[WikiEN-l] "Fair use" images of living people

[Jimmy Wales]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>> That's all well and good. But does this mean that NO images of people
>> who are currently alive can be used under "fair use"? After all, if
>> they are alive, potentially one could take a picture of them and
>> license it as GFDL.
> [snip]
> 
> It's not hard (finally) to find examples where our policy has
> increased the pool of free content. I don't think you're disputing
> that from that perspective our policy wins.
> 
> That alone makes a pretty compelling argument, and as you pointed
> out.. it's that thinking that underlies much of that policy.

I dug up this old thread as a platform to talk about something I just 
noticed the other day.  I think Greg is exactly right... even in its 
current "weak" state, the policy of preferring not to have fair use 
photos when free is possible is generating wonderful incentives for the 
creation of free content.

Here is my new example, one I just noticed.  It may be instructive for 
us to take a snapshot of the current state of affairs as an anecdotal 
benchmark of where we are a year from now or two years from now.

Elvis.

If you look in Wikimedia Commons right now, you will see some US 
government photos (public domain, no problem) and a couple of others 
that, in my opinion, are there on some very shaky grounds and probably 
should be deleted.

If you look in English Wikipedia, you will see several "fair use" photos 
which are quite unremarkable and which almost certainly should be replaced.

But how can one get a freely licensed photo of Elvis now?  He's quite 
dead or anyhow, if you remember the tabloid craze of a few years back, 
quite in hiding. ;-)

But we CAN.  There must be literally hundreds of thousands of photos of 
Elvis, some of them quite good, which were taken by Elvis fans 
throughout the years.  Surely we can find a handful that the 
photographers would love to have in Wikipedia.  Why isn't this happening 
already on a massive scale?

I can tell you why... because from the point of view of "free as in 
beer" the photos we have (via fair use) in the article are just "good 
enough" to kill free alternatives.

What if instead of the photos we have there now, we had a template 
{{fair use wanted}}.

The template says "Help!  We need a freely licensed image!"

Clicking takes you to a page with some simple instructions...

1. You must have taken the photo YOURSELF, no uploads of anything else.

2. You agree to release the photo under GFDL and/or CC BY-SA at a minimum.

3. You must have taken the photo YOURSELF.  (Yes, we said that already, 
but we want you to know how important it is.)

I suspect if we did this for tons of famous people, the photos would 
come pouring in... preserving a bit of history that is currently rotting 
in people's photo albums... and making Wikipedia not just a place where 
people can rehash tired publicity photos under fair use arguments, but a 
place where new culture is formed and born and distributed.

Right now, our reliance on fair use (which I support only in some narrow 
historically unique cases!) is killing the birth of a culture of free 
photography in wikipedia.

--Jimbo