Hi everyone.
If this is going to be a problem then its all the more reason for banning fair use.
As far as I can see there has been no discussion about obtaining more public domain images, only on handling those which are problematic.
I have two thoughts:
First: I was, in regard to the London bombing, greatly impressed by the images from Flickr (www.flickr.org) I see from their FAQ that one of the licencing options they offer users is a public domain one, which is presumably how we came by those we used. I spent a while poking around their site and the spread of high quality images of many subjects is awesome
Maybe contact could be made with them asking if they can give publicity to Wikipedia and saying we are always on the look out for PD images for Commons we can use in articles.
Second: There must be specialist editors like me who have book collections with out-of-copyright material which could be scanned. This gets over the hassle of reproduction fees from library sources. We should have a drive to get more editors making PD images even if they are for articles they have not written.
I am probably looking in the wrong place, but I have not found anywhere detailed instructions for the best methods of scanning for Wiki use. Much of the material I have comprises drawings and engravings, and these need care in scanning to avoid dither. While there is much detailed information about how to make the FTP transfer and handling the image on the Wiki page. I cannot find in the tutorials anything on how to make the scans to optimum Wiki standards.
Tony Woolrich (AKA Apwoolrich)