[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents under education/information licenses

[Delphine Ménard]

On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the
> pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for
> free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA.
> Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA
> were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid
> but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to
> be able to accept only the best.

Right, I am not soooo sure that the ESA (or any other organisation,
NASA included, for that matter) will let any random Wikipedian hop on
the next satellite to take pictures of <insert name of planet here>.
I'd love too, but hey, I don't think this is going to happen any time
soon.

I believe you will also understand the importance of monitoring what
pictures get in and out concerning satellites, space shuttles and
other highly technological objects.

>
> I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
> than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
> something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
> don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
> the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
> hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
> practice.

Let us not jump to conclusions too fast here. :-)
What you call "European chauvinism" I will rather call "lack of
means", "lack of human ressources to write the right contracts with
the n number of national laws involved in the launching of this or
that satellite and the building of this or that camera" etc. There are
reasons for the ESA and other organisations not being able to release
their pictures under a free license and they go far beyond a manichean
"good people who release in the public domain what they produce with
public money" vs "bad people who want to keep stuff for themselves". I
don't think "pressure" as you put it, is the way to go.

Let me also try to maybe tone down the questions that David was trying
to get through here and give a different angle.

The question is not that the ESA or these other organisations *do not*
want to release their pictures for a wider use. As a matter of fact,
it is the ESA who came to us (Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia
France) and asked us for advice on how to go about this, and how they
could make their pictures (more) freely available. However, they have
some conditions.

Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions
(CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think
about it).

One of their condition is that those images can't be used for
political propaganda, for example.

Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
this.

To bounce on something David said, there is much work to do in the
evangelisation of those organisations, and a lot to explain about the
pros and the cons of "free material". Most of their objections need to
be understood in the light of what these organisations can do (with
the restrictions that apply to them) and what they want to do. My take
is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient,
pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then
another story altogether.

What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
but one that is worth debating.

One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change
their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a
stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for
everyone's best interest?"

Delphine
-- 
~notafish
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