[WikiEN-l] Wikimedian image restorations exploited on eBay

[Michel Vuijlsteke]

2009/9/18 Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com>

> If I were to place restorations under copyleft license it would backfire.
> Not necessarily backfire against me personally, but against the free
> culture
> movement.  Look at the "paint by numbers" analogies within this list
> thread:

many people cannot distinguish between careful hand restoration and simple
> crop/filter/auto-levels editing.  My featured picture restorations take
> about ten hours' labor on average and one of my greatest fears is that
> fellow Wikimedians will mistake that for five minutes of running plug-ins.
> Imagine how simple it would be for an institution to protect its income
> stream by exploiting that confusion.
>

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your argument.
I know firsthand that hand restoration takes time. I also know that some
people can't distinguish hand restoration from dust&scratches + auto levels.

I stand by my painting by numbers analogy for most digital restorations. But
even if it weren't the case, and digital restoration was as incomparibly
hard an frought with judgement calls as, say, the [[Restoration of the
Sistine Chapel frescoes]]... do the restorers assert any rights? Should they
be able to?

Michel