I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the mailing list.
~Mark Ryan
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaydee Gee JDGee1@gmail.com Date: 02-Sep-2006 08:30 Subject: [Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer] To: ultrablue@gmail.com
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaydee Gee JDGee1@gmail.com To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:41:40 -0400 Subject: Dealing with a famous photographer Hello folks. I (longtime editor "JDG") stopped monitoring Wikipedia lists long ago, but I'd like to ask some advice on dealing with a rather famous photographer in my attempts to include at least one of his images in the English Wikipedia's Bob Dylan article.
To be honest, this photographer's 1966 portrait of Dylan was up there as the lead photograph in the article for almost all of `05 and most of this year, until the Fair Use crackdown. I'll suppress my opinion of that crackdown and go on to my question: given the following correspondence, what's the best way to reel the photographer (let's call him "Mr. K") in?:
<start correspondence>
"Hello J,
Thanks for your email requesting use of my photograph of Bob Dylan for the lead photo in your Wikipedia article about him. All in all, I'd like to go forward but I'll first need a moment to re-read and fully understand the "GNU Free Documentation License" material. I do not want to lose control of this iconic photograph. Anything you can say about that would be helpful.
If we go forward, what is the smallest size file you can use for good Internet photo reproduction? The file size you've picked up was made for press use and for my part,is far too large for Internet use. The picture has my copyright notice on the photograph (on Dylan's shoulder) and I would do the same for the new file I would provide. Where would I send it?
Please let me know your deadline for getting this done. Yes, I would like to be linked to my website - what information must I provide? . Best regards, K
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mr. K,
I'm one of the thousands of drones working on Wikipedia. Some of us
who have been overseeing the Bob Dylan article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan) very much want to use one of your excellent portraits as the lead photo in the article, but copyright concerns have forced us to use a very inferior picture. The portrait we wish to use is the one shown here: > http://www.cleonproductions.com/flotsam/Bob_Dylan_by_DK.png
Would you consider giving Wikipedia explicit permission to use it at
the resolution shown at the above link? We can offer no payment, but we can offer a link back to your own website, in addition to the standard photo credit by name. As Wikipedia is currently the 17th most used site in the world, this link may prove valuable, particularly if you ever try selling photographs from your site or from a site linked to your site
If you choose to give us permission, this particular digital file of
the photo will then fall under the "GNU Free Documentation License" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_Li...), with a stipulation that whoever re-uses Wikipedia content must also display the photo credit as well as a hypertext link of your choosing. Of course, all rights to the original photo, as well as digital reproductions at higher resolutions, remain with you.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
JDG
<end correspondence>
Sorry for the length, but you can see it raises some halfway tricky questions. I'm not especially knowledgeable about copyright law nor even of Wikipedia\media's own policies in this area... So, how would you answer Mr. K (with a view, of course, to "getting" his fine photograph)?
Thx,
JDG
Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he already said we can use it.
Less-practical but more in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Encourage him to release it under GFDL with the knowledge that nobody who really wants to make any money off of content is going to to be happy licensing their entire work under the GFDL and attaching all of its license agreements.
Completely-impractical but completely-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Encourge him to release it freely and not care about how his content is controlled, because information wants to be free, etc.
As my only slightly sardonic answers might give rise, I don't really think there's a solution here which is both practical (for him) and in the spirit of Wikipedia. I don't blame him for not wanting to release it under a free license. There are some ways to secure his interests and still take advantage of some of our policy loopholes, but they're not really in the spirit of the wiki IMO.
FF
On 9/1/06, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the mailing list.
~Mark Ryan
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaydee Gee JDGee1@gmail.com Date: 02-Sep-2006 08:30 Subject: [Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer] To: ultrablue@gmail.com
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jaydee Gee JDGee1@gmail.com To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:41:40 -0400 Subject: Dealing with a famous photographer Hello folks. I (longtime editor "JDG") stopped monitoring Wikipedia lists long ago, but I'd like to ask some advice on dealing with a rather famous photographer in my attempts to include at least one of his images in the English Wikipedia's Bob Dylan article.
To be honest, this photographer's 1966 portrait of Dylan was up there as the lead photograph in the article for almost all of `05 and most of this year, until the Fair Use crackdown. I'll suppress my opinion of that crackdown and go on to my question: given the following correspondence, what's the best way to reel the photographer (let's call him "Mr. K") in?:
<start correspondence>
"Hello J,
Thanks for your email requesting use of my photograph of Bob Dylan for the lead photo in your Wikipedia article about him. All in all, I'd like to go forward but I'll first need a moment to re-read and fully understand the "GNU Free Documentation License" material. I do not want to lose control of this iconic photograph. Anything you can say about that would be helpful.
If we go forward, what is the smallest size file you can use for good Internet photo reproduction? The file size you've picked up was made for press use and for my part,is far too large for Internet use. The picture has my copyright notice on the photograph (on Dylan's shoulder) and I would do the same for the new file I would provide. Where would I send it?
Please let me know your deadline for getting this done. Yes, I would like to be linked to my website - what information must I provide? . Best regards, K
Dear Mr. K,
I'm one of the thousands of drones working on Wikipedia. Some of us
who have been overseeing the Bob Dylan article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan) very much want to use one of your excellent portraits as the lead photo in the article, but copyright concerns have forced us to use a very inferior picture. The portrait we wish to use is the one shown here: > http://www.cleonproductions.com/flotsam/Bob_Dylan_by_DK.png
Would you consider giving Wikipedia explicit permission to use it at
the resolution shown at the above link? We can offer no payment, but we can offer a link back to your own website, in addition to the standard photo credit by name. As Wikipedia is currently the 17th most used site in the world, this link may prove valuable, particularly if you ever try selling photographs from your site or from a site linked to your site
If you choose to give us permission, this particular digital file of
the photo will then fall under the "GNU Free Documentation License" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_Li...), with a stipulation that whoever re-uses Wikipedia content must also display the photo credit as well as a hypertext link of your choosing. Of course, all rights to the original photo, as well as digital reproductions at higher resolutions, remain with you.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
JDG
<end correspondence>
Sorry for the length, but you can see it raises some halfway tricky questions. I'm not especially knowledgeable about copyright law nor even of Wikipedia\media's own policies in this area... So, how would you answer Mr. K (with a view, of course, to "getting" his fine photograph)?
Thx,
JDG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fastfission wrote:
Less-practical but more in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Encourage him to release it under GFDL with the knowledge that nobody who really wants to make any money off of content is going to to be happy licensing their entire work under the GFDL and attaching all of its license agreements.
This seems reasonable; it really depends on what he means by "control of it". If he means control of licensing royalties, releasing it under the GFDL probably won't significantly impact that, because most commercial publishers would prefer to pay a fee than to comply with the GFDL. If he means control in other ways, then he would be releasing some control of it; for example, people could use it in derived works.
-Mark
On 9/2/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he already said we can use it.
[snip]
Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.
Either we (and other folks like us) can use it as fair use and we don't need his permission or it's not and we should not accept the image in our article permission or not.
Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will give us permission to display them on their website.
On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.
Overrule it? No way. It's just that I find it a little silly that we can just change "with permission" images to "fair use" and pretend that changes much. In practice, we're still using it with permission, as much as we pretend not to care about being given that permission. I'm not sure whether labeling it "with permission" or "fair use" is more helpful to re-users in figuring out what they can use or not.
This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict -- Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the non-commercial/with-permissions problem. But in the end, Wikipedia is still using said images non-commercially and with-permission, no matter how sternly it says, "Honestly, we'd be using it even if we weren't completely within the terms of this license."
Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will give us permission to display them on their website.
Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.
FF
On 9/2/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.
I just wanted to expand on this somewhat pissy little ending line.
I think this will continue to be the status quo until we have some more elaboration about what exactly our fair use policy is supposed to facilitate.
There are a few tugging interests and I'm not ever really sure which of them are more important than the others. One is illustrating the encyclopedia (and I mean "illustrating" in a broad sense -- quotations are fair use too). One is protecting Wikipedia's own liability. One is protecting the hypothetical liability of hypothetical re-users.
At the moment our policies don't really differentiate between these interests or encourage people to even be aware of them and how they sometimes conflict with one another. I think there are ways in which the policies could be made which would try to balance these out a bit, but at the moment I'm honestly not always sure what the priorities are supposed to be. I have some vague notions but usually feel like I'm blue-skying it, making up most of it as I go along based on somewhat-related comments by Jimbo.
In my view of it, if we want our policy to be centered around re-users, then we need to define a target re-user, and work backwards from there. But if the bar we set there is significantly higher than Wikipedia's own situation, then we're going to need a lot of very clear guidelines (probably from on-high) because it is going to lead to a lot of irritated users.
If we are only really caring about our own rear, then our fair use policy becomes an easy loophole for the non-commercial/educational-use-only/with-permissions images.
FF
On 02/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict -- Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the non-commercial/with-permissions problem.
That's not how I remember it at all. Cite please?
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 02/09/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict -- Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the non-commercial/with-permissions problem.
That's not how I remember it at all. Cite please?
It's available at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html - I'll quote it here just to be sure.
On 19/05/2005, Jimmy Wales wrote:
All images which are for non-commercial only use and by permission only are not acceptable for Wikipedia and _will be deleted_. We have tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Non-commercial_use_only_images http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_used_with_permission
Are the relevant categories.
Examples of images which must be deleted include: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:100_0062.JPG
(This is a standard photo of the Mission District in San Francisco -- getting a free alternative will be simple.)
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:167957_7674BoyVerticalBlindsSilhouette.jp...
(This is a non-commercial only image for the purpose of illustrating the concept "vertical blinds" -- getting a free alternative will be simple.)
As of today, all *new* images which are "non commercial only" and "with permission only" should be deleted on sight. Older images should go through a process of VfD to eliminate them in an orderly fashion, taking due account of "fair use".
It is very unfortunate that such images are still being uploaded _new_ when we have not be happy about them for a long time. It is not fair to contributors who are working on such things, since we have no intention to keep them in the long run.
Therefore, these templates should be modified to warn people that these images are temporary only and will be deleted soon.
--Jimbo
On 2 Sep 2006, at 20:00, Fastfission wrote:
On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.
Overrule it? No way. It's just that I find it a little silly that we can just change "with permission" images to "fair use" and pretend that changes much. In practice, we're still using it with permission, as much as we pretend not to care about being given that permission. I'm not sure whether labeling it "with permission" or "fair use" is more helpful to re-users in figuring out what they can use or not.
This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict -- Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the non-commercial/with-permissions problem. But in the end, Wikipedia is still using said images non-commercially and with-permission, no matter how sternly it says, "Honestly, we'd be using it even if we weren't completely within the terms of this license."
Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will give us permission to display them on their website.
Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.
A significant number of people will be willing to release images for free if asked.
Perhaps in this case the owner could release an internet resolution image with the presumption that someone who wanted to print it would want much higher resolution and would still pay for this.
And of course he may lose no income from internet images anyway in practice.
Stephen Streater wrote:
On 2 Sep 2006, at 20:00, Fastfission wrote:
On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.
[snip]
Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will give us permission to display them on their website.
Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.
A significant number of people will be willing to release images for free if asked.
Perhaps in this case the owner could release an internet resolution image with the presumption that someone who wanted to print it would want much higher resolution and would still pay for this.
And of course he may lose no income from internet images anyway in practice.
How about encouraging the use of suitable boilerplate wording for use in the image copyright notice, that says something like:
"This low resolution version of a copyrighted image is used under by permission from its copyright owner, Example Corporation, who have made it available for use under the GFDL: please see [[WP:GFDL]] for license terms."
"High-resolution versions of this image are available for use under commercial license terms directly from the copyright owner; please contact Example Corporation for more details, at http://www.example.com/image-licencing/example-image-reference-code."
generated by:
{{subst:low-res under GFDL|Example Corporation|http://www.example.com/image-licencing/example-image-reference-code%7D%7D
-- Neil
It would make sense to have a system like that actually, but how regularly would it be used? I can't imagine a significant uptake of this 'internet res : high res' 'try before you buy' style release of images. Most people would be using the image in a school assignment / for a work publication etc. and could do perfectly fine with a 72dpi image.
On 9/3/06, Neil Harris neil@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Stephen Streater wrote:
On 2 Sep 2006, at 20:00, Fastfission wrote:
On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.
[snip]
Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will give us permission to display them on their website.
Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.
A significant number of people will be willing to release images for free if asked.
Perhaps in this case the owner could release an internet resolution image with the presumption that someone who wanted to print it would want much higher resolution and would still pay for this.
And of course he may lose no income from internet images anyway in practice.
How about encouraging the use of suitable boilerplate wording for use in the image copyright notice, that says something like:
"This low resolution version of a copyrighted image is used under by permission from its copyright owner, Example Corporation, who have made it available for use under the GFDL: please see [[WP:GFDL]] for license terms."
"High-resolution versions of this image are available for use under commercial license terms directly from the copyright owner; please contact Example Corporation for more details, at http://www.example.com/image-licencing/example-image-reference-code."
generated by:
{{subst:low-res under GFDL|Example Corporation|http://www.example.com/image-licencing/example-image-reference-code%7D%7D
-- Neil
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 9/2/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he already said we can use it.
Then please stop saying that "wikipedia can use it" when you are only referring to the en.wp.
If you want to make this picture free to use for wikipedia (regardless of the language), then the author has to put one file containing the image under a free license.
Mathias
On 9/2/06, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/2/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he already said we can use it.
Then please stop saying that "wikipedia can use it" when you are only referring to the en.wp.
Oh, please, what other Wikipedias are others referring to in this thread? Let's not be pedantic for no reason; I think my meaning was clear.
If you want to make this picture free to use for wikipedia (regardless of the language), then the author has to put one file containing the image under a free license.
I don't think copyrights work on a "per file" basis — they work on a "per work" basis. To my understanding of it, you can't GFDL only a low-res version of something and not have it also covered by a high-res version. At least I'm pretty sure there's nothing in current caselaw which would imply that different resolutions of the same image have independent copyright status.
FF
On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:44:02 +0200, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
I don't think copyrights work on a "per file" basis — they work on a "per work" basis. To my understanding of it, you can't GFDL only a low-res version of something and not have it also covered by a high-res version. At least I'm pretty sure there's nothing in current caselaw which would imply that different resolutions of the same image have independent copyright status.
Ok, IANAL, but my understanding is "yes and no".
Copyright is granted for the work, no question about it. Anyone create something creative have full copyright for that work and any derivatives. HOWEVER the copyright holder is fully within his right to *licence* one spesific version (or copy) of the work under a free licence without loosing any sort of controll over source work.
A number of of software companies base theyr entire business model on this principle. They offer one version of theyr code for free under the GPL licence (or whatever), and one version under a commercial licence where people can pay a fee in exchange for not beeing bound by the GPL terms (release source code, licence result under GPL etc).
Sherool wrote:
On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:44:02 +0200, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
I don't think copyrights work on a "per file" basis — they work on a "per work" basis. To my understanding of it, you can't GFDL only a low-res version of something and not have it also covered by a high-res version. At least I'm pretty sure there's nothing in current caselaw which would imply that different resolutions of the same image have independent copyright status.
Ok, IANAL, but my understanding is "yes and no".
Copyright is granted for the work, no question about it. Anyone create something creative have full copyright for that work and any derivatives. HOWEVER the copyright holder is fully within his right to *licence* one spesific version (or copy) of the work under a free licence without loosing any sort of controll over source work.
A number of of software companies base theyr entire business model on this principle. They offer one version of theyr code for free under the GPL licence (or whatever), and one version under a commercial licence where people can pay a fee in exchange for not beeing bound by the GPL terms (release source code, licence result under GPL etc).
Indeed. I would expect the commercial image libraries to get an endless source of commercial sales leads for their high-resolution works, in exchange for free (as in freedom) use of the low-resolution versions of their images throughout the GFDL-sphere.
Note that by doing this, the libraries would _not_ be making the low-resolution versions of their works available for use outside the GFDL, so they should lose very little in sales from the low-res versions, and no loss at all from the high-res versions, which would not be released to anyone at all, other than under normal commercial terms. They could even watermark the GFDL'd images with a special watermark, if they wished, signifying "this low-resolution image copyright X, year, licenced under the GFDL only", so they can catch unlicenced commercial non-GFDL reusers of the low-res images and chase them for payment.
Everyone wins.
Best of all, the libraries can dip a toe in the water by trying this on, say, a few hundred of their images first, which would be only a tiny, tiny fraction of their library, so their loss is limited even if this strategy turns out to be a bad idea.
-- Neil
On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 10:40:57 +0800, "Mark Ryan" ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the mailing list.
-8<--------
I would suggest he upload a lower resolution version, OK for computer use but not good enough for anything else, which he releases under GFDL.
Otherwise, you've just found out why we have to crack down on image licensing - first time the content is forked, the photographer is on the phone to his IP lawyer.
Guy (JzG)