[WikiEN-l] Wikimedian image restorations exploited on eBay

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:
> I suspect (as you've noted) that copyright may not be the right tool
> for the job. (It would undoubtedly encourage restorations, but the
> cultural price may not be appropriate. But that's getting more to the
> philosophical.)
>   

Copyright law is already pretty screwed up; piling a bigger load on that 
horse doesn't help.

> I think what we need to do - a practical action that we can do at
> present - is more encourage a culture of crediting restorers. This
> means naming the restorers, details of the restoration, etc. on the
> image pages.
>   

To a point. But how much restoration deserves mention.  Some may only be 
noticeable at high resolution; for someone whose needs are fulfilled by 
a low resolution image the restoration may be of no value.

> Noting the restorer is of course best practice, to be accurate about
> image provenance if nothing else. Encouraging third parties to
> actually do so is going to be a long and gentle process. It's hard
> enough to get media reusers to credit an image with more than
> "Wikipedia" when it's under an attribution licence, let alone list any
> detail they're not absolutely forced to by law.
>   

Credit to "Wikipedia" is about as much as you can realistically expect.  
For the many who don't even realize that they can edit themselves 
Wikipedia is only one monolithic entity.  The thought process that 
distinguishes individual Wikipedia contributors from the monolith only 
begins when they become aware of their own ability to edit.

> With the spread of free culture, I suspect credit will become more
> common as a social expectation, which is why getting into crediting
> restorers is a good thing to start now.
Optimist!!!

Ec