On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 15:50, Jimmy Wales wrote:
If that means less images for now, then it means less images for now. It also means that we have a very strong incentive to develop free alternatives.
I am torn on this issue - I can see the arguments for both sides. However, what certainly needs to happen, regardless of whether we keep fair use images in the long term, is for the existing image database to be thoroughly categorised by licence, coupled with a policy to prevent the problem of unknown image status, from getting any worse. In the meantime, let us keep with the status quo.
I have no intention of trying to get fair use images removed per se, but I do want downstream users to be able to separate out images they can't use easily. msg:fairuse, msg:noncommercial and friends were designed to do this.
With the respect to photos of politicians, which Caroline had been negotiating for, I doubt very much the parties would have agreed to put them into the public domain or licence them under the GFDL, but I suspect the main reason there is not fear of loss of revenue, but fear of the images being used in a derogatory way. Perhaps a standard semi-free image release would be useful? I would regret not having such images on Wikipedia.