[WikiEN-l] GFDL and images

[K P]

On 6/11/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So, I should print it out, frame it nicely, then glue the GFDL to the
> > bottom of the frame before hanging it on my wall?  Imagine there's a
> > world outside of cyberspace....
>
> If you hang it on your wall at home, you don't have to add anything to
> it. If you /redistribute/ it, then you have to give the license.
>
> Though strictly not legal, I doubt anyone will come after you if you
> settle for license name and link in the image credits. If you're going
> to mass-print GFDL-based picture catalogs, you'll probably have a page
> ot two for the license anyway :-)
>

So, in other words, I have to break the law.

This is what it says on the Wikipedia page about the license:

Burdens when printing
The GNU FDL requires that licensees, when printing a document covered
by the license, must also include "this License, the copyright
notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the
Document". This means that if a licensee prints out a copy of an
article whose text is covered under the GNU FDL, he or she must also
include a copyright notice and a physical printout of the GNU FDL,
which is a significantly large document in itself.

>
> > What I really do is just what everyone else does, ignore all the
> > images with GFDL and search for ones with Public Domain releases.
>
> So you personally know "everyone else"? Or do you have any usage statistics?
I personally know people I work with who deal with the issue of using
images, and other editors on Wikipedia whom I've asked about this.
All have offered the same solution: search for Public Domain images.

As to statistics once you've asked for the 6+billion, sampling the
population just won't do.
>
> > I'm an artist, so don't try telling me I can just download someon
> > else's image and not comply with the licensing agreement, but it's
> > absurd to allow one to be used that simply can't be used--and, again,
> > imagine a world where images are used for things other than cyberspace
> > communities.
>
> Do you have a real-life example where it is impossible for you to
> comply with the license?

Impossible?  The same example I gave, a 4" square image accompanied by
a couple of pages of text.  Impossible?  I'm a starving artist, I can
afford to frame a 4" square image, but can't afford the 24" by 24"
frame, paper and matboard for the accompanying text.
>
> > The whole image world on Wikipedia and escpecially Wikimedia Commons
> > is so difficult and poorly thought out in so many ways that I seldom
> > bother uploading images.  Things like this, the common usage of a
> > license which, if anyone ever read it, simply could not be understood
> > to apply to images, is just one of many frustrating issues.
>
> Licensing images under GFDL was a neccessity in the beginning, as it
> was the only copyleft license for non-software documents available at
> the time. I think its use as the only image license will decline.
> Personally, I dual-license all my files on commons GFDL and
> CC-BY-SA-2.5, to give the user the maximum of choices.
>
> Magnus
>

Please don't tell people to simply violate artistic copyright.

KP