[Wikide-l] Fwd: Re: use of ESA-images in Wikipedia

Sa Okt 30 18:17:50 UTC 2004

Hallo,

Danke für die Korrekturvorschläge von Martin Linnemann. Die Antwortemail unten 
hab ich soeben an die ESA geschickt. Ich melde mich in der Sache wenn es was 
Neues gibt.

Grüße,
Daniel Arnold (Arnomane)

----------  Weitergeleitete Nachricht  ----------

Subject: Re: use of ESA-images in Wikipedia
Date: Samstag, 30. Oktober 2004 19:58
From: Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de>
To: Nadia.Imbert-Vier at esa.int

Dear Mrs. Imbert-Vier,

First of all thank you very much for your answer.

> Further to your request, we only authorise you to use the ESA views to
> illustrate your articles concerning the ESA's missions in your encyclopedia
> Wikipedia for educationnal purposes.
> Of course, for each ESA's view used, the complete copyright has be
> mentioned (ESA+illustrator name).
>
> We do not authorise you to offer to your clients the possibility to
> download, copy, modify the ESA's files and to use them for other purposes.

At first I have a technical quesition to your conditions: How can we meet
 your demand not to offer the possibility of downloading the images, because
 they have to be displayed in a browser in order to use them at Wikipedia and
 therefore downloaded from the servers of Wikipedia?

Here is also an example link how an image is provided in Wikipedia by
WikiMedia-Software ( it is a special page which can be embedded in
text-pages):

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Smart1.jpg

Apart from that these usage conditions are exactly causing the problem I had
described in my previous (mostly German) mail, because they are contrary to
the principles of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, wich means that its content has to be free
according the definitions of the GNU Free Documentation license
( http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL ). Note: Free doesn't mean at
no cost, but free in the sense of freedom.

The main principles of this license are:

1) Credit to the orgininal authors has to be given
2) Freedom of usage: Everyone is allowed to use the work for every purpose.
3) Freedom of modification: Everyone is allowed to modify the work according
to his/her own needs.
4) Freedom of distribution: Everyone is allowed to distribute the work
(original and modified) at the price he/she likes, provided that every
interested person gets a transparent (open data format) machine readable copy
of the work and that for modifications/derivative work the same rights are
given to everyone.

Note: Personal rights (e.g. of persons shown in images) and trademark rights
are untouched by this license.

Many ESA-images were uploaded by several people at Wikipedia in the false
assumption, that your conditions are compatible to the GNU-FDL, which is
clearly not the case.

So we unfortunately only have two options:
a) deleting all ESA images in Wikipedia, although Wikipedias goal is
 education and the Foundation of Wikipedia is a non profit organisation,
 simply because of the far reaching rights we give to everyone (and of course
 we deliberately don't want to restrict them).
b) the images can be released by ESA at conditions compatible to the GNU-FDL.

Of course b) is only a wish not a demand. You are the copyright owner. You
 can do whatever you want with your content.

If we have to choose a) many people using and enhancing Wikipedia would be
very disappointed, because the articles (as the ones I was pointing out in my
previous mail) would suffer a dramatic loose of astethetical and
informational quality - and of course there would be a loose of balance in
 the content presented by Wikipedia, since the NASA allows the use of it
 images within the public domain.

If you didn't already get in contact with this project: Wikipedia is a large
community driven project (founded by an Open Source enthusiast called Jimbo
Wales from the US) in order to create a free encyclopedia. It has mostly the
same and in some aspects already lager dimensions as Microsoft Encarta or The
Encyclopaedia Britannica and has gained larger media interest in the recent
past (e.g. "The New York Times", BBC, ARD - German state television, "Le
Monde", "France 5"). Wikipedia contains at the moment more than one million
articles in all languages (only German pages already more than 150'000, there
also exists a large french subproject at http://fr.wikipedia.org ) and
belongs to the top 500 of visited internet pages according to independent
analysis (e.g. place 406 according to http://www.alexa.com ).

Wikipedia is the (already successful) attempt to port the idea of free
software (for example the famous Linux operating system, which is also used
in many places by ESA) to literature.

So would it be possible to release the ESA images within the Public Domain or
the GNU-FDL? ESA would for sure win with this step and would gain even more
public popularity also outside the European Union.

However your answer is, we will respect your copyright (and act according to
it).

Best regards,
Daniel Arnold
-a voluntary Wikipedia contributor

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