[WikiEN-l] Another sourcing problem

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
> It is an interesting point that being hardline about copyright puts
> pressure on some organisations and governments to reconsider their
> laws and regulations. But there is an element where Commons (and to a
> lesser extent Wikipedia) is seen as acting like the copyright police,
> overextending and throwing out (for lack of information) pictures that
> may well be public domain. The solution there is to knuckle down and
> find that missing information, or help people find that information.
> Too often, though, I've come across an attitude of "well, you can't
> prove it is public domain, so delete". That is a cautious and safe
> attitude to take, but it is not an attitude that actually helps when
> trying to identify and free up new image sources.
>
>   
OTOH it can be defended as an attitude of scholarly type. We want to 
know where our information comes from. We should be concerned about the 
provenance of historical images, also. It is now so easy to fake images 
in certain ways (as I hardly need tell you) that a degree of care in 
asking for background is going to pay off.

Charles