David Gerard wrote:
On 24/09/2007, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com>
wrote:
Considered ethical by a vocal few who have the
stamina to impose
their views everywhere? Certainly not. By a majority of
Wikipedia editors? I don't know. By publicists who would love
to have high-quality (if copyrighted) images disseminated widely?
Certainly yes. By a majority of our readers? Certainly yes.
So target the publicists. Show them an awful free-content shot, point
out to them that releasing a good promo under this handy list of
acceptable licenses means a better pic on a top-10 website and the
number one reference site.
Ayup. A fine idea.
The reason I don't do that is, well, because I'm too lazy.
And while I could rouse myself if it was important, this
particular task just seems so... unnecessary, both for me and
those publicists.
I'm pretty sure most of them thought they'd given us (and all
the rest of the media) high-quality press photos we could use
already. Yeah, they were copyrighted, but with terms that said,
"permission to use for publicity purposes hereby granted in advance."
I'm pretty sure they didn't receive explicit permission requests
from every little newspaper and magazine and concert promoter in
the world that ever used one of those photos; I'm pretty sure
they would have been annoyed and/or overwhelmed if they did.
But now we come along and say, "Oh, no, that's not good enough
for *us*. We need you to choose new licensing terms from our
handy list, here. What, you haven't heard of Creative Commons or
the GFDL? We thought everyone had by now. But you should do it,
it'll be better."
It's true, we're big enough now we'll increasingly get away
with it. But (while I have no great love for some of those big
entertainment companies) I can't help but think that they're
going to have to spend thousands of dollars getting opinions from
their high-priced lawyers before they can be sure it's better for
*them*. Oh, well.
Anyway, I'll stop whining now. Most of the images I upload are
PD-by-me, anyway. I don't care *that* much about pop-culture
publicity photos, and while I think the encyclopedia is poorer
without them, I've long known I don't have the stamina to lobby
for them (and a few other seemingly reasonable fair-use cases)
in the face of the indomitable few who are bound and determined
to get rid of them.
Also, before I go, I'd like to apologize to readers of this list
for the way half of this thread got sidetracked onto some bizarre
tangent involving banned-editor craziness. I have no idea what
that was all about, and it's certainly not what I was intending
to bring up when I started the thread.