On 11/16/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
We're insisting on free licences even in situations where we know the copyright holder doesn't mind,
Doesn't mind what?
Doesn't mind using making modified versions? Doesn't mind us selling the images?
If they honestly don't mind, then getting them to make a clear statement shouldn't be a problem.
In theory yes, but you're missing out the human factor. We had a case recently of an 80-year-old philosopher being approached. He was happy to send his image and he gave permission for us to use it. The editor had to write back and say "No, we can't use it with your permission" and gave him the right words. There was so much back and forth that the original editor gave up from nervous exhaustion and a second editor had to step up to take his place. We got the free licence in the end (I believe) but at the cost of several years taken off everyone's life. :-)
Did you miss my point about the importance of avoiding being liked by the rights holders in maintaining neutrality?
No, I saw that, and I think it's a good point, but I've felt similar pressure when I've been given free-licence images, especially when the person has gone to a lot of trouble to get them for us. I worked on a story recently where the widow of the subject sent us images from their wedding, of the subject in his schooldays, and so on. I definitely felt pressure after that not to add critical material about the husband. I resisted it, but it was there.
Who is our audience, in other words; what is our market?
We endeavor to create an encyclopedia of Free Content for the world. It is not sufficient to merely place knowledge behind a glass wall of intellectual property, so that the people of the world may look but not touch. The world already has fine examples of that in commercial encyclopedias. To go beyond that we must produce a resource which will be owned, equally, and in perpetuity by all the people of the world so that they may use it, share it, and benefit from it, in any way that they see fit.
In a few short years we have created so much free work. It would seem foolish to not take every effort to ensure that the greatest amount of the total can be easily used as freely as the majority so that it may be enjoyed by as many people for as many purposes as possible.
Wikipedia will be around 100 years from now, and hopefully still going strong. I see no cause to walk away from free content because in a few cases it will allow us to speed things up a little. Certainly not now, .. not after we've proven that competent photographers would want to contribute.. not after we've proven that we can get excellent photographs of famous people..
Yes, I take these points, and thank you for explaining.
As I said, responsible publishers who want to use our material won't trust what we say regarding free licenses: they'll make their own licensing enquiries. And irresponsible publishers won't care. So who are we doing it for?
Are they to make these enquiries years after the source has died? Do we expect a publisher to contact dozens of rights holders just to republish a *single* Wikipedia article.. people whom we already should have contacted for our own usage? That would seem to be very inefficient.
I don't know how a publisher would handle it in every case, but if we have a free-license image of Madonna, any good publisher would contact her agent before using it just to make sure. They probably wouldn't contact Professor John Smith whose image was taken from his unversity homepage, because they'd know he wouldn't mind. That was all I was trying to get at: that when we *know* people don't mind, we still insist that editors go to very great lengths to obtain a free licence, to a degree that no other publisher would.
But I take your point about absolutely free knowledge for the world. You made the case very eloquently.
Considering that my contributions are available on many websites who have mirrored and excerpted from Wikipedia and the only rights requests I've ever had were from people who wanted the ability to use my works commercially without attribution, I think you're assuming publishers are able and willing to do more work than they actually are.
Yes, you're probably right. Anyway, thank you again for explaining it so clearly.
Sarah