-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I'd like to open a discussion about non-free image use on Wikinews. A constant issue for en.Wikinews has been the use of logos and press kit images which are not under a free license. For example, on the election of Pope Benedict the Roman Catholic church made many images available to the press through their website, but all are under a non-free license and cannot be uploaded to commons.wikimedia. There is now a single low-resolution graphic available on commons, more than two days after the news event broke, and a further four graphics which are up for deletion. On en we have drawn up proposed policy for dealing with "Fair Use"-type images. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Policies_and_guidelines/Fair_use is a set of simple guidelines regarding Fair Use under U.S. law (where the Wikinews servers are), and is pretty blunt. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Policies_and_guidelines/Image_use_poli… is a set of guidelines for image use on Wikinews, including grants of license (which is when the copyright holder specifically allows Wikinews to use the image.) It's my opinion Wikinews must develop a way to allow Fair Use images, while at the same time encouraging contributors to use their camera phones, digital cameras to provide freely-licensed graphics. The two are not incompatible. Amgine _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

The problem is that there is not a lot we can do to "develop a way" to use Fair Use images because for the most part, for Wikinews, fair use does not apply in the same way that it does for wikipedia. This is not something that we can solve. English Wikipedia is in my opinion far too liberal about accepting fair use images -- not from the point of view of pushing legal boundaries, because I don't think we really do -- but from the point of view of encouraging the development of free alternatives. Wikinews should strongly and proudly resist going down this path. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

It is true that the English Wikipedia is currently falling down on the permissive side of the fair use spectrum, often to the detriment of the search for free content. It is a legitimate question whether a fair use implementation is possible that does not open the floodgates to non-free content. One idea that came up on the German Wikipedia, which faces a similar problem, is to have the upload link in the sidebar point to the Commons, and to only have Special:Upload (for local uploads) linked to from some policy page where the purpose of local uploads is explained. Through this simple "security by obscurity" measure, lazy uploads could perhaps be prevented. The current proposed fair use policy also seeks to address the concern by being very explicit in that "logos and publicity shots" can be fair use, but most other images can't, specifically no photos by other news organizations. I don't know how enforcable that is in practice. Erik _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l