[Including whole original message]
I wonder whether it would be worth developing a guideline, or just
writing an essay about it on Commons. Trouble is, I know so little
about how the Commons works -- I don't even know how to find their
list of policies.
My thinking is that voyeurism is increasingly becoming a criminal
offence, and an essay about it might help to identify the kinds of
images we should be wary of uploading. For example, in the UK, a
person commits a criminal offence if:
"(a) he records another person (B) doing a private act,
"(b) he does so with the intention that he or a third person will, for
the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, look at an image of B
doing the act, and
"(c) he knows that B does not consent to his recording the act with
that intention."
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/67
The problem with all of this on Wikimedia is the anonymity factor.
People could say "I am the model and I hereby give consent." I don't
know how we get round that.
Sarah
Especially when the images are scraped off the CC-BY and CC-BY-SA Flickr
streams.
While many American states have enacted similar statutes, there has been no
effort to criminalize the distribution of media created through a violation
of them, which has never quite made sense to me. So on Wikipedia, we are
also in an ethically gray area.
Along those lines, I direct your attention to:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Upskirt and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Downblouse
While hardly all of those images are what I feared they might be (most don't
really seem to depict the unintentional exposure of an unaware subject's
private parts or underwear from an angle that suggests intentional use for
that purpose by the photographer), there are some that I strongly doubt were
taken with the subject's awareness, much less consent (although they don't
show that much:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marcia_Imperator_back.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marcia_Imperator_legs.jpg
I also really don't think it's fair to the subject to categorize this
picture as "upskirt"
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Open_2009_4th_round_258.jpg
The greater problem is, what do we do about the potential problem here? I
think there is a real problem already with Flickr images ... Flickr doesn't
bother to affirmatively screen submissions for copyright infringement, much
less whether they were taken or uploaded with the subject's consent even if
they are unidentifiable. The former problem long ago reached the point where
we've had to publish a whole page of Flickr users to not reupload from
(
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Questionable_Flickr_images#Flickr
users) Why would we not have such a list of Flickr users who might have
uploaded nude images without the consent or knowledge of the subject?
And perhaps we ought not to presume a Flickr-sourced nude is ethically OK.
Perhaps Commons policy ought to require that any image of a nude person or
parts thereof transferred to Commons from Flickr come with evidence of
consent to be photographed and allow such a photograph to be distributed
under a free license. Perhaps any such media uploaded directly to Commons
ought to require an OTRS-verified permission with such stated on the image
page.
As it is, some of the images in the categories, even those of clearly
identifiable people, don't even the {{personality rights}} tag, the little
legal protection we do try to offer.
Daniel Case
