Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the edit history.
This could have the effect of greatly reducing the images available for use, particularly those of high quality and/or limited availability.
I recently have been up against such an issue when trying to find some good photographs of whale images for the sperm whale and blue whale pages (the blue whale page has resorted to using a postage stamp as its main image).
It turns out any underwater photos of these creatures - let alone good ones - are in very short supply. After a while of searching I found the stock agency http://seapics.com which has many fantastic pictures you'd have trouble finding elsewhere (while not a fair comparison, to get an idea try searching for sperm whale or blue whale at seapics.com and then try the same at images.google.com).
I'm now writing a letter to seapics (snail-mail still has an extra value sometimes :) to try to obtain explicit permission for use on wikipedia. These folk sell images for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on use (some info at http://seapics.com/information/clients/pricing.html).
Due to the high exposure, allowing just one of their images to be used in wikipedia would be a significant donation to wikipedial; to be honest I don't think I have a particularly good chance of success here.
**But** if I couldn't guarantee credits where used, I could be pretty sure my chances would be nil.
My understanding is that we currently accept images with credit required when used, so changing this policy would also mean a massive amount of work.
I'm strongly in favor of allowing credits inside the article, but discouraging it - favoring images where the copyright holder has no such requirements.
--Iain [newbie]
On 12/21/06, Iain Huxley iain@mindspike.com wrote:
Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the edit history.
This could have the effect of greatly reducing the images available for use, particularly those of high quality and/or limited availability.
I recently have been up against such an issue when trying to find some good photographs of whale images for the sperm whale and blue whale pages (the blue whale page has resorted to using a postage stamp as its main image).
It turns out any underwater photos of these creatures - let alone good ones - are in very short supply. After a while of searching I found the stock agency http://seapics.com which has many fantastic pictures you'd have trouble finding elsewhere (while not a fair comparison, to get an idea try searching for sperm whale or blue whale at seapics.com and then try the same at images.google.com).
I'm now writing a letter to seapics (snail-mail still has an extra value sometimes :) to try to obtain explicit permission for use on wikipedia. These folk sell images for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on use (some info at http://seapics.com/information/clients/pricing.html).
Due to the high exposure, allowing just one of their images to be used in wikipedia would be a significant donation to wikipedial; to be honest I don't think I have a particularly good chance of success here.
**But** if I couldn't guarantee credits where used, I could be pretty sure my chances would be nil.
I'd say your chances of getting a stock agency to license its images under any free license is pretty much nil. You might get Wikipedia-only permission, but that's not good enough.
My understanding is that we currently accept images with credit required when used, so changing this policy would also mean a massive amount of work.
I'm strongly in favor of allowing credits inside the article, but discouraging it - favoring images where the copyright holder has no such requirements.
I agree with this part completely. And I back this up with what I do. When I get people to license images under a free license, I always try first to get permission under Sharealike 1.0, which has no attribution requirement at all. But barring that kind of permission, I think it's perfectly acceptable for an author to require attribution within the work itself, and not on some click-through page.
Anthony
On 12/21/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think it's perfectly acceptable for an author to require attribution within the work itself, and not on some click-through page.
It depends whether you count "the work" as being the single article, or the encyclopedia as a whole, doesn't it?
Printed books often have a photo credits section or the like.
-Matt
On 12/21/06, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/21/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think it's perfectly acceptable for an author to require attribution within the work itself, and not on some click-through page.
It depends whether you count "the work" as being the single article, or the encyclopedia as a whole, doesn't it?
Not to me. If an author wants the attribution to be directly attached to the image, and not somewhere else, I still think it's perfectly acceptable.
Now, if you're asking instead what the terms are of CC-BY-SA, for instance, that's a whole different ball of wax. But then again, if you're going to claim that the entire encyclopedia is a single work and not a collection of independent works, then you can't use CC-BY-SA anyway, because the entire work is not under CC-BY-SA (parts are under GFDL).
Printed books often have a photo credits section or the like.
And the author of the printed books usually get explicit permission to use the photos, or else they use them under fair use.
Anthony