--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Axel-
Check out for example the excellent collection of portrait photographs donated to the Library of Congress.
Which one specifically?
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vvhtml/vvhome.html
Actually, what we need is probably a transfer of the copyright to us, or at the very least a contract that allows unlimited sublicensing.
No, the precise thing we need is that the copyright holder releases the picture under GFDL. They retain all rights, including the right, protected under GFDL, to be listed as author in perpetuity.
And if the New York Times doesn't want to put their newspaper under GFDL, they will still have to pay the copyright holder for the right to print the image.
See where this kind of mentality is taking us? Copyright paranoia.
Speaking of rhethoric: inventing a term with a negative connotation for a position you don't like does not advance your argument.
I would think that someone opposed to intellectual property would embrace the idea that we should defend and make use of our rights, instead of bowing to the pressure from copyright holders.
Yes, you might think that, and you would be wrong. In the end you end up with a Wikipedia that is such a mess copyright-wise that the goal "freely redistributable" becomes a farce; just another encyclopedia, without really advancing the global situation of "intellectual property".
I think Brion's suggestion of simply linking to the external site containing the photograph is a win-win-win-win proposal:
- The copyright owner gets exposure
- Our readers get access to the educational content
- We are still able to burn a CD with all our material and put "GFDL" on the cover
- The inconvenience of the external link encourages contributors to hunt for free substitute photographs.
Alas, it also has several problems:
- When the website is down, the image is no longer available. Broken
links often go unnoticed for longer periods of time because we have no way to systematically check them.
- The image is no longer embedded in the proper context. It becomes
difficult to associate image content with image text.
- The reader is taken away from the Wikipedia navigational structure
to a non-HTML image page. This is bad user interface design.
All these I redefine as advantages with my fourth point above :-)
- fair use should be kept at a minimum,
In practice, this means: "first ask for GFDL or public domain; if they refuse, ask for special licensing; if they refuse, you most likely can use it anyway."
Axel
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