[Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force

[Geoffrey Plourde]

I agree, vigilantism is not necessary and counter productive. The Commons Force proposal represents a clear and present danger, both for whoever hosts it and participates in it. It is not for a third party to intervene in a contract between two people and only two people. If the Commons Force restricted itself to documenting potential copyvios and reporting them to the copyright owners, I could see some merit to the proposal. Otherwise it will do more harm than good. 




________________________________
From: "wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk" <wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2009 11:42:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal: Commons Force

Jovan Cormac wrote:
> wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> 
>> Secondly, just because YOU think something is PD or licensed under 
>> Creative Commons does not mean that it is in reality so. For example 
>> many images on flickr have been lifted from the web and the account 
>> uploading them falsely applies a CC license to everything uploaded.
>>
>>  
> If that was true, it would mean that any worrying about licensing on 
> Commons is void as well, because after all, "just because some Commons 
> user thinks something is public domain doesn't mean it really is". 
> Obviously, there *are* lots of cases where media files clearly are 
> copyrighted, and cases where they are clearly in public domain. Those 
> cases are the interesting ones, and the one we should focus on.
> 

I'll remind you of the case the other year where a ARR self portrait
that a 14yo had taken, was used for the cover art of a porn video.
Apparently they'd found it on a Public Domain site.

Every organization that has ever wanted to use one of my CC'd images
from flickr has asked. Anyone, bloggers notwithstanding, not doing so is
an ass. There are far too many people out there that slap CC on images
that they have found on the web under the mistaken impression that if
its on the internet it is public domain. Most organizations make sure
they have some paper trail of permission.

You'll find my stuff on sites with a CC-NC license and you'll also find
the same image on other sites without a CC license. How a site displays
one of my images is between me and the site itself, the license I grant
to one site maybe completely different to that given to another.

Simply because YOU have seen the image with a CC license on one site
does not mean that another site isn't also using the image correctly.
The only person that can tell whether the work is being used correctly
or not is me, and the only person that decide whether to complain about
a incorrectly used image is also me.

Quite frankly I'd be furious if someone took it upon themselves to
interfere in any relationship I have with users of my images.



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