[Foundation-l] Personality rights - Wikimedia-l

11 Mar 2012

Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board published the following
Resolution:

---o0o---

The Wikimedia Foundation Board affirms the value of freely licensed
content, and we pay special attention to the provenance of this content. We
also value the right to privacy, for our editors and readers as well as on
our projects. Policies of notability have been crafted on the projects to
limit unbalanced coverage of subjects, and we have affirmed the need to
take into account human dignity and respect for personal privacy when
publishing biographies of living persons.

However, these concerns are not always taken into account with regards to
media, including photographs and videos, which may be released under a free
license although they portray identifiable living persons in a private
place or situation without permission. We feel that it is important and
ethical to obtain subject consent for the use of such media, in line with
our special mission as an educational and free project.* We feel that
seeking consent from an image's subject is especially important in light of
the proliferation of uploaded photographs from other sources, such as
Flickr, where provenance is difficult to trace and subject consent
difficult to verify.*

In alignment with these principles, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to:

   - Strengthen and enforce the current Commons guideline on photographs of
   identifiable
people<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifi…
with
   the goal of requiring evidence of consent from the subject of media,
   including photographs and videos, when so required under the guideline. The
   evidence of consent would usually consist of an affirmation from the
   uploader of the media, and such consent would usually be required from
   identifiable subjects in a photograph or video taken in a private place.
   This guideline has been longstanding, though it has not been applied
   consistently.
   - Ensure that all projects that host media have policies in place
   regarding the treatment of images of identifiable living people in private
   situations.
   - Treat any person who has a complaint about images of themselves hosted
   on our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encourage others
   to do the same.

Approved 10-0.
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Now, I am aware of a particular set of photographs on Commons, taken in a
private situation. They were taken from Flickr by an anonymous contributor
and uploaded to Commons. The images are no longer available on Flickr,
having been removed long ago.Over the past year, the photographer has
requested several times via OTRS that Commons delete these images. He said
that the subjects could not understand how these images of them ended up on
Commons, and were aghast to find them there. They were never meant to be
released publicly. According to the deletion discussions, OTRS verified
that the person making the request was indeed the owner of the Flickr
account.
Yet Commons administrators have consistently, through half a dozen deletion
discussions, refused to delete the images, disregarding the objections of
isolated editors who said that hosting the images in the clear absence of
subject consent runs counter to policy. Closing admins' argument has been
that licenses once granted cannot be revoked.
Yet according to the above resolution, Commons should not be hosting these
images. Not only was consent not obtained – an endemic situation – the
images are kept even though consent has been expressly denied.Why are these
images still on the Wikimedia Foundation server?
I am happy to pass further details on to any WMF staff, steward or Commons
bureaucrat who is willing and able to review the deletion requests and OTRS
communications, and remove the images permanently. Andreas