[Foundation-l] a new free image!

Sat Feb 24 00:27:29 UTC 2007

On 2/23/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Is your point that we should remove all "fair use images", causing the
> articles to be without an image making someone donate a free one?
>
> Cbrown1023
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
> daniwo59 at aol.com
> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 7:18 PM
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Cc: commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!
>
> Today we got a nice new image on the English Wikipedia--see [[Dennis
> Johnson]], a star of the NBA, who died recently. The image has a story, and
> the
> story has a moral. I want to tell it.
>
> The creator is an established sports photographer who has worked for the
> NBA
> professional as a photographer. He is also one of the many thousands of
> uknown (to us) fans of Wikipedia who visit teh site regularly. When Johnson
> died,
> he went to the article, and noticed there was no picture, so he decided to
> donate one that he took. He called the office to ask how to do it.
>
> After speaking with him briefly, I realized that we have a potential
> treasure trove of FREE images here, which he was willing and eager to share
> with  us,
> from the NBA and many other areas. I asked Greg Maxwell to speak with him
> about licensing, and the rest is history. He selected an image and released
> it
> under the GFDL license. Hopefully, there will be more to come.
>
> As for the moral of the story: we were missing an image, and someone
> decided
> to release one of his own--a high quality professional image at that. As
> for
> now, I can only wonder at the argument that we keep fairuse images until we
>
> find free ones. The fact that we did not have an image encouraged someone to
>
> "fix the problem" and provide a free one. There will likely be many more to
>
> come.
>
> So, I just want to say thank you to the photographer, who understood the
> value in what we are doing, and to Greg Maxwell, for spending time with him
> and
> explaining the free license philosophy. And I also want to thank all the
> contributors who did NOT rush to post a fairuse image. Because of that, a
> magnificent image is now free.
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The point is that fair use only applies when no free replacement can
be obtained. Yet rushing to post a fair use without first actually
trying to find some free image, discourages finding out it later