[Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

Thu Jun 2 08:28:05 UTC 2011

Risker, 02/06/2011 00:53:
> I think the more important part of this announcement is the resolution on
> images of identifiable people  [...]

I agree. It's also the first time (if memory serves me well and if I 
understand it correctly) that the board asks for a specific content 
policy of a specific project to be changed in some direction: 
«Strengthen [...] the current Commons guideline», compared to «_continue 
to practice_ rigorous active curation of content» in the other 
resolution. I'm not sure I like it, although the spirit of the 
resolutions is balanced and agreeable.

> It should probably be emphasized that this would apply equally to projects
> that host "fair use" or other images, and is not simply an expectation on
> Commons.

That's not what the resolution says, though. I think that it would be 
more interesting to have some clear legal guideline to understand what's 
/legal/ in different countries (at least the most important ones, or the 
countries whose citizens more frequently ask deletion of images to the 
WMF), because this is something the community is often not able to 
produce and the WMF has the indisputable right to keep the projects 
lawful (at least in some countries, which are tough to define; see e.g. 
the quite generic draft 
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies#Applicable_Law>).
Instead, we'll now have a «Consent of the subject (who is a non-public 
figure) is required even for photographs taken in public places in the 
following countries [...] (incomplete list)», a "Citation needed" in 
"Legal issues" section and finally some links to random websites about 
some (very few) countries.
I don't expect this to improve much on Commons, not to speak of other 
projects; I know people who work in television companies and it's clear 
that even professionals don't know all the details of the law, because 
it's just too complex.

Nemo