Wikipedia talk:Elimination of Fair Use Rationale in Promotional Photos/Vote

Please discuss the proposal here. Cedars 21:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This isn't really up for a vote. We started off with this unexamined idea that real publicity photos (like this) had an "implicit license to redistribute" and had no commercial value, so they would be a good case of Wikipedia:Fair use. This was in and of itself pretty questionable, but we had gotten used to sliding non-commercial license materials under the fair use umbrella without much justification. Less than a year later, the template/category had been so abused, and there was such a mess, User:Jimbo Wales complained about it. It had resulted in a big shift from "Most images one finds on the web cannot be used on Wikipedia" to the current "Upload anything from any website and tag it {{Promotional}}". Now we have a big cleanup job to do. A list of signatures from people who want to upload this material isn't going to change anything -- we've already demonstrated that it results in more mess than we can handle. Jkelly 23:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

We can fight the bad images like we are already doing. I really don't think the mess will be any more or less if this proposal is accepted or rejected. We are talking about real promotional images. The image that sparked my interest in this matter was this one. It is a promotional image offered by the band's website and is widely used to promote the band (I think even TicketMaster uses it). I understand the desire to cut down on fair use images and I support that. That's why the proposal would still require free images be used if available. But articles on people will suffer if they do not have an image attached because often you recognize people by how they look. No amount of text can really describe people in the way pictures can. Cedars 01:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I will note even Jimbo notes his viewpoint "is at the extreme end of the spectrum...and therefore not...formal policy". Also Jimbo isn't the only entity commenting on this matter. The Register is not pinnacle of good journalism but it does point out some of the most humorous foibles of Wikipedia. [1]

In what conceivable way is the current policy "Upload anything from any website and tag it promotional?" At this point, numerous indisputably promotional images have been deleted. No matter what the policy is, people will upload inappropriate images to wikipedia. And of course actual promotional images qualify as fair use under US copyright law. john k 14:04, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Almost all of our fair use, indeed to my knowledge ALL of it, is fine under US copyright law. I consider this to e a nearly irrelevant point for the present discussion, though.--Jimbo Wales 02:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Plase provide the relivant case law.Geni 21:19, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

IANAL. But then, neither are you. However, the people who seem to actually know what they're talking about on this issue all seem to agree that such images are legal, including people who agree with you about supporting current policy. john k 21:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Promotional images of living people should be regarded as temporary

I am a very strong beleiver that fair use images of living people should be permitted but the rationale altered to encourage a replaceable image to be restored immeditely if found. I have added fair use images of many living people where it is not always likely a free image will become available and it really is a very important part of the article to physically identify the subject particularly when it is an image for such media coverage anyway- but certain wikilawyers delete them even though a fair use rationale is give. Taking away the photo seriuosly affects the qulaity of the article and takes away a valuable info resource. While I do also agree with the concept of freeness, I do also take the quality of wikipedia as an encyclopedia very seriously and anything whiches compromises the qulaity of knowledge I disagree with. I suggest that the tagging is changed to this image must be deleted immeditely when a free image becomes available. THis way the article will always have the resource but will encourage a replaceable image to be found. As wikipedia grows I hope there will be a branch which specializes in the search for free images for use on wikipedia. In response to Big DT of course Wikipedia shoudln't be an archive of promotional photos. Images should be used to imrove the qulaity of an article only and identify the subject described certainly not for some archiveErnst Stavro Blofeld 20:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Votestacking alarm

Some users are contacting others in order to come here. If this continues, the poll should be closed as there is a clear side who is contacting users to support their cause. -- ReyBrujo 20:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no need at all to worry about that. The poll is entirely bogus to start with, so people can vote as they please, it makes no difference. We don't get to better policy by having extremists digging in their heels and voting. We get to a better policy by discussion and compromise, looking for common ground, etc. Since this proposal cuts clearly against the right thing to do and the ongoing trend toward noticing that we no longer NEED lame fair use excuses to get great content, it will go nowhere anyway. The poll is simply a distraction from the serious hard work of figuring out how to get where we all want to be: free and high quality images in Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales 02:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo, has the wiki lawyers chimed in on what "fair use" promotional images mean to potential for wikipedia getting sued? Or is this just a philosophical issue? Don't think of this question as troll, I'm actually interested in why an issue so obviously heated and splitting wikipedians relating to a topic that IRL law and lawyers couldn't sort out.Hackajar 04:31, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Brad chimed in when this same was discussed for Portals. And, as Jimbo, he opposed the amendment because of conviction. In short, Don't seek sanctuary in the law. Make the law irrelevant. Provide free content everywhere you can. -- ReyBrujo 04:44, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Please feel free to contact other users and user groups regarding the poll. As with any poll, this poll needs attention in order to reach a conclusion. The issue of fair use a significant issue, the issue has been publicised outside Wikipedia [2], it would be ideal if all users could comment. Cedars 21:04, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not a matter of "I contact my side, you contact yours". The notification must be done in the correct boards (Village Pump, Fair Use, etc), not individuals. All those who have been notified are supporting this amendment, which implies votestacking. -- ReyBrujo 21:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that it would be appropriate to contact anyone who has expressed an opinion on this issue in the last few months, at least. The idea that contacting people is "vote stacking" seems highly problematic to me. Cedars contacted me, but I've been going on about this subject for months now. Are you suggesting a better option would have been for me not to be aware of this? The idea that votes should just be let be to let people randomly come across them seems problematic to me. john k 21:28, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

So far, only those who have supported this amendment have been contact, from what I see. -- ReyBrujo 21:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Summaries

A note - it provide a far better sample if items such as this could be on a page readily found by the general public that uses Wikipedia. I'd love to see a one paragraph discussion of each side's viewpoints and rationales, and offer millions of people the opportunity to vote as such. Doing so would provide a real viewpoint on the subject from a wider cross-section of actual users, as opposed to affected editors who happen to know about this page. If that was done, I have every confidence a large majority of our readers would rather be able to see fair use images. Tvccs 20:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, yes. Excellent point. Elitism in decision-making is the breeding ground for agendas not in the interest of the public good. CyberAnth 21:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Tvccs,

I agree it would be beneficial to summarize the case for and against the proposal. Maybe we could do it by adding links (in the instructions paragraph) to a page briefly explaining the for and against case.

Cedars 21:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

My own view

This is horrifyingly bad proposal which would reverse one of the healthiest trends in the history of Wikipedia at the very moment when major successes are being had every single day. We should NOT rely on promotional images under unclear license conditions for a number of reasons. First, we are powerful enough now to demand, and get, freely licensed promotional images. This proposal undermines our credibility in making such demands. Second, we undercut all the flickr-types who are very very happily trying to create freely licensed alternatives. Many photographers report that it is a lot of fun to see an article improve from no picture, to *their* picture (freely licensed), and disheartening when people whine about not being able to use the professional photo, licensing be damned.

I very very strongly oppose this proposal.--Jimbo Wales 21:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jimbo,

Please feel free to vote on the main page as I am sure your vote will carry a lot of sway. The proposal comes after a lengthy discussion in the village pump on the matter (see parent page). In the discussion it appeared a number of Wikipedians supported the fair use of promotional photographs, so a vote on the issue seemed the logical next step. I believe the promotional photographs concerned greatly enhance articles and, while there is no free alternative available, their use is a net positive for the project. I do not believe allowing their use while no free alternative is available discourages the search for free alternatives.

Cedars 22:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That is a misconception. Wikipedia is not a democracy. We don't decide by voting. And, by no means, a "votation" can change any of our five pillars. To give you an example, I could say that it would be good to have lyrics in song articles, or that content posted by authors (in example, a musician or book author comments) should stay in Wikipedia, and I would get quite a lot of support. But since they go against our pillars, it would be a contradiction: how can we change our pillars to adjust our content? -- ReyBrujo 22:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This policy proposal does absolutely nothing to discourage anyone who is trying to create freely licensed alternatives. The suggested change merely says that fair use images of living people are not considered "replaceable" until they are actually replaced. But once a free image is available, we still say that the replacement has to take place. As to our power to get freely licensed images, this is completely and utter bullshit. It just isn't true. Most famous people don't give a damn if there's an image of them in wikipedia, and the fact is that at various times people have attempted to get promotional pictures to be freely released, and failed, as any review of the archives of discussion on this subject will show. The proposal is very mild, only affecting a very small percentage of articles. I don't see how this kind of hyperbolic rhetoric about a "horrifyingly bad" proposal is helpful or useful. It is incredibly discouraging that this kind of small-minded ideological pettiness about this subject comes from the top. Sigh. This is totally fucking hopeless. john k 22:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Double sigh. Jimbo again demonstrates his complete lack of awareness for Personality rights, which are what I see as one of the main reasons we SHOULD be fair using promotional photos. I'll try again to explain this as simply as possible: A GFDL/Flikr-photo can only be released BY THE PHOTOGRAPHER. Unfortunately, U.S. law (in 28 of the 50 states) recognize that the SUBJECT of the photograph ALSO has rights. If a Flikr user "releases" his photo of Madonna, that's all well and good. What about Madonna's rights?

Please note -- you may substitute any celebrity or person of note for "Madonna".

Second note - I'm NOT someone who thinks celebrities are "better" than anyone else, but they're not worse, either. And the law TREATS them differently. No Wikipedia policy or proposal I've seen adequately addresses this issue, and I think contacting publicists to let them know that Wikipedia is posting un-approved, un-licensed photos of their clients (the vaunted Flikr-photos hailed by many, including Jimbo, as a savior) is a horrible, horrible idea.

And I encourage everyone to actually go take a look at the current featured photo of Madonna. It's blurry, it's, charitably, non-flattering, and as a side "benefit," it's probably actionable. At the very least, it would probably piss off both Madonna and her people... sending shudders of non-cooperation down through an industry (promotional photographs) that Jimbo claims to be transforming. Food for thought... Jenolen ^{speak it!} 01:21, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

That image is needed for identification, and you can identify Madonna there. We don't need to see if she has a mole under her chin. And if it really upsets them, they will contact Wikimedia and an agreement would be reached, just as it happened with Carlson Twins picture. -- ReyBrujo 01:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

But wait! ReyBrujo, you just used a point of many people who support fair use! And if it really upsets them, they will contact Wikimedia and an agreement would be reached. Could this thought process not be used for fair-use as well? Further, if you were to state, not that you are, but if you were to state "Well it's different because..."[insert some comment about free images being superior], wouldn't that point still be setting up a double standard? Not once have I heard a complelling leagal argument against fair-use promotional images (I.e. court case citation, etc).Hackajar 04:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

You caught me off guard, yep. The "if they want, they will contact/sue us" is evil, but so natural that I used it without realizing. Thanks for letting me know. Strike all that sentence then, and leave the part that, for identification purposes, we don't need a high resolution and perfectly focused image. -- ReyBrujo 05:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

"Madonna sues Flikr user for uploading a photo that wasn't flattering enough". Somehow I don't think that is going to happen and last I checked trust was generaly an absolute defence. Of course if someone were to make some alturations to the image there could be some potential problems depending on what they were but that would apply to any image of a living person from any source. Experence suggests that porn stards may be more of a problem but luke ford has survived so far.Geni 01:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

What do you think is the personality rights issue here, exactly? The examples given in that article all seem to relate to commercial uses, i.e. using someone's likeness to promote a product. That's rather different from how the images are used here. Have there been cases involving news organizations (which quite frequently publish photographs taken without consent)? If so, how did those cases turn out? This would be interesting to know, as the use of images in the news media is arguably the closest common analog to the use of images on Wikipedia. What would be Madonna's grounds for suing based on that picture (which actually seems OK to me)?

I really don't see the legal issue at present, but if there is one it would probably be best to have a blanket no-images policy for biographies of the living and recently deceased. It would be rather refreshing to see our articles on pop-culture divas focusing on encyclopedic writing, instead of on finding the most attractive images. -- Visviva 01:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

She lives in the UK where the laws around privacy are somewhat messy.Geni 02:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, why have images in Wikipedia at all? Why not make it the best, text-only site on the Internet? But that's not the goal here - the goal is to create the highest possible quality encylopedia, and that has ALWAYS meant there must be some use of copyrighted material. But instead, the fair use of copyrighted publicity photographs is treated by some members of the Wikipedia community as somehow "less free" than the fair use of quotations, lyrics, story summaries, album covers, DVD covers, etc. which make up the bulk of all entries on topics concerning popular culture. It's impossible to discuss Harry Potter books or James Bond movies or any of a million things without fairly using copyrighted material. But put up a released promotional photo about one of those topics, and boom! It has to be deleted? If we allow fair use, as we do in those cases (and as is Wikipedia policy), we actually have to go ahead and ALLOW FAIR USE. That means for text AND images. You can't have an excellent encylopedia without it.

As for some of the other questions, I think the Personality rights questions are pertinent. A GFDL/Flikr photo (say, of, again, Madonna) that claims to be "released into the public domain" is nothing of the sort. It doesn't pass the "Cafepress test". If it were truly public domain, I could take the image and re-use it in any way I see fit, including commercially. Obviously, I can't do that with an image of Madonna. That's because no matter what some amateur photographer on Flikr thinks, Madonna retains rights to her likeness. I'm not saying this is right or wrong -- but I am saying this is the way it is. Here in the U.S., she has a certain degree of control over her image. In fact, the amount of control she has over it varies from state to state; Wikipedia is Florida based, I'm told, so their laws might be something we'd want to consider before hosting ANY image of her.

As for "focusing on the most attractive images," uh, no. Not the most attractive. But these horrendous, at a distance, out of focus, unflattering photos do NOTHING to make Wikipedia a higher quality encyclopedia. And you can't have the "free encyclopedia" without... the encyclopedia. Jenolen ^{speak it!} 02:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Our five pillars disagree with you. We strive for verifiability, free content, neutral point of view, good behaviour, etc. As far as I know, featured content is not a policy we must follow. We do not focus on highest possible quality encylopedia, although of course, it is nice. That is for Encyclopædia Britannica, where every article could be considered a Featured article here. An image that identifies the subject is enough, even if slightly blurry. The last time I checked the browser window it said "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", not "Wikipedia, the highest possible quality encyclopedia".

And by the way, while free is better than fair, for some situations where creating a free version of an existing copyrighted one would demand excessive effort that cannot be easily attained, I agree with including Fair use images. But promotional pictures do not come to my mind when thinking about something "non repeatable". -- ReyBrujo 02:53, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The existance of Fair Use Images section of WP:FU contradicts both Five pillars and your above statements no? So where does that leave us? Hackajar 01:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Off topic, but I strongly doubt whether most articles on Britannica could pass FAC, or even GAC. We can, should, and do strive to create a work of reference that is immeasurably superior to any existing. Including commercial puff photos, however, does not really help our cause. -- Visviva 03:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

• I disagree strongly with the last sentence of the above. Further, the POV term "puff" in reference to promotional photos is unhelpful and unnecessary here. Badagnani 03:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I have seen Wikipedia described as first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. And the person that described it as such? Jimbo. [3] Apparently, quality matters to him.  :) And it matters to me, too.

As for But promotional pictures do not come to my mind when thinking about something "non repeatable", I invite you to check out Image_talk:Mikko_eloranta.jpg, the talk page of a deleted image. In order to replace it, I would have to fly to Sweden, convince a hockey player to put on his uniform but not his helmet, re-create a studio setting, and, for free and forever releasing his rights to the image, have him pose for a professional headshot photo that he has already posed for once before. (You know, for the deleted image that was released to the media specifically for uses such as this.) Is that repeatable? I guess. Is it reasonably repeatable? Probably not. Should Wikipedia policy allow publicity photos such as this to be included? Probably.

Jenolen ^{speak it!} 03:23, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

A free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality... "free" meaning not just free of charge, but freely reproduceable. If the personality rights issue is legitimate -- and I'd have to defer to the Foundation's legal counsel on that -- it's an argument for removing all non-free photographs of the living and recently deceased, not for indiscriminately including copyrighted photos. If the athlete's publicist cares about Wikipedia, he/she can always release the photo under the GFDL; if not, we'll get by just fine. -- Visviva 03:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the image for Mikko Eloranta, you are doing the same mistake I used to do. I work with many japanese articles, and used to think that, while it is easy for me to find a free image from Margaret Weis, it is almost impossible to find a free image about Ayumi Hamasaki. However, and this is the beauty of Wikipedia, that is not my task. I contribute with what I can do, as others should. So, you need a free image from León Gieco, an Argentinian singer you may have never heard about? Well, I can search for it, go whenever he signs albums or gives a recital, maybe even contact him directly. That is what I can do. So, I need an image from a japanese singer? Well, for sure I can't get it, but someone in the Japanese Wikipedia may be able to, and once they upload it there, I can reuse it here. You need the image from a Swedish player? Just wait until someone from Sweden manages to fetch a copy. We don't need to do all the work, we need to trust others. Why delete all promotional images? Because it encourages users to search for free versions. Do I agree with that 100%? No, image deletions should begin from the articles with the most revisions (which are supposedly either about topics that are very common in this version of Wikipedia, or that have the most editors working on them) to the ones with fewer revisions (which are the most rare and that would be harder to get replace). But I agree with others that Fair use makes us all lazy. -- ReyBrujo 03:54, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "fair use" doesn't make us lazy, it makes entries such as Harry Potter, James Bond, Superman, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and many others POSSIBLE. In the specific case of the Finnish hockey player (who plays for a Swedish team), I just don't see it as a useful bit of Wikipedian work to track down a free/libre photo when his hockey club is GIVING THEM AWAY! They are already all but free -- and it's a waste of time, effort and energy to go chasing a "freer" version of something that, in my view (and others) increases the QUALITY of Wikipedia, without ANY HARM BEING CAUSED. Someday, in some GFDL utopia, the entire field of promotional photography will see the light, and change to the "free" model GFDL espouses. But it's not happening anytime soon, Jimbo's "success stories" to the contrary. Money, money, money makes the world go 'round, after all ... and it's "fair use" that lets me quote that most-appropriate of Monty Python lyrics. I may not like it... but it is reality. Jenolen ^{speak it!} 04:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Five years ago it may have been a utopia. Nowadays, it is not. Wikipedia is a very strong entity which can request and, in some cases, demand. I guess it is time for a WikiProject to raise, one in charge of contacting agencies, sites, companies and such, and to centralize the requests for free images. Something like Wikipedia:Requested pictures, but focused in free alternatives. Or does such WikiProject already exist? -- ReyBrujo 04:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe one does, but it certainly should. With Wikipedia's reputation (and rank on Google), it's certainly in a great position to publicize (that's not its primary goal but it's certainly an effect), and I wouldn't be surprised if companies were willing to release free images, similar to what happened at the Carlson Twins article. Would people be willing to start WikiProject Free Images or something of that nature? —ShadowHalo 06:51, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well we do have Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography, not the most active project at the moment, but creating new free photos seems to be within theyr scope. There is also Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service and then we have Wikipedia:WikiProject Illustration for those non-photographic images. --Sherool (talk) 12:04, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh sorry I misread a bit, no I believe you are correct I don't think there is any organized project that specialise in actualy contacting rights holder and asking them to release stuff under a free license. --Sherool (talk) 12:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Using fair use of people of whom a deacent free licensed photo may be taken (not to mention buildings and famous landmarks) does make us a little bit lazy. We have a few highly dedicated users who will literaly drive and walk for hours just to get a free licensed photo of something for Wikipedia. However that level of dedication is not the norm, for example a lot of school and university articles are/have been ilustrated purely by fair use images of the buildings. I don't want to offend anyone but frankly thatis just plain lazynes. We most likely have at least one Wikipedian who attend to live close by this instututions (they are generaly the ones that write about them) that could take a photo or have a photo taken, but since the articles already have plenty of photos they don't bother (yeah I know not every subject is quite as easy, but I believe the princible is sound and the more hassle it is to get a free photo the less likely "Joe average user" (those who do not have a burning passion for photography) is likely to do it if we already have a photo, fair use or otherwise). For ilustrating things like Star Wars and Harry Potter that's another thing, we simply can not create free licensed alternative ilustrations for those things. That said it is possible to come to agreements with the copyright holders. It seems for example that Ubisoft have agreed that all screenshots from games they have developed (not just published) may be released under an attribution only license, see {{Ubisoft-screenshot}} (hopefully that's not one of those things that turns out to be too good to be true), we have also gotten some screenshots from some BBC/Dicsovery documentary at one point (see for example Image:Pompeii the last day 1.jpg), simmilar deals can hopefully be made (at least for a limited number of ilustrative material) with other major rights holders in the future as well. --Sherool (talk) 12:04, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Buildings and living people are at quite a different level of ease in getting free images, and particularly in getting free images of the required quality (as I've said elsewhere, I think that all images on wikipedia ought to meet a certain basic standard of quality, and that free images that do not meet such a standard ought not replace fair use images that do). This whole "encouraging laziness" thing is perhaps true, but not, I think, entirely relevant. For some people, you won't get an image no matter how industrious you are. While there might be some cost to the creation of free images if we allow fair use images to stand until a free image is found, it strikes me that this is a necessary one, simply because it's so hard to tell if we're going to find a decent free image. I also think it's problematic to expect that we will be able to come to agreements with copyright holders. It would be great if we could do so, but it's something that can only be done on a case by case basis, and I don't see how we can use such a relatively unlikely possible outcome as the basis for what we do with fair use images more broadly. If an image is easily replaceable - buildings, currently available commercial products, etc. - then by all means we can pre-emptively delete. But this just isn't the case for any humans, besides wikipedia editors and their close friends and relations. Especially given the personality rights issues that are involved. Promotional images are all but free. This really shouldn't be that big a deal. john k 17:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I also love the we should be able to come to agreements with the copyright holders because Wikipedia is so great/awesome/powerful argument, because it assumes that I, a single Wikipedia editor, have the legal standing to enter in to some kind of a binding agreement with a multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerate concerning the use of their photos on the web. Do I report my "content licensing deals" to the Wikimedia foundation? Or do "we" really want "me" -- or Chowbok or Abu badali, or any editor for that matter -- making LEGAL deals on behalf of Wikipedia? It's just ridiculous to assume this is the case. Which is why a safe, sane, blanket (but not general blanket!) fair use policy for copyrighted material - images and text -- makes the most sense. Jenolen ^{speak it!} 19:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

No, we approach them in good faith, just like a fan would approach a band asking for an autograph or a poster. The only difference is that you can weight your words a little more by adding "Wikipedia" to your statement: instead of saying "I would like a free image", you can say "The Wikipedia article about this person is in need of a free image, and I thought about approaching you", or any rewording you want. You don't do anything "legal", you just, in good faith, ask for the possibility of releasing a free image. The only legal statement you give them is a selection of valid licenses (GFDL, CC, PD, etc). If they agree but with some restrictions, you should be able to say whether the restrictions are accepted or not (in example, if they claim the image would be released under CC but must contain a watermark, you could agree if released under BY-SA; if they want to add a caption everytime the image is used stating that the source is a determined entity, you can accept it if released under BY-SA; if they ask the image not to be modified, you don't accept it). If in doubt, your best bet is to contact the Foundation, tell them up to where you have reached, and let them handle the conversations from that point onwards. And yes, if you successfully obtain a free image, you need to tell the Foundation about it so that they can confirm it.

Sure, many, many will reject this, but every one that accepts will be a triumph for our ideal. And I agree, a single editor may feel weak, that is why I suggest creating a WikiProject Free Images with close contact with the Foundation, where members would contact entities, begin conversations, and if necessary, leave a request for the Foundation to finish the talks. Again, no legal representation, just good faithed conversations with copyright holders. -- ReyBrujo 04:39, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

A slight aside, as someone who has at times traveled great distances to get photographs for Wikipedia, I wanted to provide a first-hand comment: Our overuse of non-free images has cost us a lot free ones. Almost all my photography is done with the express intention of contributing to Wikipedia, so when I'm aware of a photo opportunity I check Wikipedia: I try to craft the images I take based on what our articles need, and I don't bother taking photographs of things we already have well covered. You would think that with my experience I'd know better, but over and over again I skip taking a photograph because we "already have one" only to later discover that the image we had wasn't free content. It is also the case that I avoid putting up a lot of the lower quality images I take even when they would help the project, because I don't want to hear complaints from people who would rather have a nicer non-free image that they snagged off the web. Our enforcement of fair use abuse, especially since the Dec 2005 traffic up-swing, has been poor in recent times. As a photographer I can say that this is a real discouragement. --Gmaxwell 11:56, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well well well...so I see it's about "power" and "demands" which are apparently more important on Wikipedia than respecting the rights and wishes of whose images we seek to publish. And as for the Flickr-types who seek to publish free images, generally they are not problematic, although I can almost guarantee that you will soon see a celebrity sue to get a bad Flickr image off Wikipedia, the very thing we're supposed to be concerned about for promotional images, which I have loaded by the dozen under completely clear licensing and correct Fair Use. I see on a related page, Jimbo, that you have stated that in your opinion there is almost no problem, if any, with Fair Use images on Wikipedia at the present time under U.S. copyright law. I find all of this very interesting. Jimbo, if you're reading this page, would you support the idea of verifying the use of an image on Wikipedia with the Flickr owner before using it on Wikipedia? I recently ran across a Flickr user who, when he found out his images were being used on Wikipedia in ways he never imagined under a CC license, chose to immediately revoke his CC licensing when he saw how they had been "nabbed" (his word). There are images being "nabbed" from Flickr from owners who don't know they are being used here in the ways they are - I've suggested it would be a wise and common courtesy to inform Flickr posters of how their images are about to be used and edited before being added here. Or is your position that, once anything is posted with a CC license, whether the poster really understands it or not, its fair game? Tvccs 12:23, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Whenever I upload an image from Flickr that is licensed under a free CC license, I leave a message in the image stating the image has been uploaded, with a link to the page at Commons. If the image is currently copyrighted, I leave the user a message asking if he would be willing to change the license, and if he does so, I upload the image and leave a message in his image.

Also note that there are bots at Commons like FlickrLickr and FlickreviewR that automatically review the Flickr images uploaded there, verifying if the license is compatible. Also, administrators there have a category at Flickr review needed where they have a list of Flickr images that have yet to be verified.

Finally, the guidelines for uploading images from Flickr recommend leaving a message in the image page in case the user has chosen a license without knowing its effects. I will search for that guideline, can't right now find it. -- ReyBrujo 17:01, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Our friend Chowbok has pulled and edited poor-quality fan images from Flickr that the poster had no idea would be used as they have been - when informed of same, the Flickr poster immediately pulled the CC licenses on all of his images, some of which remain on Wikipedia. Chowbok's rationale is that anything that's CC licensed is fair game, and that there is no need to inform anyone of anything, and I quote "That's what a CC license is for". I suggested the common courtesy of informing someone about a possible worldwide primary image distribution on Wikipedia, asking for direct permission to do so, and was hammered for that one as well. Tvccs 23:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Phrasing of the proposal

As currently written, this proposal wouldn't even change anything.

Copyrighted promotional photographs of living people (including bands) may be used in articles about those people if no free alternative photograph is available and the photograph complies with all other fair use criteria. When a free image becomes available it should replace the copyrighted promotional photograph as explained by the first dot point.

This would still permit deletion any time a "free alternative photograph" is available, which is true in most cases. Many of the supporters of this proposal express a desire to use fair-use promo photos in cases where there is no free alternative photograph of similar quality. If that's really what we're debating here, then the proposed wording should reflect that. Perel 21:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The half-dozen editors who have done most of the deletion of the 40,000+ images over the past month or so have not interpreted the policy that way. In fact, they state that if a "free" alternative photo COULD be created, that means the photo must be deleted. And delete they have (more often than not without notification to the uploader, posting to the discussion page of the article on which the photo appears, etc.). Badagnani 22:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It is correct the proposal will not change anything. It is not actually intended to change anything it is intended to clarify the present situation. Badagnani has actually explained the situation much better than me. Cedars 22:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that for a free use image of a living person to replace a fair use image, it should have to be of a certain minimal quality - in focus, not terrible resolution, showing the person's face at enough detail so that it's identifiable. I don't really care about "comparable quality", just a certain minimum quality - if the free picture isn't good enough to be in wikipedia, then it shouldn't be an argument to delete a fair use image of the same subject. john k 22:48, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd be fine with that phrasing. "comparable quality" may not be the right term, but the phrase should somehow get across that an out-of-focus super-low-resolution mis-exposed snapshot isn't a "free alternative photograph". Perel 02:10, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty much impossible to determine whether or not available free photographs exist, and thus our policy shouldn't be founded upon such an ambiguous statement. If you can't find a free picture, don't use a picture; don't say "I couldn't find one, so..." RottenFruit 01:58, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I agree with the former, and disagree with the latter. If we don't know if any free images exist, but there are some copyrighted images that we can fairly use with no legal difficulties, why shouldn't we use them? If we later find a free picture, we can replace it. If we don't, then your plan is simply demanding that we not use one of the most powerful tools the law provides us with to create a good encyclopedia. john k 07:34, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this ackin to OpenBSD or Free Software Foundation?

Theo de Raadt & Richard Stallman are so drunkin with a 100% free or nothing idea. How well are these projects coming along? OpenBSD has a solid user base, but after 10 years is still not accepted as much as say, linux. Theo had to start a call to arms in getting Adaptec to open some SCSI drivers which took 2 years! In the meantime, no Adaptec SCSI support and many potential users left project. Free Software Foundation has been around for 27 years and they only thing keeping them alive is the GPL and mass use of GNU software in Linux OS's. Perhaps the confict we are seeing on Wikipedia is a split between Wikipedian's with a OpenBSD/FSF ideal and ones that are willing to loosen restrictions for sake of expanding Wikipedia into greater acceptence. I would just hate to see wikipedia go down that road. Does "Free" have to be binary? Can we not ease into it, not just force everyone to jump in? Look at You Tube they opened the flood gates, made a huge name for themselfs, and now are going back and cleaning up. But it still worked! And they are now on the path to a 100% copyright free media site. Hackajar 07:22, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh you forgot Debian. Or de.wikipedia (516,279 articles and counting). Or Gimp. Or inkscape.Geni 08:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Using Debian as an example is absolutely the worst thing you could do in support of your argument. You should consider using an example that didn't choose to stop using the name Firefox because they couldn't use their logo without there being some sort of copyrighted license on it. It's just another reason people opposed to this overly-free approach are against it. IceWeasel, anyone?

Your other examples aren't very shining, either. Gimp is a user-interface nightmare. You should find another cause that gives you better examples to support yourself with. - Stick Fig 19:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

You relise I spenbd time ripping the wikipedia logo out of articles and the like? I fail to see anything wrong with renameing firefox if it dodges tiresom trademark and copyright restictions (heh not as if there haven't been fights over the firefox logo on wikipedia). If you spend much time trying to reuse content that is a mixture of free and non-free you would soon start to find things that used unfree content extreamly anoying. Other free stuff would be Media Player Classic, VideoLAN, Sea monkey, and Celestia.Geni 00:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter to you that 95% of the world thinks that changing a name or removing a logo because it inconveniences you is retarded? I don't know a better way to make the point than to say YOU ARE NOT THE MAINSTREAM. There's a reason why Linux users don't use Debian as much as they do Ubuntu or a few others. - Stick Fig 16:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

For the record Ubantu is a distro based on Debian, and Ubantu does not allow you to install non-100% free software by default (you have to manually enable apt-get extension to allow mplayer to install)Hackajar 09:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Well look at it this way: Today everyone can benefit from a totaly free SCSI drivers and what not, would that have happened at all if not for projects like that pushing for it? With the likes of RIAA constantly lobbying clueles politicians for ever more restrictive and archaic copyright laws (at this rate you'll soon get thrown in jail if you have the audacity to copy music from a CD you bought to your MP3 player) I think major projects that value freenes and opennes of content above all else are important counterweights. It's not the most convenient way to operate, but I think free content if worth it, especialy in the long term. --Sherool (talk) 13:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems like an awful extremist way to get such a minor piece of code. I think this issue is coming up because not all of us are so extremist about fair use. Sure, it's part of the argument of us, but it's not everything. - Stick Fig 19:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Technicaly true but only because most of the planet doesn't have "fair use" in the same way the US does and as a result has nothing to be extream about.Geni 00:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Is that not at the core of why Linux has not become as main stream like others? OS X (Mac) seems to be pushing Apple foward quite well, and they use the BSD licence.Hackajar 09:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I would tend to argue that is more to do with useability issues. Certianly that would explain linux's much higher level of sucess in more technical areas.Geni 00:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The proposal is faulty because the example images are not promotional photos

The two 'promotional' photographs examples that are provided -- Unwritten Law (image|article) and Tool (image|article) -- are not Wikipedia promotional photographs. Neither Wikipedia image page provide evidence that the photos are promotional photo. There is no link on the Wikipedia image page to a page that says something like "this is a promotional photo." There is no link on the Wikipedia image page to a page that says something like "this promotional photo is owned by company xyz." Also, there is no link on the Wikipedia image page to a page where the owner of the promotional photo provide rights to reuse the photos. Further, there is no link on the Wikipedia image page to a page where the owner of the promotional photo provides rights to reuse the photos that would permit reuse on Wikipedia. The two example photos do not meet the requirements to use any promotional photo templates. Thus, the proposal is faulty.-- Jreferee 17:07, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

• P.S. Tool (image|article) is a fair use photo because it uniquely conveys the band and who they are and illustrates a subject for which no free image could reasonably be found or created. -- Jreferee 17:44, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

In promotional pictures, we don't need to reproduce the situation when the image was taken, just the individuals. In example, I would not care to contact Flickr users to see if they could release images like www.flickr.com/photos/musicfreak/163069875/, www.flickr.com/photos/lukaszr/202176909/, www.flickr.com/photos/lukaszr/202176909/ or http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamdi/227085004/ with a free license. Sure, they don't show all the members, or they are not as good as the promotional, but they would be free. Individual articles can have better images to show their faces (if that guitarist ever raises his head in concerts, that is :-P). -- ReyBrujo 18:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Alternatives to fair use

Get permission

As noted above, Wikipedia is important enough to request and receive freely licensed promotional images and other images. I routinely email out requests to use photos and usually get the permission because of Wikipedia's status as an encyclopedia leader. It takes me about three minutes to compose and send out a request to use an image. I added my form request letter here. -- Jreferee 18:13, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

As I suggested above, maybe it is time to create a WikiProject Free Image to coordinate efforts when obtaining images (as in contacting an agency just once to request several images at the same time instead of sending them several mails with a single petition each, creating a single entry point to where these agencies, companies, etc, could contact us with questions (to free the Foundation from things we can do ourselves), maintaining indexes of images these companies offered to review their contributions, tracking down license changes or updates, image exchanges and reviewing that the images are being used in Wikipedia with conditions they have stated (in example, they could request us that every image should have a caption stating the image has been donated by them; the WikiProject would review every article where the image is being used to see this condition is being fulfilled). -- ReyBrujo 18:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this might be a very good idea. Perhaps you could also suggest this at the village pump of commons? TeunSpaans 05:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Photo Matching Service

Maybe you personally cannot take the photo, but there are Wikipedians all over the world and at least one may be able to get the photo for you. GabrielF's Wikipedia Photo Matching Service gives you the ability to access these Wikipedians (or become one).-- Jreferee 18:13, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I heartily encourage all the deletionists to join the Wikipedia free papparazzi. Tvccs 12:48, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

What really is the issue here

The issue here is (i) where a company's posted promotional license does not meet all the terms of a GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and (ii) largely because of the company's posted promotional license, Wikipedia's use of the image meets all four Copyright fair use factors, (iii) should the image still be deleted under Wikipedia's first fair use criterion if a free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information? -- Jreferee 19:10, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is particularly the issue. The main issue, I think, is what "could be created" means, and whether it's reasonable to say that images of living people are reasonably replaceable. I think everyone would agree that if a free equivalent is available which conveys the same information, we should delete the promo image. (There is also some dispute, perhaps, about what "adequately conveying the same information" means, exactly, and how broadly this should be interpreted). john k 20:13, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The issue here is that fair use images in this instance do not harm the project in any way, and losing the images makes the articles worse. As there's no harm, and the photos improve the articles, they should be allowed until a free equivalent is available to replace it with. That's the entire issue. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:34, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps there are nuances here I haven't seen. In my experience, most images tagged with {{promotional}} don't have a "posted promotional license" at all. They are either explicitly copyrighted, or simply released without any statement whatever (and therefore presumably copyrighted). Can you give an example of a posted promotional license, please? -- Visviva 02:21, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair-Use Image Watermarks?

I don't pretend to be fully familiar with the reasoning behind having this debate - I've just skimmed through the yes and no votes above. There should not be a major problem with Wikipedia merely using a fair-use image to illustrate a point, i.e. nobody in Wikipedia is intending to make any profit from someone's copyrighted image, or to use it for any commercial purpose. I believe there are provisions in copyright law (at least in Irish copyright law anyway) allowing some use of copyrighted material in educational environments. I know Wikipedia is not strictly speaking an education environment however Wikipedia seeks to spread knowledge, freely, without profitting in any way. So I don't see how Wikipedia using these images in a situation where no other image is available, should be a problem in and of itself.

However, if the concern is that Wikipedia could become a large archive of images for which someone else owns the copyright, and the concern then is that Wikipedia could then in turn become a source of images for people who are themselves seeking to use the images for their own commercial or profit making purposes, then there could be a problem. For example if Wikipedia continues to display an image that has been removed from all other sites for some reason (can't think of any practical examples) - especially since as I understand it, with the history functionality, deleting an image will still mean that it exists in a previous version and is still accessible.

Some commercial image or poster sites that allow you view an image / poster before buying, tag their images with a copyright notice or watermark, essentially, across the face of the image, in such a way that it is perfectly fine for viewing purposes, but with the watermark or copyright notice across the image itself, you are left in no doubt that it is copyrighted and were you to use it in some other environment, anyone viewing it would likewise be in no doubt as to its status.

The reason I bring this up in a slightly longwinded and roundabout way is to make the suggestion that you could combine elements of some of the suggestions put forward above, with this sort of feature. i.e. Wikipedia would allow for the use of fair-use images in an article until such time as a free image could replace it. Fair use images would, as well as being tagged in the conventional Wikipedia sense, have a watermark or copyright notice across the face of the image. This could say something as simple as "Temporary Fair-Use Image" or something to that effect, or could be more precise and include the name of the copyright holder. I have no idea how this would work on a practical level - some mechanism would have to exist to alter an uploaded image automatically and add this watermark, some means of ensuring that people actually watermarked fair-use images as such. However the upside would be that the image, while it would serve its purpose, would be some damn ugly that there would be an incentive to replace it as quickly as possible.

I'm pretty sure that this is:

1. Completely impractical

2. Completely unnecessary

3. Completely irrelevant

But I thought I would put it down on paper (screen?) and see if there was anything in that might spark an idea with someone.

Apologies for the 5 paragraphs..... Rmkf1982 22:38, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

You wrote: "...i.e. nobody in Wikipedia is intending to make any profit from someone's copyrighted image, or to use it for any commercial purpose."

On the contrary, one of the "built-in" projections for Wikipedia is that individuals or corporations who use Wikipedia's content in the near or distant future will indeed be able to use Wikipedia content for such commercial purposes. That seems to be a driving force behind the recent massive campaign to delete fair use promotional photos. Other editors, please correct me if I am wrong about this. Badagnani 23:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

About.com and Answers.com use our content in a way that can be considered commercial. See Kumi Koda at About.com (they only reuse text) and Kumi Koda at Answers.com (they reuse everything including images). -- ReyBrujo 00:14, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

It's more than just those two. So it seems that our unpaid editing labor allows these corporations to do an end run around paying for their own research, and at the same time ties the hands of Wikipedia editors regarding selection of photos. To whom in the Wikipedia structure might the kickbacks from those companies might conceivably flow for such use? The deletion campaign has been so feverish, in my estimation, that something of this sort must be involved or planned. I have heard nothing to the contrary. Badagnani 01:18, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, of course. I knew about that my unpaid labor would be converted into money by others, and surely many others knew it as well. It is in the first paragraph of the GFDL text: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. I wouldn't have made over 25,000 edits in the English Wikipedia and probably 500 adding up my contributions in over 30 other languages and in Commons without ever reading the full text at least once (in fact, since I am a software developer, I have read it much time ago, just like any other OSI-approved license). Personally, this is my way to return to the community what they have done for me through many free (as in freedom) books and software.

I admit that, for someone who may not have been in fair use discussions before, this "movement" to "free" Wikipedia may be harsh. However, those who have shared time with me know that I regularly praise the German Wikipedia for its freedom. Of course, I don't fully agree with them (as they can use company logos even in a decorative manner because they are of small size and can't be copyrighted), but at least they can focus in content instead of warring to see which promotional picture is better. Be sure this is not an "eruption", that one day an admin woke up and said "I feel like deleting fair use images". This has been meditated for quite a lot of time, so long, in fact, that I am sure I had warned people back in May that fair use images may be deleted anytime soon and that we should keep using a free alternative, even if slightly out of date. -- ReyBrujo 03:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

A wild thought: We could contact About.com and Answers.com and see if they can help us gather some free images. Not a request, of course, but a suggestion. I don't think they would ever agree, but it may be worth a try... -- ReyBrujo 04:01, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The heart of the matter

I have spent the good part of last night and today reading large portions of debate here on Wikipedia on this issue and have come to the very same conclusion as Badagnani has, just above (entry beginning with "it's more than just those two").

As I see it, Jimbo has pre-decided this issue and has apparently himself initiated this image deletion campaign and has apparently enlisted numerous admins as point persons. Nothing we say will do anything on this matter--again, it has already been pre-decided from on high.

I do believe that the motivation behind the entire image deletion campaign is as plain and simple and as base as it can get: money.

All the rhetoric of "free" and all the idealism not withstanding, we lowly free-laboring Wikipedians have been engaged in a profit-making scheme for a few. That little clause in the GNU license permitting Wikipedia to be used **commercially** is what it all goes back to.

When Wikipedia is used commercially, the commercial users' protection under fair use claims is tenuous at best, and certainly flies out the window at worst, since the first prong of the fair use test looks at "The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes."

So you see why the fair use images must go!

I suggest the only resolution is a mass fork for a project that can never be used for profit in any way. If that existed currently in Wikipedia, none of us would even be having this conversation.

That old metaphor of gaining profit on the back of the peasants has come to my mind afresh. Worse, the lords have figured a way through skilled rhetoric and facilitating certain psychological states to make a lot of the peasants actually like the arrangement. Meanwhile, we are facilitated with the illusion of largely "running" this place.

And now we have more on our backs: "get us free-use photos!"

To the average editor, it may be that now you know the real reason why you are here, why you have been invited. It may be what I am describing is the real heart of the matter.

CyberAnth 02:48, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

It is ironic, but by preventing commercial use you may be banning people from accessing the free content, as you may be effectively preventing a child with an old computer without internet access from buying a DVD with a full set of articles about his country for USD 1. -- ReyBrujo 03:39, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

A poor child needing education; old PC; no Internet access. And grant money is not available to provide them with DVDs for such? Of course it is available! CyberAnth 04:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the plan? We knew about that; it's called Wikipedia Version 1.0, correct? But as far as I understood this would be a Wikipedia project not to generate profit, but as a non-profit activity. Was I wrong in assuming this? Badagnani 03:47, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. The Foundation will likely do it not to generate profit. But by not allowing commercial reuse, you are preventing a small hardware business from selling copies of the DVDs bundled in new PCs for a nominal price. Or it would prevent someone, in example, from burning copies and shipping them to users without broadband, asking them to pay for the shipping. Or probably a computer magazine from bundling the DVD with a special edition of their magazine that is about Wikipedia and how it works. -- ReyBrujo 03:58, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

So we have to go obtain free-use rather than fair-use photos so said people can obtain profits from our labors? Can't they just avoid the photos? Also, the Foundation does generate profits from the activity. They get to obtain and use more grant money. CyberAnth 04:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

No, no, no, this is where we err. We don't do this for those people. We do it for ourselves, for making our Encyclopedia really free, for fulfilling the five pillars, for our philosophical ideals. That they also benefit from our ideal being fulfilled is just a side effect of the GFDL :-) Note that About.com avoids images. Answers.com started to show them some time ago (they used to show only plain text as well, no idea when they changed). As for the Foundation obtaining profit, it is possible. But you can apply my logic here as well: I search for free photos because it makes an article I am writing closer to my idea about free article. That the Foundation can then use it to obtain funds is just a side effect of the GFDL. If you understand and accept the GFDL, you will accept the fact that someone else may be making profit for every character you type. -- ReyBrujo 04:21, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

All idealism aside, the reality is that permitting commercial use very largely negates fair use in Wikipedia articles. Every one of the ga-thousands of fair use images deleted; all the work and heart people put into such work that has been deleted; all labor people are being asked to do (and money they will inevitably have to spend) to try to obtain free images, is solely so that a few can profit in what amounts to a transference of wealth. CyberAnth 04:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

That is what you think, and I respect that. But I disagree. If you would point to those with secret agendas, I would really appreciate it. I think this is one of those times when you need to consider what is more important: individual efforts or the encyclopedia goal. I expected this moment for well over 6 months, and knew it would be controversial, especially after reading in previous conversations that they contributed here because it allowed fair use, and that without images the articles would be too plain. But it is the price for freedom, and I am willing to pay. I don't expect everyone to understand the ideal, and many users will surely leave in protest. But as I said below, they may not understand what happens when they press the Save page button. And, if anything, I think in the end the English Wikipedia will be strengthened, not weakened. -- ReyBrujo 05:00, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Are these just musings, or actual ideas that are being planned and discussed behind the scenes somewhere? If the latter, wouldn't it be good if the rank-and-file editor(s) knew about this? And, as CyberAnth says, wouldn't it be better if all of this were done in a non-profit manner (i.e. plowing all profits back into Wikipedia or some similar non-profit)? Badagnani 04:00, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

For my part in my lead post, it is my best effort at looking at all the available words and behaviors and putting the pieces together in the larger picture and inferring what may be missing from the equation. CyberAnth 04:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, these are musings, of course. I am not part of the executive branch of the Foundation, just an editor. In fact, I heard about 1.0 through an article at eWeek or CNET before here, and since it really surprised me, I had not time to even try to create an assessment scale for Wikipedia:WikiProject Dragonlance, the WikiProject I started. And most times, I learn about these polls completely by chance. When editing, I only check that my contributions are being released under the GFDL. If that line ever changes, I would stop at once and reconsider my actions. In an ideal world, we would get paid for every character we write here :-) But, in the end, it is a question of whether you have a) read, b) understood and c) agreed with the GFDL text or not. It is my belief that most who complain that someone else is making profit from our work is failing at one of the three points I mentioned. -- ReyBrujo 04:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

No editor is asking to get paid (I hope). It is just that some are thinking it may be best if no one gets paid, now that they see that the price of allowing *commercial* use means no to nil *fair* use in Wikipedia content they care about. CyberAnth 04:21, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I never implied you or someone else had asked to be paid. I was just narrating that, in my personal ideal world, we would be paid for editing in Wikipedia and playing MUDs :-) Again, I think you are wrong: I would reword the price of allowing *commercial* use means no to nil *fair* use in Wikipedia to the price of freedom means nil fair use in Wikipedia. I can assure you that I do not have a personal agenda, and that I am doing this for conviction, and not to allow someone else to make profit. I hope all others think like me. -- ReyBrujo 04:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The price of freedom means nil fair use in Wikipedia. Whose freedom? Those that wish to make a profit or those actually creating the articles who wish to use fair use images? CyberAnth 04:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, since this must be the fourth or fifth time I reply to your "hint" that we are working for those who make profit, I guess you will not change your point of view. But, for the last time, our freedom, the freedom a teacher may have to print an article about a politician and distribute it to his students to teach, the freedom you have to print an article about a geographic location and give it to your brother so that he can visit it, my freedom to save a page I like and reload it in ten years, and yes, like it or not, the freedom someone has to download the full dump of Wikipedia and sell hard drives with the dump as bonus. It is similar to the closed drivers in Linux distributions. -- ReyBrujo 05:08, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

"Commercial use" is fairly broad. I'd expect any publisher that wanted to press DVDs of Wikipedia (because Wikimedia itself is unlikely to do so; other publishers are far better placed to do that) would expect to make some profit on their work, as they will probably be a for-profit enterprise. They would make some money off of doing such a thing, probably to pay their bills (since commercial presses do not generally have success with fund drives :-)). In fact, the publisher of the German DVD did, and also donated some of what they made toward the German chapter. And that's OK. Commercial enterprises aren't inherently bad or evil, and indeed, often do good things. (Such as creating media that many other people enjoy looking at or listening to.) But allowing only non-commercial use would restrict that use.

More importantly, allowing noncommercial use only would be a restriction on the freedom of the project. It's a philosophical aim: you can do anything with this content, so long as you too keep it free for others to use. As a musician and arranger who has been often frustrated by near-infinite copyright terms and the shrinking of the public domain, I support the idealistic goal of encouraging free content, that you can do anything with, that you don't have to avoid because you might potentially want to do something that might possibly be considered commercial. Wikimedia is not rolling in the money from exploiting users' goodwill and efforts, nor do we plan to be. CyberAnth, I would like to think I would know if this situation you are afraid of were the goal, but I don't know any such thing. (I assure you the Board doesn't see any money from it, and I spend my free time on Wikimedia instead of more lucrative work simply because I think this is a more valuable use of my time.)

Fair use is fair use, and indeed, I support uses that are truly fair, where restricting reproduction of the content would silence discourse and criticism, where it is necessary to reproduce the work and no substitute will suffice. To reproduce a part of a modern painting in order to talk about it, to talk about an iconic photo not yet out of copyright or the work of a new composer—you cannot do that without the specific work in question, and there is no good substitute for the copyrighted work. But many reproductions that are occurring in Wikipedia now are not fair. They are convenient, and they are easier than creating new content, but they aren't fair, and they aren't as useful as free. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 04:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

You said, "Allowing noncommercial use only would be a restriction on the freedom of the project. It's a philosophical aim: you can do anything with this content."

Apparently, this freedom for a few, i.e., commercial folk, has already come at and will continue to come at very great personal costs and freedom curbs (e.g., disallowing fair use images) upon the many, i.e., editors. Apparently, a great many editors are philosophically very uncomfortable with that. Again, the question is whose freedom, the many editors or the few likely to use Wikipedia commercially? Each argument for fair use of images necessarily is an argument against commercial use of Wikipedia--thus pointing to the heart of the matter, again. CyberAnth 05:02, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, Kat, and thanks for caring enough to reply as I now see you are on the Board, I fail to see how any end a commercial enterprise might reach for, except profit-making, cannot be equally accomplished by non-profit means. How hard is it for the Foundation to bring in grant money to distribute free DVDs of Wikipedia to poor kids, for example? Not that hard, and most certainly not as hard as requiring that all fair use images be replaced by "more free ones." CyberAnth 05:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, finally. Edited it, but you were caught :-) You don't understand the difference between "free" as in beer and "free" as in freedom, thus it explains why your obsession against this commercial reuse of Wikipedia. -- ReyBrujo 05:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I well understand the difference, hence the edit. My understanding problem was in the wording difference between "use" and "re-use". CyberAnth 06:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts for proposals

Let me say still another thing.

Apparently, I am correct in my assessment that the decision to purge Wikipedia of most fair use images has come from a mandate high up in the organization. Nothing editors say will affect that, except as may be basis for a fork of the Project over the matter, the creation of a new "nation", so to speak, of which I have no feelings pro or con but am simply mentioning it.

I am also apparently correct in my assessment that the heart of the matter is over commercial use of Wikipedia. Many more fair use images, such as is being mass deleted in the current purge, would be allowable in Wikipedia except for the clause in the GFDL allowing commercial use.

I am further apparently correct in my assessment that the Board and Jimbo (however it is that the internal politics work) have specifically initiated the deletion campaign. Moreover, I am apparently correct to infer that certain "trusted" admins have been privately contacted (or more or less so) by Wikipedia "higher-ups" to carry out the process.

Now let me say, with all due respect (and I truly and sincerely mean that) for both the Project and all leaders involved, that it appears to me that the way the Board has gone about this campaign has exhibited very poor judgment and leadership such that it has tabulated to immoral. A decision was made. Certain admins were contacted privately or more or less privately. They then proceeded to carry out the Board's mandate upon the Project. A huge editor outcry ensued and enormous ill-will among a great many editors resulted.

Rather, why was this not all done completely above board? Why was a bottom-up response not specifically sought? The Board's decision should have been published to all users.

In the publication, say, via a script placed on all users' talk pages, the Board should have specifically spelled out anew its vision to all editors, not assuming anything. E.g., Wikipedia must allow commercial use, so most fair use images must be removed. We must begin doing this 90 days from now to adhere to the vision of Wikipedia. Please begin now to search for free-use replacements of fair use images. Thank you and we respect your contributions - and so forth.

But what is analogous to a political purge in a dictatorship is what has been perceived by many editors. Because it resembles one in too many ways for comfort.

Proposals:

(1) The Board should hold all of its meetings publicly, in a manner similar to meetings of County Commissioners. For example, rent a movie theater or use for free a nearby Civic Center. Seat yourselves up front. Invite the public to sit randomly until the room is filled.

(2) The Board should publish its entire minutes to the entire Wikipedia community. The location of these minutes should be published to all Wikipedia users, old and new.

(3) All Board decisions must be announced on a monthly basis to the entire Wikipedia community, e.g., in a newsletter or the like. Reasonable time frames for users to respond to adjustment must be part and parcel. Allow a mechanism for feedback.

CyberAnth 06:49, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

CyberAnth, with all due respect sir, this is all simply nonsense. The trend away from fair use has not been initiated by me, nor by the board, but by the broad community. The board is extremely transparent in all decisions, all of which are published in the manner you suggest. Not all board meetings are held publicly, for various reasons all sensible, but if there was any official board decision on matter of fair use, etc., then of course it would be broadcast far and wide.

I think what you are feeling is that the bulk of the community strongly disagrees with your views, and rather than grasp why that might be, you are lashing out at me and others. Well, I recommend you think again, I consider personally insulting, and you should ask yourself if insulting others is really what you mean to be doing.--Jimbo Wales 03:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

To condense "the heart of the matter"

So to condense and bullet "the heart of the matter":

An apparent majority of Wikipedia editors are thinking it may be best if no one gets paid, i.e., they reject the clause in the GFDL allowing commercial use, now that they see that the price of allowing said *commercial use* means no to nil *fair use* in Wikipedia content they care enough about to author.

Thoughts?

CyberAnth 04:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... majority? You are the only one who is clearly wanting to go against the GFDL to allow commercial reuse. Badagnani did speak, but I took him as a curious question and not a full rejection of GFDL like you. -- ReyBrujo 05:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not rejecting it. Personally and frankly, I am undecided about it. I am saying that any argument for fair use is an argument against commercial use, or said differently, any commercial use is an argument against most fair use, because that is how U.S. law interprets it per prong one of the law. Fact is, there are many arguments for quite liberal fair use on this project, e.g., promotional photos, including on the talk pages of deleted images, don't you agree? And there are more pro fair use entries than con, don't you agree? Hence, "majority". CyberAnth 06:27, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

CyberAnth, I don't know where to start... The discouragement against non-free images has existed for a very long time, it is an inexorable aspect of one the the fundamental goals of the project: To build a Free content encyclopedia (please follow the link, when we say Free we speak of Freedom and not price). Over time, the position on exactly what we have to do to best work towards that goal changes some, but the fundamental mission has always been the same. This mission of free content is baked into the Wikimedia Foundation's charter and it is one of the fundamental differentiators between us and other resources on the web: Britannica will gladly give you access to free-as-in-no-cost-today encyclopedia articles, and YouTube (for example) will given you all the free-as-in-we-haven't-been-sued-yet content you could ever want.

Our "fair use" policy has the following rationale:

The primary goal of Wikipedia's fair use policy is to protect our mission of producing and distributing free content which is perpetually free for unlimited distribution, modification, and application for all users and in all mediums. This goal could best be met by completely disallowing all content which is not free content; however, we understand that in order to meet the second part of our mission, producing a quality encyclopedia, we may permit some non-free material for critical commentary. Thus the authors of the English Wikipedia have decided to permit a limited compromise which is outlined in this policy. Most popular non-English Wikipedias do not permit unfree images at all.

Although commercial use makes weak claims of "fair use" riskier and higher-stakes, we are not forced by a desire to facilitate commercial use to remove the unlicensed material. We are forced primarily by our commitment to making content which is perpetually free and by the ethics of not taking the work of others for our own. You are mistaken about your claims that "fair use" and commercial use are mutually exclusive: All of the interesting case law in support of "fair use" is in the context of commercial use.

It is also the case that our insertion of non-free images into GFDL licensed articles may be a license violation. The GFDL is a copyleft license. Such licenses are designed to insure that all future versions of a work are as free as the first... but when we add non-free images we may make the new version less free (for example, if the new version of article is lowered in quality by removing the image). Do you want someone enhancing articles you wrote then later telling them you can't use the new versions however you like because they added restricted content while making their changes?

There has not been any recent change in direction from the board on this matter. Our mission has always been free content. The aggressiveness in our efforts to clean up non-free material change from time to time. These changes have historically been driven by the community. I find it both unfortunate and alarming to see so many new users around who lack a deeper understanding of these aspects of our mission.

I'm going to leave your claims of claims of exploitation alone for now. Your words are hurtful, undeserved, and above all unrealistic... but I can understand why you might come to these conclusions while fumbling around in the dark. Lets talk some more and get some real understanding going, and perhaps you'll wish to reevaluate your allegations.--Gmaxwell 11:24, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

As explained below, Personality rights issues dictate that a GFDL'ed photo is no more usable in a commercial setting than a fair use image. In fact, in a commercial situation, the latter is much less likely to get you in trouble than the former because the person in question has full control of the content of the photo and doesn't have concerns of being shown without the right makeup and hair. You can't use commercial applications as an argument for GFDL as opposed to fair use...at least not in the 28 US states. Quebec and other places where personality rights laws have been enacted. SteveBaker 14:30, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

So what about the 160+ countries that have no "fair use" clause in theyr copyrihgt laws then? Even iff personality rights somehow mean that absolutely no commercial use of any image of any person is allowed (wich seems unlikely, as far as I can tell it just limits "expolitation", so I would think commercial re-distribution of article content would still be fine). On the other hand a GFDL licensed image would at the very least allow the ~250 non-English Wikipedia projects that generaly don't allow fair use to use the image. So either way a free licensed image would allow a great deal more use and value to the projects than any promotional photo ever would. --Sherool (talk) 17:43, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

"Profit-sharing" with Answers.com and related matters

This exchange between an interviewer and Jimmy Wales may shed light on the reasons behind the much-touted "absolutely free" German Wikipeida. In all the discussion of German Wikipedia that has come up in reference to its deletion of all fair use content, I have not once heard this marketing arrangement mentioned. And I would very much like to know more about Wikipedia's profit-sharing arrangment with Answers.com for their use of our content. I cannot find anything about that at Answers.com, although I believe it is significant enough to merit discussion there.

Excerpt from http://writingshow.com/?page_id=91:

WS: Are you going to be doing any revenue sharing from any of these other projects like the German version being sold on CD and DVD by the German publisher, or any other you know….?

JW [Jimmy Wales]: Yeah, absolutely. The main thing that we really want to try to avoid is to have any advertising on the Web site, but there are other revenue opportunities in terms of licensing our trademark for sales of DVDs, for example, in Germany that’s being experimented with. And for example, Answers.com has a software tool. They put out a Wikipedia edition of their software tool, and when people use that tool and visit the Answers.com site, then they split the ad revenue with us. So that’s a way that they are trying to give back to the community and benefit us. Badagnani 08:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Anyone can use our content, that's what the GFDL is all about. Answers.com just interacts a bit more closely with the foundation, and are kind enough to donate some of the profits back to Wikimedia and sponsor some events and stuff. See things like Wikipedia:Tools/1-Click Answers, foundation:Benefactors, meta:Wikimedia partners and hosts and the Wikimedia financial statement. --Sherool (talk) 12:16, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

That's pretty much it. Wikimedia is not rolling in the dough from this; no one at Wikimedia is becoming personally wealthy from doing this. We're taking in some money from making it easier for others to use this free content, but not even enough alone to keep the site afloat, which is why we hold fundraisers. Our financial statements are available here Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 20:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Personality rights/Right of Publicity

Several people have mentioned Personality rights as a reason why a publicity photo used under 'fair use' might actually be more legal than a 'free' photograph - which might potentially get us into legal trouble because of Personality rights in some parts of the world - where a photo that was explicitly offered for publicity purposes ought to be free from legal entanglements, even though there is still an active copyright on it.

Whilst I'm in favor of the ability to use 'fair use' in this circumstance, I have to say that the evidence is that the Personality Rights laws only seem to apply if you use the image of some celebrity commercially. So I don't think we ever have to actively prefer 'fair use' - a free use image should be just as legal.

However, those on the extreme of the 'anti-fair-use' camp need to be aware that even images licensed under GFDL cannot be considered utterly free of legal entanglements. If you use a GFDL image of a celebrity to advertise your brand of soap powder - you're still in trouble. Hence we cannot reasonably say that Wikipedia's content is going to be completely and utterly free. We could be in trouble if we wished to sell a paper copy of Wikipedia (for example) since that would be a commercial use - and under some juristictions gets us into trouble.

SteveBaker 02:35, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Being free content doesn't preclude having or obtaining a publicity rights release. It should be noted that when we use a unlicensed image we aren't gaining the benefit of whatever publicity rights releases were made to the actual copyright holders of the image we are using. It's really an orthogonal issue. You can have a free or non-free image with or without a release. As far as our own use and peril goes, in the US at least editorial use trumps publicity rights every single time. --Gmaxwell 10:51, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

In my personal and completely un-lawyer like opinion we should still prefeer a free licensed image over a promotional one. The personality rights still apply to the promotional image in addition to the copyright, while the free licensed image at least does not have any copyright related entanglements. There are a lot of situations where local laws may forbid the use of our content even if it's freely licensed, but in those cases it rely is the responsibility of the re-use to take local laws into acount. For example Image:Nazi Swastika.svg is public domain, but if you use it for decoration in a number of European countries you may still get arrested or fined, this is covered by Wikipedia:General disclaimer#Jurisdiction and legality of content. I don't see personality rights as beeing fundamentaly different, some uses in some areas are forbidden, but for everyting else a free licensed images is still vastly more free than any promotional photo ever will be, it might warrant en extra disclaimer on the image page, but that's about it IMHO. --Sherool (talk) 13:03, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to have an official page (guideline/policy) on this matter of publicity rights, including hopefully some "lawyer reviewed" content/direction. Jimbo has set us on the course of finding free content, which for celebs, almost exlcusively means amateur unauthorized photos. Now, this may be a very good thing, as it can encourage the creation of lots of new free content. But what if lots of Wikipedian photographers (or flickr'ies) go out, take a whole bunch of photos, and a couple years down the road, its decided we need "release" permission, and Wikipedia starts mass-deleting these images. In many cases people have permission of the subject to use their photo, but don't include mention of this, as there's no indication its needed, or what's needed in this area of publicity rights. --Rob 13:13, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Let the readers decide

This was moved from Wikipedia:Elimination of Fair Use Rationale in Promotional Photos/Vote

A note - it would provide a far better sample if items such as this could be on a page readily found by the general public that uses Wikipedia. I'd love to see a one paragraph discussion of each side's viewpoints and rationales, and offer millions of people the opportunity to vote as such. Doing so would provide a real viewpoint on the subject from a wider cross-section of actual users, as opposed to affected editors who happen to know about this page. If that was done, I have every confidence a large majority of our readers would rather be able to see fair use images. Tvccs 20:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, yes. Excellent point. Elitism in decision-making is the breeding ground for agendas not in the interest of the public good. CyberAnth 21:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Judging by our top read articles there is a substantial portion of our readers which would be quite happy if we added a hardcore porno video to every page, but we're not going to do that... A lot of people would also be happy if we deleted our articles and replaced them with "fair use" copies of current edition Britannica, it would surely reduce some of our more annoying accuracy problems... But we're not going to do that either. One look at YouTube and it's clear that there can be ways around the law, at least for short spans of time, if one doesn't care about ethical behavior, but those things are simply not our mission. I'm sure most readers would support the idea of a button that adds $1,000 to their bank account, but there is no way we could actually do it. It's great to ask what the reader wants, but we have to put some bounds on the discussion. --Gmaxwell 19:45, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

And how exactly does that relate to reasonable disagreements about the extent of fair use? john k 00:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Amen - I was talking about articles with fair use photos as opposed to none at all, and that gets turned into the above? It's again indicative of how far the free or nothing jihadi will go in pursuring this - and it would seem images of the deceased and albums, DVD and VHS covers and everything else previously okay under fair use will be discarded as well. The Wikipedia papparazzi is one of the great myths in reality on here, noble sounding as it might be, and the vast majority of the images on here have not been replaced, and most never will be with a Wiki-shot GFDL image. Apparently the new modicum is to exploit the power of Wikipedia into compulsion. Tvccs 00:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

As far I can understand, what is proposed above is, effectively, to ask non-editors (i.e. people who aren't editing and who often have little interest or understanding about what is going on behind the scenes) if they'd rather we have more pictures. Well, duh, they'll say "yes", just as many would say "yes" to more hardcore pornography or "yes" to a button that fills their bank account. As such, asking them will be somewhat pointless since we *know* the answer... The fact is that we'd like to provide more images but we must do so in a way which fits in the overall mission of the organization.

Ultimately you must understand that Wikipedia is a free content Encyclopedia. It is not some website that allows the public to 'vote' on exactly what it should be. If you're looking for a site that lets its users turn it into anything they want you've found the wrong place, this is Wikipedia not MySpace. --Gmaxwell 00:37, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe Tvccs was referring to non-editors, but to the broader public of wikipedia editors. S/he can correct me if I'm wrong. As it stands, policy pages tend to be voted on by policy wonks. And in general, the people who've been involved in this debate tend to be disproportionately in favor of a very narrow fair use policy. Your argument is a straw man. john k 06:19, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

He said "general public that uses Wikipedia" and "a large majority of our readers", I don't see how you could have concluded otherwise. This page was quite well hidden from the policy pages.. I only found it because I saw it in someone elses contribs. Of course, anyone could have taken it to the village pump so there is no reason to discuss a wider audience if all you meant was editors.. you could have just done it. --Gmaxwell 06:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Gmaxwell is right on all points here. This whole proposal was misguided and wrong from the start, not only in content, but also in form. This is not how policy is made. We discuss and build consensus across experienced editors, and sometimes vote, but when we do vote, we vote on sensible positions that all sides can agree are at least reasonable alternatives. Starting a random vote with extremely misleading options is Not Right. --Jimbo Wales 02:58, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I wonder, why was this (just above) not addressed?: "A...I was talking about articles with fair use photos as opposed to none at all, and that gets turned into the above? It's again indicative of how far the free or nothing jihadi will go in pursuring this - and it would seem images of the deceased and albums, DVD and VHS covers and everything else previously okay under fair use will be discarded as well." This list should include irreplaceable photos such as the one depicting Elian Gonzalez being grabbed. No matter what argument is made, most such photos are being deleted one by one, the discussion or consensus on the individual photo page usually doesn't matter, it gets deleted anyway, and many editors are feeling that this has become a power-grab. Reasonableness is one of our core values, at least I think that's supposed to be the case, but the discourse and behavior as far as the deletion goes (often with little or no discussion, and deletion within the prescribed time period), it has been decidedly unreasonable in recent weeks. The proposal here is not outrageous at all; in fact it is reasonable, and that is why I supported it. Badagnani 03:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

free or nothing jihadi: Badagnani, it is good custom not to call names. Gmaxwell is right: free pix are much, much to be prefered. There are two ways that images and text should be free: free to distribute and free to modify. Promotional photos may be free to distribute, but not to modify. If you need a free image of your favourite band, please take a good cam, go to one of their concerts, and take as many pix as you like. Even better: Ask them for an interview, and take photos. Release your photo under GFDL or a suitable CC-BY license such as {{cc-by-sa-2.5}}, and you can illustrate your article. I can well imagine that you find it irritating to not being able to use every picture you like. But I think this is shortsighted. Suppose you are interested in a certain topic. Let's say Cuban immigration. If you want to create your own website on it, it is doubtful that you could use all the fair use images assembled here safely: your website might not be considered "educational". But if wikipedia collects truly free images, you can easily check the license and use it. You could even make a composite of sevral phots combining and blanding them into a nice header. The current license on Elians photo is wrong: we have no certainty that modification is allowed. So yes, that means the image may have to go somewhere in the future. But the freedom to distribute and the freedom to modify are essential to our projects. TeunSpaans 04:37, 26 December 2006 (UTC) <resetting indent>

Once again, with all due respect, what I suggested was quite simply putting this debate, with whatever "properly" stated opinions there might be from both sides, out there for our readers, as well as the thousands of Wikipedia editors who have added fair use photos to articles who only learn about this "debate" when their images suddenly get deleted, and in a more public place where it can be readily seen. There is no doubt whatsoever that those of us that responded most vigorously at Chowbok have been targeted, the mere fact we dared debate the issue got us hammered. I haven't seen any real "debate" yet on this issue - as "debate" would suggest there's a possibilty of real change and/or compromise - if there is any, where is it? Is the "compromise" that we will allow images of the deceased and album covers for some indeterminate period of time? That isn't a "compromise" at all. Many editors have offered legitimate compromises concerning the tagging of fair use images with a request to replace with a free image, and various others. From what I've seen those very legitimate efforts at "debate" and compromise have so far been totally ignored. A "debate" isn't one where we continue to babble our respective viewpoints ad nauseum, on Wikipedia that's ultimately little more than a waste of time and server space, and I, and numerous others, have already "debated" this issue to death.

So far the "debate", and it's been extremely vigorous if you look at all of the linking pages elsewhere on the subject, especially at Chowbok, has consisted of fair use advocates being nearly universally shot down. I have made hundreds of postings, jumped through as many hoops as I could on dozens of legitimate images, and the net effect was that I was almost totally ignored and my images deleted, along with dozens and dozens of hours of work, based on the single rationale that a GFDL/CC image of a living person might someday become available. Other editors have endured the same. I have asked directly for a suggested alternative or compromise and have so far seen none. Nada.

"Consensus building" generally doesn't consist of "my way or the highway" last time I checked, unless you consider the White House's coercive efforts to "build consensus" about WMD's as a rationale for the war in Iraq as an example of "consensus building". I'd love to find common ground, but common ground isn't generally seen as one side simply acceding to the viewpoint of the other.

What I have seen are increasingly cyclic rationales defending the "policy" that "the only good image is a GFDL/CC image." That's not a potential compromise, or a "debate", it's simply a restate of a very hard-core position (used by no other media outlet I'm aware of), with a few variants on the side, with an explanation of the rationale. Again, that isn't a "debate." I thought a straw poll, and that's all it was, was a suitable forum for the "debate". Obviously that position was disagreed with. With all due respect, there's a major difference between a real "debate" and lip service to that effect, and those of us who are professional journalists, as well as many others, have some clue as to the difference when we examine the actual facts and history surrounding a given subject.

I think there have already been fairly well laid out statements of the pluses and minuses of both positions that could readily be fronted as the positions of each "side". And I contend that if you show a person in the general public an article with or without a quality image, especially of the magic "living person", they will indicate the article with the image is the better quality article the majority of the time. I also believe the general public will, as I stated prior, pick a quality professional image over a bad amateur image the vast majority of the time when asked which page would be of higher quality. The only viewpoint that would hold otherwise is the one that basically opines that the only good image is a GFDL/CC image, and if that's going to be the "policy" of Wikipedia henceforth, than it needs to be readily and clearly stated as such, along with the actual rationale for the change from the prior policy including any schemes designed to make a profit/income.

If Wikipedia believes it has now become powerful enough that it can attempt to coerce the release of press and promo images under GFDL, as has been suggested very clearly in this "debate", than that attitude should also be made public, and on that note, I guarantee it will - and I will ask my editors for the maximum distribution possible. As a friend just said to me, and I quote, "it seems so anti-wiki". I have quite honestly hoped this issue could be compromised prior, but that seems highly unlikely at this point.

It's my guess this is the first time there's been a potential "debate" of this magnitude since the major growth of Wikipedia that presents a real issue of quality affecting both editors and the general public who uses and views Wikipedia. Please quit comparing this issue to "everyone would like a thousand dollars too", and porno images, etc., as it's an insult to the efforts of those many editors who have attempted to make legitimate contributions as well as the vast majority of our readers, porno page popularity or not. As a professional writer, one who writes about Wikipedia at times, I value the opinions of my readers as much as the tekkies/junkies. I would think Wikipedia's ultimate "customers" our the readers who entrust Wikipedia to provide them with high-quality information, and those customers should be carefully listened to, and not treated so poorly. Is this somehow a radical concept - here I thought it was one of Wikipedia's fundamental strengths. I may well have missed something, or perhaps we need a new "pillar".

I have also repeatedly asked, so far without an answer, as to what it is that makes Wikipedia any more potentially liable than any other media outlet on the planet when it comes to using legitimate press and promotional photos? The photos I have uploaded present zero liability of any kind I'm aware to Wikipedia, and many have been gained directly from the source or artist. I have specifically avoided loading anything that I didn't feel confident of the copyright status/liability of under normal fair use and Wikipedia's prior guidelines, and I have worked in media copyright for decades. Newspapers and magazines are sold with these images on a daily basis.

A number of people have begun to speculate that the real attack on these images is to attempt to faciliate an easier sale of Wikipedia's assets, either as a whole, or in hard distributions in print or via software. If that is the actual intent, editors should be made aware of the fact their contributions to the "free online encyclopedia" are about to be sold for a profit or other benefit to the Foundation, so that they can make informed decisions about their ongoing participation, and at what level. As was recently indicated by the sale of YouTube, it doesn't take even positive cash flow to realize huge profits from a high-traffic site like Wikipedia, even in this post-bust cyber era. I'm not at all certain that's in fact what's going on here, but an increasing number of very devoted professional quality editors believe it to be so. And these matching donors should also be made aware of same, if that's on the table. If Richard Branson's not getting a cut, I wonder what he'll think? Hmmmmmmmmm. Tvccs 23:27, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

a weak and ineffectual protest

I see that Jimbo has now closed the poll. Some thoughts on this (angry earlier arguments have been redacted as I think a bit more, and read Jimbo's addendum on the page).

I still don't understand what is so radical and horrifying about the proposal. Let's quote the proposal again:

Copyrighted promotional photographs of living people (including bands) may be used in articles about those people if no free alternative photograph is available and the photograph complies with all other fair use criteria. When a free image becomes available it should replace the copyrighted promotional photograph as explained by the first dot point.

Seriously, what's the big deal about this? There is nothing in this that would mean that we do not prefer free pictures - in fact, the policy pretty much explicitly says that when a free image becomes available, it automatically replaces the copyrighted picture, without even some minimal guidelines about the adequacy of the free image, which I would prefer. The only difference, then, from current policy, is in the issue of whether a fair use image of a living person is replaceable. The current interpretation of policy seems to assume that pretty much every fair use image of a living person is replaceable, except perhaps under certain circumstances (recluses, people most famous for how they looked at a given point in their career), although even this latter doesn't seem to be agreed to by many of those against these changes. The proposed change would do the opposite, and assume that photos of living people are not replaceable until an alternative is actually found. While I'd suggest that perhaps we could come up with a more nuanced policy (Daniel Case's suggestions over at Wikipedia:Replaceability of fair-use images strikes me as probably better), it seems to me that this is much closer to reality than the current assumptions. Getting a picture of a living individual is not at all like getting a picture of a make of car, or a building, or a video game system. The first and last exist in many, many copies. The second exists only in one place, but is generally going to be easily accessible to anybody in the vicinity to take a picture. This isn't true for any living person. There are some, like US politicians, who will always have public domain pictures. But the idea that it is easy for wikipedians to take photographs of living people is ridiculous. So is the claim that we can easily get people to release photographs under GFDL or some other free licensing arrangement. In both cases, this may be true, and we should of course try to do so, but there's no reason to assume a priori that either of these things is possible.

In my view, this proposal was, for the most part, pretty moderate and reasonable. The fact that, at the time it was unilaterally closed, it had a (very slight) majority supporting it, suggest that I'm not alone in thinking so. That doesn't mean it was perfect, and that doesn't mean that a vote was the best way to resolve the issue. But it's worth noting that we've been discussing the issue back and forth for weeks, and no consensus has really emerged. One valuable thing a vote does is bring in voices who haven't been involved in the previous discussion. What the vote really showed is the utter lack of consensus behind the current interpretation of policy - specifically, that a majority of people support at least a somewhat looser interpretation of fair use for images of living people on wikipedia. The proposal perhaps does not provide the basis for what the policy should actually be changed to - certainly the vote also shows a lack of consensus for the proposed change, as well - but it does suggest that some kind of change in that direction is the only thing likely to be able to get a consensus. john k 06:19, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

"But the idea that it is easy for wikipedians to take photographs of living people is ridiculous." People also said it was ridiculous that the public could collaborate over the Internet to write an encyclopedia, yet here we are. In any case... Who said it has to be *easy*? It took is time and a ton of work to get to where we are and it'll take time and a ton of work to take the next step as well. Such is life. --Gmaxwell 06:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

"Easy" is implicit in the policy. To state that fair use is only allowed when no free alternative could be created would not be taken by most readers to mean that it's only allowed when creating one is literally impossible, but rather that it is allowed as long as creating one is very difficult. Of course, difficult means "not easy". Ken Arromdee 07:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Like Ken said. I suppose it would be theoretically possible to get a free image of J. D. Salinger. But it's incredibly unlikely. How difficult does it have to be to get a free image before we say "Okay, the fair use image can stay for now"? If people want to look for free images beyond that, that's wonderful, and they should be encouraged to do so, but we shouldn't basically be encouraging articles w/o images. john k

Your question is logical and understandable. Though a longstanding contributor on the english language wiki, I am not aware of vote procedings. However, I guess that discussion is a much better way to resolve issues than voting. Indeed, the proposal sounds very moderate. To me, allowing the use of fair use images takes the tension of the need to get truly free images. Once an article is illustrated, people simply tend to lean back and watch. They dont run any longer to get a free pic. If the article remains blank, however, they are willing to send an email to their favourite artist, go to the zoo, and so on.

Of course it will not always be easy to get a free picture. Personally, I was involved in one and it took some 15-30 emails - but in the end we got permission: both from the photographer and the artist. I can assure you that it feels good to look back on a job well done.

TeunSpaans 06:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but what if you fail? There's little satisfaction in that, and you could've still worked to get the free image if you'd wanted to, even if we had a fair use image. I agree that lack of an image encourages people to find them. But it doesn't necessarily encourage people to find a free image. Deleting a promo photo, which does not put us in legal jeopardy, is just as likely to lead ignorant users to upload an image which is more dubious - a magazine photo shoot, for instance. And I genuinely dislike the idea that we need to force people to "do the right thing" and find free images, by deleting fair images. If free images are so important, people should be willing to try to get them anyway. john k 18:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Policies are discussed and changed with consensus. Polls are used to gauge changes, not to impose them. From what I see since I joined, you can strengthen core policies, but not lessen them. As you could see, there were as many who opposed as supported the change. If the poll demonstrated something is that the change is heavily rejected. Yes, it may be time to stop and polish the amendment, and try again next year. But I doubt the result will change, because (I believe) there are as many here looking to contribute because they like doing so or because they have nothing better to do as those contributing because they believe in the free philosophy. -- ReyBrujo 11:54, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

How can a proposal which a majority favored be described as "heavily rejected"? There is clearly no consensus either for the proposal or for the current way policy is interpreted. We should be looking to find some kind of middle ground that would allow for a more restricted interpretation of when fair use images are "replaceable", without going so far as to assume that no images of living people are replaceable. As I suggested before, Daniel's proposals over at Wikipedia:Replaceability of fair-use images would seem a step in that direction. But, at any rate, your preferred position is as "heavily rejected" as this proposal was, (in fact, it was slightly more heavily rejected). john k 18:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

So, for you Wikipedia is a democracy where the one with the most votes wins? Hmm... -- ReyBrujo 20:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

No. That's a total straw man. I know very well that wikipedia does not operate by majority rule, and that's a good thing. But it certainly shouldn't a place where the policy that fewer people support is adopted. Wikipedia operated by consensus. There is quite clearly no consensus for the current policy. Some sort of attempt to find a compromise between two position which both have strong opposition is in order. john k 21:23, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The proposal wasn't for or against the current policy, it was a proposal to change policy. That there wasn't overwhelming opposition does not at all necessitate that the current policy isn't supported by consensus. Many people do not bother to oppose things which do not look like they have a chance of passing (which this didn't). Also, links to this poll were spammed on the talk pages of many users who were likely to support it (based, I assume, on the Village Pump conversation). The only reason I found the poll, for example, was because I looked at the contributions of someone on the support side while trying to follow the moving front of a different copyright related forest fire. As such, it is safe to assume that the level of support for the poll was artifically high in any case.

Furthermore, there are some things which are non-negoitable. Wikipedia isn't a game of nomic, and it's not MySpace. Wikipedia is Free content. While it is true that our exact policy for non-free images is up to the community, proposals to expand non-free materials really look bad from the perspective of our fundimental goals. --Gmaxwell 19:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Nobody disagrees with the free content issue. The question is what is the best way to mesh this goal with the other goals of wikipedia. An article with no image contains absolutely no more free content than one with a fair use image. As to the proposal, Jesus Christ, doesn't the fact that we've been arguing about this shit for weeks and weeks, that a majority supported a major change to the policy (until the vote was ended by Jimbo), and so forth, indicate that there's a lack of consensus for the current policy? This is absurd. There is absolutely no consensus for the current policy, or at least for the current interpretation of policy. This interpretation, so far as links provided by Angr from back in September show, was arrived at not through the normal methods of discussion and consensus, but as a result of back room discussions on IRC, or some such. john k 19:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

What evidence supports this IRC claim? —Wknight94 (talk) 20:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

"Back room discussions on IRC, or some such"? Oh, no way john k. As Jimbo said, "The trend away from fair use has not been initiated by me, nor by the board, but by the broad community." CyberAnth 20:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

See here. AlisonW says "Further to discussion on IRC channels between Jimbo Wales and verious admins and editors a review of how well (or otherwise) 'fair use' is working resulted in the changes just made." john k 21:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for adding this link - very VERY informative. Have a look-see. Tvccs 06:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Boy, it's tough to pick my favorite part from that link. I think, after due consideration, I'm going to have to go with the part where a brief discussion between User:AlisonW and User:Abu_badali, conducted more or less over 72 hours, is considered consensus enough to change the fair use criterion. Muy enlightening! Rey - is this your consensus in action? Ah, to be young, innocent, and a true believer... Will we ever be again?  ;) Jenolen ^{speak it!} 11:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Another interesting development today, it appears. I was about to post something over at the Village Pump on this, as was suggested here prior. The Pump had a directly related notice of the removal of the prior vote page, as well as an extended debate about the entire Fair Use photo issue. But now the Village Pump pages have been deleted on the subject, all further Pump issues are only going to be up for a few days, and the archives are going to be deleted unless they are copied to a talk page within nine days, maybe less? I wish I wasn't laughing here. Someone wanna copy those somewhere? Tvccs 00:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

"The proposal listed here is entirely contrary to our fundamental goals."

The proposal might be inappropriate, but the large interest in this proposal indicates that something needs to be changed to clarify the matter for the rank and file editors. I believe that the first fair use criterion needs to be clearer on why it is so fundamental to Wikipedia. Based on the above, it appears that the fundamental goals of the first fair use criterion are (i) the ability to request and receive images from copyright holders due to Wikipedia's reputation from its high copyright standards and (ii) the future position of having copyright holders spontaneously provide image content to topics that they are involved in due to Wikipedia's reputation from its high copyright standards. The first fair use criterion needs to be revised to make it clear that the purpose of the first fair use criterion is to further these fundamental goals. A proposed revision Always use a more free alternative if one is available. In the collective, this will work towards encouraging copyright holders to spontaneously provide their content to Wikipedia, which is a fundamental goal of Wikipedia. -- Jreferee 16:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The primary goal of Wikipedia's fair use policy is to protect our mission of producing and distributing free content which is perpetually free for unlimited distribution, modification, and application for all users and in all mediums. This goal could best be met by completely disallowing all content which is not free content; however, we understand that in order to meet the second part of our mission, producing a quality encyclopedia, we may permit some non-free material for critical commentary. Thus the authors of the English Wikipedia have decided to permit a limited compromise which is outlined in this policy. Most popular non-English Wikipedias do not permit unfree images at all.

--Wikipedia:Fair use criteria

Whats unclear about that? The reason there is opposition to a proposal to allow more replaceable non-free content "until it is replaced" is because we're pretty confident that including non-free greatly reduces the chances that someone will submit free content. This position isn't based on speculation, or even the just first hand experiences of photographers, there was a test performed where "non-free left in article", "non-free left with ugly request for replacement", and "non-free removed" were compared and we found that only non-free removed was effective. User:Robth can comment more on this. Beyond that, people are asking copyright holders for releases on a daily basis and the copyright holders most likely to agree are the ones who want to see their work in Wikipedia, but if we will just take their work without a freely licensed release, we've removed the incentive for them to provide one. --Gmaxwell 19:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Encouraging the the creation of free images is not, in fact, the only goal of wikipedia, so the extent to which a particular policy encourages the creation of free images should not be the only criterion for determining what our policy should be. In this case, your favored policy, assuming it does actually lead to the creation of more free images (and I'd like to see some actual links to this supposed test), also has some major drawbacks, in that it will also lead to a much greater number of articles with no image. john k 19:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Our unwillingness to copy a current edition of Britannica into Wikipedia left us missing a great number of articles for a long time, so I fail to see your point. An article with non-free images is not a free article. You can not use the article in its entirety as free content and, in some cases, it can be difficult to remove the non-free image without substantially lowering the quality of the article (which is the whole basis for your opposition to our policy). As such, the addition of non-free images where the possibility remains of having a free images is an unnecessary failure at our primary mission of Free content. You and I obviously have differing positions, I don't know that we'll ever see eye to eye on this. So perhaps I should stop responding. Oh well, if you ever need photographs of something or someone in the Washington DC metro area, please let me know.--Gmaxwell 20:38, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Copying a current edition of Britannica into Wikipedia would clearly be a copyright violation, and thus illegal. No fair use defense of such a thing could possibly hold up in a court of law. To compare that to including fair use images is a straw man. Beyond that, it's inevitable that there will be fair use in wikipedia, and thus that many of our articles will not be "entirely free". Beyond that, the issue is whether there's a real possibility of getting free images. Sometimes, your prefrences seem essentially to be condemning us to having no image for the foreseeable future. I come from the Washington DC metro area, so I strongly doubt I shall need anything from you on that front. No particular thanks to you for the offer, which seems to have been designed as a dismissive way to conclude the conversation, rather than as a genuine offer. john k 21:40, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Considering the many by-request photos that I've done, your final conclusions are offensive.

Your claim that it is inevitable that Wikipedia will contain non-free images is outrageous coming from someone who has been been around so long: I'm sure you're aware that most of the larger non-English Wikipedias do not permit non-free image, including dewiki which is often regarded as higher quality than enwiki.

We have many pictures today of American celebs some of which were previously claimed to be nearly impossible to get by people making arguments similar to yours. What is saddening is that how few have been provided by English Wikipedians and how many have been provided by other languages whom all have far smaller communities. It's no coincidence that these other languages do not permit non-free images.

I don't see how you can simultaneously argue how difficult it is to get photographs of people while simultaneously saying that copying Britannic articles because we need them is different than infringing the copyright of some third party because he took a picture we could use. --Gmaxwell 23:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

There has not, unfortunately, been a systematized study of the efficacy of the two methods yet, but I can provide a number of illustrative examples. For a case of an easily replaceable image that merely sat around with a {{replacethisimage}} tag, see [4] (that image has not yet been replaced after deletion, but this may be in part because a number of the people who would have been most likely to replace it have seen that page and are holding off so as not to "bias the experiment"; a good example of a very similar image that was quickly replaced after deletion is at [[5] (initial discussion about that deletion is further up the page); another example of deletion serving as a spur to replacement can be found at [6] (that editor has since sought and obtained the release of a number of images). Another prime example of an image that was replaced after deletion is the lead image of Lindsay Lohan. In short, the noticeable absence created by the deletion of images has been successful in bringing about image replacement in a number of cases. I don't have as many examples of surprisingly ineffective {{replacethisimage}} tags at my fingertips, but I can testify to the great number of them I encountered while deleting images of cars you see on the street on a daily basis. (I don't have time to go digging through my old contribs to look for this right now, but if you're particularly eager to have that pleasure for yourself, there should be a number of examples of this back in early November.) Others who have been involved in fair use work for a longer period of time may be better equipped to comment specifically to the efficacy of the {{replacethisimage}} tag; I know that I have never seen that tag referred to as at all successful by anyone familiar with the issue, which has been in accordance with my observations. --Robth^Talk 21:17, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Rob - I'm happy to accept that there have been cases where the absence of an image leads to the creation or acquisition of a free image. I'm also happy to accept that there are many times when the {{replacethisimage}} tag doesn't work, and sits uselessly for months. But that doesn't make for any kind of quantitative assessment. There are also numerous pages that sit around for months without an image after the image is deleted, and surely there used to be cases where long-existing fair use images were replaced by free images without the fair use image having been deleted first (now that we're deleting so frequently, this might be rarer). The problem is that the way you are looking at this is bound to get you to the position you already hold - that the solution is to pre-emptively delete. My basic position on this is that we ought to take into consideration how difficult it is to get replacement pictures before we delete. I'm perfectly willing to allow that for things like cars and buildings, the ease of going out and creating a free image is such that we should delete pre-emptively. I don't think this is the case for living people, who are, as a rule, much harder to photograph than a building is. I think Daniel's suggested standards at Wikipedia:Replaceability of fair-use images would do a good job at trying to determine which images of people should be pre-emptively deleted, and which should not. john k 21:40, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

These is a huge difference between photographing a specific individual person and photographing other things. People are utterly unique - famous people are hard to meet and may very well actively try to avoid being photographed. Cars (for example) are a very different matter - it would be a rare car indeed for which only one example existed - if it were that rare, it would probably be in a museum or some other location where it would be relatively easy to track down. Buildings are more often unique - but they are almost impossible to hide - so taking a photo of one isn't usually that hard. But people are typically very hard to photograph. That makes photographs of people VERY special compared to other things. Worse still, you can describe (without a photo) quite a lot of objects in the world - but describing someone's face in sufficient detail that someone might be able to recognise them is utterly impossible. Humans (rightly or wrongly) judge a lot by a person's face - the lack of a photograph in an article about a person is a serious omission. SteveBaker 22:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Well put, Steve. john k 22:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Steve nailed it. We seem to be assuming that we're more powerful than we actually are by trying to push for an unrealistic goal. I'm not particularly happy with the way Jimbo has handled this whole issue, but at the same time, I did post something on his talk page a few weeks ago noting that this was coming to a head, and he acted only when he saw that the straw poll clearly supported the fair-use side of this issue. Granted, maybe this could've been handled a little better by fair-use supporters, but this is an important enough issue to the future of the site that Jimbo shouldn't just swoop in and take a side like that; he should help us reach an honest-to-God reasonable solution that doesn't piss off thousands of editors like the current one does. - Stick Fig 22:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Stick Fig - how did the poll "clearly support" our side of the issue? It was 43-42 at the time it was closed. That's not clear at all. I agree with you, though, that Jimbo's action is not particularly useful in arriving at a consensus. It is much more useful in preserving the status quo, imo. john k 22:41, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

At the time that Jimbo got involved, it was favoring the fair-use side, although it moderated later. - Stick Fig 22:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

(To John's comment.) You are quite correct in stating that we cannot draw any quantitative conclusions from the examples I provided, as no systematic study of the effects of either method has been undertaken. Indeed, in many cases we would not notice the image being replaced, as someone would come along and replace it without any comment; the cases I have pointed to are only the ones in which the person doing the replacement talked to an involved administrator. Although I recognize that an argumentum ab absentio is inherently weak, I have trouble not reading some meaning into the fact that, in all the endless rehashings of this discussion, I have yet to see anyone bring forward a similar success story involving {{replacethisimage}}. Similarly anecdotal, but compelling, evidence from amateur photographers (such as Gmaxwell) suggests that the presence of an image of any sort often serves as a disincentive to the creation of a new one. And with good cause; on the vote page here, before it was blanked, at least one editor argued that it would in fact be a waste of time for photographers to take free images of subjects for which any image already existed. That comment is evocative of an attitude that is stunningly contrary to the aims of this project, but which has a significant enough presence that we have actually had, in the past, problems of photographers having to deal with editors who are angry that a favorite fair use pic was replaced by a free pic (again, I think this is something Gmaxwell may be able to speak to); preemptively removing the fair use image removes this disincentive to contribution.

I fully agree that the difficulty of taking a photograph needs to be taken into account when preemptively deleting. The remote possibility that a Wikipedian will find themselves at a dinner party with J.D. Salinger (to pick everyone's favorite extreme example) would not be a justification for deleting a fair use image of him (and, just as importantly, deleting the fair use image would not in any way increase the probability of a free one being created). For people who make relatively frequent public appearances, however, the possibility of obtaining a free image is much greater, and I think that deleting the fair use image does appreciably increase our chances of getting a free one, and thus improves Wikipedia over the long run. (I am, by the way, generally supportive of Daniel Case's efforts at the replaceability guideline page, although I haven't checked on what the specifics of that page are recently.) --Robth^Talk 22:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

As much as I dislike making arguments from single cases, here is a fun example. We've had a good picture[7] of Steve Martin since October 25th, it was uploaded to commons for use in a non-english Wikipedia which does not allow "fair use". 44 edits to Steve Martin and almost two months later, on December 11th, on of the non-free images in the article was marked in the article as fodder for deletion [8]. In the two weeks and 18 edits since, no wikipedian bothered to make the slightest attempt to find a free image as evidence by the fact that they didn't find the one we already had. I've noticed the red image link and inserted the free image, and removed the other non-free images which had weak to no claims of fair use.--Gmaxwell 23:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh and yes, replacement of free with unfree images happens all the time. After a long history of only non-free illustration we discovered that a non-english Wikipedian had provided a free image of John Travolta for another language Wikipedia. Later a more recent (although less good) Flickr image was discovered and we had two free images. More recently, someone dropped one of the free images from the article and replaced it with a non-free image. [9]. The free image that was removed is now orphaned on the English Wikipedia. --Gmaxwell 23:48, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't be so sure the Travolta image is free. According to the image descrip in Image:John Travolta 2004.jpg, Tracey Hunter is the author, except she is probably not the photographer, since she is a co-subject in the uncropped original photo. We don't know (for sure) who the photographer is, which makes its "freeness" questionable. So, this isn't a great example. --Rob 01:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Arniep's talked to Tracey Hunter, my understanding is that tracey handed the camera over to someone else to get the picture w/ Travolta. We're getting a bit loopy if we start saying that Tracey wasn't the copyright holder for this snapshot.--Gmaxwell 02:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you could argue that the Steve Martin photo is a good free photo from Steve Martin's heyday, the John Travolta photo is a the kind of qualitative thing that I think a lot of us have a problem with. It's a fuzzy photo with Travolta holding a drink (quite possibly drunk, and I'm sure that's how he wouldn't want to be remembered), and one could argue that he would be better served with an iconic photo from "Pulp Fiction" or "Grease," because that's where people would recognize him the most.

I don't see how we're going to balance out these concerns that advocates for fair use have when it seems like quality's being sacrificed and free photo advocates are suggesting options which don't seem to make sense. - Stick Fig 01:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of that particular Travolta picture, I much prefer the free image which was already in the article. Which one is best is really offtopic. For all the claims of the impossibility of getting free pictures of these folks, we seem to often have multiple ones to choose from. It's a good problem to have. As far as balance goes, I don't know what there is left to hash out. That free replaces non-free is firmly embedded in policy and thats not going to change... The suspicion that some of the free content advocates have here that non-free images will be promoted over free ones even once we have free ones seems to be supported by the subtext of all this discussion. --Gmaxwell 02:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Seriously. Free should only be one factor of many -- an important factor, but one that shouldn't get in the way of the article's overall quality. I'll keep saying that until my face turns blue, because it apparently isn't getting through.

License isn't everything, and if it is, Wikipedia's about to suck big time. - Stick Fig 04:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are mistaken. The freedom of the content is the primary concern; the mission of the projects is to "collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally", as stated on the Foundation site. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 04:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Then you're misleading a lot of users into thinking that creating good articles is the goal here. There is a limit to what free can do, you know. - Stick Fig 05:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is what free can do. This very site stands in the way of your comment's assumption. Good articles are a direct result of "collection and developing educational content under a free license or in the public domain." There is no inherent need for a picture of any random singer, movie star, or politician if a free picture can easily be taken. I think it's important to note that nobody here is arguing that photos of, say, J.D. Salinger, or Guernica, should be deleted. Another important note is that promotional photos are often inaccurate- airbrushed, and digitally edited, to provide a better appearance to the celebrity. Free pictures are a vast improvement over any fair use photo we can find, and it's preposterous to suggest that the concept of being "free" has any limit. Ral315 (talk) 06:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Professionalism is lost to extremism. What you're suggesting is the logical extreme to Wikipedia's goal. What I'm suggesting is that even successful free products have limitations. Utopian ideals seem to seize the thoughts of crusaders for free. I like free. I think it's great. But I also think there are way more things to consider than if something's free.

Tonight, I needed to acquire dozens of promotional and fair use images for a page I edited and designed. I didn't choose the option that was free. I chose the one that was best. It's called "news judgment" in my industry. And it seems to me that many of you seem interested in choosing what's free instead of what's best. Any sort of editorial judgment is being thrown into the wind because of utopian ideals. And it's a long-term philosophy that's bound to bite Wikipedia with fiercer teeth than using fair use in a way that is properly mandated and legally-structured. - Stick Fig 07:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

For all the claims of the impossibility of getting free pictures of these follks... Actually, I'm guessing John Travolta (and/or his attorneys) would be surprised to know that you consider this a free/libre picture of himself. I'm pretty sure he has given up none of his rights (I see no indication in any of the documentation of the photo indicating as such), and any reusers of the photo -- say, such as Angr, who comes to Wikipedia expecting most, if not all of the content to be free/libre -- are bound to be disappointed when they realize this free photo is nothing of the sort. "Free" absolutists, at some point, will have address the rights of the subjects of these type of photos. Jenolen ^{speak it!} 04:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The picture is *exactly* what it claims to be, licensed under a free license from a copyright perspective. I completely debunked the personality rights claims days ago way up on this page. They are only material if you would use the image for advertising/promotion. They are not material for editorial or artistic uses. Our non-free images are in no better position: You still could not use them to advertise/promote in manners which are limited by their personality rights even if someone else has used them for advertising and promotion, because you have not received the release. Non-free images have an increased burden of copyright risk and uncertanty even when the use appears to conform with the fair use exceptions.

Your argument is fundamentally equal to a claim that the text of our articles is not free content because you couldn't alter it to libel someone without legal liability.. I have grown tired of you making this argument over and over again without paying any attention to the responses. --Gmaxwell 05:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try again -- Some users, among them, User:Angr, expect ALL Wikipedia content, including images, to be completely free/libre. (And, in fact, this is one of Wikipedia's stated goals.) That they may do whatever they want with Wikipedia content, including use or re-use, commerically or non-commercially, in any manner, in perpetuity, forever. (Angr, PLEASE jump in if I'm misstating your position.) And that's simply not the case, as anyone trying to commercially re-use a "free/libre" GFDL Flikr-photo of a celebrity would quickly find out. Can we at least agree on that? Jenolen ^{speak it!} 05:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Angr's position on non-free images is more aggressive than mine. Please read our policy pages for my position. (Seriously, they are pretty close. I played my part in shaping our policy, and I reasonably happy with most of it as written if not as implemented)

As for your commercial use example, I do not agree. With a policy-conformant Wikipedia I could derive from Wikipediaand sell a coffee table book on celebrities which includes a photograph and a biography for each celebrity. There would be no serious cause for concern with respect to rights of promotion. In a Wikipedia stuffed with non-free images, my ability to do this would be substantially limited by copyright for several reasons. While it is true that some images which were considered "fair use" on Wikipedia could be claimed as fair use in my work, others could not. For example, if the copyright holder and source of the image is another coffee table bio book publisher (or any other remotely similar product), I'd have a very hard time claiming that my use of their copyrighted works is transformative and fails to infringe on their ability to profit off their work. So for each image I would have to do an expensive and error-prone analysis and in the end I'd have to throw out many images. The coffee table bio book is only one such example; there are examples closer to home such as textbooks, courseware, and other guides which the foundation intends to host projects to produce. While some images will be fair use in many places, others will not and only with additional effort can we even guess which is which. Non-free images, even when solidly "fair use" in Wikipedia, really are significantly inferior for our long term purposes. --Gmaxwell 05:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

With a policy-conformant Wikipedia I could derive from Wikipediaand (sic) sell a coffee table book on celebrities which includes a photograph and a biography for each celebrity. Simply put, I disagree. And that disagreement comes from my practical experience dealing with these issue as a member of the media for the last fifteen years. (IANAL, but I do have to talk to a lot of them about these things as part of my job.)

Look, I guess it's really not a big deal, but I think your coffee-table book would likely be a substantial infringement on the personality rights (and if not that specifically, then something legally similar) of the photo subjects in at least 28 of the 50 U.S. states that have such laws. If you want to take a photo of me, and put it in your book, and I'm a big movie star, you'd better have a release from me. I don't give a rat's behind what the photographer has told you about the rights to the image; they can go Flikr themselves. If you want to make money off MY image, Daddy's got to get paid ... and/or YOU have got to get a release. (Notice that this is sometimes part of the "fair use" debate -- in fact, earlier in this debate, I was told that I DID have the power to enter in to legally-binding licensing agreements with attorneys representing bands, actors, etc., as long as I "reported" them to the Foundation. I'm tempted to tell the Foundation I've sold the whole kit and kaboodle of Wikipedia to Google for $1.4 billion, and see if they bite...)

However, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to open a CafePress T-shirt shop, using "Free/Libre Celebrity Photos" I found on Wikipedia! Wanna go in on it with me?  ;) Jenolen ^{speak it!} 08:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I find it interesting to see the mindsets of the Free Image folks versus the professional journalists, etc. who actually do the work on a daily basis. If you take the position that "a good image can only be a free image" as stated above, then you can justify almost anything. However, if I show the average Wikipedia user a professional quality image versus an amateur washed out over-exposed image and ask them which is better, I think the pro quality image will win 9 out of 10 times. If you believe the only good encyclopedia is a totally "free" encyclopedia (not withstanding the inherent contradiction of the many thousands of fair use images that will likely remain untouched), then you can throw whatever content up you want and congratulate yourselves that at least it's "free", and therefore of inherently better "quality". Those of us that are professionals in delivering traditional quality content, and work hard at doing so, will usually disagree, as would our readers. Tvccs 06:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

In the case of the nearly three dozen images I recently had deleted, not one, to my knowledge, has actually been replaced. So much for all this poppycock about readily replaceable images just waiting to be snatched up for the taking. I deal mostly with artists and musicians that, while they are "celebrities", are unlikely candidates for readily available free photos, as many are mostly private individuals with limited public appearance schedules. Furthermore, I maintain the somehow now-novel idea that a "fan photo" shot of a celebrity as a courtesy to a fan is NOT suitable for publication as a primary image on Wikipedia. Not only are there often quality issues, there is also no respect whatsoever for the person who was kind enough to appear in the image, and had no idea it could end up used in this way and published worldwide through Wikipedia. The Keith Emerson image I detailed at Chowbok was exactly such an example. As I have previously said, Wikipedia's "nabbed" use of these fan/Flickr CC images is going to make celebrities stop taking these pictures, and the only people that will suffer for it are the celebrities who will appear only as snobbish by doing so, when it is in fact Wikipedia that is at fault. Tvccs 06:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Good points, Tvccs... It is a bit taking advantage of someone, isn't it? I mean, they're nice enough to pose for the photo with a fan, and suddenly, boom, there it is -- their "official" Wikipedia photo. Certainly not what they had in mind, but hey, it's "free", and yes, that is the only criteria that matters to some of the people involved in this debate. (For example, if you believe the official state government portrait of the Governor of Michigan does NOT belong on the Wikipedia entry about the governor of Michigan - and yes, that photo was deleted - than you may be missing the bigger picture. Wikipedia - the amatuer photo encyclopedia? More on that in a moment...)

Another scoreboard note - I'm zero for eight when it comes to the alleged great hordes of "free" alternative photos just waiting -- waiting, I tell you! -- unsnapped in some camera somewhere, or as yet un-Flikr-ed, to be "liberated." All of the promotional photos I uploaded, tagged, sourced, and worked with admins to make sure they met the guidelines -- as they then existed -- have been wiped out, and, strangely, not a one has been replaced. Odd, isn't it? I guess those libre photographers will get around to them, uh, eventually... In the meantime, though, the entries in which those photos were used sit sadly barren of valuable encyclopedic content.

First final thought -- the last two years have seen a lot of growth in Wikipedia, and the Wikicommunity. I wonder if that growth will continue if every picture in the place looks like this? Or will Wikipedia become "that website that used to be kinda' cool, but now, it looks like total amateur hour"? Hmm...

Second final thought -- still no takers on the CafePress/Wikipedia "Libre" Celebrity photo front? C'mon now, free absolutists; isn't there anyone, besides Gmaxwell who thinks you can commercially re-use an ostensibly "libre" celebrity photo, hosted right here at Wikipedia? Anyone? Anyone?? Bueller? Jenolen ^{speak it!} 11:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

A couple of points. Personality rights do restrict the redistribution of images of living people to a certain extent. It should be noted, however, that unlike copyright (which is established internationally by the Berne convention) personality rights are not constant across jurisdictions. A libre image of a living person may be usable in a number of places and for a number of purposes that a copyrighted promotional photo would not be. I'm not familiar enough with this aspect of the law to speak to whether a coffee table book o' celebs would be acceptable in any given jurisdiction, but the notion that personality rights will be as limiting as copyright is inaccurate. A libre image of a living person will not be entirely free to use, but it will be more free (and will be particularly more useful in jurisdictions that do not have a legal concept of "fair use").

A second point, regarding imageless entries: there are worse things than going without an image for a while, even a long while. We should never make the mistake of prioritizing the appearance of our current internet content over the content that we hope to see redistributed around the world in years to come. The audience that uses our internet content today is dwarfed by the potential future audience that our content is intended to reach in redistributed form. If we give up an internet-only image and let an article go imageless for some time in order to obtain a redistributable image at a later time, we have made a very good trade-off. --Robth^Talk 01:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

We really need a more restrictive policy, not a less restrictive one

There are degrees of replaceability. For example, a screenshot from a movie to illustrate the movie, a corporate logo, or an event poster, are all 100% irreplaceable. Even if we had all of the time/resources/talent in the world, we could never produce a free version of those things because anything we could produce would only be a derivative of a non-free work. Make a drawing of the Enterprise - you still have a derivative of something copyrighted by Paramount. Make a painting of the Rose Bowl logo? You still have a derivative of something copyrighted. That's what irreplaceable is - we're talking about items where there is no such thing as a free version. But when we're talking about photos and not movie screenshots ... that's a whole different ballgame. Even if the person is dead ... there is potentially such a thing as a "free" version of a photo of Reggie White, for instance. We may not have one ... but we could potentially convince someone who photographed him to release their photo under the GFDL. With Star Trek, that's patently impossible. Paramount could never release a drawing, photo, screenshot, whatever, of the Enterprise under the GFDL or they would lose their ability to exclusively market it. With a movie screenshot, corporate logo, etc, there is no such thing as a free version, there never can be, and never will be. Those are 100% irreplaceable. But for anything else, we need to be moving away from questionably claiming fair use on any random thing we find on the internet and move towards trying to acquire free versions. BigDT 06:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Although a minor aside: Paramount could in theory release a single frame (for example).. although they wouldn't be able to stop further derived works, it probably wouldn't harm them since most of the derived works will happen anyways and they can't stop them without bad PR (fanart and the like). That said, I favor an interpretation of policy which would regard such things as irreplaceable. The easiest way to express the form of fair use that you are talking about would be something like "You may use an excerpt of a copyrighted work in an article which is providing analysis or critical commentary on that work." This notion is one of the core concepts underlying the existence of fair use in US law, that the exclusive rights of a copyright holder should not squash normal public discourse, criticism, or academic research. It is this material and this material alone why I do not support a policy which would completely prohibit non-free materials in Wikipedia.--Gmaxwell 06:19, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Nope. This is a philosophy built on what-ifs and logical extremes. It's not the kind of ground to build a philosophy on. It's wobbly. The trick is to moderate and find the steady ground that benefits all, not one philosophical pole. - Stick Fig 06:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This "anything we find on the Internet" supposed atttiude as a basis for "policy" is ludicrous - we are talking about legitimate press and promo photos, some obtained directly from the artists themselves. I have no problem with not using non-legitimate photos, as well as substituting quality free images when they are actually available. I radically disagree with the idea that the only images placeable on Wikipedia of living persons, or dead, should somehow be free and unable to use press or promophotos, unlike every other publication on the planet. The vast majority or artists I deal with are not readily available to be photographed by the Wikipedia papparazzi, do not and will not have GFDL images available, and/or choose not to release their own material under a GFDL license. Tvccs 11:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Very frustrating

This has been a very frustrating "debate" for me. I've tried many things and all have failed. I don't even know why I am posting anymore. Everything I could say has been said, so my time wasting here accomplishes absolutely nothing. It is frustrating because I've personally spent entire days taking photos and releasing them under creative commons for certain articles like the Michigan State University article and several others. I and people like me are proof that bad photos will be replaced by good on their own in due course and elimination of fair use content is unnecessary. Now that it is established that I really do support the idea of free/libre content and also understand it as one of Wikipedia's goals, I have to say that it is EXTREMELY frustrating to have an extremist viewpoint push aside a more moderate one, ignoring any type of possible compromise or change in policy or enforcement thereof when it comes to utilizing the great availability of press/publicity photos of people, living and dead.

I'd say the thing that makes me most discouraged is Jimbo Wales himself jumping in and shutting down debate on the subject, as if "I am He and He has spoken, now go forth and generate free content". First off, to me his position makes me suspicious of ulterior motives. Jimbo is a business man, not Mother Theresa. He's not a saint. He's not a stupid man and he knows that we are free and clear to use fair-use content in a perfectly legal manner. What end-goal could possibly be behind his desire for wikipedia to have entirely free/gratis content? I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help but believe someday all this altruism here at Wikipedia will be usurped by an ultimate profit motive.

But even then, the really stupid thing is that if our job really is to protect all content for "downstream" users to make gobs of money off of it, efforts to use only "free" celebrity photos are in vain. As has been mentioned countless times, you cannot use "free" photos of personalities for anything except those uses that qualify under fair-use anyway. Period. End of discussion. You will get sued into oblivion. So, WHY.. WHY is there such consternation over the issue at hand? I've yet to hear a good arguement from those who believe fair-use needs to be gone, but yet we are making no progress in allowing the publicity photos of public figures on Wikipedia.

The other very frustrating thing about this debate goes back to Jimbo Wales again. This man is able to come in to the debate, state his opinion, and have flocks of yes-people come in and argue his side as if it actually had some sort of weight behind it when it certainly does not. I think I'm going to start calling him Jimbo Jones, and just laugh as all of his followers drink the kool-aid. Yes, drink up and ye shall be free! So sayeth the Jimbo. At the core, this debate has been between followers and critical thinkers. On one side, followers recite the position over and over as stated by their leader and on the other people who can critically think try in vain to find reason against the zombie masses. There is no reason, no critical thinking, no willingness to compromise and no cooperation. So, again, I don't even know why I bothered posting anything again as it will accomplish nothing.--Jeff 13:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Well said. Couldn't agree with you more. Rmkf1982 14:16, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree - before it was so rudely shut down, the poll was clearly showing that more people are in favor of keeping free use photos - that doesn't make for a 'consensus' - but neither does shutting down the poll. We all know that polls are not decisive - but they do test the waters. The fact is that we have a deep division here and we need to find a compromise that more people can accept or we'll have more wholesale shredding of articles by the anti-fair-use folks and more complaining and reverting by the pro-fair-use people. The only way to stop the warfare that's going on right now is to come to a compromise. We'll never get 100% agreement - there are radicals at both ends of the spectrum whom we'll never pull in - but I think that with the right wording and some formal mechanisms we could reach a 75% consensus of editors. The poll proved that we can't just sweep this under the rug and pretend that nothing has to be done. SteveBaker 14:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I am shocked that people would turn my clear invitation that rather than a debate-killing poll, we should have an open discussion and debate into an effort to shut down discussion. I am even more shocked, though, that this action could be conceivably be grounds for such a shockingly low insult as to compare me to a mass murderer.--Jimbo Wales 15:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo, first of all, this is not about you but rather its about the action you took therefore when I said I agreed, I was referring to the important issue at hand - that being that the debate was shut down. For your information, and in response to the ever so slightly paranoid comment you left on my talk page, I didn't pick up on the "mass murderer" reference - I had never heard of Jimbo Jones or whoever it was, nor do I care, as it wasn't the point. The issue people are concerned with is the sudden end you put to the debate - not with you personally. We are all well aware of the enormous contributions that you have made and nobody is questioning that at all, however the sudden pulling of the debate is being questioned.Rmkf1982 16:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The poll was shut down. Not the debate itself. Just look at all the discussion there is on this page after the discussion supposedly was shut down. Garion96 (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

you're correct - I should have said poll not debate. Rmkf1982 16:18, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I do apologize to Jimbo for being sensationalist in my post and invoking parallels to Jonestown. It was an improper citation made for attention seeking purposes, not a statement of truth.--Jeff 16:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course. No one took it as direct parallel. Excellent content "right on the money", otherwise. CyberAnth 19:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, please. I'm shocked that the founder of Wikipedia doesn't realize a clumsy allusion to drinking the Kool-aid doesn't mean one is being compared to a mass murderer. "Drinking the Kool-aid" is a common enough phrase used for any large group of people who seem to blindly follow a leader, no matter what the circumstances. I realize that this is Jimbo's playground and all, but really, to be jumping on to individual user's talk pages, demanding apologies? Jimbo -- here's a tip: You don't have to respond to every slight. WP:AGF and all... Jeff is frustrated, he's worked his butt off, rhetorically, against a series of vindictive editors, as he tries to make Wikipedia better (and for the most part, succeeding), only to see his and a lot of other people's good-faith (and legal!) work nuked by those with what could charitably be described as a very narrow interpretation of our fair use guidelines. And he most certainly didn't "compare you to a mass murderer." Please, if he'd really wanted to do that, I think we can all agree he would have gone with the traditional favorite, invoking Hitler. :) Peace! Jenolen ^{speak it!} 19:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo, I'm sure his point was clumsy, but you need to do more to help us solve this problem than play traffic cop. He wouldn't have made the flub in the first place if you had. It just doesn't strike any of us right when someone -- no matter how powerful -- swoops in and tells us how it's going to be done. We seem to be so concerned about legal issues here regarding photos. Instead of just saying, "No fair-use photos, we might get sued," we figure out a way to make them work for us.

For one thing, we aren't even making an attempt to talk to public relations people here. I wonder if we could convince some of the bigger PR firms to release things under CC licenses. We need to start relationships here, not burn bridges. - Stick Fig 23:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• A number of you are jumping on Jimbo for stepping in and making a decision. A reminder folks, this is precisely what a good leader can and should do when needed to help affirmatively resolve a dispute. And let's be realistic; this is a dispute. Some of you seem to feel that a compromise can be reached. Forgive me, but I've been doing fair use image removal long enough to know there are a large number of people for whom the only compromise will be the allowance of fair use everywhere on the project.
• Over and over and over again we have fought over how to use fair use images, where to allow them, whether they are replaceable, etc. Over and over again it is shown that very few fair use images are really needed here. All of you reading this debate should look at the upper left of this page and every page on Wikipedia. It says, "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". This is a free encyclopedia. We are not a fair use encyclopedia. This project's entire focus is creating a freely available encyclopedia that can be reproduced under terms of free licenses, NOT fair use. All of us should be striving towards this goal. We should not be trying to reach some compromise that encroaches on the project as a free encyclopedia.
• The goal of a free encyclopedia is and should be a superset of everything we do here. If what you, I, and everyone else here are doing does not contribute either directly or indirectly to that goal, there's little use to it. It would be as if you were designing a bathtub when we're working on building a car. Unless we're going to be installing a bathtub in the car, the work on the bathtub is meaningless. Likewise, trying to push non-free content into the encyclopedia is a mismatch. It should be guarded against at every opportunity, and we should always strive to obtain free content.
• I can already (and have) hear(d) people saying "But...". There are no buts. Either we're a free encyclopedia or we are not. It's a simple concept. --Durin 00:06, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

There are limits to what free can do. Professional photographers will simply get a better shot of a celebrity than most of us can due to access. We need to figure out a way to make those limits something we can deal with instead of closing the door on it. I'm telling you, closing access and options would be considered retarded in any other part of the mass media, of which Wikipedia is part. For some reason, we encourage it. - Stick Fig 00:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Our aims are completely different than any other mass media organization. They are making content to make money. We are making content that is available to distribute to the world with a minimum of potential encumbrance. That doesn't mean that we have to do everything differently than the rest of the mass media, but it does mean that we need to critically examine what practices are and are not in line with our goals. In this case, since redistributability (which is a matter of no concern for the rest of the mass media) is central to our aims, we need to find our own way. --Robth^Talk 01:11, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Plenty of media publications are not making content to make money. Most journals of opinion, for instance, lose money and are supported by wealthy owners (or, in the case of The Nation, by donation drives). In terms of redistributability, I feel that there has been a pretty great degree of lack of clarity on the extent to which promotional photos can be redistributed. Can anyone provide any actual example to suggest what limits on redistribution of such photos exist, for instance? Anyway, I think the difference between what we are doing, and what more traditional press sources do, has been overdrawn. Obviously there are differences, but I'm not sure how material they are to this issue. john k 01:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Durin, we're not a free encyclopedia, then. We can't possibly be. Do you want to delete all paraphrases of copyrighted fictional works? All quotations from copyrighted works? Fair use is inevitable on wikipedia. Your position is far more at odds with current policy than the proposal here was. The proposal here was basically a matter of how to interpret current policy, and how to tell whether an image of a living person was reasonably replaceable. It perhaps set the bar further in the direction of allowing fair use than some people would like, but it really would not have been any kind of change in basic policy. Your apparent preferred solution, to remove all fair use from wikipedia entirely, would represent a complete change from our current policy, which allows fair use in many situations. There can be some honest disagreement about the extent to which we should employ it, but we'd have to delete a hell of a large portion of wikipedia if we really were to ban fair use entirely. As to Jimbo making a decision, I think what grates the most, for me at least, is the fact that he is not making a decision. He shut down one particular effort that he did not like to make changes in policy, but the whole thing is entirely ad hoc. If the Foundation were to set a policy on wikipedia fair use, that would be fine. Even if I didn't agree with it, I would accept it and work with it - anything else would just be a waste of my time. These kind of half-official shuttings down of debate are tiresome. Am I just wasting my time trying to effect some change here? I really don't know. Jimbo says that he wants debate, but he also expresses his extreme abhorrence of a relatively mild proposed change and acts like it's the end of the world, and intervenes to end an ongoing vote. Can anyone point to other instances of Jimbo intervening to end a debate in this manner? It was pretty clear that the vote was not going to result in a move, but that doesn't mean that blanking the page with a mandate from on high is the best idea, and I am a bit dubious of Wales's expressed incredulity at the fact that his actions have been taken as an attempt to smother debate. How did he expect such an action to be taken? Hasn't he been around long enough, and seen the way his actions are responded to, to realize that of course this is exactly how it is going to be interpreted, especially given that in the very place where he does this, he also expresses how much he hates the proposal? I have no idea what to think, and I have no idea whether further debate on this matter is useful. This is very frustrating, and is pretty much a result of the way Jimbo has dealt with this. I'm willing to accept that this is a matter of incompetence rather than of malice, but I don't see what good is accomplished by such shenanigans. john k 01:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• (responding to a few points) That a fair use image is superior in quality than one we could reasonably be expected to get under a free license isn't much of a point in favor of allowing fair use. In fact, it somewhat works in the opposite direction. If we use the argument that we can get better fair use images than free license images, then why should contributors strive to release their photos under a free license and post them on Wikipedia? I've taken a number of images for Wikipedia. For example, I took a number of images at the Indianapolis Zoo (see [10]). I could have just as well grab a bunch of higher quality images from their website (see [11] and example blowup. Why should I bother going to the zoo and getting images if all I had to do was sit at home and grab superior images from their website? Where's the motivation to provide free content? None. That's what.
  • Straw man. Nobody is making an argument that this argument would rebut. john k 04:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Hardly. Stick Fig says above "And it seems to me that many of you seem interested in choosing what's free instead of what's best." and cites this as a negative and harmful attitude. --Robth^Talk 06:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I'll willingly admit to making that arguement, with certain thresholds in mind. First of all, the photos you make example of are inanimate objects. I am not advocating for fair use inanimate object publicity photos; those should be disallowed. I am advocating for fair use of publicity photos of living persons. Secondly, Your photos of the Indianapolis zoo, much like my photos of Michigan State University are of good enough quality to pass the reasonable where they should be used in place of copyrighted alternatives, even if they are marginally better. The issue is that there have been many fair use publicity photos replaced with god awful alternatives, please see Jennifer Granholm for one example. If the free/libre photo that replaced the original publicity still even approached the quality of the original, I'd have no grounds. Thirdly, I and others like you are proof enough that there exists motivation to contribute photos to Wikipedia that are under creative commons licensing consistent with Wikipedia policy and because of that I don't see a reason to "encourage" it through destruction (deleting images).--Jeff 14:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
        • It strikes me that, in general, we ought to have some minimum standard of quality for all images on wikipedia. If a free image doesn't meet that minimum, it oughtn't to be considered an adequate replacement for a fair use photo that does. But once the minimum is reached, free should always replace fair. Of course, there would be some difficulty about where the minimum lies, but it should be possible to arrive at some sort of consensus about this. Beyond that, I'm not sure anyone has actively been advocating "always use the highest quality image", although that may be the implication of comments people have made. john k 18:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
• On promotional photos; various agencies set their own policies with regards to promotional photos. There isn't any one size fits all legal standing on those images.
  • A lot of the time, though, so far as I can tell, everything is implicit. So far as I can tell there is no "license" for many of these kinds of photos. They are simply distributed by the copyright holder as a means of publicity, with the understanding that they will not sue people for using them. Any use rights in such instances would have to be determined by common law type provisions, that is to say, by precedent and so forth, rather than be any kind of explicit licensing. john k 04:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
• To other points, it might do to review the mailing list for pertinent discussion on these points. Jimbo has on several occasions made it clear both that he would far prefer to see a very, very limited set of allowable fair use here, and that he does not set policy. Nevertheless, a large number of people hold his line; that we should limit fair use as much as we can so as to provide what it is we are here to do. Yes, we might very well have to delete a large number of images from Wikipedia. But, that itself is not a reason to not do so. We delete thousands of things a day that are not in compliance with what we strive to be. This is little different.
  • What exactly is your position? Is it that we should have a very limited set of allowable fair use? Or is it that we should not have any fair use? What I hate about this stuff is that your goal seems to be to push things as far as possible in your direction, rather than to devise a workable fair use policy. john k 04:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
• As for the foundation setting policy on this issue; On closely related items, the foundation has already established policy. Not surprisingly, a significant number of people actively and aggressively disagree with that policy even though it was established by the foundation. That a policy is established by the foundation does not make it immune from controversy or globally acceptable to all contributors here.
  • Sure, I was only expressing my own views. There will always be people who aggressively disagree with anything. The issue is what is the best way to provide clarity on this issue. If the Foundation wants a highly restrictive fair use policy, it should set some clear boundaries. If it wants to let users decide this through the normal wiki processes, Jimbo shouldn't involve himself in stuff like this. The problem is that he wants to have it both ways - to set policy without going through the controversy that would result from actually setting policy. Thus the disrespect for normal processes we've seen here. (And, yes, the vote that was going on on this page was a perfectly normal process, and certainly not one that there was any reason to shut down in the way that it was. ) john k 04:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
• We most emphatically are a free encyclopedia. --Durin 02:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • You were the one who made it a binary choice, and suggested that inclusion of any fair use makes us not a free encyclopedia. As inclusion of some level of fair use is almost inevitable, unless we banned all summaries of the plots of copyrighted works, and all quotations from copyrighted works, then by your standards, we can never be a free encyclopedia. Perhaps this isn't what you intended to say, but it's the clear implication of it. john k 04:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, but we can't lose sight of the fact that, at the end of the day, this project is about producing a freely redistributable encyclopedia. That doesn't mean we don't make compromises where necessary; some articles just wouldn't work without the use of fair use. I think that when most people who say "this is a free encyclopedia" are not trying to claim that we should have only free content, but rather that we are fundamentally about creating free content wherever possible. Seen this way, this isn't a binary choice at all (there is plenty of room to debate about what is meant by "possible") but rather a statement about what the basic goals of this project are. It's instructive to remember how Wikipedia came about; the thought process wasn't just "hey, let's create an encyclopedia on a wiki"--it was "hey, let's create a freely redistributable encyclopedia" only later followed by "I wonder if a wiki would be a good way to do that?". --Robth^Talk 06:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
      • most people who say "this is a free encyclopedia" are not trying to claim that we should have only free content, but rather that we are fundamentally about creating free content wherever possible. Robth, may I introduce you to Angr? He is an admin who often deletes fair use material (so much so, he can't even keep track of it), militantly adamant about Wikipedia's committment to "free/libre" content. Please be sure to tell him about these "compromises" of which you speak... :) Jenolen ^{speak it!} 07:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
        • I am aware of Angr's position, and have made it clear in discussions on WT:FU that I disagree with it. So long as he does not attempt to enforce it instead of standing Wikipedia policy (which he does not), we can and do agree to disagree. --Robth^Talk 21:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
          • I think Anger most definitely broaches Wikipedia policy. See Image talk:A Theoben Gas Ram.jpg. I agree with the poster in reaction to Anger's action - "Outrageous!" Also see User_talk:Stephenjh. CyberAnth 01:45, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
            • That action is perfectly in line with Wikipedia policy. --Robth^Talk 07:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
              • Only if you consider it "reasonable" to expect a Wikipedian to come along with that exact same $1000 gun who is willing to risk destroying it by taking it apart for a photo of one of its inner parts, ROFL Shaking My Head in Utter Amazement. You are just not going to get many Wikipedians to do such a thing. On the other hand, you will get many who no longer give a shit about the articles. CyberAnth 09:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
                • It is completely reasonable to expect a contributor to do exactly that. We have a LOT of contributors. I've uploaded pictures of things that, prior to my upload, someone could have made a similar argument that it wasn't realistic to expect a wikipedian take such pictures. ::shrugs::
                • Not only do I think that it is reasonable to expect someone to eventually send in photographs from a non-destructively disassembled $1000 device (although those air rifles are not that expensive), especially when such disassembly is frequently performed as part of cleaning and repair, I also don't think that it is unreasonable to expect someone to eventually contribute picture of a destructive dissassembly if such an image would be usefully informative in Wikipedia.--Gmaxwell 20:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
                • It may also be the case that a diagram would be even more informative than a photograph. See cathode ray tube for an example which uses diagrams along with what appears to be either destructive disassembly or a picture of a pre-assembly part.--Gmaxwell 20:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
                  • Much more so is it reasonable to assume that the greater number of editors will refuse to go to such ridiculous lenghts and no longer give a shit about the articles or the project--especially those who have had their images so rudely deleted as at Image talk:A Theoben Gas Ram.jpg. CyberAnth 22:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
                    • It would be instructive to hear how expensive and risky (or overtly destructive) a process would have to be before Gmaxwell would consider it to be impossible that a Wikipedian could undertake it - and therefore permit use of a fair-use alternative? It's evidently more than $1000. Is it $10,000? $100,000? The GNP of a small country? What? I wonder what kind of car Gmaxwell drives? I might feel a sudden and unexpected need for a fair use photo of some particularly inaccessible engine parts and I'd like to be certain that he'll be a man of his word and get the shot for us. SteveBaker 01:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

So what kind of car do you drive, Gmaxwell? Please, tell us. I am dying to know. And what kind of inboard motor does your boat have, displayed on your user page?

AAR, I have been thinking about doing an article on a very unique archaeological site in my small hometown. Research has been done and photos have already been taken, and the photos are copyrighted and the owner will not release them to the public domain or similar. The lone museum that contains artifacts does not permit photos.

But I do have photos that could be used under fair use. Yet it is "possible" to get some extremely expensive "free" photos of artifacts. I'd just have to, you know, do a few little things to get the "free" photos.

I'd have to write a detailed proposal, get permission from the county commissioners, pay for the permits, fund or find funding for a new research team, insurance, help do the dig work, etc. It would only cost about $200,000 - $300,000 dollars. Hey, I could then give them away so others could make the profit from my work!

But surely there are some wealthy Wikipedians willing to fund this, right? Willing to transfer their wealth so others can make the profit from it, right? To go beyond a donation for non-profit educational use, right?

But at this point I am not holding my breath, and I am not even going to do the article, because the "fair use" photos that would make it worthwhile and informative would only be deleted. Talk about a chilling effect!

And if you think a Wikipedian is going to come along and do all of that kind and amount of work and investment for "free", I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn I could sell you, just $250,000! I promise to use the proceeds to fund the photos for the new article.

I think I really did have it all pegged rightly at Wikipedia_talk:Elimination of Fair Use Rationale in Promotional Photos/Vote#The heart of the matter, above. "Non-free work" - a euphemism for "your donated work that cannot be used for profit-making by others".CyberAnth 02:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

A question

Above, in the course of a post that is way more inflammatory than necessary, Jeff made the comment that

As has been mentioned countless times, you cannot use "free" photos of personalities for anything except those uses that qualify under fair-use anyway.

This doesn't seem to be true to me. If I own a tabloid, I can't publish a paparazzi photo of a celebrity that someone else has taken under fair use. But I could publish a free image of the same subject (or one to which I own the copyright). So obviously there are some situations where this doesn't work. Perhaps this is only when freedom of the press comes into it. But I'm doubtful that it's completely true. At the same time, it does seem as though there's some truth to this with respect to publicity photos. Publicity photos are, at least implicitly, released for pretty broad use. What exactly are the ways in which we can use a free photo of a celebrity, that we can't use for a promo photo? And I'm talking about real promotional photos here, so don't bring in the old "most things tagged as promo photos aren't actually promo photos" chestnut. I'm perfectly willing to accept this, and to agree that photos that aren't real promo photos should not be treated as such, but that's completely irrelevant. john k 01:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Same application space. "Permission" granted in as ephemeral manner as the permission of a publicity photo can be trivially revoked. If you are mad at what someone is writing about you, you might do everything in your power to stop them. If their speech is protected, your options to attack them are somewhat limited. Even if you could get away with a fair use claim or win an argument that they couldn't revoke the permission, copyright is a good excuse to sue someone... and a court isn't likely to dismiss a claim based on "fair use" as quickly as they would a "just because" case. If you are a group like Wikipedia with much ability to afford an expensive legal battle, the chance that someone could keep you in court a while before you win is almost as important as if you can win.

Of course, it's also the case that most conceivable uses do not run into publicity rights issues. Some people here disagree, but none have cited a publicity rights case where the use wasn't promotional (or at least indirectly promotional). It's informative to read the law, Indiana's is probably the most aggressive. However, your example is good. I don't think anyone here will make the outrageous claim that a newspaper would have issues.. and that is certainly a use we wish to protect. We even have our own newspaper, Wikinews. --Gmaxwell 02:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you provide any instances of law suits over use of promotional photos? In particular, any instances where the copyright holder won some sort of damages? It seems to me that the advantage of a promotional photo over some other non-free photo is not so much the issue of permission, but that the way the picture is released is such as to make the fair use claim very strong, and to make it very hard for any copyright holder to demonstrate a copyright violation by someone using the photograph for more or less the reason it was released - i.e., to identify the subject of the photo to the public. So obviously it's trickier, in theory, than a GFDL photo, but in practice, it would be nearly impossible for any copyright holder to actually win a case on the basis of copyright violation for such a picture. You're right, of course, about the possibility of a nuisance suit on this basis, but I'd be interested to know if there's any way to tell how likely this actually is. Have any legal threats ever been made against wikipedia about use of properly tagged promotional photos, for instance? john k 04:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Quick reply (sleepy, tired, 2 days before burning myself out, little time to read, off-topic and other disclaimers here): Two quotes from our lawyer at the Portal issue: I believe moving further in the direction of free as in beer when the aim here is to use free as in libre content is a poor choice for the project. and Don't seek sanctuary in the law. Make the law irrelevant. Provide free content everywhere you can. In other words, we should not discuss whether we would be sued for using something or if we had had a lawsuit for using something. Just walk towards freedom. -- ReyBrujo 04:38, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, wikipedia lawyer, for providing an opinion that gives no guidance as to what the law is. Utterly useless. john k 17:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A Proper Poll?

In rereading the project page, or what's left of it, I noticed the comment from Jimbo that we should have a proper poll after a proper debate. Care to provide guidance/ideas as to what a "proper debate" and a "proper poll" mean in this context? Tvccs 03:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Note, in example, how the French Wikipedia handled the banning of Fair use. A month of discussion, followed by a month of voting. However, I go back to what I said somewhere else (at WT:FU or here, can't remember): It is clear that these polls can be made to tighten the free concept (in example, removing fair use cases), but not to lessen the concept (in example, adding new types of fair use). -- ReyBrujo 04:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Then your above two comments predispose an inevitable outcome, as opposed to anything else. Tvccs 06:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

That's ridiculous. What this means is that if some terrible decision is made, we can never take it back. What basis do you have for believing this to be "clear"? john k 17:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

What the poll told us...we must compromise.

Wikipedia isn't a democracy - voting is not the way we resolve disputes. What polls do (and what the one that Jimbo shut down did) is to measure how close we are to agreement. This one was labelled as a straw poll for that very reason. If 90% of people agree with some point - but the remaining 10% are still loudly arguing that point - then we have something close enough to a consensus that we can move forward. If (as in this case) the poll comes out close to a 50-50 split then we have a deeply divided community. We don't use the poll in the sense of one side winning with a margin of just a few percent.

In that sense, the straw poll did the job. It said that we are a deeply divided community and we won't get consensus without some sort of compromise. The debate here has stagnated - neither side is changing the other side's point of view - we are all just using the same arguments over and over.

This means that for peace to return to the community, both sides have to compromise. The anti-fair-use folks have to accept that some fair use needs to be enshrined and protected - albeit with some heavy caveats. The pro-fair-use folks need to accept some more stringent limits than we currently believe are acceptable.

So what is needed is for each side to prepare to concede some ground - every single person who'se posted here has to accept that they aren't going to win the debate on the terms they entered it. Everyone is going to be somewhat disappointed in the results...but that's better than having scattered outbreaks of argument every time a photo is posted or taken down.

We need people on each side of the debate to start deciding what they are prepared to give up...there must be something.

The pro-fair-use people should be prepared to give up any right to use fair-use in cases where free photos are fairly easy to obtain and perhaps to accept strict time limits for photos that are difficult (but not impossible) to obtain - providing they get the clear right to use fair-use where it's almost impossible to replace the photo any other way.

The anti-fair-use folks have to accept that the goal of having a high quality and literally "100% free" encyclopedia just isn't possible - it's desirable - and we should all strive to move that way - but it's just not going to happen. They have to accept that because it's the only way to move from their absolute position towards compromise. Saying "it's 100% free or nothing" isn't going to cut it because that allows for no compromise - and compromise is what's needed here. Ironically, the way to move to a more free encyclopedia is to allow it to be slightly non-free. That is because by allowing a small amount of wiggle room will bring more editors into consensus about limiting what they are currently practicing.

That's what it takes to resolve this.

I don't expect this plea to work...I actually expect both sides to again express their uncompromising points of view and for the argument to rage on for another 20 pages before it eventually fizzles out as people give up on reading the same old arguments over and over.

...sigh...

SteveBaker 15:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I doubt a compromise is possible. In fact I thought that this proposal was the closest we came to a reasonable compromise. As I see it, the pro-fairuse group look at the current situation and argue in favor current encyclopedia quality and express skepticism over the idea that removal of fair-use images encourages enthusiasm in acquiring free images. While the deletionists argue in favor of the idea that removal of fair-use images encourages enthusiasm in acquiring free images and maintain a solid belief in the principal that in order for wikipedia to be a free encyclopedia it must be composed of free materials. I label the two sides as "present" and "future". If you look at what the words present and future mean, you will see the terms (in the sense of time) have no middle-ground and I think it is the same here. I think the fair-use people should probably admit defeat, since when a division such as this exists who ever is trying to succeed in a change has little if no chance of success, until ofcourse opinions change. If fair use criteria #1 didn't exist it would have been a different story. - Tutmosis 19:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

We ain't admitting defeat of any kind. Not until this utter insanity ends. - Stick Fig 19:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

As Stick Fig said, no defeat will be admitted. FU criteria #1 does not keep fair use promo photos from being used. Only the strictest interpretation of FU Criteria #1 results in the deletion of fair use publicity photos of living persons. Under most rationale, moderate interpretations, we are correct.--Jeff 20:00, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

People interested in trying to find some kind of compromise ought to look at Daniel Case's suggestions at Wikipedia:Replaceability of fair-use images. That might be the basis of some kind of compromise on these issues. john k 19:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Daniel Case's suggestions are a good starting point. As a 'pro-reasonable-use-of-fair-use' person, I'd be prepared to give up more than that if it gave us the ability to retain fair use images where getting replacements is virtually impossible rather than literally impossible. I don't (for example) demand that the free use image is at least as good quality as the fair use one. So long as it's an adequate depiction - let's punt the fair use image and use the free one. But to have no photo at all and no realistic possiblility of ever getting one and when a perfectly legally usable one is available...that makes for a worse encyclopedia. SteveBaker 20:11, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I also worry that such a compromise is impossible. I strongly disagree with your labelling of 'present' and 'future' because it presumes that the deletionists somehow win without compromise - and I don't see how that is possible. Since I get the strong impression that the vast majority of day-to-day editors are pro-fair-use and the majority of administrative and political types are deletionists, what we have scope for here is more or less open warfare. "The fair use people" can't "admit defeat" because most of those people are blindly unaware that this debate is even happening. The majority of people who are writing articles and putting photos into them under the fair use rules only see a problem when someone comes along and deletes something that they see as fairly used. So it's possible to trample over wishes of the fair use community with heavy-handed policy - but that doesn't end the problem. The very least this will do is to further disenchant the 'grunts' who are doing the bulk of the editing - and that can spell disaster for the encyclopedia. Wikipedia can only function if the ratio of editors to articles, editors to readers and editors to vandals remains at something like the present level. There is a limit to how far the politics and in-fighting can go without upsetting enough people to tip the balance in a dangerous way. We badly need a compromise here. SteveBaker 19:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Since criteria #1 exists the deletionists already have won (if that's what you want to call it) and since there is not enough consensus to change criteria #1 the deletions will continue. That's the reasoning behind my "giving up" comments. By "giving up" I ment I see no hope in the near future of the situation changing unless some brilliant new idea will show up that will satisfy both sides. I hope I'm wrong though. - Tutmosis 20:39, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem with FU #1 - let's just quote it here, you can employ fair use if:

<quote> No free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information. If unfree material can be transformed into free material, it should be done instead of using a "fair use" defense. For example, the information in a newspaper article can easily be used as a basis of an original article and then cited as a reference. Maps and diagrams can often be redrawn from original sources, though simply "tracing" copyrighted material does not make it free. Neither photographs nor sound clips, however, can usually be "transformed" in this way. However, if the subject of the photograph still exists, a freely-licensed photograph could be taken. </quote>

The problem boils down to the first and last sentences. The first says that if there is a reasonable way to take a free photo - we should do so. The last asserts that this is always possible if the subject still exists. But the latter is clearly a non-factual statement - we can easily come up with a bazillion examples of things that still exist that we could never in a hundred years get a photo of. Suppose we didn't have a free photo of Neil Armstrong's first footstep on the Moon or the hull of the Titanic or the wreck of the BeagleII on the surface of Mars...whatever. The subject does still exist - but could a freely licensed photo be taken? No - not in any way reasonably. The last sentence makes no sense - it's an untruthful statement. So right there we know that the policy needs to be amended because it's quite simply untrue.

The first sentence can be read to be more reasonable - but not if we have unreasonable people interpreting it. We need to define the phrase "could be created". Does it mean that the photo could mathematically/physically possibly be taken by hypothetical mega-beings? Does it mean possible to an average Wikipedian? Does it mean possible if you had the money, time and skills to climb to top of Mount Everest? Does it mean "possible if you don't have to wait more than 20 years for the next emergence of the 20 year cicada's? It's just not clear.

But there is another vagueness that neatly mirrors the first one. What does it mean about "adequately convey the same information"...again, it's mathematically impossible for two different photos to convey the exact same information. Time elapses between photos - different camera angles, different lighting - the entropy of the universe changed between photos.

We also have to presume a reasonable definition of "adequately give the same information" - just as we have to presume a reasonable definition of "could be created". Could be created must mean "could reasonably be created by a Wikipedian in a reasonable time scale" - and "the same information" must mean "sufficiently similar information that the meaning of the article isn't unduly compromised".

If the deletionists apply the literal meaning of "could be created" and say that: yes, in theory we could build our own spaceship and get our own photo of the first footsteps on the Moon - despite it being utterly impossible in reality....then the anti-deletionists will simply say "Yes - but your photo won't contain the exact same information as the original photo because the light from the sun is never exactly the same and you can't precisely duplicate the reflections from Armstrong's boot". If either side wishes to interpret the rule in a pig-headed and unreasonable manner - then so will both sides and we are again at an impassse. So - we need better wording...and therein lies the need to compromise. The words of this policy are not holy scripture and they don't have the standing of the US constitution - they can easily be fixed if shown to be broken. This rule is clearly broken - so we can and should fix it...and if we're going to do that, we need consensus - so a compromise is needed. Right now, neither side can be said to be 'right' because the rule is meaningless when not interpreted 'reasonably'. SteveBaker 02:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I agree that the interpretation of the policy ranges to extreme angles. I agree with most things you wrote. I'm not trying to argue against this view. This thread was started by a comment I would summarize as "no point of continuing the meaningless arguing and let's start thinking of a compromise". I responded by my overall left feeling that I see no compromise in sight and that maybe we should calm down with the excitement, at least that is what I felt when this new idea came up. Thinking from the deletionists perspective, your above comment could probably easily be countered by saying "instruction creep" (making a policy to define every aspect of 'replacable') because even if this policy is broad and very general the admin deleting the image has a mind of his own and can judge himself if an image is likely considered "replacable" or not. - Tutmosis 03:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

If we divide images between those that can have free versions (promotional images, in example) and those that cannot (art), then I would agree that those fair use ones are justified. But this discussion is about promotional photos, and as you can obtain free versions, they should not be kept. -- ReyBrujo 21:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Hogwash! I can NOT obtain, nor can I create, nor can anyone else create, "free" versions of several types of promotional photos. I can't get a Finnish hockey player to put on his uniform, take off his helmet, and pose for a studio headshot portrait for me. I can't get Jeri Ryan to put on the 7 of 9 outfit and pose, in character, for "free" publicity shots. I can't assemble Wham! for new studio shots. I can't get the the Governor of Michigan to pose for a nicely lit, composed, focused and framed portrait. And it is completely unreasonable to think that any Wikipedian could! There are PLENTY of promotional photos that can't be created in new, improved, "free" versions. But I have yet to see a promotional photo pass muster with the current interpretation of Wikipedia policy. Jenolen ^{speak it!} 12:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The article on Andy Warhol is a good example of the problem here. Look at the English WP version - then check out the German version here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol - the German version has to have only free photos - so basically we have a photo of Jimmy Carter with a fly-speck-sized Andy Warhol tucked in amongst other faces in the background - and we have a poorly lit sculpture of Andy Warhol - which, even at full resolution doesn't look at all like him and at thumbnail size could be almost anyone. There is (of course) not one single one of Warhol's works shown anywhere on the German article because without fair use, you can't show any photos of works of art that are still in copyright. Please - tell me how the German article is of any use to our readers? It may be free - but it's hopeless as an encyclopedia article! The English version is a great description of the man and his works - and it shows all the things you'd want to see when you lookup up a fellow like this. It's interesting to read because it's full of pictures. The German article is just terrible by comparison. The fair use provisions of the copyright laws are there for a reason. They acknowledge that there are rare and special times when it is better for the common good to allow the use a copyrighted photo without permission than to deny the use of that photo. SteveBaker 01:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious to know about the battle to eliminate permission and non-commercial images. Did Jimbo just go about and announce it unilaterally, or was there a dicussion beforehand considering the elimination of such photographs? Would a cut-off date be too much of a cop-out? That's how {{frn}} came about, and {{Permission}} images were eliminated after May 19 2005 Hbdragon88 07:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

What's with this?

I found THIS on the French Wikipedia, in English, but have not found it on the English version. CyberAnth 07:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

That is an obsolete two year old essay :-) -- ReyBrujo 12:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. :-) CyberAnth 04:27, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Photo request boilerplate

User:Chowbok has a boilerplate at User:Chowbok/Photo request boilerplate for requesting "free" images from famous people. Here is the letter copied from the source:

Dear [whoever],

I am one of the many volunteer editors of the English Wikipedia
(en.wikipedia.org), the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia is among the
most-visited sites on the Internet, ranking near the top ten according
to the estimates of Alexa Internet (alexa.com).

Unfortunately, our article about you at
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[Whoever]) currently lacks an image.
I am aware that there are publicity images of you available, but since
Wikipedia aims to be reproduceable even for profit and even in nations
where generous United States "fair use" provisions in copyright law are
inapplicable, we cannot use an image that is not released under a
so-called "free license". Essentially, the copyright holder of any image
that we use must irrevocably permit anyone else to use it, modify it, or
sell it, with the only permissible requirements being that the author be
named and that any modifications be released under an identical license.

Example licenses that would permit us to use an image would be: the GNU
Free Documentation License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/legalcode), or a simple
"no rights reserved".

Given Wikipedia's great popularity, I was hoping that you could provide
us an image under such conditions. Please do consider this, and feel
free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Kim Scarborough

I find the sample letter he offered very interesting but unclear.

I thought I would therefore suggest a much more clear wording of the letter. This version avoids euphemisms and jargon. It also responsibly lets the celebrity know of some important implications of their decision to release a "free" photo of themselves.

Since our Jennifer Love Hewitt article currently lacks an image, I thought I'd just go ahead and address this letter to her, to make it more realistic.

Here is the sample letter:

Dear Jennifer Love Hewitt,

I am one of the many volunteer editors of the English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org), the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and use for any for-profit or non-profit purpose.

Unfortunately, our article about you at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//Jennifer_Love_Hewitt lacks an image.

I am aware that you have already made copyrighted publicity photos of yourself available for fair use, and that these depict you as you yourself wish to be depicted in media such as Wikipedia. However, fair use images are not actually allowable within Wikipedia. This is because we must maintain the encyclopedia's entire contents, including all images, as reproducible and alterable for for-profit purposes by anyone anywhere.

We are therefore requesting you to legally and irrevocably release to the world an image of yourself, an image that

• Anyone anywhere may use for profit, and;
• Anyone anywhere may modify as they see fit.

However, we can require that attribution is always made to the producer of the image.

After you have released in perpetuity a photo of yourself under this type of for-profit-allowable and derivative-allowable licensing, we at Wikipedia along with anyone anywhere can then use the photo.

We hope you agree, and thank you for your time and consideration.

Joe Gotdagall

CyberAnth 03:56, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

the line "yourself available for fair use" makes no sense. Fair use doesn't work like that.Geni 00:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

This approach to getting free photos works well for some subjects - when I want a photo of a rare car, I find the owner's club web site - which always has a gallery section - then I email the owner of the site and ask if they would be prepared to donate one or two photos into the public domain or under GFDL and about 80% of the time I get the photo I need. But it's different with big businesses (and big name personalities are definitely big businesses). These organisations find it easier to refuse your request (or more often, simply ignore it) than to go through the cost/effort to get in contact with their corporate lawyers - have them read the license agreement - then to go through all of the internal the red-tape required to say "Yes". It's simply cheaper and easier to ignore your request. In the half dozen cases I've tried to do this, I've never once gotten a reply - let alone a positive reply. (Although admittedly these were requests to release promotional photos of cars, computers, etc...not people.) SteveBaker 15:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ask a lawyer

Instead of all of us stating and restating our opinions, and arguing back and forth endlessly, when it is clear that we are never going to agree, or having pronouncements made from on high again, why don't we ask someone who knows the ins and outs of copyright law for an opinion. As the servers are all hosted in the States, American copyright law would seem to be the most applicable.

I'm sure that the foundation has its own lawyers? Otherwise, out of the thousands of lowly editors like the rest of us, there has to, I'm sure, be at least one lawyer competent in this area. Admittedly, we'd only have their word that they were a lawyer, but wouldn't it be useful to have a simple legal opinion:

are we or are we not allowed under fair use provisions, to use promotional / publicity photos for the purposes of compiling a free encyclopedia? Rmkf1982 | Talk 13:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

We have had our lawyer opinion here. According to him, Don't seek sanctuary in the law. Make the law irrelevant. Provide free content everywhere you can. -- ReyBrujo 13:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ReyBrujo - I had seen that comment already though - he says that he opposes, but not for legal reasons, which to me means he isn't expressing his opinion of the legal niceties, but rather his own opinion. What I meant was can we get someone to give us a legal opinion of whether or not it is permissable. Rmkf1982 | Talk 13:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't legally obliged to be a free content encyclopedia; rather, its founders decided that was the kind of encyclopedia they wanted to build. Wikipedia's policies are a reflection of that vision; they're not intended to allow everything that doesn't actually break the law. —Angr 13:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

However, the issue of what the law allows ought to be important in determining what the best way to promote free content on wikipedia is. Being a "free content encyclopedia" is not something that has an unambiguous meaning. Clearly, the founders believe that having some fair use content does not violate this goal. The issue of what exactly our fair use policies should be ought to bear at least some relationship with the law, if only so that we know the outer bounds of what is allowed. It is quite possible that current policies, while far more restrictive than the law in some ways, might also allow for some content in violation of the law. Even if it does not, knowing what the law is, and how it applies to an enterprise like wikipedia, can only be helpful to this debate. john k 17:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

So far I haven't seen anyone complaining that Wikipedia's fair use policy allows things that are prohibited under U.S. fair use law. If it does, clearly the policy needs to be brought in line with the law. (Someone did mention once that Wikipedia's fair-use policy allows things that aren't allowed under the UK's fair-use law, but they didn't elaborate.) Usually though, it's the other way around, with people saying "Why can't I do XYZ under Wikipedia's fair use policy? It's allowed under U.S. law, isn't it?" To which the answer is, yes, it probably is, but it's Wikipedia policy to keep fair use images to an absolute minimum. Jimbo once said we could have hard-core pornography on the main page and not violate any laws, but it's an editorial decision not to. Similarly, there's no law saying we have to write from the neutral point of view or that all our encyclopedic content has to be verifiable, but we do it anyway. —Angr 09:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a big distinction between the WP:NPOV and WP:V policies and the issue of fair use policy. Enforcing NPOV and V make for a better encyclopedia - denying fair use makes it worse (Compare Andy Warhol in English and German Wikipedias to see clearly what happens when you deny fair use). You have to justify denying legal fair use on purely idealistic grounds - which is a much harder sell. The word "free" in "free content encyclopedia" has many meanings - it's vague. Does this mean that the encyclopedia can be purchased for $0? Does it mean that you can read it for $0? Does it mean that it's OK to mirror it? Is it OK to copy it without giving credit to Wikipedia? Is it free of all legal entanglements? Is is mostly free of intellectual property entanglements? Is it entirely free of such issues? In all countries of the world? In all English-speaking countries of the world? Just in the countries where the servers are housed? Any and all of these interpretations of the word "free" are possible - and depending on precisely where on this spectrum you stick the stake in the ground, you get different answers to what should be done about fair use images. Since that precise spot on the spectrum has never been determined, we are doomed to continue to have this kind of debate over fair use. SteveBaker 15:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Free Images

Images can be divided between free and non-free ones. Recently, there has been a push to eliminate the non-free ones that, apparently, can be recreated. However, until now I have seen many places with suggestions about how to request free images, but not a project to coordinate efforts. Because of this I am giving the first push to WikiProject Free Images, aimed at centralizing discussion about free images. Currently, it is situated at my userspace, User:ReyBrujo/WikiProject Free Images, but with enough positive feedback and help, it will be moved into the Wikipedia namespace.

The WikiProject aim is broad: first and foremost, educate users about the benefits of free images, but also to teach the differences between free licenses when applied to images. Aside this, the WikiProject will focus in replacing the current fair use images with free ones of good quality, by contacting the media, agencies, publishers or other copyright holders as necessary. It would keep a list of requested images to different organizations, with the different steps that had been taken and the different replies. It will also have an index of all the images that had been donated by these organizations, so that they are able to review their contributions. Also, the members of the WikiProject would review the usage of these images in Wikipedia, verifying that attributions are applied at all times when requested by the copyright holder.

This WikiProject was given as a thought during the Wikipedia:Elimination of Fair Use Rationale in Promotional Photos discussion, and since apparently there has not been a similar one, I decided to try it out. With some luck and effort, it should be possible to replace many of the current fair use images with free ones of similar quality.

Please drop by and give some thoughts in there. Thanks. -- ReyBrujo 18:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a great proposal

Fair use is a wonderful legal concept and we should be taking advantage of it, not hiding our heads in the sand. Promotional publicity photos are specifically taken by the subject in anticipation of distribtuion and re-use. Usually, these photos are of much higher quality than any that are likely to be taken by amateur photographers. Legally appropriate use of such images makes this encyclopedia better and should be embraced with open arms. Johntex\^talk 04:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Small naive compromise suggestion

As I understand the position of those who are "anti-fairuse-promophotos", with regard to publicity photos, is, that while publicity rights do limit use of free images, such limits are vastly less than those typically imposed on copyrighted promophotos. For instance you can't use this PD photo of Britney Spears on a perfume bottle, to falsely imply she endorsed it. So, perhaps what we should do is draft a free license that explicity accepts certain limits that are already in place in major U.S. states (e.g. California), due to publicity rights, or other laws. IANL, but here's an example of my pseudo-legal wording for a tag (which needs to be added to, and improved):

This image is copyrighted, but anybody is allowed to use this image for any purpose, including commercial useage, provided there is attribution, and the image is not used to imply an endorsement by the subject of the photo. Derived works are permitted, provided they do not mispresent the subject..

This would help stop stuff like slapping on a famous celebs head onto a nude model's body, to sell naked photos of the celeb (who never posed nude). I have a serious problem asking a person to use their photo for any purpose (if taken to the literal extreme). Since we already accept photos which can't be used for certain purposes (as free), we aught to be able to have a license text which acknowledges that certain re-uses aren't allowable. --Rob 18:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The point is that copyright and personality right are two entirely separate jurisdictions. Images or text that are free to use on copyright grounds are still subject to certain basic legal restrictions that apply to all speech; you can't use them for false advertising or libel or certain other purposes. So when we ask someone for a libre image, we aren't asking them to waive their right to be protected from libel or infringement of their personality rights; those remain protected. It would be somewhat clumsy to attempt to reduplicate this protection in the copyright law (not to mention that writing a good license is a major task for which we would need a lot of help from experienced lawyers). --Robth^Talk 18:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, we can't possebly cover all possible non-copyright related laws that may affect re-users of our content in every part of the world. We aim to give acurate copyright declarations for our stuff, and make sure Wikipedia itself does not break any laws to wich it is subject. For everyting else there is Wikipedia:General disclaimer and Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer. --Sherool (talk) 19:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

IANL and most people aren't lawyers. So, while you say we're not asking people to waive personality rights, how we word license tags and suggested wording for requests for permission, certainly sounds like we're asking for exactly that. I'm mainly concerned with the specific unique situation, where the subject of the photo (or their rep) owns the copyright of the image (which I assume is common with promo photos). They may (we hope) be willing to grant permission for pretty much any use, but aren't willing to accept *literally* any use. I really can't understand why we can't give people some small written assurance, that they're not releasing more rights than is reasonable. As for being "clumsy", that's hopefully fixeable, and definately unimportant. We really have to look at things from the perspective of a *non-lawyer*, who's the subject of an article, considering the release of their own image to Wikipedia. Also, Sherool, I think you're not addressing my suggestion. I never said we have to cover all non-copyright related restrictions. Simply put, we shouldn't ask to use images for *any* purpose, without a qualifier, unless we literally mean that. If we don't literally mean "any", than say "any except". Let's just speak clearly. --Rob 01:11, 7 January 2007 (UTC)