[Foundation-l] Fair use images

Thu Mar 9 21:02:07 UTC 2006

On 3/9/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Keep in mind that many of the oldest images were uploaded before
> explicit licensing was required, and a general assumption that the
> content was uploaded with licensing under the GFDL.  That assumption has
> since been proven to be inaccurate in many cases, and a reason why this
> is no longer taken at face value.  Still, going after older unlicensed
> images is hardly a good policy, especially when the uploader didn't know
> they were supposed to provide licensing information.  For new images and
> recent uploads, yeah, you need to meet the licensing requirements.  And
> copyright enforcement is done on most images that are recent uploads.

Most images on EN have some kind of license attached... but it's often wrong.
It's very depressing to go through and correct the tagging because of
two factors:

1) A lot of them (45,846 on enwiki at the moment) are fully orphaned,
it feels like such a pointless  activity to retag these.
2) Sometimes other users treat you like crap because you've found out
that their favorite picture is a copyvio or otherwise unacceptable for
inclusion on our site.

Worse, perhaps, is that fact that images which fall under (1)
sometimes even caues you problems under (2).   :(