(Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com):
Many images uploaded to Wikipedia are third-parties' copyrighted IP being used under the vague claim of "fair use". The project has not yet received legal advice about whether such materials can be redistributed under the terms of the GFDL; until that's resolved I at least have no intention of putting them all in one easy download, for which a significant use would be reuse and redistribution by people like yourself trying to reuse Wikipedia material.
I don't think there's anything unresolved; clearly we CAN'T redistribute copyrighted photos under GFDL. But the issue of whether or not we can use them in Wikipedia is more complicated. The supply of good public domain photos is negligible, and the usefulness of photos to an encyclopedia is critical enough to justify some hassle. So if copyrighted images, used with permission or under fair use, are attached to Wikipedia articles, and it is likely that most if not all redistributions of the Wikipedia would also qualify for the same fair use, I think that's a reasonable second choice, so long as (1) every image so used _is clearly identified_ as such, and has clear documentation of its source.
Images from unknown sources should certainly be removed, and any images that can be replaced with real GFDL images should be. Likewise, if we do any static mirror of Wikipedia, I think it's important that it retain (or point to) the image description pages that identify the source of each image and its status.