There is an additional problem that a license change may legitimately be a correction rather than malfeasance. It's not the world's most common problem, but I have seen several instances where a Flicker user copied a CC-SA or CC-NC work from someone else but mis-stated the license as PD or CC-BY, etc. In a couple cases where it has happened with my own works, I've contacted the Flickr user to get a correction. This goes to the general question of how much are you willing to rely on the accuracy of statements made by largely anonymous people on the internet, really? And do you really want to be in the business of assuming that their first statement was more correct than their current one. Personally, if you can't establish authorship more specifically than an online screenname, I'm inclined to favor deleting images when things like ambiguous/contradictory licensing claims come up. Also, it's worth noting that even if you have ironclad documentation that a legitimate license had been communicated, that only addresses that you were acting in good faith. Good faith actions eliminate the possibility for punitive damages, but if you rely on a license declaration that is incorrect (for example because the Flickr user stole it from someone else), you are still potentially liable for actual and/or statutory damages. Which is why professional publishers usually expect a clearer chain of authorship to avoid getting duped. -Robert Rohde On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Alex G wrote: Change the way to do flickr reviewing. If the image differs from flickr, put {{speedy}} I use to delete those images with flickr source which don't have a free license, because it's too improbable that an image uploaded two days ago has changed its flickr license to an unfree one.

We do need tackle this problem somehow, but I'm not sure what I'd think is the best way to do it. I think redirecting the possibly unfree category to {{speedy}} is a mistake - simply because its such a vast change. Note also there are files awaiting review that were uploaded in 2007, so the backlog is still a nuisance; and with files coming through other wikimedia projects that problem isn't going to go away either. I do think that we should try our best to empty Commons of "possibly unfree Flickr images" in their entirety, not just the recent additions. The proposals here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Flickr_images#Reviving might be appropriate. Overly bureaucratic maybe, but I'd rather have a process that is administratively difficult, but the community can accept, than a slicker process that annoys the community. That strongly indicates a "slow" deletion process to me - maybe a variant on {{no permission since}}. As an aside: Flickr users are perfectly entitled to cease to offer an image under a free license, and instead use a non-free on, but they can't stop other people distributing it under the license if they got it freely. That makes using Flickr a pain in the neck for any downstream user, like us, as we cannot prove the license here was ever valid.. (and round in circles we go) On 01/04/2008, Alex G <g1ggyman(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 7:08 PM, Florian Straub <flominator(a)gmx.net> wrote: Screenshots are as much fakeable as everything else. In fact we once had a user who "proved" that an image was free by sending a fake screenshot. Bryan

Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh(a)gmail.com> wrote on wed, 2 apr 2008 10:48:26 +0200: I know, but not, when a bot takes them. Regards, Flo

Daniel Kinzler wrote: If you can prove that it's safe because taken by a bot, you can equally prove that the bot recognised that license. CLOSE WONTFIX