Suppose I were in New York and went to TeaNY and took a picture of Moby waiting tables (he does sometimes; he owns the place). I would then own the copyright to that picture. /But/ could it ever be released under the GNU FDL? See, there are limitations on what can be done with pictures of living (or even recently deceased) people--they can't, for instance, be used to advertise anything without the permission of that person or the estate. These conditions seem more restrictive than those of the GNU FDL. So is it at all possible to release a picture like that onto wikipedia? Who knows anything about this?
I ask this not as a /completely/ rhetorical question--my town is somewhat active politically, and we have had several famous & controversial people come speak--e.g. Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Bobby Seales within the last few years. And I could easily enough get a picture of them myself; a few months back Seales spoke in a room barely bigger than my living room.
regards,
kq
0
At 06:54 PM 7/8/02 -0700, you wrote:
Suppose I were in New York and went to TeaNY and took a picture of Moby
waiting tables (he does sometimes; he owns the place). I would then own the copyright to that picture. /But/ could it ever be released under the GNU FDL? See, there are limitations on what can be done with pictures of living (or even recently deceased) people--they can't, for instance, be used to advertise anything without the permission of that person or the estate. These conditions seem more restrictive than those of the GNU FDL. So is it at all possible to release a picture like that onto wikipedia? Who knows anything about this?
I ask this not as a /completely/ rhetorical question--my town is somewhat
active politically, and we have had several famous & controversial people come speak--e.g. Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Bobby Seales within the last few years. And I could easily enough get a picture of them myself; a few months back Seales spoke in a room barely bigger than my living room.
regards,
kq
Outfits such as the New York Times and CBS News regularly take pictures of public figures and use them for informational purposes. Publishing representations of private persons can be a privacy problem. So don't illustrate the article on sexuality with just anyone. Some public figures sell their visages and images and have a legally recognized right to be paid. Some, such as Paul Newman, are quite sensitive about the matter.
Generally, like with Bobby Seale, you might ask if you can take a picture, explaining what you intend to use it for. It's a long shot, but explaining all about Wikipedia to say, Bobby Seale, may get them started themselves (everybody had idle time) and serve to spread the word.
Fred Bauder
I think that's a very interesting question.
But I think that the GNU FDL doesn't let the user add more restrictive conditions. If there are more restrictive conditions having to do with not violating some laws, that's a different issue from GNU FDL issues.
So I don't think there's a problem.
I think it'd be great if there were a large community of GNU FDL paparazzi. Individual little people fan sites are constantly harassed, and rightly so under the copyright laws, for stealing pictures. It'd be neat if there were a repository of GNU FDL photos that fans could use without permission.
--Jimbo
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