2012/7/24 Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il:
Hi,
The Olympic games are beginning soon. Apparently, ticket holders cannot use photo equipment longer than 30cm and cannot use the photos and videos for commercial purposes without accreditation.
Practically everything that happens at the Olympics is notable and should be on Wikipedia, Commons, etc. Does anybody know whether there are professional accredited photographers who are Wikimedia-friendly and plan to upload their photos? If there aren't any, does anybody know whether a Wikipedian can obtain such accreditation?
This doesn't concern me directly, but there are many, many people who write Wikipedia articles about sports in all languages and it may be interesting to them. Also, it may be a frequent issue in sports and I'm just not aware of it because I rarely follow sports.
Sources for the restrictions:
I think this another layer of problems besides copyright, with CC-BY-SA the author grants permission to reuse the photo also for commercial purposes without requesting permission to the author. But there are many other layers of rights which could interfere with the free (or better the "anarchic") reuse of a photo. For example I think that using an image of Usain Bolt to promote a book without explicit permission from the athlete (or his agent) is anyhow unlawful even if the photo was taken, for example, in the street and freely licensed. That said I think with can treat photo from the Olympics in a similar way as we do for photos with "personality rights", we could put a template saying "Olympics photo warning: to reuse for commercial purposes this photo you should obtain permission from IOC and/or individuals depicted in the photo". The point is that the author of the photo allows for it the widest possible reuse permitted by CC-BY-SA, thus sharing part of its copyright with others, but if one wants to use the photo for commercial purposes that he should go (himself, not the author) through the hassle of obtaining permission from the relevant subjects.
Could it work?
Cristian