[WikiEN-l] Re: Non-free images, there has to be a better way

[Michael Snow]

Maury Markowitz wrote:

> More recently I went back to the article and found all the images 
> deleted. The deleter added a note, but as far as I can tell did so 
> AFTER deleting them ( I can't get history on the image itself, of 
> course).. He stated I should have tagged them differently. Yes, well, 
> thanks for that,  maybe someone should have told me that in the month 
> between me uploading them and them being deleted so I could have 
> actually DONE that.

As the person who deleted these images, I'll explain that I did so based 
on the policy that newer images tagged with the {{copyrighted}} template 
(i.e., Wikipedia-only permission) should be deleted on sight. The reason 
I added the note to the image talk page after deleting is because I did 
not even discover it had a talk page until Maury complained about the 
deletion (use of talk pages for images is exceptionally rare). I am 
sorry that I missed that fact, as I would not have deleted the images 
based on the information there.

The template involved is the one that Maury used himself, and it warned 
about this potential deletion at the time that he used it. Arguments 
against images of this kind have been brought up for quite some time, 
and various announcements have been made and advertised in many places 
to discourage their use. I think it's worth noting that the talk page 
for the template has this note from Jimbo: "We should keep this message 
around, so that people will use it. This will ensure that we can find 
these images and promptly delete them." This statement was written on 18 
Feb *2004*.

> What's particularily baffling is that the deleter suggested I simply 
> re-tag them to PermissionAndFairUse. This strikes me as absolutely 
> rediculous. First of all, why are these OK and not ones used with 
> permission?

I was trying to be helpful and provide some information that would allow 
Maury to restore the images, which I hope he still has access to. So 
long as we allow fair use images (not everyone agrees that we should), 
the fact that we have permission bolsters our claim to fair use. Thus 
even when the permission by itself is too limited for our needs, it is 
very useful to note that we have permission.

> And if these are OK, why didn't it say so in the warning on the 
> Permission tag?

As has been noted, many people who really want some particular image on 
Wikipedia are quick to claim fair use when they really don't have a 
basis for it. So I think this is not done in the interests of not 
advertising this dubious escape hatch too widely.

--Michael Snow