[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer

Sat Sep 2 02:40:57 UTC 2006

I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be
having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the
mailing list.

~Mark Ryan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jaydee Gee <JDGee1 at gmail.com>
Date: 02-Sep-2006 08:30
Subject: [Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer]
To: ultrablue at gmail.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jaydee Gee <JDGee1 at gmail.com>
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:41:40 -0400
Subject: Dealing with a famous photographer
Hello folks. I (longtime editor "JDG") stopped monitoring Wikipedia
lists long ago, but I'd like to ask some advice on dealing with a rather
famous photographer in my attempts to include at least one of his images
in the English Wikipedia's Bob Dylan article.

To be honest, this photographer's 1966 portrait of Dylan was up there as
the lead photograph in the article for almost all of `05 and most of
this year, until the Fair Use crackdown. I'll suppress my opinion of
that crackdown and go on to my question: given the following
correspondence, what's the best way to reel the photographer (let's call
him "Mr. K") in?:

<start correspondence>

"Hello J,

Thanks for your email requesting use of my photograph of Bob Dylan for
the lead photo in your Wikipedia article about him.  All in all, I'd
like to go forward but  I'll first need a moment to re-read and fully
understand the "GNU Free Documentation License" material.  I do not want
to lose control of this iconic photograph.  Anything you can say about
that would be helpful.

If we go forward, what is the smallest size file you can use for good
Internet photo reproduction?  The file size you've picked up was made
for press use and for my part,is far too large for Internet use.  The
picture has my copyright notice on the photograph (on Dylan's shoulder)
and I would do the same for the new file  I would provide.   Where would
I send it?

Please let me know your deadline for getting this done.  Yes, I would
like to be linked to my website - what information must I provide?
.
Best regards,
K

----------------------------------------------------------------

 > Dear Mr. K,
 >
 > I'm one of the thousands of drones working on Wikipedia. Some of us
who have been overseeing the Bob Dylan article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan) very much want to use one of
your excellent portraits as the lead photo in the article, but copyright
concerns have forced us to use a very inferior picture. The portrait we
wish to use is the one shown here: >
http://www.cleonproductions.com/flotsam/Bob_Dylan_by_DK.png
 >
 > Would you consider giving Wikipedia explicit permission to use it at
the resolution shown at the above link? We can offer no payment, but we
can offer a link back to your own website, in addition to the standard
photo credit by name. As Wikipedia is currently the 17th most used site
in the world, this link may prove valuable, particularly if you ever try
selling photographs from your site or from a site linked to your site
 >
 > If you choose to give us permission, this particular digital file of
the photo will then fall under the "GNU Free Documentation License" (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License),
with a stipulation that whoever re-uses Wikipedia content must also
display the photo credit as well as a hypertext link of your choosing.
Of course, all rights to the original photo, as well as digital
reproductions at higher resolutions, remain with you.
 >
 > Thanks for your time and consideration,
 >
 > JDG
 >

<end correspondence>

Sorry for the length, but you can see it raises some halfway tricky
questions. I'm not especially knowledgeable about copyright law nor even
of Wikipedia\media's own policies in this area... So, how would you
answer Mr. K (with a view, of course, to "getting" his fine photograph)?

Thx,

JDG