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

[Robert Scott Horning]

Delphine Ménard wrote:

>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.
>
>
>Delphine
>  
>
I don't know how completely to answer this, except to note how NASA 
images have been used in the past, and frankly for considerable benefit 
for just about everybody who uses them.  The famous "Earthrise" photo 
that was taken during the Apollo 8 flight in particular has been used 
explicitly for political purposes.  (see [[w:Earthrise]]).  I don't 
think that these political purposes to which the photo has been used 
have been shown as an endorsement by NASA of those political groups that 
use those photos... indeed it is exactly the opposite.  Because NASA has 
been explicitly apolitical in the use of this and other photos, it has 
been used by a very wide range of groups from the boy scouts, religious 
groups, environmental activists, political campaigns, space advocacy 
lobbies, science fiction conventions, and astronomical observatories. 
 Political restrictions would make it available to almost none of these 
groups and would have a huge impact on its distribution.

Another very good example of how some creative useage of "public domain" 
photos is in the form of the also quite famous [[w:Image:Buzz salutes 
the U.S. Flag.jpg]] that was later used by none other than MTV for 
promotions of their television channel.  It has also been used in other 
contexts as well, where the U.S. flag has been photoshopped to other 
images.  Clearly this is a case where having public domain content can 
be used creatively in manners that having copyright restrictions would 
not normally allow such use.  Especially if you are manipulating images 
for artistic purposes, it is essential to have some content that is in 
the public domain to avoid having significant licensing problems and 
relying on "fair use" as a very poor substitute.

It should be of note that the only image that NASA has a real problem 
with people using is the official logos of NASA, especially if such 
usage implies endorsement.

How this relates to the ESA, I am not entirely sure.  One huge problem 
the ESA faces is that they have a committee of many nations to help 
decide policy on this issue, each of which has their own unique cultural 
background.  In contrast, the USA has had a long tradition of putting 
all government publications into the public domain, so it was a 
no-brainer when NASA decided to do the same with the space pictures.  It 
wasn't even breaking tradition to do so.

I do hope that the WMF encourages the widespread use of GFDL-compatable 
images and multi-media content, more than just simply for compatability 
with Wikipedia.  It also allows ordinary people to have access to rich 
media archives that would otherwise be locked up, or encourage 
widespread "IP pirarcy".

It should be of note that those who choose to produce quality artistic 
content (both text as well as multi-media content) under copyright and 
propritary licensing arrangements are actually helped by having a large 
quantity of public domain and free content available.  It forces those 
of us who do so to prove that what we are making is of the highest 
quality and does something original and unique.  In the long run, public 
domain and free content will make a much richer artistic environment.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning