On 27/09/2007, Tom Holden <thomas.holden(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> They're collecting an archive of images of listed buildings taken by members
> of the public.
>
>
>
> Do you think it would be worthwhile contacting them to ask if they'd be
> prepared to send a mass e-mail to their volunteer photographers saying
> something like the following:
No. No no no no no.
If someone came to us (and they do, fairly often) asking us to do this
to our users for some random other site, we'd send them away with a
flea in their ear. It's randomly fishing for material, it's rude.
What might be appropriate is contacting them and asking if they'd be
willing to have some opt-in method where their photographers can
choose to release the photographs under a free license - and mark them
as such on the site - which would allow it to be reused etc etc etc.
We can evangelise very efficiently in this sort of message about the
wonderful effects of such a policy :-)
But asking if we can just have images for Commons gives the impression
all we want to do is make our site better, not make *their* site more
useful. It's arrogant *and it will sound it*.
> (It seems crazy that they didn't make release under a CC license a criteria
> for acceptance as a volunteer photographer... One of our goals as a UK
> organisation really ought to be lobbying people like the Lottery Fund to get
> them to mandate "free" licenses on work like this they fund.)
Bear in mind the context here. It's an English Heritage project;
essentially an adjunct to the national listed-building registry, and
it's being run for their purposes; they want archival photographs of
all listed buildings for future reference purposes, and they have a
strong motive to get those photographs as good (in a technical sense)
as possible, which means taking pains over their photographers.
If you look at who they've recruited, they're mostly "real"
photographers; perhaps some professionals, mostly serious amateurs;
skilled, selected people, not random applicants with a camera - and
then they've doled out specific tasks to them. One of the inducements
given is that the rights remain with the photographer (and they have
some expenses funded); mandating open licensing would probably make it
a lot harder - or at least a lot more time-consuming - to get
good-quality recruits.
Them putting it online is nice and handy, and I believe they got
funding *for that part*, but the real goal is to have it as a safely
stored archive - things like public access at all are incidental, and
the project would probably exist without the website.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk