[Foundation-l] Personality rights

[Techman224]

Would you mind posting this on wiki so that everyone there can comment about this. Not many on wiki users subscribe to this list.

Thanks,
Techman224

On 2012-03-10, at 10:03 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

> Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board published the following
> Resolution:
> 
> 
> ---o0o---
> 
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board affirms the value of freely licensed
> content, and we pay special attention to the provenance of this content. We
> also value the right to privacy, for our editors and readers as well as on
> our projects. Policies of notability have been crafted on the projects to
> limit unbalanced coverage of subjects, and we have affirmed the need to
> take into account human dignity and respect for personal privacy when
> publishing biographies of living persons.
> 
> However, these concerns are not always taken into account with regards to
> media, including photographs and videos, which may be released under a free
> license although they portray identifiable living persons in a private
> place or situation without permission. We feel that it is important and
> ethical to obtain subject consent for the use of such media, in line with
> our special mission as an educational and free project.* We feel that
> seeking consent from an image's subject is especially important in light of
> the proliferation of uploaded photographs from other sources, such as
> Flickr, where provenance is difficult to trace and subject consent
> difficult to verify.*
> 
> In alignment with these principles, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to:
> 
>   - Strengthen and enforce the current Commons guideline on photographs of
>   identifiable
> people<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people>
> with
>   the goal of requiring evidence of consent from the subject of media,
>   including photographs and videos, when so required under the guideline. The
>   evidence of consent would usually consist of an affirmation from the
>   uploader of the media, and such consent would usually be required from
>   identifiable subjects in a photograph or video taken in a private place.
>   This guideline has been longstanding, though it has not been applied
>   consistently.
>   - Ensure that all projects that host media have policies in place
>   regarding the treatment of images of identifiable living people in private
>   situations.
>   - Treat any person who has a complaint about images of themselves hosted
>   on our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encourage others
>   to do the same.
> 
> 
> Approved 10-0.
> ---o0o---
> 
> Now, I am aware of a particular set of photographs on Commons, taken in a
> private situation. They were taken from Flickr by an anonymous contributor
> and uploaded to Commons. The images are no longer available on Flickr,
> having been removed long ago.Over the past year, the photographer has
> requested several times via OTRS that Commons delete these images. He said
> that the subjects could not understand how these images of them ended up on
> Commons, and were aghast to find them there. They were never meant to be
> released publicly. According to the deletion discussions, OTRS verified
> that the person making the request was indeed the owner of the Flickr
> account.
> Yet Commons administrators have consistently, through half a dozen deletion
> discussions, refused to delete the images, disregarding the objections of
> isolated editors who said that hosting the images in the clear absence of
> subject consent runs counter to policy. Closing admins' argument has been
> that licenses once granted cannot be revoked.
> Yet according to the above resolution, Commons should not be hosting these
> images. Not only was consent not obtained – an endemic situation – the
> images are kept even though consent has been expressly denied.Why are these
> images still on the Wikimedia Foundation server?
> I am happy to pass further details on to any WMF staff, steward or Commons
> bureaucrat who is willing and able to review the deletion requests and OTRS
> communications, and remove the images permanently. Andreas
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