[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] 1.6 Billion USD to spare? How about liberation of some pic...

[David Monniaux]

David Gerard wrote:
> The other part of the problem is how to use images in compliance with
> the licence. To this end, I started
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse a while ago, with the intended
> audience being casual readers who know nothing about Wikimedia but who
> call up or email asking if they can reuse an image they saw on
> Wikipedia. Any improvements anyone can make for accuracy and *CLARITY*
> are most welcomed.
I think there is one important issue that precludes widespread reuse by 
responsible people: we make no warranty whatsoever about the correctness 
of the licences - and it's to be expected, since the licensing 
information is filled in by users on which we have no a priori control.

When people buy photographs from Getty and so on, they not only buy a 
photograph but also some kind of insurance that they can safely use 
them. If they get sued for copyright infringement, they will say "hey, I 
bought this photograph from Getty, who certified that it was legit! sue 
THEM!". But do they want to say to a judge "well, we downloaded this 
picture from this site, where it was uploaded by somebody called 
tiptop35 who said it was in the public domain".