On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 3:29 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan
<nawrich(a)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)?