On 11/25/05, Justin Cormack <justin(a)specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-11-25 at 15:19 +0100, Uwe Brauer wrote:
> > Hello
> >
> >
> > I just found the following image
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RFJesus.jpg
> >
> > which seems to be under a different sort of license, if I am not
> > mistaken.
> >
> > I would like to include that image, in the corresponding German
> > wikipedia article, however so far people hesitated since they believe
> > that this license as expressed in the above url, would/could violate
> > the GDL. I find it odd that different wikipedias have different
> > standards concerning the license politics.
> >
> > What can be done? May the simplest solution would be to contact the
> > artist (if he/she can be find) and ask for explicit permission.
> >
> > Any comments, suggestions?
>
> This is typical of en-w's "flexible" approach to licensing.
>
> Someone is pretending that because it was printed in some
> newspapers under terms that we know nothing about somehow this
> gives us permission to use it under some unknown terms even though
> we dont accept pictures where we are explicitly given permission
> any more.
>
> Currently its not worth trying to get rid of these pictures from en
> as there are still thousands of more dubious ones (no source for
> example). It might get picked up at some point in the fair use
> examination.
>
> You cant use it in de: only real free images, sensible policy.
>
> Justinc
Is this really how it works in the German Wikipedia (and other
non-English Wikipedias)? I assume you must allow some form of fair
dealing, as it's difficult to think of a photo of the real world that
doesn't contain *some* copyrighted materials incidently. Does the
German Wikipedia have many pictures of celebrities and big events? Do
you find that not allowing non-free images detracts significantly from
the encyclopedia (ignoring, if you can, the benefits of the images
being free)?
I think a big part of the hesitation of really embracing being a free
encyclopedia is the fear that the encyclopedia would be so much less
useful without fair use images. I guess I can get a rough idea of the
answers to these questions just browsing the sites on my own, and
maybe looking at some statistics if I can find them, but it'd be nice
to hear from the perspective of someone who really spends a lot of
time on those Wikipedias.
Anthony
