--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
There are currently 3 images on the page, all taken from indymedia.org. Two of them are likely taken by IndyMedia activists,
They may even be Reuters, XingHua, or Agency Presse, or other photos -- thought I was careful to select the ones that were not explicitly labeled as the others. Indymedia isnt very clear or concerned with proper attribution, -- they arent making product - they report news (or make news, depending on who you ask. ;)
The map is problematic, and it should be removed before too long. (before someone copies it under GFDL.) (BTW, why do some 4reference articles (WP content) show up better than WP? )
fair use doctrine or no. IndyMedia is an extremely political website whose views are, ahem, quite different from my own, but nonetheless I suspect that they have no beef with our NPOV policy.
From what ive seen, Indymedia is slowly increasing it
standards becoming moderated -- they were hurt severely when an anti-semitic post got them booted off the Google wires -- but they still show up there (marginally). The POV aspect of Indymedia is offset however by the fact that they report on things that mainstream media completely ignores. Until the 13, hardly anyone in the US reported on the massacres -- let alone things like "15 soldiers executed for refusing to fire on crowd" -- Its more than validity and verification -- its plain news prioritation, that more and more people are understanding as a thing WAY out of whack in US media. (its why I decided against a journalism carreer --in days before web pub'ng.)
It *does* strike me as likely that they would object vociferously, though, to re-use by potential re-licensees, and I
No, but we better get some communication with them to get the facts straight. I dont think they are concerned with copyright or left at all -- to they point that they even ungratuitously boost content from other newssources. I'm going to talk to someone there --Im also curious about their technology --it would seem that their whole process is gettig an overhaul but there is no consensus on which direction. If they were *talked* into using Mediawiki (instead of dead, dead Twiki) it may score some more developers for Mediawiki. (Im just getting into the IM thing... )
"The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's distortions and unwillingness to
cover the efforts to free humanity."
They are not too dissimilar.
Their efforts in this area, as far as I've been able to determine, mainly consist of promoting tyranny around the world as an antidote to the problems of freedom and prosperity. ;-)
I disagree. Solidarity with the working man ain't tyranny. Solidarity with Stalinist apologists is just stupidity of course (or just part of the any warm body welcome policy ). John Stossel has a nice new editorial on this whole "do protestors help at all" question.
But my own political leanings aside, it *does* seem likely to me that the IndyMedia people could be quickly convinced to adopt a policy consistent with their own stated goals, i.e. to release all their images under a free license.
And to perhaps adopt NPOV too! ;) -- Super LPOV seems to be shooting themselves in the foot in some ways. I think some of them recognize it -- others well... theyre just angry and angrier reactionists. Bakunin: "Given six months, and the revolutionary will become worse than the Czar himself."
If they could be so persuaded, then there would be no problem at all with our use of their images. They would achieve some of their goals,
Let the GNUtually beneficial dialogue begin !
And here's where I think a too-easy reliance on the crutch of "fair use" can be harmful. We have an opportunity before us to encourage a likely receptive audience to engage in free licensing, and yet we have passed on that because it's just too easy to take their content and mumble and wave our hands about fair use, knowing full well that they probably won't complain anyway.
So... you *have* been thinking along these lines for a while...
Fair use is a dangerous crutch, and I *really* think we need to start reforming our fair use practices
to be
*much* more strict.
Or loosy-goosy. It may be that the goals of an increasingly transparent and highly fast turnover news site are simply incompatible with the goals of making stuff to hold onto forever --They can always say "sorry -- we'll take it down." By the way, Im going to start doing some illustrations for some of the articles -- with a request list.
Fair use is an absolute necessity for us in some contexts. But it should be used judiciously and
with great > care, and only when every
other (freely licensed) alternative has been exhausted.
This kind of contradicts what you just said before. Either fair use is a defense, or it is not. Where that slider is set, is going to be harder to explain than GNU is.
In this case, I think that hasn't happened. We used the images (well, Stevertigo did) because they were
good, > and because it was easy.
All too easy -- but I guess that's the point.
~S~
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