Greetings,
My name is Roberto X, a 24 year old editor and administrator of
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. As you may have heard, Wikipedia is
an international online collaboration aimed at building a high quality
and free repository of knowledge, available to anyone, anywhere in the
world. The site itself is regularly situated between the ten most
visited in internet according to Alexa (you can confirm the claim at
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=wikipedia.org ), the traffic
measurement service offered by Amazon.
To reach such goal, it is common for Wikipedia editors to contact
companies or individuals that may help us improve articles. In my
case, I am contacting Napalm Records to check the possibility of
obtaining free images compatible with Wikipedia aim.
In Wikipedia, images can be classified as "free" or "non-free" ones.
Images considered "free" are done so in the "freedom" sense of the
word; in other words, the copyright holder agrees to either release
the image under the public domain, or agrees to license it under a
so-called "copyleft" license, a license that allows the following:
1. Freedom to use the image, both commercially and non-commercially.
2. Freedom to modify the image
3. Freedom to publish a modified version of the image, both
commercially and non-commercially.
These images are usually contributed by Wikipedia editors themselves
(in example, by taking a picture of a metal band during a concert) or
by copyright owners themselves (professional photographers, bands and
agencies agreeing to release a few selected promotional images under a
free license). Images released as promotional material (usually for
the press to advertise new launches, or use for "personal purposes")
are considered "non free", because they fail to provide the previously
mentioned freedoms. In example,
http://www.napalmrecords.com/promotion.shtml indicates "Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium is permitted for promotional
use only." which clearly contradicts with Wikipedia concept of "free".
Unfortunately, a number of articles about bands signed with Napalm
Records currently do not have such free images. A few of them are:
* Trail of Tears: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears_%28band%29
* Visions of Atlantis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visions_of_Atlantis
* Midnattsol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnattsol
* Leaves' Eyes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves%27_Eyes
* Lacrimas Profundere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimas_Profundere
* Elis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elis_%28band%29
Please note that Wikipedia is a multilingual project, therefore for
every article in English I linked, there are several in other idioms
as well, in example, Leaves' Eyes is currently found in 14 other
languages, including Spanish (
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves%27_Eyes ) and Japanese (
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B4%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%82%A4%E3%82%BA
).
While, eventually, editors will be able to supply free images obtained
during the band's promotional events and concerts, the quality of free
images created by the community do not match the quality of
promotional images released by record companies, as they usually lack
focus, lightning and, sometimes, even band members.
Therefore, I am contacting Napalm Records to suggest the possibility
of providing Wikipedia free images for the bands currently work with
you, including (but not limited to) the mentioned ones. Free images
would not only help increasing the quality of Wikipedia articles about
your bands, but also offer free publicity to them. It will also put
Napalm Records in high consideration within the Wikipedia community,
especially those contributing with articles about metal bands, as
agreeing to relicense properties is seen as a true form of
collaboration with this project.
Also, of note is that Wikipedia is always between the first results
returned by Google and Yahoo search engines. A search for "Leaves'
Eyes" at Yahoo returns the official website of the band in the first
place, and the Wikipedia article in the second (as seen here,
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22Leaves%27+Eyes%22 ), while a
similar search at Google returns the Wikipedia article in third place
(as seen in http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Leaves%27+Eyes%22 the
first two hits are from the official page itself). A good and
informative article about the bands can also drive more visitors to
the their official sites, as every article includes links to Napalm
Records and the official band website.
Images do not require to be of high definition, or even new ones. It
is our belief that "free" is more important than "large" or "updated".
We have obtained images of varying resolution, from less than a
megapixel to several ones. While we would really appreciate high
resolution, updated images, we will welcome any version you may
provide.
In order to consider an image "free", it must be licensed under a
license that accepts the freedoms mentioned above. Following is a
short list of licenses, from less restrictive to most restrictive you
may be interested in:
1. Public Domain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain ). The
copyright owner renounces to all his rights over the work, worldwide,
in a timeless manner (that is, forever). If in some location it is not
possible to declare such renouncement, the copyright owner agrees to
license the work, for any purpose, in a timeless manner, to anyone.
2. GNU Free Documentation License (
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html ). The copyright owner agrees to
license the work under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) with
no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
The image must be accompanied with a copy of the GFDL license. Any
modified version of the image must be licensed under the same license.
3. Creative Commons Attribution (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ ). The copyright owner
agrees to license the work under the Creative Commons Attribution
license (CC-BY). The copyright owner must indicate the way in which
the material is attributed to him, but allows commercial and
non-commercial usage of the material, modifications over the original,
and commercial and non-commercial usage of the modified versions.
4. Creative Commons Share Alike (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ ). The copyright owner
agrees to license the work under the Creative Commons Share Alike
license (CC-BY-SA). The copyright owner must indicate the way in which
the material is attributed to him, but allows commercial and
non-commercial usage of the material, modifications over the original
and commercial and non-commercial usage of the modified versions.
However, any modified version must be also licensed under this same
license (CC-BY-SA) or a compatible one.
Images with free licenses are updated at Wikimedia Commons (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ), the repository of free
media for the Wikimedia projects, from where they will be used in the
different articles in different languages.
It is my hope that I have explained myself clearly and demonstrated
that collaborating with us help not only our project, but also the
bands, especially new ones, giving them more visibility through
Internet.
I await your response, willing to ansewr any question you may have
regarding this mail.
Very Best,
Roberto X, Wikipedia editor and administrator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ReyBrujo
