[WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

[Steve Summit]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> We're talking about publicity shots aren't we?

Well, I was, but naturally the thread has expanded somewhat.
(And see below.)

> As in, photos that are provided to the media so they can write
> puff pieces about them [...] So presumably also legal for
> Wikipedia to use them as the lead image for relevant articles.
> But possibly not legal for downstream Wikipedia content reusers...

Just so.  But:

> The interesting issue though is that we probably have permission to
> use these types of images without resorting to "fair use", but we
> actually prohibit ourselves from using that kind of image: we accept
> free images, we accept fair use...

Not quite.  The current climate is that we accept nothing but
free images.  Fair use is not free, so we're stamping out fair use.
Licensed-for-almost-anyone-to-use publicity photos are not free,
so we're stamping out those, too.  I'm sure magazine covers and
DVD packages will be next.

And this isn't necessarily such a bad thing.  Certainly,
accepting only free images, and upping the incentive to acquire
free images, by declining to accept nonfree ones in the meantime,
is a noble goal.

I started this thread talking about publicity photos, but it
became clear to me that this is not the fundamental issue, and I
suspect it's not even worth debating publicity photos until the
fundamental issue is resolved (or changed).

The people campaigning to get rid of all nonfree images have got
Jimbo's statement to fall back on: it's better for an article to
have no image at all than to have a nonfree one.  A licensed
publicity photo of J.D. Salinger is not free, ergo it's better
for the [[J.D. Salinger]] article to have no image, until such
time as a free one can be found.

Stated another way, not only does a poorly-composed fan shot of
an author at a book signing trump a professionally-photographed
headshot, an imageless article trumps that headshot, too.