[Foundation-l] video presentation on explicit images on WMF projects

[Nathan]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/1/13 private musings <thepmaccount at gmail.com>:
>> G'day all,
>> I continue to have concerns related to the growing number of explicit images
>> on WMF projects (largely commons) - but rather than banging on with dull
>> mailing list posts which gaurantee a chorus of groans, I'm trying to be a
>> bit less dull, and have made a short video presentation.
>> It's my intention to work on this with a few like minded wiki volunteers,
>> and probably then make a sort of alternate version for youtube etc. to see
>> what the general feeling is out there.... what I'd really like is for the
>> foundation to acknowledge that this is an issue where some regulation may be
>> necessary (or indeed, where the discussion of potential benefits of some
>> regulation is even conceivable) - I hope the board, or the advisory board,
>> might also be interested in offering some thoughts / recommendations too.
>> I've used a selection of explicit images from Commons, so please only click
>> through if you're over the age of majority;
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Privatemusings/WikiPr0n
>> ps. I'm also particularly interested if anyone can point me to where
>> 'section 2257' (record keeping) issues may have previously been discussed -
>> is it the current foundation position that section 230 acts as an exemption
>> to these requirements?
>
> Come on, even *I* would have given up on this argument by now...
> you're not going to win... If you think there are legal concerns,
> email Mike Godwin.
>


Part of the problem is that people who think they understand the whole
of the argument being made actually don't. Arguments against
censorship address only a part of the concerns Privatemusings and
others, including myself, have expressed. PM's comment above referring
to Section 2257 alludes to much of the rest of the concerns -
specifically, the rights of the individuals featured in the
photographs themselves. There are ~25,000 images in the Commons
category of potential personality rights problems, but the Commons
policy (COM:PEOPLE) essentially leaves it to the ethical discretion
(and nose for appropriate sounding file names) of the uploader to
manage rights issues.

Attempts to address this problem are sporadic - an example is a group
of over a hundred images from a Dutch photographer with a checkered
past, whose work has been largely removed from Flickr (from where it
was imported to Commons). After quite a lot of debate and delay, many
of these images were deleted on Commons in 2008 - but since then, many
new ones have been uploaded.

To avoid the very real chance that the subjects of explicit photos are
underage or have not given publishing consent, I would like to see
Commons require proof of model release, and age verification, for
explicit images.

Nathan