From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission
The "ethics" of it are of no concern for us.
In the case of attributing ownership to creative works?
In a situation like this, I think we can, for once, assume good faith in terms of copyright -- that the person who is providing the picture of themselves has the ability to make some claims as to its copyrightable status. I see no reason to doubt it in this instance, or in most instances where users are using pictures of themselves.
I disagree. When the photographs are obviously NOT taken by the subject, the question of copyright becomes non-trivial.
My reading is that people are uploading pictures of themselves onto their user pages, knowing quite well that they are non-controversial, but that they don't have a suitable template to choose from.
I think that claim to be the creator of the work not because they know that they hold copyright, but because they can't find a better template. I suggest that most people uploading images of themselves would have doubt about the status.
Peter