geni wrote:
On 5/5/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/05/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/5/06, Craig Whitford craigwhitford1@emailaccount.com wrote:
I've heard about the Request for comment from the United States Congress. It's true, Wikipedia is used as a PR/spin machine. I've also noticed Commons is being used to upload PR pictures too, for spin purposes.
Craig
A PR photo is better than nothing.
"PR photo" implies non-free licencing, which means that it's not acceptable on Commons, our free media repo. So in this case, and in others, no image *is* better.
Rob Church
I assumed that people were releasing them under a free lisence (it might be a logical course of action for politicians although not so much for celebrities).
This is one of those areas where fair use would be easily applicable. At a time when a copyright notice mattered the publicists could just give out these pictures, and no one would give a second thought to their re-use. Many of these pictures simply went into and still are in the public domain. With the notice requirement gone the situation became ambiguous. Perhaps a category "Fair use - PR" should be considered. These pictures were intended to be given away free, so using them does not harm the primary market for them. Whether they can be modified seems like a non-issue; who would want to?
Ec