[WikiEN-l] Creation of user photographs

[Peter Mackay]

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs
> 
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> 
> >On 5/22/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> >
> >>So you can release a photograph as GFDL if you do not hold the 
> >>copyright to it? Is this fair dinkum?
> >>
> >>No. Check the {{GFDL}} template. It's not a release, it's an 
> >>assertion. If you stamp the photo {{GFDL}}, you're simply 
> saying that 
> >>the person who took it has previously released it - a 
> different kind 
> >>of sin, that may or not let you sleep better at night.
> >>
> For instance, if my wife takes a picture of me, I ask her to 
> release it under GFDL so it can be on WP and she agrees, I 
> can legitimately do the uploading and GFDL-tagging myself, 
> crediting her as photographer. We do take it on a certain 
> amount of faith that I'm representing the situation 
> truthfully, but given that the GFDL requires that the creator 
> of the work be identified, a skeptic would in theory have 
> enough info to contact her directly and confirm the license.

If they wanted to. Actually, I don't have much of a problem with this for
non-controversial user photographs. I don't know if it would stand up in
court, but you'd have to say that if someone asks a random person on the
street to take their photograph, then it was implicit that the photographer
would have no ownership or control over the resultant image. Afer all, you
wouldn't ask someone you didn't know to take your photograph with your own
camera if you thought you wouldn't end up with rights to it. It's a little
different to going into a studio and asking a professional photographer to
shoot you. You end up with copies, he keeps the rights.

My problem is where uploaders identify themselves as the creators of the
image when clearly they are not. I'd like to see some explicit WP-agreed way
of doing this.

And the ultimate reason why I want this made plain is that when I'm
eventually able to edit my own user page again, I want to upload a picture
of my smiling face, and I don't want the same mean-minded individual who
pulled it off last time to do it again, citing the exact same quibble with
ownership.

Here's the photograph I want to upload.
http://static.flickr.com/35/123137544_d055e4bebf.jpg Me in Hiroshima with
cherry blossoms, taken by my friend Cari.

Pete, back home again