[Gendergap] Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> Several women, including on WikiProject Feminism on the English
>> Wikipedia, have recently expressed concern about the number of
>> photographs of women's body parts that Wikimedia hosts, particularly
>> regarding the issue of permission.
>>
>> It's far from clear in many cases that the women have given consent.
>> It's also sometimes unclear that the subjects are above the age of
>> consent.
>>
>> Another concern is what a woman is meant to do if someone uploads an
>> image of her without her knowledge. Is she supposed to write to an
>> anonymous person at OTRS? Does she have to give her real name? How
>> does it work?
>>
>> Any information from the Foundation about the legal situation, and
>> what Foundation policy is, would be very helpful.
>>
>> Sarah
>
> The matter is discussed at Commons:Photographs of identifiable people
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people
>
> Fred

In addition the Board passed a resolution dealing with an aspect of
this last spring:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people

But that resolution focuses on images of identifiable living people,
since it seemed to us that's where the most immediate potential for
harm lay. However, one important aspect of that resolution was the
notion of the right to privacy, and the fact that people in private
situations in particular (such as non-professional bedroom situations)
where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy should have the
right to consent to having photos of themselves freely licensed on
Commons, and we should obtain consent before using this kind of photo.
US law is actually quite permissive on this point, unlike some
national laws, but we see it as an ethical issue as well.

So that's the board's position on that part of the issue. The point in
that resolution that all projects should have similar policies still
needs to be addressed. Practically speaking there have been a few
deletion debates on Commons where the issue came up and real names
were not mentioned; deletion debates for images are much like for
articles on Wikipedia. Or you could write OTRS. Verification gets
tricky if it isn't identifiable and wasn't uploaded by you, but as
John writes often that's just a reasonable-person test, and as Sarah
writes often these photos add little value or are poor quality anyway.
(I am particularly concerned with bulk uploads from other services
that don't have such policies in place, such as Flickr, because
provenance and consent becomes very difficult to trace in that case.)

Positives: I'm with John -- sexuality and related are important
topics, and we should have the best possible illustrations etc. we can
get; I would personally love to see us partner with a responsible
education project or the like for this kind of content.

-- phoebe