[Commons-l] revoking licenses /user-request-deletions

[Andrew Gray]

2008/9/17 ABF <wikipediabaeren at gmx.de>:

> Yesterday there was a user who clearly wants all of his Images yust to
> have all his Images gone and after we opposed his CSD-request he yust
> said "My father/sister/whatever took the Image, so its unfree" and we
> had to delete them all.
>
> I belive we should get a clear consenus about this. (For example
> blocking in cases as above!?) Do you have any Ideas?

When it's someone who's just decided they don't want to play any more,
and where it's just them storming off and demanding we delete
everything as they go, we can justify a somewhat blunt response
(though I might not go as far as Stan's approach!). Compare enwp's
response to "delete all my contributions, I don't like this project
any more" requests.

I think we do need to be careful not to assume such a request is
*always* bad faith, and should *always* be blocked and refused -
there are entirely legitimate circumstances where someone could
discover that they don't actually own the copyrights to a set of
images they thought they did, and in such cases, I think we'd have to
be helpful and (if at all possible) not punish them for an honest
error!

Consider if someone stands up and says something like "I took these
whilst working, and I didn't realise until today that under my
contract, my employer owns the rights"; or perhaps "My grandfather
took these pictures, and I thought I inherited the rights, but it
turns out someone else did". These cases aren't the same as storming
off in a pique, but they could easily look like it, especially if the
person making the request is upset over it or if there are language
difficulties.

A more marginal case would be someone who hasn't suddenly decided they
don't want to play any more (like our original, *but* has just
realised that the GFDL or a Creative Commons license wasn't quite what
they thought it was.

I'm sure most of us would delete a single image for those reasons if
the uploader came to us fifteen minutes after uploading and said "oh,
look, I'm really sorry, but I didn't quite think this through..." -
would we do it after a day? a week? a year? How about if it was two
images, ten images, a hundred? Does the quality or rarity of them
influence our decision?

At some point in this, it goes from being reasonable to unreasonable,
and I don't think we can draw a general line very easily - it really
does boil down to whether or not the person seems like they're being
silly.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk