[WikiEN-l] FBI vs. Wikipedia

[FT2]

A few differences on currency (and some other items).

Making "copies" of currency is often explicitly a crime. So there is a legal
obligation to be clear that what is presented is not "currency" regardless
of whether it would help criminals or not. This doesn't appear to be the
case for most logos and documents.

Also unlike the FBI badge, currency is common (uniquitous) and may well be
scrutinized; the details on an FBI logo are coarse and little known,
unlikely to be checked whereas the details on a print of currency are likely
to be checked. Most people can obtain good quality scans with minimal effort
but the kinds of professional and very high resolution digital versions
needed to produce non-crude forgeries may not be so easy to create.

I think if I were drawing a line for Wikimedia I'd have it somewhere like
this:


"There is rarely a need to show the detail of anti-copying shading, or if
there is, there is rarely a need to show the entirety of it for a whole
document. Currency and other official documents that have fine scale
anti-copying devices (currency, passport pages and laminate, etc) may be
held in detail on Wikimedia, but the anti-copying shades and effects should
either not be entirely shown, or if entirely shown then they should not be
shown in excess of ___ dpi."

 FT2


On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:

> You may be right. Changing subject slightly, does that argument apply
> with currency counterfeiting laws? I know this thread isn't about
> currency images, but Commons does actually pay a fair amount of
> respect to concerns that currency could be counterfeited, which has
> always surprised me somewhat, given that most currencies now use
> security methods that no high-resolution image will help with when
> counterfeiting.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Currency#Counterfeiting_tag
>
> Carcharoth
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:43 AM, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think the "high resolution helps forgers and impersonators" argument is
> > spurious.
> >
> > Let's assume the logo were to be used improperly. Most people don't know
> > what the "right" logo is. A decent image quality (straight lines, etc)
> would
> > fool most people if it looked "professional" whether technically accurate
> or
> > not. Social engineering does the rest (not everyone will argue with
> someone
> > who claims forcefully they are FBI). Basic image cleanup is something
> anyone
> > can do these days and any computer can tidy up a poor quality image to
> look
> > "clean" (photoshop). If there was doubt asd to appearance most
> impersonators
> > only need to google image: "fbi badge" to get close enough.
> >
> > In simple terms I don't see any merit whatsoever to a claim that a good
> > quality copy helps impersonators. Any impersonator will easily be able to
> do
> > the job well enough to fool most people, and any capable impersonator
> will
> > not be affected by Wikimedia's decision.
> >
> > FT2
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 5:11 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 8 August 2010 16:57, Charles Matthews
> >> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > I think I found the word, early in 2007. Misunderstanding that Gerard
> is
> >> > more g'day than have a nice is a poor basis for any such judgement.
> >>
> >>
> >> Yes, the thread has been rather non sequitur all the way down. Assume
> >> some bad faith and why, it's a microcosm!
> >>
> >>
> >> - d.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>