[Wikipedia-l] What would Richard Stallman say?

Fri Feb 20 22:09:36 UTC 2004

Delirium wrote:

> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>>> If each wikipedian took 10 pictures of the interesting things he 
>>> visits, I'm
>>> sure we would not need nonfree pictures any more.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> No matter how many pictures I take of the interesting things I visit,
>> I will never take a picture of Bob Keeshan (1927-2004) -- and you will
>> not find a free picture of him.
>>  
>>
> However, it may not be impossible to acquire one eventually.  As 
> Wikipedia gets more famous, the estates of famous people may start to 
> dislike the fact that that person's biography has a conspicuous lack 
> of an image, and consent to GFDL-licensing an image to fill the gap.  
> If we fill it in with a fair use image, that removes the incentive.

Maybe, maybe not - a site that wants to drive traffic will have an 
incentive to
keep the pics out, and readers unaware of all this will just go to the site
directly, blow off WP.  It would "game the system" :-) better to have the
fair use picture up for a long time, get lots of visitors, then announce a
campaign to replace with a licensed picture, give the estate a chance to 
offer
a licensed picture as an alternative to the fan's snapshot showing him 
picking
his nose while going into the Mustang Ranch. :-) If you don't have such a
picture already, Photoshop/GIMP is very helpful...

As they say, Be Bold!

Stan