[WikiEN-l] [WikiEn-l] Image license tags

[Stan Shebs]

Justin Cormack wrote:

>
>We should stop all uploads of images now; free stuff can go to commons,
>so that we stop the increase: we have hundreds of thousands of old  
>images
>to deal with. Its one setting on the software, we might need to get a
>bunch of admins to become commons admins to cope with the extra load  
>there.
>
Not to spread too much FUD about an ongoing debate, but a flaw with the
"use commons for all free images" theory is that a number of commoners
consider that German "design rights" laws mean that nearly all pictures
of designed objects, such as toys or furniture, are not free, and that
as a consequence most interior shots are not free either. (Outdoors pics
are covered by the "Panoramafreiheit" exception.) There is also a
problem with pre-1923 things marked "PD-US" that are not necessarily PD
worldwide.

Image licensing is a hard issue that cannot be resolved with simple
solutions.

Stan