On 6/20/06, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Wikinews permits unfree images (CC-BY-ND) as a result of this.
wha....?!?!?!! I can't believe it! How disappointing. According to http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Image_use_policy they also allow NC images! Is that not the very definition of nonfreeness for Wikimedia... is it really that they allow these because of photography quality concerns, or something else?
I was shocked too. I think it's a mix of factors.
The real photographers have significant and largely reality-based concerns about modification and unfair commercial exploitation. This has provided folks who wish to see Wikimedia distributing pseudo-free content a chance to claim pragmatism as an excuse...
I don't see fairuse images on as the same as NC/ND, because fair use images don't pretend to be free, they are annoying enough that they will and are replaced, and at least when they are used correctly they are used where there is no alternative possible. The argument made, I believe, is that the images aren't really part of the content and thus don't have to be free content if it helps us make better news. I think this is ridiculous because if the images weren't part of the content, then why do we bother having them at all... But not everyone agrees...
Of course, the concerns of photographers could be addressed in other ways...
Concerns over modification could be largely ameliorated through a combination of healthy social norms (don't shed paint) and photographer education (if someone mucks up your image than distributes it in a way which implies that it's your doing we call that fraud, you don't need annoying copyright terms to protect you from fraud)... and perhaps somewhat through copyleft licenses which require history preservation.
Concerns over unfair commercial exploitation could be significantly reduced through education and the support of aggressive copyleft licenses like the GFDL which require a copy of the license terms to be included, thus making sure the recipient knows exactly what he's getting and creating an incentive for commercial users to separately negotiate more favorable and traditional terms with the photographers. Unfortunately some self-professed visionaries involved with some of our projects have come out strongly in opposition to the GFDL, making decidedly non-reality-based claims about it (like the preposterous claim that it's a violation to transmit GFDL content over an SSL connection, or store your own copy on an encrypted disk).
FWIW I agree on the point of image-editing. I think the best approach is, when the original uploader is offended at "improvements" to an image, revert to their version and upload the edited version as a separate file. Then the community can argue about which they prefer and the original uploader doesn't feel their work is being "mauled" (even if everyone else has incredible bad taste).
The challenge is that if their version sits orphaned it might as well not exist. I don't believe that we should let prima donnas prevent us from having high quality content... But when someone did a awesome job with 98% of a picture (subject, composition, lighting, image quality, etc) and there is 2% which is highly subjective/viewer dependant which remains debatable (altered saturation, contrast, sharpening)... we should probably trust the person who got the 98% right to make the call on the rest, given our input. That it also keeps the photographer happy contributing is a secondary, but critical, effect.
I'm now managing to turn this thread into my own personal soap box... It really has gone OT. please forgive me, .. it's so hard not to reply on all this stuff that I care about. :)