[Commons-l] proposed policy - Commons:Trademarks

Wed Sep 6 16:16:24 UTC 2006

As posted on the talk page: copied here for those not following there:

I would '''strongly''' disagree with any attempt to bar depictions of
products on Commons.  If Commons goes down the road of prohibiting any
content where there may be any restriction on its use under any
circumstances, the project will prove utterly worthless for my use,
and many others'.  The fact is that almost any product of humankind in
recent times has some kind of restriction on use, somewhere.
Manufactured objects, almost certainly, especially if they have
visible trademarks on them (which almost all do, these days) or a
distinctive design (whether considered copyrighted or design protected
in another way).  This covers pictures of cars, computers, electronic
devices of all kinds, buildings, and nearly everything I can think of.

Pictures of living people also have restrictions on them.  In some
jurisdictions, there is in fact no way for any model release or
contract to remove all restrictions; the person depicted still has
some rights over the image.  Pictures which contain living people even
incidentally are also restricted, especially if no model release or
contract has been signed.  The picture as a whole is PROBABLY legally
non-problematic, but if cropped down to show only a person or group as
the main subject would be a problem.

Also, in many countries, creators have inalienable moral rights over
their creations that cannot be signed away.  These are legal
restrictions over and above those of the GFDL or other free license.

If commons goes down the road that any restrictions on use at all
except those specified by GFDL or CC-By-SA are unacceptable, then
Commons will be a repository only for public-domain art (but beware of
those copied without the consent of the current owner!), pictures of
landscapes and growing things (but even then, beware!  Some landscape
features have been trademarked ...) and suchlike.  That Commons is
nearly useless to me, and I will not use it or contribute to it.

-Matt