On 10/18/06, Brad cunctator@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
The logic behind the second two is to extend Wikipedia etc. with material that can't simply be re-expressed.
That is, I can "de-copyright" some written fact by rewriting the same information. I can't "de-copyright" a photograph very easily.
Although it's not always so simple...
As is text often needs to be rewritten to make it conform to the purpose and style of Wikipedia... so you could argue that the impact of copyright is actually minimal.
The same is often true for many illustrations. Although there are lots of 'found' photographs which can be made to work, they are often far from ideal... portraying the subject in a manner which is excessively artistic, or otherwise far from maximally informative.
Making a quality illustration (photographic) takes a lot of work... It takes skills which much be practice, access, equipment... But it does not take more of these (well except perhaps equipment for the photographic illustration case) than it takes to write a featured article.
It's true that it's easier to collaborate on a article than an illustration (although the difference is less so for synthetic illustrations like SVGs), but if you look at the history of our featured articles you often find cases where the heavy lifting is done by a single contributor.
I honestly believe that the image situation isn't as hard as is often believed... and that it can be addressed by getting more experienced folks working on our projects.