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

[Haukur Þorgeirsson]

Jimbo wrote:

> It is my position, speaking generally, that we ought to crack down quite
> a bit on "fair use", not because there are any legal problems with what
> we are doing now, but because it makes it harder for people to reuse in
> jurisdictions with bad fair use provisions, and because an excessive
> reliance on fair use tempts us to be lazy about creating freely licensed
> alternatives.

It's good to have your position on this.
Since you consider reuse in other jurisdictions
to be important I'd like to ask you one question:

Are you at all concerned that we are
systematically ignoring the law in
several European countries?


> But for now, I think the first campaigns for cleanup should be (1) any
> remaining untagged images and (2) the elimination of non-free (such as
> "by permission") images.

There are still oodles of untagged images.
The number of by-permission images is trivial
in comparison and completely dwarfed by the
number of fair-use images.

Why should eliminating by-permission images
have a higher priority than cleaning up
fair-use images?

- - -

I have a proposal for trying to cut down the
number of untagged images being uploaded.
Could the upload interface include checkboxes
where one could easily select the appropriate
license(s)? It takes some time to learn the syntax
of the various tags (PD, PD-art, PD-old-50, etc.)
and this could help those who haven't got there
yet. We could also include a form with several
fields. Say, something like:

- - -
Please include as much of the following information
as you know.

Short description of picture:
Name of author:
Year of author's death:
Source URL (if from the web):
etc.
- - -

It would really help if we could to some extent
standardize the information we have on pictures
and encourage people to contribute more of it than
they are currently doing. (I suppose something like
this must have been discussed in the past.)

Regards,
Haukur