On 8/25/07, James Duncan Davidson james@duncandavidson.com wrote:
In any case, I think the fundamental disagreement is what is considered to be fair attribution. I consider Wikipedia's current practice to be lacking. It can be interpreted to be within the scope of the CC license, but I don't consider it to be fair. You consider it to be fair and acceptable, though indicate it could be done better. I don't think there's any easy resolution.
I personally think that *at the very least* we should make it obvious that credits and licensing can be obtained by clicking on the image, even if we don't put a credit on the page itself. Otherwise, we're engaging in mystery linking. The only thing that's remotely obvious about clicking on a small clickable image is that you might get a bigger version by so doing.
The one thing I'm concerned about about is the statement that attribution could be changed to Wikipedia with a change to terms of service. I'm puzzled by that. If I'm not the one uploading a CC-licensed image, how have I as an original Author or Licensor designated another party for attribution? If that's true, then the attribution requirement means very much less than what I thought it meant.
I think that you or the person stating that is mistaken. Even text contributions to Wikipedia do not require assignment of copyright to Wikimedia/Wikipedia. They are all copyright their original contributors. This definitely goes for images as well.
-Matt