On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:37 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvir...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 20:24, Carcharoth <carcharot...@googlemail.com> > wrote: > > On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:05 AM, SlimVirgin <slimvir...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> What kind of reusers do we have in mind? The reason I ask is that the > >> image policies are crippling, or the way they're being applied is. > >> I've lost count of the number of times Holocaust images are proposed > >> for deletion because, we're told, there's a free equivalent somewhere. > >> Prisoners risked their lives in concentration camps to smuggle out > >> images to prove to the world what was happening, images that are PD in > >> their country of origin, yet we're not supposed to use them (in the > >> opinion of some Wikipedians) because they're not PD in the U.S. and > >> there might be a free equivalent somewhere. If this is happening to > >> make things easier for reusers, it would be good to know who they are > >> and what this kind of policy application protects them from, because > >> all it does is cause problems for us. > > > > Possibly the reusers who stick images on T-shirts and mugs and sell them? > > I can't tell whether that's a serious answer. I hope we're not making > editors jump through all these hoops, and depriving readers of > important historical images, for the benefit of people who sell > T-shirts. :( > I believe the answer is serious in as much as the most contested (but allowed) re-use-cases of Commons content are for commercial purposes. It is a use-case that is both difficult to explain to many copyright holders but also important for us to retain as a standard for our free-culture project. I agree that it is annoying to think of commons admins going to all this trouble just for the benefit of unknown people selling t-shirts, but if people *aren't* allowed to sell t-shirts then it's not free-culture project. For the record, I agree with George Herbert (above): "We should not get lazy and rely on [legal requirements in the US], but we also should not be too defensive or paranoid." As they say about Fair Use - use it or lose it! -Liam [[witty lama]] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l