On 19/09/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
In the World Cup example, at least, Commons seems to
have decided that
it's not our job to enforce them---it's between FIFA and the
photographer whether the pictures were taken in violation of a contract,
and not really our job to pry into the matter, even if we suspect they
were probably not taken with permission.
Yeah. But there's a difference between "we're not going to ask" and
"we're going to actively promote that you can do this quasi-legally",
and we often seem to be slipping towards the latter, by assuming
copyright is the only relevant factor.
I'm not sure that's a position we *must* take,
but it does seem to be
the one we're currently taking. There are problems with the opposite
position, too, that would at least require us to come up with something
more complex/nuanced. For example, we'd probably want to reserve the
right to publish pictures taken illegally in complex political
situations---if somebody snapped a newsworthy photograph during a coup,
for example, which the government later declared illegal, we would
probably not want to take it down for that reason (or at least I
wouldn't want us to have such a policy).
We've quite the collection of illegally-produced material - most of
the illustrations of revolutionary propaganda, for a start...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk