I think somebody has previously said that that's because it wouldn't be compatible for use outside of Wikipedia, and we do have a lot of forks and mirrors. We don't regulate that, so we would need to get the copyright holder to completely give up rights to the image for safety. And that's not always fun for everybody. The contradiction is peculiar and unfortunate, but makes some sense.
--Ryan
On 12/4/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/5/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Certainly the most obvious case would be one in which the hollywood star did not own the copyright to the photo.
We're talking about publicity shots aren't we? As in, photos that are provided to the media so they can write puff pieces about them...presumably the publicist owns the copyright, and presumably it is legal for the media to use them this way. So presumably also legal for Wikipedia to use them as the lead image for relevant articles. But possibly not legal for downstream Wikipedia content reusers...
The interesting issue though is that we probably have permission to use these types of images without resorting to "fair use", but we actually prohibit ourselves from using that kind of image: we accept free images, we accept fair use...but not "permission granted for Wikipedia". It's a strange one.
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