[WikiEN-l] NYT: Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos

[Durova]

You might be surprised.  The biggest obstacle is that most of the people who
own copyrights simply don't understand wikis and free culture.  They're used
to thinking in terms of reproduction permission, which presupposes an older
type of static publication.  That can change; what we need to do is
communicate while we have the public's attention.

Fortunately many copyrights have almost zero commercial value.  When
individuals hold those copyrights they often regard it as flattering that a
site such as Wikipedia could use them.  Think of it in terms of someone
whose aunt was an Olympic bronze medalist decades ago: photographs of her
would be treasured within the family, but elsewhere she's just a name on a
long list of athletes.

The default action that people take when they discover Wikipedia would
publish their photos is to offer permission.  When we try to answer 'that
doesn't work, you need to go to OTRS and...' nine times out of ten their
eyes glaze over and they wander away.  They simply don't comprehend.  We
need to stop being defeatist and get serious about commuincating on a
broader scale that yes, these things are possible.  The solutions are
simple, but they require a paradigm shift.

-Durova

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 12:14 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/7/20 Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>:
> > You are right Durova. I apologise for sidetracking things there.
> >
> > Do you have views on how to address situations where we have a free
> > pictures of someone when they are very old, but all the pictures of
> > them when they were young (and famous) are copyrighted? This can
> > happen with sports stars and others. Does the presence of an arguably
> > less relevant free picture (of them when they are old) dissuade people
> > from attempting to get a free picture that may be more relevant to the
> > article (from when they were young)?
> >
> > Carcharoth
>
> Taking the age of the average wikipedian into account the general
> solution involves their parents and grandparents photos and a scanner.
>
> But realistically whatever we do we are likely to an effective image
> dark age of things between about 1923 and 2005. But then we have
> similar issues with photos of things outside the western world and
> popular holiday destinations.
>
> --
> geni
>
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http://durova.blogspot.com/