Slashdot Mirror
Why the Photos On Wikipedia Are So Bad
Reservoir Hill writes "The NY Times has an article investigating why, unlike the articles on Wikipedia which in theory are improved, fact checked, footnoted, and generally enhanced over time, the photos that go with Wikipedia articles are so bad and in many cases there is no photo at all for even well known public figures. Few high-quality photographs, particularly of celebrities, make it onto on Wikipedia because Wikipedia runs only pictures with the most permissive Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to use an image, for commercial purposes or not, as long as the photographer is credited. 'Representatives or publicists will contact us' horrified at the photographs on the site, says Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation. 'They will say: "I have this image. I want you to use this image." But it is not as simple as uploading a picture that is e-mailed to us.' Recent photographs on Wikipedia are almost exclusively the work of amateurs who don't mind giving away their work. 'Amateur may be too kind a word; their photos tend to be the work of fans who happen to have a camera,' opines the Times's author. Ultimately the issue for professional photographers who might want to donate their work is copyright. 'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
Wikipedia does not have to increase its popularity, it has no online free rivals. It is the people who have a wikipedia page that will be willing to have such a nice picture than all American presidents who will provide copyleft pictures. If we can get RIAA-sponsored stars to interest themselves about these pesky legal issues, this is a great benefit.
And if you really need a picture or are ready to (sigh) "steal" an image with a copyright, there is always Google Image, the greatest aggregator of ready-to-be-pirated copyrighted material.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Apparently they care more about freedom than having the highest quality images available. What more is there to say?
They want to use wikipedia as a advertisement for their portfolio while still using a restrictive license for everyone else. This is a problem, of course, for the encyclopedia that aims to be free for anyone to copy, distrubute, modify as they please.
> 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
Um, they do. If he can't even understand a basic thing such as copyright, then why is he writing such an article? The whole article stinks.
The nytimes seems to be complaining that the photos of celebrities are ordinary photos, rather than 'glamour shots' (their words). I fail to see the problem.
It goes on to say that photographs are static and can't be improved, thus exposing a flaw in the wikipedia model. Wtf? You can just replace a photograph with a better. And I have even seen a given photo re-uploaded when someone else found a better version (like the NASA photos).
But surely the photographers DO maintain the copyright, they just license the image freely. If they have a problem with 'freedom', they should just say that instead. "We photographers don't like freedom". There, I restated the problem, clearly.
If some celeb has a problem with their picture, they can just pay for one to be CCd. Don't tell me in a world of millions of photographers, they're all asshats?
"I want the free publicity I get from having my images freely distributable, but I want to retain the sole right to distribute it."
Not how it works.
To me, the problem is the professional photographers' restrictions on public re-use of their work. If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site then they'd release the image under an appropriate open license.
ps: i have no idea what "elevate the image on the site" means either. but if someone as smart enough to be a celebrity photographer says it, it must mean something really clever and important.
If I'm not entirely mistaken, the photographer maintains the copyright, but the publishing on wikipedia under the creative commons allows everybody to use the photography as long as the photographer is credited.
If photographers want to help, but are worried they'll lose control, why not upload lower than mint quality images?
testing 1 2 3
You can't mix those and Wikipedia admins knows that. It's like matter and anti-matter. Allowing copyrighted content would spawn all sorts of problems. You would no longer be able to fully cite, print or publish Wiki content easily. If the page would contain copyrighted image, you would have to ask for pardon the copyright holder etc. Headache after headache..
And to think I was looking for a 4000x3000 raw bitmap photo of Halle Berry on Wikipedia. Good thing I now know better.
Seriously though, what's wrong with the diversity that the net has to offer? I use wikipedia.org to get some shallow information about anything that crosses my mind, and I use images.google.com to browse for images. So wikipedia is not the source for everything, big deal, I have the rest of the internet at my disposal at any time. So thank you wikipedia, thank you google, and fuck you NY Times.
I am the lawn!
Wikipedia provides full citations for the author/source of all uploaded photos. If a professional photographer wanted to increase his exposure (no pun intended), he could contribute to wikipedia under a free license. The upsides really dwarf the downsides.
-Gonz
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'
Then you better be sure to stay off Wikipedia, Mr. Avenaim.
He just fails to understand the concept of Wikipedia, whereas everyone should be able to copy-paste a whole article, -with- the photos included, if deemed necesary.
I couldn't care less if a picture of a celebrity is not up-to-date, glamorous, or whatever: As long as the provided information is correct. And -if- the celebrity (or their management) cares... Well, supply a freaking photo with a Creative Commons license: Is this so hard?
Mr. Avenaim would just love it to keep the copyright over his work, so probably in the future he could ask for some money for using his work.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
See, NYT, it's not called a web because we like to imagine spiders crawling all over our internets. It's called that because pages are supposed to be joined into an interconnected mesh through hyperlinks. So, when your article on the bad photos on Wikipedia doesn't include a single link to the bad photos themselves, or to any page on wikipedia at all (I've checked, "wikipedia.org" doesn't occur even once in the page source), the impression you're giving is not "we're a respectable news organization", it's "we fail at the internet forever, kick us."
I love free use and all that. I'm also a photographer - not one who makes a living off it, but a moderately serious amateur who makes a little money now and then.
In my real job, I work somewhere where a permit is required for "commercial" photography or filming. I can take all the pictures I want for personal use, of course, and I can put pictures on my personal web page (or for that matter my work one), but unless I pony up the bucks for a permit (hundreds of dollars) I can't profit in any way, nor (and here's the clincher) can I give the photos for free to someone else who profits in any way from them.
There is a Creative Commons license (actually, lots of them) for things like this - the -nc- (non-commercial) ones. Unfortunately, last time I looked at Wikipedia, they insisted on a license allowing all uses, including commercial uses.
So as an amateur who doesn't want or need to make money off pictures of where I work, to upload a picture of my workplace (unsurprisingly, I have plenty, many of them quite good) I would have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a permit, then allow anyone and everyone do do whatever they want with my picture, including making money off it. So not only am I basically releasing it to the public domain, I'm paying out of pocket for the right to let other people make money off it.
If Wikipedia has changed their terms and are allowing cc-*-nc-* licensing, then I'll be very happy to stand corrected. If they still require licensing of all uses including commercial ones then I'm sorry, but I simply can't play that game.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Creative commons attribution is the only copyright and patent law we need. I look forward to the day when music is free to copy and musicians make their money from live performance, when images are free to copy and the original has value because it's, well, the original. When the written word may be copied and recopied, when patent law is no longer needed because people invent and discover for prestige.
he editors and reporters at the New York Times are constantly hectoring us on various subjects, in their editorials as well as their news stories. Sometimes the subject is climate change, which requires a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics to evaluate competing theories. Or maybe it's health care, where the paper's editors denounce the rest of us for being reluctant to commit to trillions of dollars worth of government medicine. The implicit premise of the Times' yammering is that they are smarter than you.
The problem is, it isn't true. Reporters and editors at our major newspapers are neither smarter nor more knowledgeable than the general public. In fact, I think they are, in general, less so. Today's case in point is a correction that the New York Times has run repeatedly in recent years. Yet, somehow, they never seem to learn:
I say this in all seriousness: why should we take direction on any complex issue of public policy from a group of people who literally do not know what a square foot is? They are not smarter than we are. They are dumber.
If you are a celebrity and want Wikipedia to have a good photo of you, provide one with the appropriate license and stop bitching. Problem solved! If you can't provide a picture under a free license, don't complain when someone else puts up a crappy picture. There is no problem here.
meh
(Please note, stating my Conflict of Interest up front: I am currently a Wikipedia Administrator, one of the 2,500 or so)
I do agree that photos are not a good spot for Wikipedia. And we're currently in a spot where our pictures are simultaneously decried as not good enough (this topic) and too good (http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/07/17/085244/New-Developments-In-NPGWikipedia-Lawsuit-Threat , the museum in question says that low res versions would be ok, but high res infringes on their copyright (note, the items in question are in the public domain in the US, but the laws regarding reproductions of items are a bit wonky in the UK)
We are a free encyclopedia. The people who use the encyclopedia have a right to reuse the material on Wikipedia in any way possible. Therefore, we cannot present any material that doesn't meet the requirements, because outside the two categories (things permissible under the GFDL/CC-BY-SA licensing terms, and limited fair-use exemptions, usually when no other picture is possible, such as photos of a person who is no longer living).
One could quite possibly argue that if we did not restrict items to these categories, then on other versions of Wikipedia, or otherwise legal use of Wikipedia (for example, reusing the article elsewhere), Wikipedia would be contributing to copyright infringement, or even considering the terms the rest of the website is under, encouraging copyright infringement.
Do I (speaking more as a user of the encyclopedia, rather than an administrator) want professional looking photographs and information on Wikipedia? Yes, Of course. I would LOVE for a lot of professional photographers to be able to release their work. But it's their decision. If they don't want to donate the phots under the suitable license, then, unfortunately, we cannot use them.
And I should say that there are categories where Wikipedia shines. Several governments including the German goverment (http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F06%2F1654246&from=rss) have released hundreds of thousands of historical to current day photographs to be used on Wikipedia by the site's terms.
I know a user on Wikipedia (who I am proud to call a friend), who makes it their mission to restore old, faded pictures and photographs. They have close to 300 featured picture credits to their name. There's a whole category at the Wikipedia Commons (a sister project to Wikipedia) that makes it their goal to restore these photos and historical documents. (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Potential_restorations).
So it's an ever-improving process. We can only take what we are GIVEN, but everyday we're given more and more to work with.
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
Otherwise, even public domain art scannings can get them in trouble.
Like the recent shameful lawsuit by the National Art Gallery
That some jackass artist's agent lawyers-up at the slightest prospect of getting another shinny penny in the pocket, I can expect. But a taxpayer funded institution which main objective should be the preservation and public outreach of fine art (a lot of which outside the scope of any copyright bindings), that's just unacceptable.
The author of that article needs to get pulled up by his editor for bad research and reporting.
Who the hell said that licensing something under Creative Commons means that you are giving up your copyright? Does he even understand what Copyright is all about? And what a license is?
It's this kind of article that scares the willies out readers, who are led to believe that licensing under the GPL or CC means that you lose the right to be identified as the author of the work. What rubbish!
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
"'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
The problem is that Wikipedia does not end at Wikipedia. Even if they themselves are given copyright permissions I imagine they consider it a problem if the endusers that copy the images from Wikipedia for other purposes get in trouble.
The critics apparently want Wikipedia to pursue the maximum image quality they can get for readers of the site, but they don't stop to consider that there's a lot more people do with the stuff on wikipedia than just view it on the wikipedia.org domain.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
For every thing that Photoshop does well and GIMP doesn't do or does badly, there are things that GIMP does well and Photoshop doesn't do or does badly.
Most commercial offerings are more error prone code than free code. The selection of closed code is, of course, less available, but there has been instrumentation of such code done and FOSS code is of higher quality.
with blackjack! and hookers!
Tell you what, when you release your photos under the CC license that only requires attribution, then I'll be happy to be corrected.
But your cost isn't my problem.
I swear, I read wikipedia for the articles, not for the pictures!
Nobody is going to pay money for a 400x300 photo, but that would probably be more than adequate for wikipedia. Presumably if it's a good photo, and there's a market for such things, such a small thumbnail will only be suitable as advertising.
Or am I mistaken and there's actually a huge market for low resolution photos of celebrities?
Organize some donors and create a program whereby if a donated high-quality image is used (or restrict it to portraits if that's a specific problem area), the donators give X dollars to a good cause, starving children or something, in the name of the image copyright holder. Create a public top list of photographers works so donated.
There are a million variations, but the idea is that if they want to complain with their strawmen arguments, make them look like the whiners they are.
Assuming this is a real problem. I've never had reason to complain personally about images on wikipedia, but I mostly hang out in technical articles.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'
Uh, they do? You are not required to assign copyright to Wikipedia.
However, they require that you grant the public a broad selection of rights. That generally doesn't mix with any future attempts to use the same image for commercial purposes, because your customer might just as well take the copy from Wikipedia.
It's a difference. An important one. I would mind terribly if someone else would get the rights to my works. But retaining the rights and granting everyone the right to use my stuff is what sharing (and thus the Creative Commons idea) is all about.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The combination of the NYT's editing and Slashdot's summarizing has been rather unkind to that "they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright" quote, imho.
> If a professional photographer wanted to increase his exposure (no pun intended), he could contribute to wikipedia under a free license.
That's exactly what the guy who the quote was attributed to has done.
The story quoted Jerry Avenaim, who has contributed his photos to Wikipedia, for example here. He says that photographers get paid very little for celebrity shots and make most of their money on resales of their photos (presumably print and online). If a freely licensed version on Wikipedia exists, then many publishers would simply take the wikipedia photo.
Given that Avenaim himself has contributed photos, he's obviously aware of the upsides and the downsides of doing so - he even notes that he gets free publicity out of it. But re his "they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright" quote, it sounds like he meant Wikipedia should have a license that allows photographers to contribute _only to Wikipedia_ (presumably *.wikipedia.org) and still retain rights for usage of that photo anywhere else.
I can see how this could be made to work. Have a 'better' photo for use on wikipedia.org, and point to an alternate free copy for use e.g. when other sites re-use wikipedia. That way photographers can contribute high-quality photos AND get paid, wikipedia gains, AND freedom to reuse is not lost.
However, given that wikipedians are pretty hard-core about free (libre) content, it's unlikely anyone will take him seriously. Which is a pity. Good illustrations really enhance the value of an encyclopedia, but I'm guessing wikipedia won't compromise on its core 'free-ness' thing to get them.
Go somewhere random
I've heard of needing to get -permission- to do something out of the ordinary at a workplace. But to 'shell out hundreds of dollars for a permit'? What the fuck? Is your 'workplace' Myanmar or something?
Really, don't sweat it. I don't think Wikipedia needs pictures of your workplace that badly.
So as I understand it from the article, the problem is this:
So it seems to me that
Reply to undo wrong mod, sorry
Elen sìla lùmenn' omentielvo
Wikipedia is based on free content - that's one of its five pillars. Allowing non-GFDL compatible, non-fair use content is not going to happen. Period.
But consider this: barring exceptions, fair use photographs of living people are not allowed on Wikipedia. This means e.g. that 99 times out of 100, you can't use a screenshot from a movie to identify an actor. That's how the copyright law works, apparently: do otherwise, and you risk a lawsuit.
NYT's reasoning in the article is along the usual lines: there's nothing wrong with the copyright law, that's even beyond discussion - it's those stubborn Wikipedians...
. Great idea, poor execution, Wikipedia. .
blog me no blogs
A problem that seems to be ignored here is the limit of fair use. Wikipedia allows only low-res pictures of some items (video game box-art for example), so the quality of the pictures comes out rather awful not because of lack of people contributing higher quality pictures, but because a higher quality picture could be considered a copyright violation of the original and are thus not allowed.
Wikipedia aside, low quality pictures is a general web problem, your average news side won't feature 10 megapixel photos either, just a lumpy scaled down version, thanks to everybody being overly careful with copyright and licensing.
Yes but only one of those has much of a future. who wants to pay for an encyclopaedia? As for your complaint about quality, if it really matters then you don't read wikipredia, you read the sources listed in the wikipedia article and follow it up by checking the relevant publications in the field.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Wikipedia doesnt need a full 10+ megapixel image to illustrae atricles, it doesnt even need one that would fill you screen. Something around 200x200px would probably be suficient for most cases, e.g a picture of a celebrity where the issue seems to commonly arise. If photogaphers are concerned about copyright why not just created a reduced size and quality version and release that. Its too small to be used for commercial uses in most cases so neednt worry so much about it being 'stolen', and can still retain as many permissions as they like over the full image.
Exactly. Many seem to think this is a "oh boy, those annoying freedom fighters that prioritize freedom over practicality again", but really... In *every* case where a non-free license would be used, Wikipedia would not be able to use the images and let people download them freely without breaking the law. And with a high profile site as Wikipedia, believe me, someone in the sue-happy country the English Wikipedia is based in, would try and win. (if not having this policy)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I would happily grant Wiki a free license to use the photo but no, they want a complete surrender of copyright or they don't want the picture, so they don't get the picture :-(
You might consider this to be splitting semantic hairs, but actually you would retain copyright. You would just offer the image under a license which allows free distribution.
But you summed it up. Wikipedia's aim is to create a freely distributable encyclopedia. They don't want any material that they can't distribute freely.
You're not contributing because you don't share Wikipedia's aims.
And I have no problem understanding the copyright laws, certainly those relevant to Europe. I possess about 250,000 negatives which are my copyright (although not all of them are worth a dime). I know that Wikipedia is a community resource where we are neither intended to make money or achieve fame or infamy. So the NYT article is just dumb. If celebs want images in wikipedia then they should upload a completely copyright free image and stop whining. That's all there is to it. Not complicated. No script writer needed. They do it every other day when they appear on the beach for the paparazzi.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
I'm afraid this is a common misconception. Copyright refers to, literally, the right to copy something. If I give everyone in the world, or even just one single person, the right to copy an image, then I have _effectively_ surrendered my copyright.
For example: Suppose I give you the right to distribute one of my photos. A publisher then comes to me, wanting to license the photo for a book, and I quote them a couple of grand for the rights. You can then step in and quote them one grand.
I would happily grant Wiki a free license to use the photo but no, they want a complete surrender of copyright or they don't want the picture, so they don't get the picture :-(
Wikipedia is all about free content. Free as in "everyone can fork it, print it, distribute it on CD etc.". Not free as in "everyone can view it on *.wikipedia.org and if they want to do anything else with it, they go to Andy Smith and buy a license".
So apperently, you don't want to contribute to Wikipedia, as you do not accept one of the core principles of the project. You want to contribute to a collaboratively created, but non-free wiki, which isn't what Wikipedia is about.
I think you troll....
I had that problem before with the article on Hayo Miyazaki that I'm contributing to, but I went to Flickr, found a bunch of good, professional-looking pictures of Miyazaki-san and asked the photographers to release their picture under the correct CC license. I got one in less than a a week. The photographer was only glad to help and have his work seen.
A quick search on Flickr quickly reveals a good photo of Ms Berry and Mr Clooney. So, I suggests someone gets to it.
Is this really a problem, or are some professional photographers just put out because their pictures not showing up on Wikipedia? I hadn't noticed the pictures on Wikipedia sucking, and all my pictures have been licensed such that Wikipedia could use them (though I didn't think of Wikipedia when I chose the license) since I started using flickr, years ago.
Speaking of the license, I think this statement is wrong:
"Wikipedia runs only pictures with the most permissive Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to use an image, for commercial purposes or not, as long as the photographer is credited."
I don't think the most permissive CC license requires even attribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons#Types_of_Creative_Commons_licenses
-Rich
I have a bunch of high quality images that I've taken and am happy to donate. However, when I tried to upload them I was prevented due to not having updated a sufficient number of articles. Until you've updated the text on something like 10 articles you can't upload any images. I simply haven't found that many articles I felt I could make a useful contribution to yet. It seems like an odd restriction to me. Unless you can prove you can write readable text, you can't upload pictures.
They hired professional photographers to photograph their clients, without ensuring they had the right to do what they needed with the photos.
The fact that Wikipedia can think ahead and require the correct license is only a good thing.
Wikipedia is all about free content. Free as in "everyone can fork it, print it, distribute it on CD etc.". Not free as in "everyone can view it on *.wikipedia.org and if they want to do anything else with it, they go to Andy Smith and buy a license".
I would very much like to contribute photos which could then be used freely for anything Wiki related, including printing and distribution etc. But the license which Wiki requires would then give people the right to extract my work from Wiki and sell it independently, which is what I'm not willing to allow.
Why shouldn't I be able to contribute a photo to Wiki without also granting people permission to sell it as a poster?
I recently tried to post our logo on a wikipedia article. It was hell. First I posted the image, thinking that would be the end of it. I got a post on my page saying that I didn't put a license on it. Fine. So I went and picked a permissive license. They they said I didn't have permission to do that. So I posted my yahoo-inc (internal employees only) email address asking them what do they want me to do to prove it. No response. The image was deleted.
Second try, I post a bigger version of the image. . This time I don't say that I work for yahoo, but that this is a valid non-free use of the image. I leave the citation the same way as it was before. Alas, this worked and everyone left me alone!
So, if you are trying to post your own logo, just say it is an acceptable non-free use.
This experience was not very fun, but I really wanted to get our logo up there so that a search will show the logo in the Wikipedia SearchMonkey result. Hard to demo a product when a search for the name doesn't show a good use of the product.
No, you fool, they're tits. And they're censored. To be worksave, you know.
This explains why Wikipedia's article on breasts has less impressive images than, uh, various other sites. And their article on cleavage is downright horrible.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Images make articles more readable. If you want to publish an article about corruption amongst politicians, it will more likely be read if there are accompanying photographs which show the people who are mentioned in the article.
If you control the source of those images then to a large degree, you also control the audience for the article. You might think this is a minor problem, but it isn't. Try finding a free for use photograph of most politicians and more particularly senior executives and you will find the going hard.
I think there is a powerful argument for making such photographs fair game if there are no others available. Otherwise we will be prone to this mild form of censorship forever.
No. Copyright refers to your right to specify who may copy something, and under what terms.
You can give up that right, by putting a work into the public domain, or by transferring the copyright to someone else. But if you let Wikipedia use an image under a CC license, you are still the copyright holder.
But even if you're giving the work away, being the copyright holder has advantages. For example, you get to specify what kind of copies are allowed (e.g. attribution must be retained).
For example: Suppose I give you the right to distribute one of my photos. A publisher then comes to me, wanting to license the photo for a book, and I quote them a couple of grand for the rights. You can then step in and quote them one grand.
That depends entirely on the license you granted me. Your license may forbid me from charging anything for a copy. Your license may dictate that I may only duplicate the image under the same license terms as you gave me.
One common approach is dual licensing for software. Say I've release SlimWidget under the GPL. You want to use SlimWidget but you don't like the GPL. I can sell you the right to use it under any license I choose, while continuing to let other people use it for free under the GPL. As copyright holder, I am the only one allowed to do that, even though plenty of people are freely copying my work under the other license.
The last time I checked, a CC licence was irrevocable, so yes, effectively you are giving up copyright if you licence under a CC licence that allows commercial use.
Interesting that the NY Times would press the idea that Wikipedia has "bad photos".
It wouldn't have anything to do with the NYT being nervous about losing their status as the "official record", would it? After all, it's only been about a decade that the NY Times has had color photographs at all.
If I remember correctly, the first color photograph appeared in the New York Times on October 16, 1997.
Actually, and ironically, I learned this on Wikipedia.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Agreed, but one could also say that uploading the photos of a politician that their PR dept. asked you to upload is disingenuous anyway. What's wrong with a standard candid photo after all? Are they that ashamed of how they look in on an AVERAGE day?
Why shouldn't I be able to contribute a photo to Wiki without also granting people permission to sell it as a poster?
Because the whole point of Wikipedia is that it is a free resource which can be recycled and reused in all sorts of ways the original contributors might not have imagined.
Including, yes, making posters.
Looks more like assholes.
rewriting history since 2109
If we see some actual photographs and not just some photoshop reconstructions, we have a better shot at recognizing the person in real life and asking for their autograph or just striking up a conversation.
Stop the brainwash
The history of pictures on the vagina and breast articles has been pretty hilarious. Every now and then, we see some woman spreading her junk with her long, manicured fingernails.
Are 300x400 resoluion wikipedia photos useful for book pictures?
We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
Yes but each of her male fans need the extra 1500 pixels so that they could imagine themselves bit-maped in with her.
Pretty much anything's useful if someone is trying to get it for free.
Well you clearly have an axe to grind over Wikipedia, and you're also butthurt about the current President of the United States of America. The last bit has nothing to do with the topic at hand, so that makes you either an idiot, or a troll.
I hate it when people say something like that as if they were mutually exclusive.
I agree completely in 2006-7 wikipedia used images to the degree they were legal. For example they would freely used a promotional image of a star if no free image was available. A policy of a bias towards copyleft but not not a requirement. Also they would use images licensed to wikipedia.
Then the policies shifted to essentially nothing but GFDL unless you go through amazing hoops. The result is that images on wikipedia are far worse than they were 2 1/2 years ago and the rate of improvement is very slow.
BTW I've contacted actors for photos they would be willing to SA3 or GFDL to wikipedia and they don't often write back.
If a celebrity is so concerned that their wikipedia page has a frumpy picture why can't they just donate a picture under wikipedia appropriate license? Professional photographers looking for exposure/free advertisement via wikipage can also do the same thing, possibly even taking new pictures just for that purpose to avoid copyright issues. Do these people have to own every single picture they take or have taken of them?
I don't understand people who think freedom is a bad thing.
I don't own wikipedia, but if I did I certainly wouldn't want to lose more freedom by chaining myself with copyright. It's bad enough I have folks like the Congress, my boss, and Comcast* treating me like a slave..... I don't need a bunch of photographers or celebrities bossing me around too. "Remove the negative material from my bio, or I will issue a DMCA takedown notice against you." I prefer the freedom of not being someone else's whipping boy.
*
* I'm not really Comcast's slave, but due to computer error they charged me 3 months at $61 when I only have $10/month lifeline, locals-only service. I've tried several times to get that money back but being a monopoly, they've pretty much ignored all my requests because they know I have no other option.
In other words they stole 15 hours of my labor. I'm not Comcast's slave but I feel like one - at least in part.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'"
Dear Jerry,
If photographers truly wanted to get their images seen in the biggest free encyclopedia in the world and reap the exposure and free credit, they should donate their works.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Where do you live?
Seriously, a permit to sell photographs? Is it possible to make a more stupid law?
Why shouldn't I be able to contribute a photo to Wiki without also granting people permission to sell it as a poster?
If I print a book, and then leave it on a park bench, someone is free to come along, collect it, and sell it, without me receiving any money. If I wish to control the distribution of my books so that I make money when they are sold, then I had better not leave them lying around on park benches.
You can't have your cake and eat it too !
There are no good pictures on the site because of copyright greed.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
There is a reason why IMDB insists on these conditions for a basic headshot:
"You may submit a resume and photos for yourself or an authorized representative may submit them on your behalf. Examples of authorized representatives include your agent, your publicist, your parent, or even a friend you asked to help you because you're no good with computers, just so long as they have your express permission. If you're submitting a resume or photos for a person who is deceased, you must be that person's heir or have permission from their heir(s)."
Note that, that is the policy which disallows fans to submit photos even if they paid $25 for a "pro" account.
The reason is simple, even some artists specific photos are owned by the movie company or the producers of that movie.
So, these photoshop geniuses with high end cameras should ask their lawyers if they could actually release them.
I have dealt with a Wiki editor for a celebrity photo and I haven't seen anything managed that professionally on the web. Perhaps only some very big Hollywood company could reach that kind of strict policy. They should have checked how the photos being in Wiki end up there, the process and they would agree me.
A last note for them: Maintain your own portfolios on your own sites, Wiki is not a advertisement site.
So you are saying that you don't want to contribute to Wikipedia, well that is your right. And you aren't surrendering your copyright, but you are giving away a licence to use the image for any purpose. You still have to be credited as the creator and copyright holder of the image.
Wikipedia runs only pictures with the most permissive Creative Commons license
Yet, oddly, has fallen out with the NPG after its copyrighted photographs were duplicated.
If the photog took the pic and put it on FB without asking the subject, isn't that some sort of copyright infringement to begin with? So if you copy the picture, what are they going to sue you for? Infringing on their infringement?
I think putting Copyrighted photos on there could be a bad idea. Imagine if the photo was used out of context.
My workday just got "slashdotted"...
Gee thanks!
The use of non-free images on wikipedia is bad enough as it is. Allowing users to maintain the copyright would make Wikipedia "just another website", not the collaborative resource it is now. If you really want to maintain copyright, you have to do on your own personal portfolio, where you are fully responsible for anything posted. Even Flickr, Deviantart, Picasa, and all the other photo sites take some copyrights for themselves. The fact that they hide it in a Submission Policy doesn't make you safe. But if you have a good photo and want to share it, not caring where it pops up, then Wikipedia is for you. Some commercial practices for Wikipedia have developed over time, but your exclusive copyrights are gone forever when you submit something under one of its very permissive licenses. You can still offer your photos on a non-exclusive commercial license but that's it, you can't sell your exclusive copyright anymore, because you waived it for a common good.
If I remember correctly, the first color photograph appeared in the New York Times on October 16, 1997.
Actually, and ironically, I learned this on Wikipedia.
So actually (and somewhat ironically), you didn't remember that date at all.
<cartman>
Weell, weell, weell, you have a photo, you say?
Sure you can upload it. But first you have to create an account.
(5 mins later)
Ok, nice. But I can't see you in this list of approved users.
You want in there? Weeell, then you better wait at least two weeks.
Then you can get into tier one. Which means, that one of our higher-level users might approve your image after upload.
You know... so you can actually use it.
</cartman>
<me>
Well, fuck that! *logs out and closes tab*
</me>
And you wonder why the photos (and images in general) are so bad...?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The author seems solely obsessed with entertainment figures, Placido Domingo, Hank Aaron, Michael Jackson, Dr. Phil, David Beckham, Oliver Stone, George Gervin. But what about pictures of nebulae, flags, geometrical shapes, natural phenomena, etc. I routinely use wikimedia commons for finding out how different things that I've never seen look! The point of wikipedia is not to have every single Michael Jackson picture ever. It's an encyclopedia not TMZ. Who cares if it's only got one bad image of George Gervin? At least it's got a picture so you can see what Gervin looked like. But if this article had been written by someone who understands the purpose of wikipedia we might have found out that while wikimedia commons has the one pic of Gervin, it's got 28 distinct pictures about solar flares, or check out national insignia and see how much visual info you get. Plus this author argues that it's bad the photos aren't improved! Is he arguing for photographic manipulation or something?
Like Sir Fozzie I'm a volunteer Wikipedia admin, so I have a certain bias here. But looking at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures collection of Wikipedia's best pictures is it really fair to dismiss all current photos on Wikipedia as bad? As for not being able to improve photos on Wikipedia, yes as with text Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, so if you can improve the photos on Wikipedia with better ones that you've taken yourself then feel free to load them and change articles accordingly. What I would concede though is that thus far Wikipedia's images have on average lagged behind text. Partly because a good digital photo from six years ago would probably now look low quality on modern screens, and partly because digital cameras have improved so much in the last few years. My prediction would be that this will tend to shift over the next few years. WereSpielChequers
well not really - but sometimes it seems they do - everytime i've gone through the trouble of trying to add a decent image to an article, the wiki-nerds shut you down - yes, they need to be diligent - but at the end of the day its just too much of a pain in the @#%$ to get a nice photo on to wikipedia - who wants to fight the censors - its just not worth it.
for example, i had added the wiki article for 'Jeff Johnson' (a great musician) - i emailed him, he actually emailed back. he sent me a photo that he chose and WANTED to have on wikipedia - even though the musician himself had provided the photo - the wiki-nerds deleted the image - its just too much trouble, and i cant be bothered to fight them just to get a picture up - so now the article runs without any picture at all -- i think my experience may be typical -- and thus = crappy or no pictures on wikipedia = the state of affairs.
2cents from toronto island
john penner
Memories are getting shorter these days.
you could send a complaint to your state attorney general (they deal with that shit) or use small claims court.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If photographers want to use Wikipedia to advertise their portfolio, they should choose a few relevant, high quality photos, and release them under the required CC license. This license requires that the photographer be credited. Donating a few photos is a small price to pay for such publicity.
I think photographers tend to be touchy about surrendering their rights because their position is tenuous. When the last several years worth of your work can all fit on a DVD-R, and it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish it from the work of amateurs, anyone would feel a little defensive.
The authors of the text on Wikipedia do not retain copyright.
Neither should the people who take the photographs.
The public license is a benefit, not a detraction.
For the good of public knowledge, not your personal gain.
You'd think altruism was slowly being bred out of us.
The CC by-sa license requires derived works to be free as well. If someone wants to include my image in a non-free product, she still has to pay me to use it.
The equation commercial=evil doesn't work here, because commercially added value must be free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_pictures
Certain classes of photos (e.g. celebrities) might be lacking but it's hardly true that Wikipedia photos in general are poor. I'm sure the celebrity photos will also improve over time.
Wikipedians as a culture have a habitual weakness of assuming that everyone who contributes is Joe-Schmoe-from-Iowa-in-his-bathrobe. A year ago Jerry Avenaim came to the attention of Wikipedia's featured picture program with this nomination.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Mark_Harmon It was nearly speedily closed until I realized the photographer was an active editor and wrote to request a larger version, and even afterward some editors refused to support because they wanted to change the size requirements. They weren't seeing the significance of getting material from a leading Hollywood portrait photographer. Last week I was talking to Noam Cohen and mentioned Jerry Avenaim's contributions. Showed him Jerry's Wikipedia volunteer work. Noam loved the idea and apparently Noam's editors did too. Thank you, Slashdot, for also 'getting it'. Let's hope this story encourages more photographers to donate their work.
The quote in question, from a photographer who DOES distribute images, has been taking a bit out of context. What if wikipedia also allowed images that are *non-commercial* share alike? In those cases, the only folks denied the use of the images are magazines and newspapers and such that want to grab a photo without paying for it, and then charge money that doesn't benefit the photographer.
That's what he's saying wikipedia should consider.
Not to mention that there are all sorts of awesome photographs and other illustrations on Wikipedia created by Wikipedians:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:QI
and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures
(not all featured pictures are wikipedian created, but they are all freely licensed)
"Representatives or publicists will contact us' horrified at the photographs on the site, says Jay Walsh" All they have to do is put their money where their mouth is. If they want a good photo posted then they can certainly find a good photographer who will sell them the copyright to one. Certainly it's more expensive but it can be done. Then all they have to do is license it CC and send it in. Let the publicist or representative who thinks having a quality pic on Wikipedia pay for it. It's not Wikipedia's problem that they should have to change just so some celeb looks good on the internet. Otherwise, if it's not worth the money then they can just stop talking about it.
I think photographers tend to be touchy about surrendering their rights because their position is tenuous. When the last several years worth of your work can all fit on a DVD-R, and it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish it from the work of amateurs, anyone would feel a little defensive.
Musicians, journalists, authors, and programmers are not treated with kid gloves like photographers are. Tell them to toughen up and join the club.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The articles suck, too.
I doubt you could find a single one that doesn't contain an error in its facts. Even among those about people who are alive and use computers and the internet and can edit the wikipedia themselves.
And the writing? Bollocks.
The truth is, Wikipedia is a jumble of random statements collected under meme headings.
Every bad picture is worth a thousand bad words.
"'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'" ...and I suppose they could go one step further and allow writers to keep the copyright too.. Oh wait, that goes against the entire concept of Wikipedia.
If publicists are so "horrified" by the photos on the site, they should buy the rights to the photographs from the publishers, and release the rights to the public for use on Wikipedia.
Why is this so complicated?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Wikipedia is not a celebrity fansite. It's about information. If the information is sufficient to allow f.i. to tell a Mr. Clooney from a Ms. Berry, the goal has been achieved.
No it hasn't.
The right photograph can sum up the essence of what made the man or woman the star:
Thursday Thirteen: The 13 Most Handsome Classic Movie Stars, Thursday Thirteen: The 13 Most Beautiful Classic Movie Stars
The geek sets the bar too low.
He confuses quantity and quality. Raw data with information.
Depth. Meaning. Context. Understanding.
Redundant, I am absolutely sure, but I've got to say it too.
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'
"To me the problem is Jerry Avenaim's failure to grasp Wikipedia," says Bob9113, a Slashdot geek. "If he truly wants to get an image posted on Wikipedia, he should license it in a way that suits the principle purpose of Wikipedia."
Wikipedia is a shared public repository of information. The word "shared" in the previous sentence is perhaps the single most significant component in the Wikipedia success story. Removing it would be like taking the engine out of an automobile -- pretty much defeats the purpose.
Wikipedia is not a place to host your portfolio or rack up resume items, it is a Free encyclopedia. You can use it to do the former, but only if you are willing to respect and support the latter.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If he is unhappy about the licensing standards of Wikipedia, just refrain from using it? In the meantime, the rest of the world will enjoy the freedom to use and distribute the content as it please.
Some people just can't get the fact that the whole world wasn't created for their sake.
I feel like if they really wanted to, Wikipedia could host a celebrity fund raiser. The celebrities would come in, have their photos taken, then Wikipedia would auction off large autographed prints of the photos. The proceeds from each photo would go to whatever cause the celebrity wants to support, and Wikipedia could just find a good volunteer photographer willing to release photos under whatever license Wikipedia wants (and I know plenty of good photographers, myself included, that would do this.) That way the celebrities can get some free publicity while helping a good cause, and Wikipedia could get some free high quality photographs under whatever license works best for them.
"I can see how this could be made to work. Have a 'better' photo for use on wikipedia.org, and point to an alternate free copy for use e.g. when other sites re-use wikipedia."
So then I cannot (technically within the law) just print out a Wikipedia page and hand it to somebody else. I have to go check licenses and re-mix with secondary images, etc. Far too much hassle.
Wikipedia becomes "Look, but don't touch".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This isn't so much a Wikipedia problem as it is a problems of copyright laws not keeping up with the pace and realities of modern society/culture/technology. It's sad that our overly broad, overly restrictive intellectual property laws, written by and for Big Content providers have derailed the original intent of these laws to protect artists and creativity.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
If I remember correctly, the first color photograph appeared in the New York Times on October 16, 1997.
And what of the Sunday Times? The magazine section?
Color printing on newsprint was never an easy problem to solve. You do not want a slightly-out-of-register color photograph on the front page.
The obvious solution for much of Wikipedia's image needs is for talented users to take their own photographs of a page's subject and submit them under whatever licence Wikipedia prefers.
With that, I give you a snippet from the User Talk page of Richie X, an entirely too enthusiastic submitter of homemade photographs in the category "genitals" (no pictures on the linked page, thankfully):
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The Lipoma article has a real body part on it too :)
In areas outside of copyrighted photos, such fine art, the photos seem to be very good. For example, search for Rembrandt. So far as photos of current celebrities, however, isn't there a way to create a composite photo of the many photos already in existence? In some sci-fi entertainment, I've seen where computers could simulate moving images of people, but is this science fiction only? Presumably, a simulated photograph could not be held subject to copyright.
'To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,' says Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. 'If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.'
I read that and then this article started to really bug me. I was fine with most of what was said, but Jerry doesn't understand the beliefs of wikipedia. Its suppose to support the open distribution of information through a forum. I tried to figure out a less rude way of saying this, but Jerry is basically trying to suggest that Wikipedia should support the capitalist system we want to impose on them instead of the open one they currently support. Or even more simply put, its their fault we don't want to play nice.
This issue basically disillusioned me with wikipedia to the point that it was more trouble than it was worth trying to contribute to the site. When there are literally hordes of people constantly patrolling the ENTIRE SITE for images that are not 100% certain to be public domain and orphaning them so they get deleted if undefended by the uploader, there is no chance of even unofficially putting decent images on there. Many, many people there either sleep with a copyright statutes under their pillow or use image orphaning as a way to curry favour and be promoted to admin status so a barren, near image-less wikipedia is the victory that the hordes of copyright nazis fought long and hard for.
I don't know, this one is pretty good: Brazilian Bikini Wax
Independent professional photographers have a mindset that they are being paid for the end use. If you want a portrait of your wife to hang on the wall, they want to sell you a portrait of your wife to hang on the wall, and they will charge a fee based on the size and the framing and other add-ons. If you want a portrait of someone to include in your employer's annual report, they want you to pay for that, based on the size and the quantity, even though the actual production won't be done by them. If you want a stock photo of two adults holding hands while walking down a path by a lake, they traditionally wanted you to pay for size, type of use, and quantity, though now there's so much royalty-free stock that's out there that this model is starting to wane.
But in real life that started to change a long time ago. Most commercial photographers working low-end to average corporate gigs (product photography and PR) are willing to sell all rights (possibly holding back a nonexclusive license to use their own work in portfolios and the like) in exchange for a reasonably generous day rate. Magazine and news photographers are generally employees operating on a work-for-hire basis. The low end wedding and portrait photographers charge a shooting fee only; the media is their deliverable and it comes with all rights. That leaves the higher end portrait and corporate photographers as the last bastion of the old, royalty-based model.
The whole point of Wikipedia is to be freely redistributable. A Wikipedia that contains sufficient material licensed on a "Wikipedia only" basis, as many photographers would like, does not serve this goal any more than binary-only drivers and code (or source licensed for non-commercial use only) serve GNU/Linux. A major misunderstanding regarding Wikipedia is that the Wikipedia's mission is to have a popular web site. It's not; it's to create free content, and this goal is not something that Wikipedians are willing to negotiate away in exchange for pretty pictures. It is the undefined nature of the possible end uses for the content that professional photographers don't like.
And a newspaper tax!
And a CEO tax!
And since they pay for their software with money they take off you, a Microsoft tax!!!
Wikipedia isn't there to make celebrities look good. From a historical perspective, an honest picture is better than a carefully posed and manipulated one.
If a celebrity has been arrested, their picture on Wikipedia is likely to be a Government mug shot.
I share wikipedia's aim of freely redistributable content and images, so when I have a photo that's helpfull I upload it. I'd like to think that a few of the photos I take are better than what someone took with a little digicam. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soarin'_Over_California.JPG It might be quite soft, but the wide angle can't be beat.
This is a well-known bit of US copyright law. If you are a programmer hired by a company to write code for them to use, you probably do own the code unless your contract states otherwise. You may think that paying someone to create something should mean that you own it, but that's not what the law says. Look up work for hire and read your contract.
Too bad Wikipedia doesn't mention why the New York Times didn't print color photographs.
Of course, the first full color image on Wikipedia couldn't have appeared until around 4 years anyway. I wonder why.
What do you mean by "300x400 resolution" photos?
I have a stack of my wedding photos done digitally, Picking two of them, they are both 640x480 "resolution" (in your terms). However, one of them shows a fairly good picture of my wife's upper body, whilst the other shows a ridiculously large picture of her nose!
The fact is that the first is at a resolution of about 120dpi whereas the second is at a resolution of about 670dpi and I cropped a 640x480 rectangle (just covering her nose) - the whole photo is 4304x2680; at the given resolutions, they both print at about 6"x4". Obviously the former would suffer quite badly as the size of print increased.
My 18" [visible] monitor is running at 1600x1200 or about 110dpi. If I view the photos pixel-for-pixel, the first appears complete at about 6"x4", whereas the second (complete, not just the "nose" extract) only shows a part of it (on the whole screen).
If wikipedia is mainly intended as an online encyclopaedia, then surely it doesn't need pictures with a resolution greater than about 110 dpi (which also has the advantage of less bandwidth to download them)?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
Why hire out for the pictures? I'm sure most stars could pull something reasonably flattering (or at least more to their liking than what's on Wikipedia) from their own personal photo collection. If not, how hard is it to hand the camera to the waiter on the next restaurant visit and ask him to take a picture?
Stars meet and greet each other all the time. Could they not exchange cameras then snap away so that each person is then in possession of their own pictures?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I was contributing to wikipedia for a while. Specifically, I was submitting several high quality photos of vintage instruments.
However, ALL of my photographs got taken down. I did everything that I could to
A: Prove that they were taken by me.
B: Provide all the proper releases.
C: Provide proper attribution so a third party could independently verify that all of the images were free and clear to use.
Eventually, all of the photos that I submitted were taken down because of a case of moderators thinking that it was to good to be true. Take downs normally boiled down to someone saying that the pictures I submitted, although they had proper releases, look like they were stolen from a real photographer.
It was a insulting, and eventually got to the point of not being worth the effort.
it's generally a ridiculous concept. you aim and push a button, what creativity? even a caveman can do it.
A photographer who thinks rather than clinging to outmoded business practices deserves to have a few mod points thrown his way.
I wish I had mod points. Why on earth would wikipedia be interested in presenting the "image" a celebrity's publicist is trying to push? It's not reality. The whole point of a publicist is to create a perception that is better then reality. I think candid photos of a celebrity on an average day are much better at presenting the truth of what that celebrity looks like. Much like you are not supposed to make articles about yourself, people should be forbidden from uploading photos of themselves, especially if a photo from a neutral source is available.
I find that not paying the overcharge gets them to pay attention when you call customer support.
The magic words are "I'm disputing this charge". Try it.
---dragoness
I'd gladly give all of my Flickr photos (culled for quality and properly tagged and titled), but I've found it confusing and cumbersome to contribute images to Wikipedia.
Simple. Give Wikipedia a 200x300 JPEG picture at medium quality, keep the full size RAW for yourself. You can't make a poster from a 200x300 picture unless you really like horrible image artifacts blown up to the size of your hand and pixelated to boot, which means that probably nobody would bother making or buying one anyway. No self-serving person/media outlet will use a 200x300 picture if they want to print anything of substantial size.
It's a lot like people like Fir0002 who license pretty good-sized pictures to WP and keep better-bitrate pictures so that they can sell them. (The guy in question also gets plenty of nice shiny stars for his work. :P)
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
I don't contribute either. My photos appear on academic sites, articles, blogs, and advert free news services etc. I have images of things of which there are no other online sources. However, these will never appear in wikipedia precisely because they insist on them being licensed for commercial use. They never will be, they will only ever be licensed CC-NC. If you want to use an image commercially pay the price. Oh and don't bother asking me as they are NOT for use commercially.
Being an amateur enthusiast photographer, I regularly upload my pictures directly to flickr, which applies the CC licence and then upload from there to Wikimedia, which is effectively Wikipedia. I have even found a number of my pictures that have worked their way into Wikipeida, which are licenced properlly and linked back to my flickr account by some complete stranger who was able to find my work on flickr.
Specifically the picture of Slash was mine taken at a show in NYC, with a small point and shoot.
This story of free photography is not new to me.
People like me who take pictures because they enjoy doing so and enjoy the idea of licencing their pictures with the Creative Commons are becoming quite a hot topic with pros.
I just spent 2 weeks volunteering at Ottawa Bluesfest. As a volunteer i get free access to the entire festival. For starters this festival allows any camera for anybody, which is quite rare. I know NIN allows this on their last tour but i am not aware of any other festival that has relaxed camera policy. The only advantage as a volunteer I got was to sit backstage and talk to the photographers between sets. every picture I took was from general admission and not backstage or in the photo pit, which oddly enough was where i was a volunteer.
Their main complaint was that people like me were flooding the market with free "good enough" photographs. while there was no argument that their work was better. But I was permitted to stand in general admission for the entire set and shoot as long as i wanted, with this "machine gun" shooting strategy almost anyone can get a decent picture or 2, While the pro's were only permitted to shoot for 2 or 3 songs. Is this fair? I think so but that's another story.
The pro's I talked to were strongly against any free photography and every pro i talked to was sure to add "and stop using flickr" as part of the advice given.
Is this a market that will flip upside down, just like music sales..? Maybe
Are the pro's stuck on the current path and unwilling to change..? For sure
Will pros start giving pictures to Wikipedia..? Not the ones I Taked to.
Do I love the fact that I am contributing to Wikipedia by providing better photographs..? Yes!
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
However, these will never appear in wikipedia precisely because they insist on them being licensed for commercial use. They never will be, they will only ever be licensed CC-NC.
Then it's proper that you don't contribute to Wikipedia, because your values don't coincide with Wikipedia's aims.
Theres lots of income options besides concert tours. They just don't make you so rich. If you want to pay the rent, go play at the local club. If your music is really great, fans will travel from everywhere to wherever you choose to play.
If you license an image as CC-BY-SA then all versions of the image are CC-BY-SA not just the low res that you uploaded to wikipedia. Its the work that is licensed not the particular digital file. So if a wiki-thief happens upon a larger size they can upload that one to wikipedia and Fagin will spend his time justifying it.
That's what I said. They chose to have crap images. I chose not to supply commercial entities with my work.
Copyright refers to a set of exclusive rights granted to particular people ("copyright holders") with regard to specific works (which works are covered, and exactly which rights are included, are matters of the differing laws of various nations.)
No, you have licensed your copyright. Unless this is part of a contractual exchange (in US law, at least) this license is revocable at will. Even if it is part of a contractual exchange, their right to copy the image (and their right, if any, to transfer that right), insofar as it is a use of your rights under copyright, extends only so far as you have provided for it to in the terms of the license. You have no more surrendered your copyright than you have surrendered your ownership of your home when you allow someone else to enter it.
No, its true, that you may give up the control that makes the copyright valuable to you if what you value is control and you give a license which include broad rights to sublicense. But that doesn't mean you have "surrendered" your copyright, even effectively. For some people, they want certain of their works to be widely distributed, but, e.g., they want credit for them -- and for them, distributing works under a license which creates broad rights for the licensee to distribute the work with attribution isn't "surrendering" their copyright, its leveraging it most effectively to serve their interests.
ES.WP doesn't apply "fair use". See this: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
It's called copyright law. Yes, it is a pain, but that's not Wikipedia's doing.
The problem is, getting permission just to "use" an image on Wikipedia is not enough. You need to get permission to use it under a license compatible with Wikipedia's goals: it has to permit the image not only to be used, but also to be redistributed, modified, even sold (although you can require redistribution under the same terms allowing free redistribution etc.). Furthermore, you need to get permission from the owner of the copyright - as other posters have noted, this is often the photographer, not the subject of the photo.
I'm sorry you had difficulty contributing to Wikipedia, but don't blame Wikipedia for diligently attempting to follow copyright law, or for your own ignorance thereof.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
I am one of those professional photographers who has submitted some images to Wikipedia. I did so with attribution required. Shortly after I submitted my images, they were deleted and then resubmitted without any restrictions ... remember, anybody can edit anything! Many of my images, such as those of Taylor Swift are spread all over the internet and most have no attribution. I can't afford to get nothing for my work ... my cameras, computers, printers, everything has to be paid for as well as my mortgage and health insurance. Rather than fight it over and over I simply stopped submitting images. The only ones I submit now have big logos on them ... and many of those are then edited to remove the logos.
Nothing clever
Why not start a website where: . ...
1. Everybody can upload their picture with the licence asked by Wikipedia.
2. Lets everybody vote for of their favorite celebrities picture
3.
4. profit
NB: step 3 could of course be monetarization of the votes
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
Not really. Photographers who were very good at their trade would get very high pay from e.g. people who wanted flattering (or whatever) publicity shots.
do seem to make a right. To wit, defendants in a patent infringement suit almost always counter-sue based on a patent they own, and the whole thing is usually settled out of court.
doesn't the band have a copyright on their act?
I feel that the celebs should not care weather they have a "low resolution" picture on a website because they do not need to be picture perfect every single time. On the other handpeople should get permission from the people before they put them on the web.
The pictures on Wikipedia are not that bad and I think that celebs need to chill.......Just because they are caught eatin a hotdog at a baseball game does not give them a good reason of why they should call wikipedia all angry. On the other hand, the only reason they should be angry because they have pictures posted of them without their permission. But still, as long as the pic is not degrading, then there should not be a problem
I feel as though what Wikipedia is doing i reall don't care about it. For one is because it's a piture and if it don't relate o me than theirs no need for me to worry about it. But i also understand where others are coming from with their concern about this issue and i rsspect that, but i just don't care bout it. I feel as though what wikipedia is doing is wrong to the celebrities but than again i also feel for the photographers as well. life will still go on withought it so it don't matter.