[Wikipedia-l] morguefile.com image use

Neil Harris neil at tonal.clara.co.uk
Fri Aug 27 11:14:49 UTC 2004


Magnus Manske wrote:

> <Farnsworth>Good news, everyone!</Farnsworth>
>
> I contacted Michael Connors from www.morguefile.com, a free image 
> repository, about use of the images on wikipedia. Short answer: Go 
> ahead! Long answer: below...
>
> Happy image-hunting!
>
> Magnus
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Hey mangus, first off for a site like Wikipedia, you can certainly use 
> any
> image photographed by mconnors free and clear of all terms or by-lines 
> and
> you have my written permission. The problem is that I don't own these
> images, I only have permission to redistribute them. Or at least all 
> of the
> images that I haven't photographed. And I wrote the disclaimer myself, 
> which
> is why it's so shoddy. (even more so then the coding) You are correct, 
> what
> I plan to do is have a lawyer provide us with proper terms. My only real
> concern was preventing someone from downloading the entire collection and
> finding a morgeufile CD for sale at wal-mart. And I have gotten 
> request from
> people who want to just rip off as many prints as they can and sell 
> them at
> every street vendor in NYC, in which case I tell them they should at 
> least
> stick a calendar on it. If your using the images on a webpage, that's 
> really
> not the same- they would be really bad prints. The intent of the site was
> definitely to serve sites not unlike wikipedia, so I think you should run
> with using the images, I honestly believe the contributors would be 
> tickled
> to know there work is being used by your site. Give me another 6 
> months to
> hire the lawyers and we'll have a solid license. For now you can 
> contact the
> contributor of a specific photo- I'm sure you won't have any problems
> getting permission. Thanks a lot for the advice, it is greatly 
> appreciated.
> mconnors
>
Perhaps they would like to GFDL only low-resolution versions of their 
images, say up to 640px or 800px on the longest edge? They would be no 
use for prints, as they would be limited to only a few inches across at 
150dpi colour resolution. However, they would be more than adequate as 
encyclopedia illustrations, and would provide high-resolution thumbnails 
and other small illustrations.

Neil




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