On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 3:29 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think the concept of the project is the problem. I'm skeptical
that
an "Uncommons" project built around fair use could be workable,
considering
that the validity of a fair use claim is context-specific and no
cross-wiki
project (like Commons) is going to have an easy time managing that requirement.
We don't have to. As a basic inclusion rule, someone justified an image on a fair-use project, and someone else wants to share it. If its use gets deleted on both those wikis (and anywhere else that started using it) due to not complying with fair use, and it stays out of use, we identify a cleanup procedure. But as long as a basically credible "it's fair use over here" exists for 1 or more projects, it's a candidate for Uncommons.
Uncommons should *never* see an image deleted out from under an article using it, for example. If someone feels it's not compliant with X wiki's local fair use criteria, they go to X wiki, argue the case, get it removed from the article(s). Uncommons would consider deletion if all the projects which tried to use it rejected it on fair use grounds.
Caveat that a copyright violation in the US, where the servers are, may still need to be removed even if fair-use in (for example) Argentina and Botswana apply, which is unfortunate, but we have a process for people to report copyvios of their images to the Foundation, and allowing OTRS to do their thing as usual would cover that.
So you want to split the role of "image repository" into two projects - one that is freely reusable for all possible reusers, and one that is useful in the first instance for all WMF projects and secondarily for anyone else using it in an educational context.
Ok, I get that. But there are some unanswered questions:
1) Why would our "Uncommons" be superior to Flickr or any other repository of images that can be used under fair use doctrine? Is it that we are categorizing them? That we might be able to select the "best" file for a particular usage, and replicate that out in context across projects?
2) How would Uncommons not fall prey to same set of issues that have beset Commons for years? Copyright status would still need to be investigated to some degree, FUR would need to be policed at least a little, etc. etc.You'd attract the same people, probably, with the same biases and prejudices and problems.
3) EDP files on projects are currently already hosted by WMF, so what we're really talking about is pushing them into the same bucket to focus curation resources. Considering the challenges, would it be better to just implement an easier common architecture for these files (i.e. make discovery of files from various projects simpler on any individual project)?