[Wikimedia-l] "Voice Intro Project"

[Fae]

On 8 February 2013 17:09, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay.  So I looked at this a couple of times, and couldn't come up with a
> good idea for "notable" people to want to deliberately record and upload
> with an open license a recording of their own voice - knowing that it
> *will* be abused and misused and mashed.  (There's little question that
> this will happen. Just because Wikimedians are pretty decent sorts doesn't
> mean the rest of the world is.)
>
> Now, I have no objection whatsoever to supporting article subjects who
> *wish* to do this, but I'm not convinced it's a good idea to actively try
> to persuade them.  I'm not convinced that recordings of a person's voice is
> actually "information" about the person, either, except in the way that
> their fingerprints are.
>
> Risker/Anne

I'm afraid, rather sadly, I have to agree. At a minimum, I would
recommend that those donating their audio or video are cautioned very
clearly about what free re-use might mean, and that the licence is
certain to be irrevocable, even if we do later make a community
decision to delete a file from Commons (which is highly unlikely if
they are notable and the release was unambiguous).

It's a nice idea, but my frank advice to a notable person would be to
release on a CC-BY-SA-ND licence which means that re-use is far more
likely to stay "respectful" and even though this means that Commons
could not host, articles on Wikipedias could still provide a link to a
stable host site that did accept the ND restriction. This is the same
advice I have provided for sensitive modern cultural content, such as
photographs of the general public at festivals where there is no
specific release from the models, or tribal rituals which may contain
children or partial nudity. Sometimes this means turning away super
content, but I would much rather do that than have upset partners who
may suffer reputational damage as a result.

Obviously if you are notable and you don't care because your voice and
image is everywhere already (and perhaps massively misused or used in
parody), then perhaps the caution will not put you off that much
anyway, as it would be water off a duck's back.

Thanks,
Fae
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