On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:

Pete,

I don't know which Commons you participate in. The one I know has tons of nude pictures of women uploaded by anonymous throwaway accounts, with no indication whatsoever that the women concerned are aware of and have consented to the upload,

<snip>

Andreas, you are of course correct. I believe two factors address the distance between what you and I said:

(1) The word "consent" is not qualified in the Board's resolution, which invites this critical question in every case: are we talking about consent to be photographed, or consent to have the photo released under a free license on a widely viewed, open access web site? This is obviously a question of critical importance. The resolution's language doesn't provide much guidance. In practice, the places where Commons participants do well are with photos where it's visually clear that the subject may not have consented to being photographed at all, in the first place (i.e., no reason to believe the subject is even aware of the camera).

The resolution wording is:

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We feel that it is important and ethical to obtain subject consent for the use of such media, in line with our special mission as an educational and free project. We feel that seeking consent from an image's subject is especially important in light of the proliferation of uploaded photographs from other sources, such as Flickr, where provenance is difficult to trace and subject consent difficult to verify.

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I don't see anything ambiguous about that.

This topless image is typical:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miss_Lovely_F3247.JPG

Categorised under "Hooters". Zero evidence of model consent for the use of this image.

Here is another of the same woman:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miss_Lovely.JPG

This was okayed by Commons administrator Mattbuck:

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This image, originally posted to Flickr, was reviewed on 3 March 2013 by the administrator or reviewer Mattbuck, who confirmed that it was available on Flickr under the stated license on that date.

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Zero concern for model consent to this use of the file.

As long as that is the accepted standard of behaviour in Commons, I'd be a fool to waste my time contributing there.

(2) The existence of files on Commons, vs. the ones where somebody takes the trouble to write a well-formed nomination for deletion, is a huge one. My comments concern only the latter; but of course, there are many thousands of files on Commons that could or should be nominated for deletion, but haven't. It's important to acknowledge that while such cases may reflect the intent of the uploading individual, they by no stretch of the imagination reflect the considered judgment of the Commons community.