[WikiEN-l] Images that are PD in their country of origin

[Liam Wyatt]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:37 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 20:24, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:05 AM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> What kind of reusers do we have in mind? The reason I ask is that the
> >> image policies are crippling, or the way they're being applied is.
> >> I've lost count of the number of times Holocaust images are proposed
> >> for deletion because, we're told, there's a free equivalent somewhere.
> >> Prisoners risked their lives in concentration camps to smuggle out
> >> images to prove to the world what was happening, images that are PD in
> >> their country of origin, yet we're not supposed to use them (in the
> >> opinion of some Wikipedians) because they're not PD in the U.S. and
> >> there might be a free equivalent somewhere. If this is happening to
> >> make things easier for reusers, it would be good to know who they are
> >> and what this kind of policy application protects them from, because
> >> all it does is cause problems for us.
> >
> > Possibly the reusers who stick images on T-shirts and mugs and sell them?
>
> I can't tell whether that's a serious answer. I hope we're not making
> editors jump through all these hoops, and depriving readers of
> important historical images, for the benefit of people who sell
> T-shirts. :(
>

I believe the answer is serious in as much as the most contested (but
allowed) re-use-cases of Commons content are for commercial purposes. It is
a use-case that is both difficult to explain to many copyright holders but
also important for us to retain as a standard for our free-culture project.

I agree that it is annoying to think of commons admins going to all this
trouble just for the benefit of unknown people selling t-shirts, but if
people *aren't* allowed to sell t-shirts then it's not free-culture project.


For the record, I agree with George Herbert (above): "We should not get lazy
and rely on [legal requirements in the US], but we also should not be too
defensive or paranoid." As they say about Fair Use - use it or lose it!

-Liam [[witty lama]]