But you have to be careful - just because a image is licenced under cc dosn't mean that it isn't also GFDL. ABCD On 5/19/05, David Benbennick <dbenbenn(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: Ugh. Without a clear grant we have no right to use the images whatsoever. Copyright defaults closed not open. But I'll accept that the decision has been made and I will complain no more. ... and I will still replace at least the lower quality ones with GFDLed image as the opportunity presents itself.

On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: I really must protest here. The stock.xchng site rules (which presumably the uploader and downloader have both read) states that "1. Selling and redistribution of these photos (individually, or as a whole) without written permission is prohibited. Using the photos in website templates, on postcards, mugs etc. doesn't count as selling or redistribution, however you are not allowed to build a gallery using the photos you downloaded from here." so when a user indicates that there "are no usage restrictions" it would appear quite clear that they are speaking in terms of condition 1 on the website. ... These terms would likely permit the normal use in wikipedia articles, but they should not be accepted in commons and we should probably find them unacceptable like we find non-commercial-only media unacceptable. In copyright law usage and redistribution are distinct concepts, my GFDLed works are available to you without any restriction on usage and with a clear set of grants and conditions on redistribution. It's not clear that without a written contract if any limitation on *usage* could ever be imposed on a copyrighted work, in any case. Even if you disagree that usage and redistribution are distinct, the terms on the stock.xchng website make it quite clear that the licensesor of the works considers them distinct for the purpose of establishing your rights to redistribute his works. If I were a stock.xchng contributor I'd be quite rightfully angered if I stumbled across my work listed on wikipedia as 'public domain' (which some of them are). Our behavior is especially in inexcusable in light of the fact that stock.xchng usually provides a means to email a contributor and strongly encourages such communications: Why are we even bothering to argue over stock.xchng when we could just contact the copyright holders directly? Wikipedia has grown past the point where we need to rely on grey legality images, and preserving them only discourages people who would submit free ones in their place.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Thing is, if someone says "contact me for permission", and gives a possibly years unused email address, what can you do? People who give Yahoo, Hotmail or other free webmail addresses are virtually unreachable, because a) the account could be dead b) the account could get so much spam that messages never get through c) the account might be alive but not used anymore I can think of at least one image where this is the case. I tried emailing the author, but got no response. - -- Alphax GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: When I follow that link I get to a page with some generic instructions, there is a 'terms' button on the top which has the ruls for both uploaders and downloaders. When you sign up an account it presents you with a little box with the terms as well. My point related to that was that use restrictions in absence of a written contract may or may not be legally binding. It was more of an aside than anything else, Just because one rule disagrees with the users dropdown doesn't invalidate the whole thing. The terms on the site refer to the specific terms set per image by the holder over and over again. I notice that you didn't reply to my comment on contacting the copyright holder.. with as many places as that's advised on the site, you'd think that the submitters at wikipedia wouldn't be so averse to it. If you're so sure that the stock.xchng contributors will not mind, then why not have a policy of sending the request? It should bring us more direct contributors.

On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: So after this email I went ahead and attempted to contact about 9 copyright holders whos works were from stock.xchng, it would have been 10 but one of them already had all his work taken off stock.xchng for it being copyright violating (trying to get clarification on that from stock.xchng). My emails basically said "I noticed your picture is being used in the Wikipedia Encyclopedia article on [link]" gush gush how wonderful and how it improves the article then "I noticed that it is labeled public domain, I know stock.xchng only gives you a few licensing options, and I wanted to know if this was an accurate description of how you intended to license your work?" I've received three replies back so far, one indicating that her work was indeed "free for any use" but two who complained that stock.xchng isn't clear in their licensing and that their work isn't PD. One of them said his work is cc-by-nc-sa, and I've updated one of his images accordingly (but since most of the images have no attribution, it's difficult to go find all of his photos). I find it really amusing that we went through the trouble of having a vote on this when we could have just asked the copyright holders.

On 5/20/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote: 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.

Erik Moeller wrote: This suggests an interesting contest for wikipedian photographers; who can illustrate the most previously-unillustrated articles, using only new photographs taken on a designated day? The articles should already exist at the time of the contest's announcement - no fair creating road intersection articles for the purpose! :-) Optionally, there should be no existing useful pictures on commons or in any language's article (though that's hard to check). Stan

Gregory Maxwell wrote: All the better! Then we can choose the best one for the article. The other ones can remain on Commons, but needn't be used in Wikipedia articles. Also, I think such an effort would be a great idea. While it is true that there are currently many "easy targets", it's all the better, because then they will be filled with images quickly. The contest will gather more meaning later when all the "easy targets" are exhausted!

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gregory Maxwell wrote: [snip] Does anyone have a *free* photo of doughnuts? - -- Alphax GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis

Gregory Maxwell wrote: I believe that the rule in law is that the specific overrides the general. In other words if the owner of the particular image wants to allow a broader use than the site itself, that's fine. Similarly, if one of our contributors wants to give users a broader right than what would be allowed by GFDL that's permissible. Some have already done that by invoking CC licensing. Eccentric rules are often not enforceable. The fact that the intent may be commendable is not relevant. Ec