On 5/21/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay(a)bigpond.com> wrote:
My question about the ethics of claiming a photograph taken by someone
else
as your own is a legitimate one. It applies to a great many photographs on
user pages. How I got to this particular is really immaterial, and I
mentioned research in case someone like you wondered why I chose this user
as an example.
With respect, it's really not important, and was probably a tag slapped on
in haste, knowing that no one is going to dispute the copyright of that
image, and that no one is ever going to attempt to reuse it for anything.
Our system isn't really geared to handle these types of images - what tag
would *you* have put on it? All I can think of is getting the creator (yes,
that random passerby) to write an email certifying that they release it
under GFDL, and we could *still* dispute whether it was actually them or
not.
We don't really have a way of dealing with images whose copyright value is
so low as to actually be negligible. Copyright is not like other laws - if
it's inconceivable that anyone could actually sue us over it, or even
complain about it, there is not, afaik, any problem with us violating it.
Steve