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

[Ken Arromdee]

On Sun, 7 Feb 2010, SlimVirgin 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.

The thing is, "there might be a free equivalent somewhere" isn't really an
*argument*.  It's an officially blessed excuse, officially blessed to such an
extent that it's impossible to argue "well, I don't think there's a free
equivalent somewhere" because even a ridiculously low chance of a free
equivalent existing somewhere ias enough to count as "there might be", and
there is no allowance made for "well, there might be, but the chance is so
small that there may as well not be".

This is also a particular problem with pictures of living people, since we've
been told that since it's *possible* to take another picture of a living
person, all non-free images of living people are prohibited.  The official
way of interpreting "it's possible to" takes no consideration of just how
possible it is.  In any other context this would be considered rules-lawyering--
we're basically officially rules-lawyering our own policies.