Gregory Maxwell wrote:
We need to be mindful that one of the major differentiators between commons and other user contributed online image repositories is our responsiveness to copyright infringement concerns. We are remarkably more responsive than most other user contributed image repositories, and and automated image-live-mirror system without automated revocation puts that status in jeopardy.
I think the problem is that our image table has no metadata information about the image, it only knows if we have it or not. We would need at least another bit: a good/bad flag. We could have more states: - Not found. - Untagged/Unknown. - Copyright violation. - No source/license. - Fair use - Non suitable license for commons (nd, nc...) - Duplicated - Superseded - Free license
Added within the templates we use, the change could be transparent for the users.
They could even be available for the deleted images (identified by their sha1 on the FileStore).
When we have this data ready we will be able to do a better job. Images without a valid license wouldn't be shared via IntantCommons, and could apply to WMF projects too (can't show the image because it doesn't have enough information, give it a "Copyrighted" style...).
InstantantCommons users should check (with a maintencance script) their images are still free, and decide upon the reason (eg. delete fair use, keep superseded) what to do. We should also provide an automatic system to automatically check the files once a month, with 'proper' defaults (they will always be able to keep violations, but don't make easy that configuration).