[Foundation-l] [Slashdot] Why the Photos On Wikipedia Are So Bad

[Peter Gervai]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 21:05, <wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Peter Gervai wrote:
>
>> Usually I do not get it why people choose NC licenses all the time
>> while there's usually a low probability to actually _lose_ money by
>> making it public.
>>
>
> This may come as a shock to you but its not about money. When I take
> photographs it is in my free time, and outside of the commercial system.
>
> If you have a personal use, want to illustrating an article or blog that
> is not Adsense rich, have an academic use, or a small scale fundraising
> non-profit fine take what you want. If on the other hand you are share
> cropping with Google Ads, using the images to tart up an otherwise
> tawdry commercial web site, are involved in online selling, are a
> commercial advertising or publishing house, then kiss my arse.
>
> The NC license serves very well.

That's nonsense, to put it mildly.

What you say is basically two things:

1) You do not release your work because you do not want other people
to gain on them even that it does not mean any loss for you at all.

2) You do not release your work because you want to prevent certain
uses you do not like.


As of #1, it is often called "envy". You cannot make money from them
so nobody else should. Of course you have the right to be envious of
others, but then editing WP must be pointless for you, since people
may GET RICH (no, really) by your work. I can _sell_ your work for a
million bucks on DVD. Anyone could. So, as you phrased: this may be
come as a shock for you. This reasoning doesn't really fit to what
we're doing here.

#2 is even more logical, since by publishing anything online means
your work could be used on porn sites, war crim sites, whatever you
please, including ad-ridden pages. Your NC license wouldn't change a
thing for those people who don't care about it. If you want to control
your content WP is the NIGHTMARE for you, since anything could be used
almost anywhere, really, legally. I can create  copy of WP with an ad
for every even line, plus the full sideborders, and it'd be legal and
okay.


So I think people never releasing anything free and sticking to NC
lincenses aren't logical, thinking people. I can accept that there are
people who make photos for a living, and they do not want to release
all work, full resolution due to monetary reasons. But those people
who made 50 photos of a person and reject to release any one of them
freely just because whatever, well, these people aren't considered
thinking enough by my not so humble self.

(As a sidenote, a NC image can be used in really dirty pages if
there's no commercial gain, like nazi propaganda pages, hate pages,
etc. There are other long list of reasons why NC is of no use in the
long run. Use full copyright and keep the picture rights. If you're
lucky the images may be locked 200+ years after your hopefully late
death.)

And I release most of my better photos freely, not that anyone would
be interested in them. ;-)

-- 
 byte-byte,
    grin