Magnus Manske wrote:
<Farnsworth>Good news, everyone!</Farnsworth>
I contacted Michael Connors from www.morguefile.com, a free image repository, about use of the images on wikipedia. Short answer: Go ahead! Long answer: below...
Happy image-hunting!
Magnus
-------- Original Message --------
Hey mangus, first off for a site like Wikipedia, you can certainly use any image photographed by mconnors free and clear of all terms or by-lines and you have my written permission. The problem is that I don't own these images, I only have permission to redistribute them. Or at least all of the images that I haven't photographed. And I wrote the disclaimer myself, which is why it's so shoddy. (even more so then the coding) You are correct, what I plan to do is have a lawyer provide us with proper terms. My only real concern was preventing someone from downloading the entire collection and finding a morgeufile CD for sale at wal-mart. And I have gotten request from people who want to just rip off as many prints as they can and sell them at every street vendor in NYC, in which case I tell them they should at least stick a calendar on it. If your using the images on a webpage, that's really not the same- they would be really bad prints. The intent of the site was definitely to serve sites not unlike wikipedia, so I think you should run with using the images, I honestly believe the contributors would be tickled to know there work is being used by your site. Give me another 6 months to hire the lawyers and we'll have a solid license. For now you can contact the contributor of a specific photo- I'm sure you won't have any problems getting permission. Thanks a lot for the advice, it is greatly appreciated. mconnors
Perhaps they would like to GFDL only low-resolution versions of their images, say up to 640px or 800px on the longest edge? They would be no use for prints, as they would be limited to only a few inches across at 150dpi colour resolution. However, they would be more than adequate as encyclopedia illustrations, and would provide high-resolution thumbnails and other small illustrations.
Neil