On 6/21/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
As I recall (and Anthere, apologies if I've got this wrong) - the image is a member of the fr community who died recently and Anthere wanted to keep it as a memorial, if it made sense. She was obviously prepared to let it go (and did, in fact, let it go) but someone applied IAR and *poof* it's back.
Yes. I'm just saying that if the user had been required to upload his self-portrait under a free license, we would not be having the post-mortem debate about whether or not we can use the picture for memorial purposes.
In fact the policy page on the English Wikipedia is clear on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#User-created_images
Wikipedia encourages users to upload their own images, but all user-created images must be licensed under a free license (such as the GFDL and/or an acceptable Creative Commons license) or be released into the public domain (no copyright). If licensing, it is best practice to multi-license your images under both GFDL and a Creative Commons license.
This explicitly forbids invoking a "fair use" defense with material you yourself hold the rights to, which would IMO create a legally (or at least morally) frivolous situation for everyone involved.
—C.W.