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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.
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
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
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."
You would think that for a celebrity it would be worth paying a photographer to take a good shot and release it under a license which wikipedia will accept.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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
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.
They can't. One of the stated goals of the project is to allow commercial reproductions (e.g. distributions on CDROM or printed copies). To permit restriction of photographs to non-commercial uses would cripple this, effectively preventing them from reaching a key aim point. They'd rather not have the photo (which encourages somebody else -- perhaps somebody who already has that commercial use permit -- to take the photo for them) than have one that can't be used properly.
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!
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.
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