On 6/21/07, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote:
As I recall (and Anthere, apologies if I've got
this wrong) - the image is a
member of the fr community who died recently and Anthere wanted to keep it
as a memorial, if it made sense. She was obviously prepared to let it go
(and did, in fact, let it go) but someone applied IAR and *poof* it's back.
Yes. I'm just saying that if the user had been required to upload his
self-portrait under a free license, we would not be having the
post-mortem debate about whether or not we can use the picture for
memorial purposes.
In fact the policy page on the English Wikipedia is clear on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#User-created_images
Wikipedia encourages users to upload their own images,
but all user-created
images must be licensed under a free license (such as the GFDL and/or an
acceptable Creative Commons license) or be released into the public domain
(no copyright). If licensing, it is best practice to multi-license your images under
both GFDL and a Creative Commons license.
This explicitly forbids invoking a "fair use" defense with material
you yourself hold the rights to, which would IMO create a legally (or
at least morally) frivolous situation for everyone involved.
—C.W.
