[Wikimedia-l] photography restrictions at the Olympics

[Cristian Consonni]

2012/7/24 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il>:
> Hi,
>
> The Olympic games are beginning soon. Apparently, ticket holders
> cannot use photo equipment longer than 30cm and cannot use the photos
> and videos for commercial purposes without accreditation.
>
> Practically everything that happens at the Olympics is notable and
> should be on Wikipedia, Commons, etc. Does anybody know whether there
> are professional accredited photographers who are Wikimedia-friendly
> and plan to upload their photos? If there aren't any, does anybody
> know whether a Wikipedian can obtain such accreditation?
>
> This doesn't concern me directly, but there are many, many people who
> write Wikipedia articles about sports in all languages and it may be
> interesting to them. Also, it may be a frequent issue in sports and
> I'm just not aware of it because I rarely follow sports.
>
> Sources for the restrictions:
> * http://www.tickets.london2012.com/purchaseterms.html
> * PDF: http://j.mp/london2012prohibited

I think this another layer of problems besides copyright, with
CC-BY-SA the author grants permission to reuse the photo also for
commercial purposes without requesting permission to the author. But
there are many other layers of rights which could interfere with the
free (or better the "anarchic") reuse of a photo. For example I think
that using an image of Usain Bolt to promote a book without explicit
permission from the athlete (or his agent) is anyhow unlawful even if
the photo was taken, for example, in the street and freely licensed.
That said I think with can treat photo from the Olympics in a similar
way as we do for photos with "personality rights", we could put a
template saying "Olympics photo warning: to reuse for commercial
purposes this photo you should obtain permission from IOC and/or
individuals depicted in the photo".
The point is that the author of the photo allows for it the widest
possible reuse permitted by CC-BY-SA, thus sharing part of its
copyright with others,  but if one wants to use the photo for
commercial purposes that he should go (himself, not the author)
through the hassle of obtaining permission from the relevant subjects.

Could it work?

Cristian