On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Gregory: The grant is clear. In fact, the grant is more clear than the grant to license your Wikipedia contributions as GFDL.
I really must protest here.
The stock.xchng site rules (which presumably the uploader and downloader have both read) states that "1. Selling and redistribution of these photos (individually, or as a whole) without written permission is prohibited. Using the photos in website templates, on postcards, mugs etc. doesn't count as selling or redistribution, however you are not allowed to build a gallery using the photos you downloaded from here." so when a user indicates that there "are no usage restrictions" it would appear quite clear that they are speaking in terms of condition 1 on the website. ... These terms would likely permit the normal use in wikipedia articles, but they should not be accepted in commons and we should probably find them unacceptable like we find non-commercial-only media unacceptable.
In copyright law usage and redistribution are distinct concepts, my GFDLed works are available to you without any restriction on usage and with a clear set of grants and conditions on redistribution. It's not clear that without a written contract if any limitation on *usage* could ever be imposed on a copyrighted work, in any case.
Even if you disagree that usage and redistribution are distinct, the terms on the stock.xchng website make it quite clear that the licensesor of the works considers them distinct for the purpose of establishing your rights to redistribute his works.
If I were a stock.xchng contributor I'd be quite rightfully angered if I stumbled across my work listed on wikipedia as 'public domain' (which some of them are). Our behavior is especially in inexcusable in light of the fact that stock.xchng usually provides a means to email a contributor and strongly encourages such communications: Why are we even bothering to argue over stock.xchng when we could just contact the copyright holders directly?
Wikipedia has grown past the point where we need to rely on grey legality images, and preserving them only discourages people who would submit free ones in their place.