[WikiEN-l] When Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 license makes sense

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 3/16/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/14/06, guru brahma <wikibra at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
> >
> > Sometime back, there was a discussion about the unusual license of
> > http://www.panopedia.org/index.php/Panopedia. Within the context of
> > Wikipedia, I was wondering if this license makes any sense at all. I think
> > there are some instances where this MAY make sense. For example, images
> > tagged as GFDL-self could be tagged this way. If I make an image, that is,
> > take a photograph of a leader or an actor I adore and do not want it to be
> > photoshopped into some unknown monstrosity, I would be more comfortable in
> > using Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 license. The same would
> > apply to personal images that I upload on to my userpage. The last thing I
> > want to see in my image my moustache disappear or a beard appear ;). Any
> > thoughts which other areas this admittedly over-restrictive license can be
> > used if at all allowed on wikipedia?
> >
>
> I don't see any need for this. If you take a picture of Eddie Van Halen, and
> someone photoshops a beard and a corncob pipe onto it, you can be for damn
> sure that this image won't be apperaing on Wikipedia.

Unless it gets picked up by some tabloid newspaper or made into a
Pokemon (or a million other scenarios).

> And since people do
> this stuff all the time anyway without any kind of legal permission, you
> won't be any worse off by indirectly permitting it anyway. No one is going
> to see the image except a few of the joker's friends.
>
Well, I agree with you that it probably doesn't make much of a
difference.  But not for the reasons you're giving.  Rather, I believe
it doesn't really matter because photoshopping a picture of Eddie Van
Halen to add a beard and a corncob pipe onto it, even without
permission, is probably fair use anyway.

> The only place where this is really different is when we are trying to
> rework an image for legitimate purposes, and this license only introduces
> barriers to that. There is no benefit to the project really.
>
There's a benefit if people are willing to release images under such a
license that aren't willing to release these images under a less
restrictive license.  (This is true regardless of whether or not their
thought process is logically sound.)

> The bottom line is that who are highly protective of their intellectual
> property probably should not be contributing it to Wikipedia.

CC-BY-ND is a fairly permissive license.  It's much more permissive
than, for instance, the license Wikimedia provides for its own logos. 
By your rationale Wikimedia shouldn't be contributing to Wikipedia.

Anthony