As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
On Jul 7, 2007, at 6:13 PM, Casey Brown wrote:
During an IRC discussion earlier today, Rama suggested we use Flickr to help increase our exposure - per the recent conversation in the "My photo was reused" thread. We discussed the fact that we could upload our Featured Pictures using a Wikimedia Commons account; hopefully people would see these images and ask to use them, thereby increasing the visibility and knowledge of the Commons. Cbrown1023 created the account to ensure nobody else could steal the name, and now we're bringing this idea here to see what the community has to say :) May also be brought up on the village pump if it seems wise.
The e-mail address has been temporarily set to info- en@wikimedia.org so requests, etc. can be handled there in private; we also thought of requesting an info-commons@wikimedia.org address (if one doesn't currently exist?) for such purposes. The fact that requests may be in many different languages as Commons is multilingual (Flickr too) would also be a good reason for not having things sent to info-en but to info-commons directly.
Thoughts? Comments? Ideas?
-- Casey Brown ( Cbrown1023 ) Ayelie ( Editor at Large )
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 7/7/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
That's great, certainly something to keep in mind :)
-- Ayelie ~Editor at Large
Hi!
On 7/7/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
Perhaps will be good idea to discuss issue with license change on flickr (old Commons' headache :-).
Free licenses are irrevocable. Only changes to less restrictive license should be allowed (for example, CC-BY-SA -> CC-BY).
With best regards, Eugene.
On 7/8/07, Eugene Zelenko eugene.zelenko@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
On 7/7/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
Perhaps will be good idea to discuss issue with license change on flickr (old Commons' headache :-).
Free licenses are irrevocable. Only changes to less restrictive license should be allowed (for example, CC-BY-SA -> CC-BY).
With best regards, Eugene.
Hmm, good points... also, what about an option that allows releasing into the public domain? Right now they don't have that option, it's a CC license or All Rights Reserved. In many cases (such as if we were to upload some of our FPs to Flickr) we would run into issues with having to say they are under a CC license when in fact they are PD or other.
On Jul 7, 2007, at 9:08 PM, Ayelie wrote:
Hmm, good points... also, what about an option that allows releasing into the public domain? Right now they don't have that option, it's a CC license or All Rights Reserved. In many cases (such as if we were to upload some of our FPs to Flickr) we would run into issues with having to say they are under a CC license when in fact they are PD or other.
In most jurisdictions it is simply not possible to really "release into the public domain". It is a complicated and sad situation.
In terms of a release, the best one can do generally is CC BY.
But you are right that some photos actually are public domain, and perhaps Flickr should have a way for people to flag that. But since most people have no clue that you can't really release things into the public domain in most jurisdictions, this would probably be a net LOSS for free culture, because people would start incorrectly flagged photos as "PD" in cases where they WISH they could do that, but can't, and so if they understood it would choose CC BY.
--Jimbo
On 7/8/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
On Jul 7, 2007, at 9:08 PM, Ayelie wrote:
Hmm, good points... also, what about an option that allows releasing into the public domain? Right now they don't have that option, it's a CC license or All Rights Reserved. In many cases (such as if we were to upload some of our FPs to Flickr) we would run into issues with having to say they are under a CC license when in fact they are PD or other.
In most jurisdictions it is simply not possible to really "release into the public domain". It is a complicated and sad situation.
In terms of a release, the best one can do generally is CC BY.
But you are right that some photos actually are public domain, and perhaps Flickr should have a way for people to flag that. But since most people have no clue that you can't really release things into the public domain in most jurisdictions, this would probably be a net LOSS for free culture, because people would start incorrectly flagged photos as "PD" in cases where they WISH they could do that, but can't, and so if they understood it would choose CC BY.
--Jimbo
Yes, this is very true; which is why on our PD licenses we have the "In case this is not legally possible I here by revoke all claim..." or whatever it is, I can't remember off the top of my head. As Brianna said there is a CC-PD license which would work well.
On 7/8/07, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Flickr is geared towards people uploading their own work. It might be worth checking if there is something in the TOS against uploading others' work (regardless or whether or not license terms allow it).
cheers Brianna
Yes, that was something I was thinking about when talking to Casey earlier but neglected to add to the message. If we ensure it isn't against Flickr policies and check to make sure it won't cause problems, well. I know on Commons and Wikipedia we don't like to allow "company" accounts or the like, but if we let Flickr people know that this account will be used only by certified people (i.e. admins, people who have been given access after a vote etc.) and that we are uploading already-existing images ...
On 7/7/07, Eugene Zelenko eugene.zelenko@gmail.com wrote:
Free licenses are irrevocable. Only changes to less restrictive license should be allowed (for example, CC-BY-SA -> CC-BY).
Users can screw up. They must be allowed to change to the license they actually intended. Flickr would, I believe, not agree to an irreversable license change because of the tech support headache it would cause.
On the other hand, keeping a license history might be a good idea.
-Matt
On 7/8/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/7/07, Eugene Zelenko eugene.zelenko@gmail.com wrote:
Free licenses are irrevocable. Only changes to less restrictive license should be allowed (for example, CC-BY-SA -> CC-BY).
Users can screw up. They must be allowed to change to the license they actually intended. Flickr would, I believe, not agree to an irreversable license change because of the tech support headache it would cause.
On the other hand, keeping a license history might be a good idea.
-Matt
No changing licenses allowed after the image has been uploaded for #days? I imagine most mistakes are caught within the first two days or so, anything after that is likely just changing their mind. Hard to judge I imagine, but then again if there were notices on upload pages saying "After x number of days licenses are non-revokable: please choose wisely" I imagine people would pay more attention.
It may be good for everyone if that happens anyway, too many people don't really care and just slap whatever license they feel like on an image, and then complain when it's used and change to All Rights Reserved. We might get a few less freely-licensed images, but also a lot less confusion and complaints and changes and misunderstandings.
On 08/07/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
- Making visible a "license history" would solve some problems, if not implementing Eugene's idea of only allowing users to change to a less-restrictive license. - Flickr is the biggest 'user' of Creative Commons license, in terms of letting ITS users choose to use them. This is really a complaint about CC, but Flickr could help: stop using the vague phrase "some rights reserved" to refer to ALL CC licenses and instead use the specific name of the license. Teaching people how to distinguish between the various licenses is made extremely difficult when Flickr only uses tiny icons and no actual visible text, to identify the relevant license.
Also regarding PD releases, there is a "CC-PD" "license" which Flickr could let people choose to use.
regards Brianna
On 08/07/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
Add a note to CC licensing: "If you use CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, your material will also be usable on Wikipedia. If you use NC or ND, it will not be."
(I say "Wikipedia" there for brand identification.)
- d.
On 08/07/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As a part of this brainstorming, please know that we have very good friends at Flickr. I see Stewart and Caterina socially fairly often, and of course they are huge fans. So if there is anything we need from Flickr, let's discuss it, write it up, and I can ask them.
http://search.creativecommons.org/
Flickr is added there... has anyone made any attempt to get Commons added to their search? Or were we waiting until Commons has a half-decent search engine (Mayflower is admittedly much better but still not perfect) before looking into that? I assume Jimbo has some contacts at Creative Commons as well ;)
CC's flickr search is another place where our images would pop up, if we had an account on Flickr for the Commons where we added our images. Admittedly it's the same as a plain old Flickr search, but I am guessing that many people are going to use the CC website to search for items - and the Flickr option there is the one to choose for good-quality photos.