User:Tillman/Non-commercial image policy

DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION edit

Several editors have proposed reopening the discussion of Wikipedia policy on use of non-commercial licensed images (for example, images licensed CC-NC). The following discussion is being transferred from Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates#Non commercial image license. The discussion there began with photographers who would prefer to license their contributions to WP as non-commercial , but expanded to the use of existing archival and Flickr NC-licensed images. This discussion attracted interest from such WP notables as Jimbo Wales and Erik Möller.

Some highlights from the (now closed) Talk:FPC discussion:

Having recently invested quite a lot in photographic gear, I am reluctant to give away my images for free. I have no problem with wikipedia or any other non-commercial organization using them, however I would not like commercial institutions to benefit at my expense. I therefore suggest wikipedia adopt a non commercial license such as CC-NC . This will not violate wikis principles of free knowledge and will convince photographers to release higher resolution pictures as well. It might also convince professional photographers to release their work knowing that their work will not be used for commercial means and that they will still be able to make a living.

I don't know if this issue has been discussed before and I know village pump would probably be the place but I wanted some feedback from the photographers before taking it there. --Muhammad(talk) 05:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

Won't happen per Jimbo. GFDL is good enough in preventing some commercial use because they need to put a copy of the license close to the photo (which isn't going to happen for adverts, prints, posters and all the usual photo stuff). MER-C 07:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is very unlikely to happen. The licensing structure is pretty well engrained. I'd be interested to know what Jimbo's reasoning is, though. Is it ideological or commercial in nature? What about a license that is commercial but restricts commercial use to Wikipedia and its various sites, that way Wikipedia can advertise down the track (not that I would agree with advertising except as the very last resort to remain viable, but that is another issue) without giving away content? Surely a compromise can be found that doesn't allow commercial exploitation of content by companies that are simply being cheap, rather than having a genuine educational need for the images. Because thats what I see the issue as being about. Wikipedia's purpose should be to educate the masses - not to give away media content to commercial interests. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:17, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

- Lets invite Jimbo to this discussion. --Muhammad(talk) 13:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

Two things. First, although there is still some debate about it in some quarters, in general CC NC licensing is not thought to prevent hosting on a site with advertising. So it would be possible for Wikipedia to both have NC licensed images and to have advertising. I oppose both, by the way. :-) Second, the best way to understand my position on this is to read Erik Moeller's essay.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

With all respect to the author of the essay it strikes me as having been written from the wrong perspective and hence contains several errors. The key problem as I see it is that he's assuming contributors want their contributions to spread in numerous derivatives far beyond Wikipedia. I for one dont. I contribute to Wikipedia as I think it is a valuable resource as an encyclopedia only. I'm contributing to increase the informative value of the articles on Wikipedia, not to contribute to a general free content movement.

[snip most of long comment on Erik Moeller's essay ]

Conclusion: I would disagree that uploading under a free license protects you from large scale exploitation - I think every photographer has a pet story about how they got ripped - a good one would be Diliff and Apple. I think that providing photographers with this kind of basic protection and choice in how thier images get used will strongly benefit the project (and by the project I mean a free online encyclopedia) with semi-pro grade photography. --Fir0002 01:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Nicely put. About a month ago, I did a Google search of my username and found many instances where my images are used throughout the Internet (see here). While it's flattering, none of them asked, as is specified on the image pages themselves (granted it's not part of the license, but it's common decency). And these examples are only the ones that actually credit me. There must be many that use my images but don't mention the author. ~ ωαdεstεr16_{♣kiss me}^{i'm Irish♣} 07:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

I think we have quite a bit of hubris here on the part of our photographers. While your work is appreciated, it is by no means fundamentally different than the work done by our thousands of article writers. (Collaboration doesn't somehow diminish their efforts.) Wikipedia is and always has been a free culture project. Its goal is education, yes, but it is also the creation of free content. Content that anyone can use for anything. Content whose price is the same as its marginal cost, so that it can be spread as widely as possible and bring the greatest utility to those who would benefit from employing it. Wikipedia's licensing is also forward-looking. Perhaps in a hundred years, the Wikimedia Foundation will no longer exist. Maybe no nonprofit will want to take on hosting Wikipedia, because they can't get the donations necessary to do so. Using a commercial license allows the continuation of Wikipedia content into the future, so long as someone can make a buck doing it. (And this will probably be true for a long, long time.) At this moment, there is no shortage of photographers willing to donate content under wiki's terms. There is no reason to compromise our principles here. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

I wonder who is exploiting whom. So far all the prominent FPC contributors have enjoyed the exposure their work gets from appearing on the frontpage of one of the world's most popular websites. You guys already get widely idolized despite of uploading only downsampled versions of your images and clinging to the hard-to-reuse GFDL-1.2. And now you are even asking for NC licenses?! This is very disappointing. :-( --Dschwen 16:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

As an aside, many months ago I approached the Foundation about allowing NC images in place of fair use images for subjects where no truly free image exists. That is to say that NC might be allowed, but only when there was no more free alternative was available to show the same subject. Personally, I consider NC to be much clearer for reusers than fair use, since in both cases a commercial reuser may need to remove images, but NC provides a bright line while fair use is fuzzy and ought to be looked at on a case by case basis. The Foundation was open to the idea of using limited NC images at the time, provided that the community backed it. Though there would still be a tension between the desire to encourage people to create truly free content and the desire to have any photo at all of a difficult to obtain subject. Dragons flight (talk) 20:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

-- [Dragons flight is the creator of the popular Global Warming Art images widely used at WP. This comment, wikilink and emphasis added by Pete Tillman (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)]

There are a number of historic archives that license their photographs for free noncommercial reuse under the CC-NC licenses -- a good example is the large LA Times photo archive at UCLA. And many photographers at Flickr license their photos as CC-NC. We're missing out on a lot of good, free content by not allowing CC-NC licensed material at Wikipedia. So I'm very pleased to hear the Foundation is open to changing this policy. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 20:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, this was an informal, in-person discussion. It should not be read as the WMF making any sort of a commitment. However, the people I talked to did seem open to giving serious consideration to whether there could be some limited legitimate uses of NC content on Wikimedia projects. Dragons flight (talk) 21:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

It's been Wikimedia's long-standing position that allowing commercial re-use contributes to its educational mission (the negative impact of stupid commercial uses is outweighed by the positive impact of educational, commercial uses), and that position is unlikely to change. That said, I do believe we need a license that clearly has a "strong copyleft" effect on photographs and similar media, so that when they are used e.g. in newspaper articles, the surrounding articles would need to be copylefted, too. That is consistent with our licensing policy, but neither the GFDL nor CC-BY-SA have really developed clear and unambiguous language to this effect. Creative Commons is open to modifying CC-BY-SA to clarify that copyleft applies on images used in the context of other works (as opposed to only applying to modifications to the image itself). While not helping you with all use cases you're concerned about (it would still allow commercial use in ads, provided the ads are freely licensed), it should certainly limit use in ways which are consistent with our values. This is something we can continue to work on together. Beyond that, I'd encourage the people concerned about commercial use to think about Wikipedia not as their primary publishing platform, but as a way to highlight and promote some of their work, while generating revenue elsewhere.--Eloquence * 01:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

[Quote FYI from User:Eloquence: "My name is Erik Möller. I'm a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Foundation's current Deputy Director"] --Pete Tillman (talk) 16:59, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

[snip]

I seemed to have ruffled some feathers when I suggested that photographers uncomfortable with commercial re-use of their photos stop contributing them to Wikipedia. I did not mean this as an us vs them comment. The reason I said this is that the issue is a frequent proposal (especially on Commons and the listservs) and both the community and the WMF have been consistently opposed to the idea from the beginning. Yet it keeps getting proposed every few months and we have to go through the same arguments over and over again. The issue of non-commercial licenses is not simply "a matter of degree", it would represent a fundamental change in the philosophy and values of both Wikipedia and the free culture movement (which Wikipedia has an integral relationship with). If you intend to continue this proposal, please familiarize yourself with the history of the issue:

There are also dozens of threads on Commons and the listservs, but I think the links above give the best explanations. I apologize if I was curt in my earlier comments, but hearing this proposal from photographers who are actively benefiting from their exposure on Wikipedia (judging by how many inquiries you guys have on your talk pages) seemed somewhat less than altruistic to me. I will, however, assume good faith and believe that you guys are pursuing this issue for selfless reasons ("karma", etc). Kaldari (talk) 16:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Please note that the entire thread is substantial, nuanced and well worth reading -- but it's bit intimidating to come on cold! Hence this introduction and summary. Best regards, Pete Tillman (talk) 17:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)