On 12/5/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Stated another way, not only does a poorly-composed fan shot of an author at a book signing trump a professionally-photographed headshot, an imageless article trumps that headshot, too.
I think this needs the clarification that this might only apply if the professionally-photographed headshot has not been licensed appropriately. I certainly am very in favor of notable individuals providing us their press photos under a free license.
I don't agree with either extreme proposition here. I don't think that an article is automatically better with no image than a fair use one, but neither do I think that a fair use image is automatically better than no image. It is definitely the case, though, that imageless articles tend to inspire properly-licensed image contributions much more so than articles with an appropriate but fair-use image.
I also agree that in the majority of cases, fair use images on articles on living persons could be replaced with a free image. There are some cases where such replacement is extremely unlikely, and in those cases I would accept an argument for a fair-use image, particularly if it is one that would be freely available to us under a Wikipedia-only or noncommercial-only or educational-only license, so that we are not actually in potential legal difficulties.
What do people think about fair use images of historical things that no longer exist? In these cases, nobody can go and photograph the thing - our only hope of getting a free-licensed image is persuading someone who owns the copyright to one to donate it. (Short of waiting for copyright expiration, if it ever even happens given the continual raising of copyright periods)
-Matt