From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/22/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
So you can release a photograph as GFDL if you do not hold the copyright to it? Is this fair dinkum?
No. Check the {{GFDL}} template. It's not a release, it's an assertion. If you stamp the photo {{GFDL}}, you're simply
saying that
the person who took it has previously released it - a
different kind
of sin, that may or not let you sleep better at night.
For instance, if my wife takes a picture of me, I ask her to release it under GFDL so it can be on WP and she agrees, I can legitimately do the uploading and GFDL-tagging myself, crediting her as photographer. We do take it on a certain amount of faith that I'm representing the situation truthfully, but given that the GFDL requires that the creator of the work be identified, a skeptic would in theory have enough info to contact her directly and confirm the license.
If they wanted to. Actually, I don't have much of a problem with this for non-controversial user photographs. I don't know if it would stand up in court, but you'd have to say that if someone asks a random person on the street to take their photograph, then it was implicit that the photographer would have no ownership or control over the resultant image. Afer all, you wouldn't ask someone you didn't know to take your photograph with your own camera if you thought you wouldn't end up with rights to it. It's a little different to going into a studio and asking a professional photographer to shoot you. You end up with copies, he keeps the rights.
My problem is where uploaders identify themselves as the creators of the image when clearly they are not. I'd like to see some explicit WP-agreed way of doing this.
And the ultimate reason why I want this made plain is that when I'm eventually able to edit my own user page again, I want to upload a picture of my smiling face, and I don't want the same mean-minded individual who pulled it off last time to do it again, citing the exact same quibble with ownership.
Here's the photograph I want to upload. http://static.flickr.com/35/123137544_d055e4bebf.jpg Me in Hiroshima with cherry blossoms, taken by my friend Cari.
Pete, back home again