[WikiEN-l] "Editorial purposes only" images

[Rowan Collins]

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:58:36 -0700, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some sources of photographs are available under "editorial purposes
> only" licenses, often with an explicit "Not for use in advertising."
> An example is photographs from the United Nations.
> 
> We have decided that "noncommercial-only" images are not acceptable,
> but I don't see anywhere that a decision has been made about this
> category.  Editorial-only images are usable by commercial users as
> well as noncommercial in an encyclopedia context, so their use would
> not prohibit commercial redistribution of Wikipedia.  On the other
> hand, it's a less free license than many we use.

And, crucially, a less free licence than the one our content is
distributed under; IANAL, but I think technically this gives us two
options: restrict our distribution licence along similar lines; or,
exclude these images. Or of course both: give the reuser the choice
between our freer licence (which we have to offer most of the text of
Wikipedia under anyway, else we break our contributors' copyright) and
a more restricted version with the extra images.

Unlike with noncommercial-only images, a lot of us might not mind
incorporating some of these extra restrictions anyway, but since to
comply with our existing licencing obligations it would mean offering
two copies of the database, I think anything that cannot be
distributed under the GFDL should be avoided.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]