Dear Danavir,
You recently enquired about the copyright situation as regards a Gandhi image on our site and requested permission for reuse. I saw our fellow contributor Aevar Arnfjoerd Bjarmason (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%c6var_Arnfj%f6r%f0_Bjarmason) has already replied as follows (please read on below):
On 26 Aug 2004, at 23:02, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
Message: 8 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:05:25 +0200 From: ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg
"This image may not have information on its source. It may be usable under fair use but this has yet to be verified. It might be public domain or under a licence compatible with the GNU FDL. To the uploader: Please provide licensing information as soon as possible. Images without this information may be deleted in the future. If you want to publish an image as fair use, please list it on Wikipedia:Fair use."
We do not know.
In case you are already familiar with the details of how our system works, please disregard this message. In case you might not be, please allow me to explain:
- Wikipedia is a volunteer-driven effort. There currently are no full time employees. - One of our effective operating principles is to lower any bars to entry as much as possible, if not to outright abolish them. - As part of this philosophy, and contrary to what it possible with paper-based works, editorial review of any contribution, including images takes place /after/ publication. - Any freely registered user thus can technically upload and submit any image file of his or her choosing and it will be available online right away. - Submitters are however required to adhere to our copyright terms, which including our image guidelines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Image_guidelines). This is further explained by our _Image use policy_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy) and by our _Uploading images_ article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Uploading_images). Our terms contain a clear requirement that the uploader ensure compliance with copyright legislation AND explain why the image is copyright law compliant AND also classify the rationale for legal use of the respective image through the use of an appropriate tag. Again, the legal responsibility to ensure copyright compliance lies squarely with the submitter. - It is only /after/ such submissions are made that these uploaded images go through various review processes (e.g. listing and review at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Imagelist) to verify that they meet our standards (which includes adherence to copyright regulations). - If violations are confirmed, any offending images are _permanently_ deleted, unlike other submitted content, which remains available via article history pages. - Because such deletions are permanent and because the responsibility for ensuring copyright compliance lies squarely with the submitter, we are sometimes cautious about deleting images in cases of doubt.
Finally: - In the case of the picture you asked us for permission about, the contributor has so far failed to classify and explain the uploaded image's copyright compliance. - With virtually all images on the Wikipedia, you can check their respective copyright and submission details just by clicking on them in the article, which should take you to an image descriptor page. - In case of the Gandhi image, that page is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg. This contains the text which Aevar Arnfjoerd Bjarmason included in his email (see above). - From this page, it can be seen that the submitter was our fellow contributor Netoholic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netoholic). I am contacting him for clarification via his Talk page. (This is something you could have done do directly as well -- you can leave him a message (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk: Netoholic&action=edit§ion=new) on his Talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic). That goes for any user.
- I am asking Netoholic to get back to you direct, but because of the volunteer nature of our project there is no guarantee that he does so (in time).
- Until Netoholic has confirmed the copyright situation, we would strongly suggest for you NOT to use the respective Gandhi image as the legality of its use is not presently clear to ourselves. (That is unless you were to find out from other sources that the image can legally be freely used. In this latter case -- or if you find out that it CANNOT be used, we would be rather grateful to be notified as well.) If you were to re-use the image without further enquiries, you would be doing so entirely at your own risk.
Please accept my apologies for a lengthy email relating a complex procedural and legal framework and please understand that in the absence of more information we cannot grant permission for reuse of the image. Indeed, if we do not receive such clarification, the image is likely to sooner or later get deleted from our own servers as our fellow Wikipedians follow our continual review processes.
Yours sincerely,
Jens Wikipedia contributor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ropers http://www.ropersonline.com
original message follows:
Message: 4 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:15 -0700 From: "Danavir Goswami (USA)" Danavir.Goswami@pamho.net
Dear Friends, Aug. 26, 2004
Greetings. I am a monk writing a book on celibacy---the title is "Brain Gain" (1,000 copies) and would like to use, within the book, an image of Gandhi I found on your website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
If you could be so kind as to inform me A) whether the image is in the public domain (copyright-free), or B) if you have the ability to grant permission for its use, or C) you could suggest how I might seek permission.
The seminary is non profit and the publication is also not a profit enterprise.
Thank you so much for your help.
With best regards,
Dr. Dane Holtzman
Rupanuga Vedic College (USA) 5201 Paseo, Kansas City, Missouri 64110 Tel: (816) 924-5619, (800) 340-5286, Fax: (816) 924-5640 E-mail: danavir.goswami@pamho.net Website: www.rvc.edu