[WikiEN-l] Image licenses; a small suggestion

[Justin Cormack]

On 11 Oct 2005, at 03:25, Andrew Gray wrote:

> Today, I noticed {{Userpage-image}} on WP:TFD - basically a template
> saying "permission granted only to use this on userpages".
>

So did I, because on ifd there were some images marked with this.
The user was objecting to them being deleted even though s/he had
created them but didnt want them released under a free license. As
far as I know this user's images are the only ones under this template.

> Obviously unfree, and should be deleted under existing policy.
> However, it got me thinking about that self-same policy. First, a
> caveat - I am not a lawyer. Especially not a Florida copyright lawyer.
> That said, let us float an idea.
>
> We don't accept non-freely licensed images because they can't be used
> in a commercial (or, in some cases, any other) daughter project, which
> is fine and dandy and a core principle. However, any daughter project
> consists basically of the encyclopedia pages, the images on them, and
> a credit.
>

(snip)

> On a related note, though a little less contentious, a tag along the
> lines of {{fairuse-project}} could be handy. I can think of contexts
> where it's legitimate to have a fair-use image as part of a discussion
> on a discussion page ("purposes such as criticism, comment, [or]
> scholarship", remember), but where it wouldn't be appropriate to use
> the image in the main articlespace for one reason or another
> (inappropriateness for the article, or quality issues).

There are a few cases. I have never seen one.

> When I was doing image tagging, I found a good few fair use images on
> talk pages - mainly maps, as I recall, presumably because they're hard
> to "quote". However, as it stands now, our Fair Use guidelines are
> solid on "article illustrations only". Comments?

The guidelines might be. The usage is not.

And the image dumps include all images, free or non free, which
is wrong.

I am coming to the conclusion that the only solution is to transwiki all
non free images to a different server, restrict upload rights there,
and force non free tagging of all image links to there. "Free use"
ie copyright violation is so prevalent, there are perhaps 10,000 (guess)
claimed free use images that are not (I have so far found under 10
images that I would be prepared to support in court as fair use),
and deleting them doesnt help as more are uploaded to replace them.

Justinc