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Wikipedia:Non-free content/Publicity photos

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This page is intended to hold fair and open discussion on the use of promotional photographs on Wikipedia. An outline of the current issue regarding the use of promotional photographs is detailed on this page below. Discussion of the issue may be found and partaken in on the talkpage

Overview and History

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Wikipedia-en has long had lax enforcement and lax interpretation of existing policy in regards to copyrighted photos used under fair use. The desire to have photos at all led to a great number of photos being used under fair use rationale where there was legitimate ability to have a free replacement of equal quality. As Wikipedia grew, there was a movement initiated to enforce stricter interpretation of existing policy, up to and including deletion of images. Starting in late 2005, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fair_use was started to refine Wikipedia's fair use guidelines and help curtail the usage of fair use images on Wikipedia-en. This refinement process was enacted by those who desired very restrictive use of fair use on Wikipedia.

Wikiproject Fair Use started the move towards refining and improving fair use rationale and helped initiate the deletion of many contributed images that may have failed WP:FU clause #1, that an image was replaceable by an equivalent freely licensed image. In the case of most inanimate and/or common objects, this was a perfectly reasonable campaign.

Editors who desire publicity photos to be allowed on Wikipedia acknowledge that this interpretation is perfectly reasonable when considering images of snow cones, cream pies and other inanimate objects, landscapes and buildings. They also acknowledge that the current Fair Use policy actually allows for publicity photo's under acceptable fair use. Most inanimate objects are quite easy to obtain a freely licensed photo of as they are lying about waiting to have their photo taken, and United States law is quite clear that a photo of an inanimate object easily qualifies for licensing by the photographer. (except in the case of photos of statues or art work still under copyright; those are derivatives and cannot be licensed by the photographer)

Around July of 2006, possibly due to this post by Jimbo Wales to the Publicity Photos talk page, Wikiproject Fair Use enlarged the scope of their campaign to eliminate publicity photos of living people which had been used under fair use rationale. Now that publicity photos have begun to be marked for deletion, significant disagreement with the campaign has been voiced by many parties, with the side deleting images claiming that policy demands the deletions and cannot be changed, and the other side disputing this claim and calling for discussion and for the tagging to cease in the interim until a resolution has been found.

There have been many attempts by individuals through posts at various locations which have all failed to have stop this non-consensus implementation of "existing policy". Ultimately, the people deleting fair use publicity photos feel justified in their task and had been unwilling to listen to any dissenting opinion, having become emboldened by their previous 6 months of successfully deleting fair use photos of inanimate objects without opposition and Jimbo Wales' apparent endorsement of their actions. By comparison, those who would defend publicity photographs feel this to be a different situation to that relating to inanimate objects, and one where policy does not allow for such actions as implemented.

Both sides acknowledge that the noble efforts of those tagging publicity photo's for deletion have brought the issue (the problem of not even trying to replace them/lax attitude towards their use) into the spotlight (for which they should be only commended). Those against the tagging feel that that same action is doing harm to both the quality of the encyclopedia and its standing. The issue has caused much strife between the parties adding the deletion tags to promotional photo's and the people who first helped add the content to the encyclopedia. Many people have made great effort at Wikipedia and their efforts shouldn't be dismissed so easily. it means some peolpe can if they ask perimission for fair use

Reasoning

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Non- mass deletion

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The reasons for advocating fair use of publicity photos of people are thus...

  • Since by definition, the implicit purpose of publicity photos is to be used by non-copyright holders to publicize the subject of the image, virtually any conceivable encyclopedic use of a publicity image, whether by Wikipedia or a secondary user, would be upheld in court as fair use.
  • There is no plausible legal rationale for preferring GFDL images to publicity fair use images; the only uses of publicity images that would not be considered fair use (libeling someone, promoting a commercial product, etc.) would also not be allowed with a GFDL image.
  • It is impossible to make an encyclopedia without making use of the right of fair use; every article that quotes from a copyrighted work or paraphrases plot or other details of a creative work takes advantage of fair use. There is no legal, moral or philosophical justification for allowing fair use of text and disallowing fair use of images.
  • Publicity photos have rarely have an equivalent and are not easily replaceable with free alternatives. Free alternatives are almost never high quality and do not offer the same value, thereby passing FU clause #1. If a free alternative of similar quality is available, it should be used.
  • Wikipedia is an encyclopedia first and a social movement second. GFDL advocacy for ideals needn't overcome the first mandate of Wikipedia, being a great resource.
  • Personality laws are different in every state and make it impossible to verify a photographer truly has the right to license their amateur photo under their own, free license.
  • Most celebrities are unlikely to ever release a quality photo of themselves unlicensed, and for a variety of reasons, they shouldn't be expected to.
  • Any existing policy or interpretation thereof which outlawed the posting of, or enabled the deletion of, publicity photos was certainly enacted without proper discussion. A motivated opposition wasn't aware of changes in policy or enforcement until the deletion started happening. Indeed, the current fair use policy has a section devoted to how publicity photo's should be tagged, and allows for their use.

Pro- mass deletion

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The reasons for advocating deletion tagging of publicity photos of people are thus...

  • One of the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation, of which Wikipedia is part, is to promote the use and availability of free-licensed content. This means, at the very least, a strong preference for the creation and or re-licensing under free licenses of images. This is, in particular, a central goal of Wikimedia Commons, and a collateral goal of Wikipedia.
  • There are at least two ways that goal may be furthered by refusing to allow the use of publicity photos under fair use doctrine when it is possible to obtain another image:
    1. Wikipedians are more likely to be motivated to seek or create free-licensed images if that is the only way to obtain these images for articles.
    2. Performers (and, perhaps more importantly, their publicity agents) and companies with products are more likely to grant free licenses to use their publicity photos if one reward for doing that that is a chance to get a high-quality image of their own choosing into Wikipedia, which is now one of the most-visited sites on the World Wide Web. Each time we use such an image on a fair use basis, we reduce their motivation to license the image freely.

Immediate Goals of publicity photo advocates

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  • Cessation of the deletion of existing fair use publicity photos, and a halt to any further uploads of the same, until such time as a resolution to the issue has been agreed upon.
  • A fair use white list that allows the use of publicity photos of people, acknowledging that quality makes the photo difficult to replace with a free alternative and therefore passes FU clause #1. This would put publicity photos at the same level as album covers, screenshots and other such minutiae and allow them to appropriately be used to illustrate the subject of the image in only the subject's article. We recognize that constant with Wikipedia goals for a free encyclopedia, publicity photos that do have a free alternative of similar value (read also high quality) should be used instead.

Participants

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Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.

  1. Jeffness (talk · contribs)
  2. Jack Cox (talk · contribs)
  3. Nareek (talk · contribs)
  4. Badagnani (talk · contribs)
  5. Jenolen (talk · contribs) - member of the media, deals with fair use issues on a daily basis
  6. VitaleBaby (talk · contribs)
  7. Stick Fig (talk · contribs) - member of the media, deals with promotional photos on a daily basis
  8. Tvccs (talk · contribs) - Also a member of the media
  9. TheQuandry (talk · contribs)
  10. MarionADelgado (talk · contribs) - a member of the media, also creative artist

Proposed solutions/resolutions

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1, A project for obtaining freely licensed photographs

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Everyone's end goal, is that Wikipedia have freely licensed photos. The major disagreement between editors is one side thinks everything should be deleted out of hand and the other doesn't want them deleted until a reasonable replacement is found because quality is important.

What if everybody came together and refocused their efforts towards something that's actually productive? A solution may be to I agree to allow fair use publicity photos on Wikipedia (as the current fair use main policy page suggests, but start a Wikiproject effort to obtain publicity photos under a free license. Instead of hassling editors and just deleting their hard work, what if it was turned to something productive like actually trying to obtain the very image under a free license? The project would also be handed sole responsibility/permission for uploading publicity photographs, ensuring that they are used only when a reasonable free alternative is not available, and that any non free promo photos are correctly tagged. Promo-photo's not supplied by the project (or unverifiable as such) after its inception would be deleted. Such deletions would involve civil inquiries with the uploading user.

That way, the images can be kept as FU, but the Wikiproject - the combined effort and goal of both sides of the current issue - would go towards trying to get publicity photos from their authors under a free license, while ensuring that only appropriate use of non-free photo's exists. Does this idea do far more for wikipedia than just deleting publicity photos?

Resources

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Pages where discussion has previously occurred

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Related Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fair_use

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