On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote:
That directly contradicts the terms they uploaded them
under, which
allow for commercial use. To say we have to contact every individual SXC
user is like saying we have to contact people uploading their work as
CC-BY-SA and make sure that they really "meant it." I disagree with that
notion. If people explicitly upload images with "no usage restrictions",
then that's what I think we should refer to, unless these people then
contact us and complain about the usage.
As you pointed out, nothing on that site is clear and reliable enough
to be binding.
The users aren't given an option that represents cc-by-sa-nc.
Sometimes they make statements like that on their user pages, I'd say
I have evidence that shows we tend to ignore such things, but I can't
tell what was on the userpage when we took the image. :)
If someone were to give us legal advice that they'd stand by, I highly
doubt it would be anything except "don't touch those images with a 10
foot pole".
The vast majority of the images we have taken from stock exchange are
mediocre images of everyday objects that almost any wikipedia with a
camera could reproduce with little effort. Of the images I've looked
at so far I could replace the majority with simllar images before
sundown. It's silly to add risk and complexity for a bunch of images
we could easily replace (door knobs, gumballs, etc). It shows a lack
of forsight for us to make our collection less useful by clouding the
waters by mixing in potentially questionable copyright status
material.