Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".
Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy. However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer. That said, let us float an idea.
We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and a credit.
Talk pages? Not needed. The scads of Wikipedia namespace administrivia? Almost entirely deadweight - what possible print version will want to have a copy of the 4,987th ROUGE ADMIN!!!1one! complaint on WP:AN? User pages? Helpful for attribution, but keeping them can (as we found with our neo-nazi friends) be, uh, prone to rather unfortunate misinterpretation. Indeed, I believe we now offer dumps filtered of all user-space material to avoid this. We're seeing the divide between "front-end" material and "supporting material" beginning to be a bit clearer.
All text is GFDL-licensed, and I'm not suggesting changing that, but I 'm proposing creating a class of images which are *not intended* for redistribution because they're not a part of the encylopedia we're producing - in much the same way that we're starting to discourage redistribution of some parts of the project to downstream users as, basically, not particularly relevant.
So, a suggestion. {{project-image}}. "This image is intended for use in developing Wikipedia content. Copyright is, unless explicitly stated otherwise, owned and retained by the uploader; it is an internal working document, not an encyclopedic image, and not intended for use in articles. Permission is granted to create derivative works under the conditions of this license." (or something in that general vein)
And, using a broad definition of working on the encyclopedia, we have the small amount of editing overhead that goes into strengthening a working community - not the aim of the wiki, by a long shot, but necessary to keep it running well. And, as a part of that, people keep adding photos...
Yes, this suggestion was prompted by people not wanting to freely license their userpage photos, but I do feel it has potential for use in other roles (personally, I have no intention of putting a photo of me up there!); a case of "build it and they will come", in a way.
Are there any practical reasons, other than a blanket "we don't accept non-reusable images", that this couldn't work? We're already resigned to keeping around a large collection of images that are only legally valid in certain articles & off-limits to whole namespaces (fair use), which knocks down the "but if it's lying around, people will use it" argument.
Comments appreciated, though I suspect I'll wake up tomorrow morning to find half a dozen "this is insanely unworkable, and here's 46 reasons why" notes. C'est la vie.
On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or] scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another (inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).
When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 11 Oct 2005, at 03:25, Andrew Gray wrote:
Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".
So did I, because on ifd there were some images marked with this. The user was objecting to them being deleted even though s/he had created them but didnt want them released under a free license. As far as I know this user's images are the only ones under this template.
Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy. However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer. That said, let us float an idea.
We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and a credit.
(snip)
On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or] scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another (inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).
There are a few cases. I have never seen one.
When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?
The guidelines might be. The usage is not.
And the image dumps include all images, free or non free, which is wrong.
I am coming to the conclusion that the only solution is to transwiki all non free images to a different server, restrict upload rights there, and force non free tagging of all image links to there. "Free use" ie copyright violation is so prevalent, there are perhaps 10,000 (guess) claimed free use images that are not (I have so far found under 10 images that I would be prepared to support in court as fair use), and deleting them doesnt help as more are uploaded to replace them.
Justinc
I'd like that:
I believe I put a copyright tag on my userpgae image. That, or GFDL-self with a note to please not use outside the user namespace.
I, as a 14-year-old, do not want my image spread across anywhere except where I put it, and I do believe it's illegal anyways without my permission (which nobody else has and which GFDL-self might in essence be forcing me to give...)
On 10/10/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".
Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy. However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer. That said, let us float an idea.
We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and a credit.
Talk pages? Not needed. The scads of Wikipedia namespace administrivia? Almost entirely deadweight - what possible print version will want to have a copy of the 4,987th ROUGE ADMIN!!!1one! complaint on WP:AN? User pages? Helpful for attribution, but keeping them can (as we found with our neo-nazi friends) be, uh, prone to rather unfortunate misinterpretation. Indeed, I believe we now offer dumps filtered of all user-space material to avoid this. We're seeing the divide between "front-end" material and "supporting material" beginning to be a bit clearer.
All text is GFDL-licensed, and I'm not suggesting changing that, but I 'm proposing creating a class of images which are *not intended* for redistribution because they're not a part of the encylopedia we're producing - in much the same way that we're starting to discourage redistribution of some parts of the project to downstream users as, basically, not particularly relevant.
So, a suggestion. {{project-image}}. "This image is intended for use in developing Wikipedia content. Copyright is, unless explicitly stated otherwise, owned and retained by the uploader; it is an internal working document, not an encyclopedic image, and not intended for use in articles. Permission is granted to create derivative works under the conditions of this license." (or something in that general vein)
And, using a broad definition of working on the encyclopedia, we have the small amount of editing overhead that goes into strengthening a working community - not the aim of the wiki, by a long shot, but necessary to keep it running well. And, as a part of that, people keep adding photos...
Yes, this suggestion was prompted by people not wanting to freely license their userpage photos, but I do feel it has potential for use in other roles (personally, I have no intention of putting a photo of me up there!); a case of "build it and they will come", in a way.
Are there any practical reasons, other than a blanket "we don't accept non-reusable images", that this couldn't work? We're already resigned to keeping around a large collection of images that are only legally valid in certain articles & off-limits to whole namespaces (fair use), which knocks down the "but if it's lying around, people will use it" argument.
Comments appreciated, though I suspect I'll wake up tomorrow morning to find half a dozen "this is insanely unworkable, and here's 46 reasons why" notes. C'est la vie.
On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or] scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another (inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).
When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N.
Ilya N. wrote:
I believe I put a copyright tag on my userpgae image. That, or GFDL-self with a note to please not use outside the user namespace.
I, as a 14-year-old, do not want my image spread across anywhere except where I put it, and I do believe it's illegal anyways without my permission (which nobody else has and which GFDL-self might in essence be forcing me to give...)
By putting your picture into the wiki you are giving permission. The more interesting question is whether an underaged person has the legal right to enter into any kind of licensing agreement.
Ec
not technically, as the tag on the image is 'copyright w/ permission'
and as you say, I don't believe i have the ability to give such a permission othewise...
(In other words...ugh! Maybe it's too much trouble)
On 10/11/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Ilya N. wrote:
I believe I put a copyright tag on my userpgae image. That, or GFDL-self with a note to please not use outside the user namespace.
I, as a 14-year-old, do not want my image spread across anywhere except where I put it, and I do believe it's illegal anyways without my
permission
(which nobody else has and which GFDL-self might in essence be forcing me
to
give...)
By putting your picture into the wiki you are giving permission. The more interesting question is whether an underaged person has the legal right to enter into any kind of licensing agreement.
Ec
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N.
On 10/11/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
By putting your picture into the wiki you are giving permission. The more interesting question is whether an underaged person has the legal right to enter into any kind of licensing agreement.
You are arguably giving permission under the GFDL, although even that could be disputed if you claim you didn't notice the contract/waiver when you made the submission. On top of this, Wikipedia doesn't actually follow the GFDL. They roughly follow the spirit of the GFDL, but there are quite a few significant pieces that are missing. Since the GFDL is automatically revoked whenever you break it, if you're going to rely on the argument that the image is released under the GFDL then Wikimedia probably has no permission to distribute any of the images at all. It'd be a much easier case from a legal standpoint to claim that by contributing to an article you are contributing to a joint work, under a joint authorship agreement which licenses the content to all third parties under the terms of the GFDL and under Wikipedia's rough approximation of the GFDL. The truth is, for now, no one really knows the true copyright status of Wikipedia from a legal standpoint.
Ec
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 10/11/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
By putting your picture into the wiki you are giving permission. The more interesting question is whether an underaged person has the legal right to enter into any kind of licensing agreement.
You are arguably giving permission under the GFDL, although even that could be disputed if you claim you didn't notice the contract/waiver when you made the submission. On top of this, Wikipedia doesn't actually follow the GFDL. They roughly follow the spirit of the GFDL, but there are quite a few significant pieces that are missing. Since the GFDL is automatically revoked whenever you break it, if you're going to rely on the argument that the image is released under the GFDL then Wikimedia probably has no permission to distribute any of the images at all. It'd be a much easier case from a legal standpoint to claim that by contributing to an article you are contributing to a joint work, under a joint authorship agreement which licenses the content to all third parties under the terms of the GFDL and under Wikipedia's rough approximation of the GFDL. The truth is, for now, no one really knows the true copyright status of Wikipedia from a legal standpoint.
This last comment is probably right. So much of free licensing is completely untested in the courts.
Ec
In fact (sorry about double post), I just noticed that my userpage image was listed as IFD!!!!
Do remember that the database dumps are also sometimes used to do analysis on to benefit Wikipedia. We should make as many namespaces available as possible.
--Mgm
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
Andrew Gray wrote: <snip>
So, a suggestion. {{project-image}}. "This image is intended for use in developing Wikipedia content. Copyright is, unless explicitly stated otherwise, owned and retained by the uploader; it is an internal working document, not an encyclopedic image, and not intended for use in articles. Permission is granted to create derivative works under the conditions of this license." (or something in that general vein)
That might solve the problem of Wikimedia Foundation images being on Commons; cross-posted to commons-l for dissection...
PS. Original post available at http://ln-s.net/8-u
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