2009/2/1 Sam Johnston samj@samj.net:
By way of example, I am currently working on a short (8 slide), clean presentation, to be licensed under a free license. It contains a slide with 8 thumbnail photos of generic pictures (a house, a building, a government chamber, a few racks in a datacenter, etc.) and a few samples of text. It also contains a picture of one of the original google racks which would be less easy to replace. Some of the photos have been transformed by others so there are multiple authors.
I doubt there are that many authors and crediting photo authors is not a major challenge. Indeed in many cases wikipedia would be the long option ("geni" is shorter than "wikipedia").
By imposing the attribution requirements (indeed even linking to individual articles rather than Wikipedia itself) you are making it significantly more difficult for me to make use of the work and more likely that I will 'take my business elsewhere'.
Feel free to do so. Getty and Corbis will cost you say $100.
That damages the community and thus the (apparently egotistical) needs of the few threaten to impose on the needs of many (both within our community and the general public as a whole).
Evidences?
This type of piecemeal reuse/'remixing' is typical to that of an encyclopedia - for example in your average school project.
Your average school project is then a copyvio.
The authors each contributed a small part to individual works which eventually became even smaller parts of a larger work. Their contribution at the end of the day is negligible and if they feel the need to have school kids quoting their name to teachers and the like then I suggest they would be better served by the various communities that cater for this 'need'.
This is what fair use and fair dealing is for. South Korea also has exceptions.