Sarah wrote:
The usual response when I write to a living person to ask for a freely licensed image of them is 'Yes of course you have my permission," followed by how much they love Wikipedia. I have to write again explaining about our policies, our aim of making freely licensed material available, the need not to rule out commercial use etc. Sometimes they get it the second time. Often they reply: "I hereby license the image for anyone to use with no restrictions, for educational purposes." I have to write again and tell them "for educational purposes" is a restriction. I usually have to give them the precise words they need to say in order to release the image entirely.
By the time this is done, I feel very exploitative of them. I want their image on WP, they want it on WP, and the article is more informative for having it. So it's win-win. And yet I have to insist that they abandon all rights before that win-win situation can be acted upon. It feels irrational.
It seems like a partial practical resolution to this difficulty would involve something only slightly technical... a special page to which we could direct people where they could grant permissions. A simple wizard.
For example, Sarah uploads the image, along with the email address of the person who says "yes of course you have my permission". This triggers an email to them giving them a link to visit to finalize the process. The link is some kind of hash of the email address.
They visit the link. They see the image in question. They click a box that says "Yes, I own the copyright to this image, and I release it under CC BY-SA." (And that's a link to the CC page about BY-SA.)
This gets recorded in the image history.
It's reasonably secure, if done well, and generates a paper trail of how Sarah got the permission.
And it is a lot less frightening to people than a long conversation in email.
--Jimbo