[Wikinews-l] To stop using Wiki Commons as our default Wikinewsimage source

Thu Mar 10 00:05:39 UTC 2005

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
> 
> > David should come up with an argumentation that survives contact with 
> > reality when it leaves the fair-use island (except the argumentation 
> > lazyness (sp?) to find free solutions).
> >
> > Sorry, if this was to harsh but I'm very scared of this change of policy.
> 
> No, I don't think it is too harsh, it's very important that we be
> quite hard-headed about such things.

Jimbo and Mathias,
I'm a firm believer that disagreeing parties can be steadfast in differing opinion while maintaining the courtesy of civiilty and foregoing insults by implication. 

This issue goes beyond mere laziness.

Here's a reality of the current Wikinews project: 
If a major news event (a terrorist attack, for instance) happens at night at the Eiffel Tower in Paris and we have a Wikinews reporter in Paris on scene who takes a photo, we will not be able to keep that photo on Wikicommons because under French law, night time pictures of the Eiffel Tower are copyrighted and not freely available for distribution (the light installation is a protected work of artistic expression.) But, I can guarantee you that virtually EVERY OTHER news agency - including those in France, will publish night time pictures of the twer. But, the distribution of a WikiCommons night-time photo of the Eiffel Tower would be a violation of copyright if used in Wikipedia or Wikibooks. Therefore, that same photo would be unavailable to Wikinews, even though the copyright agrument is minimal for news (since the shelf life for news is so short).

And that is only one non-logo example.

I'm not asking us to ditch WikiCommons entirely - I'm merely suggesting that the quickly adopted die-hard rule of Wiki-Commons-ONLY was installed without adequately thinking through the limitations it places on the Wikinews project in regard to the abilities of other Internet news organizations. 

I think that was the Wikiverse expandes, it is becoming very obvious that "a rose is a rose is a rose" doesn't always apply. Not all wiki images have interchangeable use or share appropriateness between projects.

For me, I'd like to see an alternative where some images which may not be Inter-wiki suitable could still be used on Wikinews as appropriate. There could be many ways around this - including expiration dates (where after 5, 10 or 30 days, the picture automatically expires and is replaced will a null pixel) - or something similar.

-David