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

[Michael Peel]

On 8 Feb 2010, at 23:05, Ken Arromdee wrote:

> 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.

Personally, I think we should remove all non-free images from all  
language Wikipedias (and everywhere else they occur) - as they make  
it difficult to get freely licensed content off people that already  
have that content. Case study: I emailed ESA to ask for a photograph  
of a satellite to use in an article; they provided a 200 pixel image  
I could use as 'fair use' in return. In the past, we weren't big  
enough to have any leverage to get that content released - but now we  
are, and we could have that leverage if we want to take advantage of it.

However, that is somewhat separate from the question of images that  
are in the public domain _somewhere_. It is somewhat crazy that US  
laws dictate what public domain materials you can upload to Wikipedia  
etc - irrespective of what laws apply in your own country.

One possibility that might be worth investigating is something like  
Wikilivres - which holds books that are out of copyright in Canada  
(life+50 years) but not in the US. It can do that as its servers are  
based in Canada. Could we do something similar with Wikimedia  
Commons? i.e. host multimedia content on a server in a different  
geographical area, and then have that linked in with Wikipedia in the  
same way that Commons currently is? There shouldn't be any concerns  
about having thumbnail images of these works on Wikipedia, as these  
are all done under fair use anyway (e.g. all of those uncredited CC- 
BY-SA images...).

Mike