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.'"

Comments

This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[Yvanhoe]

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.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[Daengbo]

Indeed, instead of this:

'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.'"

We should be hearing "If the publicists really want clients in the best light, they'll provide a picture which meets the largest encyclopedia's standards."

They just don't get it. It's one picture that you donate to the world in exchange for your name being mentioned. Sports sponsors have been doing something similar for a long time.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[fbjon]

Not to mention that the photographers do maintain their copyright. Only a permissive license to use the image is required, and then only for the image uploaded to Wikipedia, not the original work.

The world is filled with control freaks, it seems.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[muridae]

Hmm, let's work this out from the photographer's perspective. I go out to a studio, with all my gear and assistants, and do a model shoot of a celebrity. It's a whole days work, with hair and makeup changes, wardrobe, setting of lights before people get there, and tearing stuff down when they all leave. Maybe I'm lucky and have a stocked stage someplace, or maybe I want to shoot them on location somewhere. End of the day, I expect to get paid for this work. And what I expect to get paid depends on what the celebrity and their company want to do with the picture. Most of the time, they want exclusive control of the image, and I charge them for that. That means, I can not turn around and re-license the picture to Wiki under the CC, as the contract we have forbids it. That's the publicists problem, not mine. If the publicist wants the picture under the CC, I am going to charge more for it.

Counter-intuitive, I know, but hear me out. By my licensing the picture under the CC, I would be giving the publicist, and the rest of the world, more rights than a normal photo contract provides, provided the photo shoot wasn't done as work for hire (15x base cost, minimum since I can never use those pics in a portfolio). Because I would lose future rights on the photo, for now and forever, I would charge accordingly. It's not greed, it's pragmatism. You say that a photographer retains their copyright, but if the picture is out there under the CC who needs to license it from the photographer under anything more restrictive? Since that is lost future potential revenue, it's going to cost more, period.

I know this opinion won't fly well with the /. crowd. All data and stuff should be free unless it's the work I do for the company on their time and then I should be paid like a king for it. Funny that photographers think the same way about the pictures they take on someone else's time.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[vlm]

You say that a photographer retains their copyright, but if the picture is out there under the CC who needs to license it from the photographer under anything more restrictive?

Wikipedia might be content with a vaguely 320x240 pixel image of some celebrity. A typical "womens magazine" front cover at a reasonably non-blurry DPI would need, maybe, 4000x3000 resolution, probably at a totally difference aspect ratio than the image provided to wikipedia, and probably as a PNG/raw/GIF rather than a lossy jpeg file.

I can't think of a downside if a photographer makes a small low res sample image, perhaps with a little banner at the bottom "john q hacker, professional photographer, http://www.johnqhacker.com/" and distributes it as widely as possible.

If some teenage girl wants to print it out and tape it to her school locker, she was never going to pay any money for a license permitting that, so no loss. If a magazine editor wants a front cover picture, the editor will gladly pay a nice big fee to license an ultra high res image in the format and aspect ratio of their choice, so no loss.

Maybe instead of an ultra low res color image for free, try a medium res black and white for free? Assuming you are not "into" black and white for artistic reasons?

I'm really struggling to see how a freely available low res image has any downside, and it has a microscopic upside of providing free advertising for the lazy people who don't remove the "banner ad" at the bottom.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[ta bu shi da yu]

Indeed. It's very amusing that on one hand, celebrities and public figures don't like the low quality images on Wikipedia, yet won't release pictures under Creative Commons licensing. They can't have it both ways. Either you get amateur and often less than flattering free pictures on the world's largest encyclopedia, or you release a high quality image under the appropriate license for use on the project.

If you don't like either choice, then tough.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[Firethorn]

I have to agree. My first thought was 'then the Celeb in question hires a photographer to take a representative photo to be released under that license, or buys the rights from the photographer in question for posting'.

It doesn't even have to be a particularly high resolution photo either.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[AK Marc]

Because I would lose future rights on the photo, for now and forever,

My understanding is that is incorrect. You retain the original. You license a copy. That copy is under CC. If you want to take it at 15 megapixels and retouch it after you are done for the best effect, then you have that. Give Wikipedia a 320x320 image. The issue for Wikipedia isn't always that the photo isn't "high quality" in the sense of resolution and such, but that it's a picture of them sneezing and the only one used because that's the only one submitted. Make a purposefully inferior copy. Give it away. Keep the others for yourself. Or, in a photoshoot, there will be hundreds of pictures taken. Take one of the mediocre ones. It will be better than what Wikipedia has now. And it will be one you would never have gotten compensated for.

You sound more like someone that has decided that you don't like the idea and you are working hard to find reasons why it is bad, rather that taking scenarios that are more palatable and seeing how those would play out. Yes, it may take a small bit of cooperation between the photographer and the publicist, but they do that every photoshoot with a new contract, so I can't accept the "doesn't play well together" excuse when they do it all the time.

Re:This is good and Jerry Avenaim doesn't get it

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Short of waiting to be blessed by some rich benefactor, how do YOU suggest a photographer make money at their trade?

As a former photographer, I'll take a stab at that. I'll use wedding photography in most of my examples because that's the only time most people ever hire a photographer.

They can get a rich benefactor. This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Customized porn, for example, can bring in a bundle. (And, no, I guess my first example doesn't have anything to do with weddings.)

They can employ a modified rights management strategy. Lots of wedding photographers are drifting this way. They charge more for their work and then sell substantial or all rights to the happy couple. Full-res digital files are sold for a premium. Full rights are sold for a premium. They also make money off of web services, providing a web site to display the photos and make it easy for anyone to order prints for a nominal but mildly profitable cost. Some photographers even abandon all rights after a set period, usually a year.

They can toss all idea of control. Some wedding photographers have begun seeking out digital-ready couples who want to handle all their own post-production work. In those cases, the photographer charges a reasonable rate for a days work and, at the end of the festivities, burns a DVD with all the pics and hands it to the couple or their rep. This sort of "shoot, burn, and run" business model is definitely low-rent and is metaphorically spat on by traditional wedding photographers, but it's profitable for folks who view the job with as much romance as a plumber views lead pipe. It also makes "better-than-your-shutterbug-uncle" wedding photography available to lots of people who couldn't otherwise afford it.

They can cling to the old model. There will always be high-end jobs to be done for rich clients who don't want to get their hands dirty. These are the people who will pay $500 per 8x10 print for an album with 100 prints in it, then turn around and pay $800-$3000 for additional, single prints to hang on the wall or give to family. These are the people who expect to sit down in a studio business office where they're served champagne, make nice talk, write a check, and not have to think about it again.

They can sell prints. Lots of people make money in the fine-art print business. By doing so, they can retain all the traditional rights because their target audience would never conceive of pulling a 20x24 print out of the frame to get it scanned so they can email it to friends or pirate it to a commercial buyer.

They can shoot for stock. This is nowhere near the money-maker it once was but for a talented and prolific shooter, it can make money.

They can ridiculously specialize. Some businesses have photo needs so specialized that there's no secondary market for the work. Thus, it doesn't matter if the photographer retains rights or not because he will definitely be charging significant money up front.

They can graduate beyond weddings and portraits to commercial work that pays big. Few will succeed, but for some it's worth a shot.

They can negotiate rights with the buyer. Whether it's your wedding, portrait, your dog's portait, or whatever, nearly everyone is open to the concept of buying rights that stipulate the buyer can use the photos for any non-commercial purpose with attribution. This allows the photographer to maintain control enough to make money (sell the photos if their subject ever becomes famous, show them in a portfolio, etc.) while allowing the buyer to do virtually everything they can conceive with the photos without interference (give to friends, publish in the newspaper, put on their web site, etc.)

This list is poorly organized because I typed it stream-of-consciousness style in just a few minutes. Given a few days to mull it over, I could probably get a good start on writing a book on the subject. The bottom line is that, yes, the world is changing and it's getting to be harder for photographers. But the talented, hardworking, adaptable ones will always be able to make a living.

Freedom versus high quality pictures

[noidentity]

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.'

Apparently they care more about freedom than having the highest quality images available. What more is there to say?

Re:Freedom versus high quality pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly does rejecting images, which the author allows to be used within *.wikipedia.org, but not elsewhere, advance freedom?

You're kidding, right? Let me rephrase your question to something with less tortured double-negatives:

How exactly does only allowing images under Creative Commons, advance freedom?

Well now isn't that just a stupid question? It advances freedom because the source material is free. Tada!

One would think, etc. etc. blah blah BAWWWWW my images, giant axe to grind over Wikipedia and Obama, blah blah

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.

Re:Freedom versus high quality pictures

[SolitaryMan]

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.'

Apparently they care more about freedom than having the highest quality images available.

This is the good thing. I don't come to Wikipedia to see HQ images. I come for free information I can immediately use: quote or contribute. There are plenty of other sites, where you can find images.

Re:Freedom versus high quality pictures

[FireFury03]

Apparently they care more about freedom than having the highest quality images available. What more is there to say?

You could elaborate, I suppose... How exactly does rejecting images, which the author allows to be used within *.wikipedia.org, but not elsewhere, advance freedom?

1. It means you don't have to deal with investigating the licence on every bit of content - if you want to reuse some content on Wikipedia then you *know* what the licence is because its all the same.
2. Allowing non-CC licensed content would reduce the amount of CC licensed content on Wikipedia (articles would choose to use the "better" non-Free images *instead* of the Free ones), and that really would harm freedom.

One would think, they want their pages to be printable and (re)publishable, but in that case, the authors wouldn't be credited (there is no author's name printed, when you print the page) — contrary to the current license...

Yes, this is rather at odds with the licence - the Wikipedia templates really need to automatically add an attribution caption to all images that are embedded in a page.

Re:Freedom versus high quality pictures

[Lumpy]

Exactly. I am a professional photographer (Paid and published in several magazines) and some of my images I hold that ball and chain. but unlike others that do what I do, I gladly relinquish that. Wedding photos for example, pay me an extra $100.00 and I'll give you the full size digitals and a letter releasing reproduction rights to the couple. I get a crapload of work because I am the only photographer in this state that does this. I also get a lot of events because of that. A typical 3 day event my team will shoot nearly 30,000 photos with at least 15,000 of them good enough to give to the event organizers. Having a full reproduction release in hand on that pool size of photographs kicks the crap out of the prima-donnas that want a fee per image.

The problem is that Wikipedia also does not really want professional images there. I submitted several of the great shots of Travis Tritt I took last year when I was on stage with him as photographer for one event, with a release terms they requested and they said no thank you. What they want is full release of OWNERSHIP not copyright. I refused to release ownership of the image, but gave them and everyone else pretty much whatever they want to do with it license. That was not good enough.

Re:Freedom versus high quality pictures

[jandrese]

Maybe for some of the many "grab a subset of Wikipedia and give it to poor people in (insert random third world country) as an inexpensive form of an Encyclopedia". Nobody would want to have to clear the rights to hundreds of thousands of photos just for some charity work.

Photographers do maintain the copyright of course

[3dWarlord]

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.

Good grief

[JohnFluxx]

> '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).

Don't see the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Don't see the problem.

[funkatron]

Asshat photographers are pretty common. At a gig my band were playing we had a photographer turn up (we didn't know him or invite him), get in the way at the front of the stage and then try to sell us pictures by showing us the display on his camera while we were trying to clear the gear up. He wasn't even interested in emailing us thumbnails so that we could look at them properly (and put them on our myspazz without buying full size versions). We're ok with people coming and taking pictures and using them wherever they want but trying to sell them to us is pushing it when we can get plenty of good pics off facebook etc. for free.

The other and far more common place to find asshats is uni graduation ceremonies where the photographers charge extortionate amounts just to take one or two pictures.

Re:Don't see the problem.

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Why can't they release THOSE pictures under CC, instead of just throwing them in the trash?

Having once made my living as a photographer, I'm severely disinclined to wade fully into this discussion. I can see both sides and I get really irritated at the way both sides, both through innocent ignorance and wilfull intent, so frequently misunderstand each other.

About this one point, though, I'd like to say something. Good photographers are manic about making sure that every single piece of work they produce is as close to perfect as possible. You, the general public, my potential future clients, may only see one picture I've taken in your whole life. In that case, it had better be perfect if I'm going to stand any chance of getting any of your future business. That one photo is my representative to the world. The same thing is true of every photo I release.

Thus, releasing anything that's substandard is self-defeating. Losing control of subsequent re-use, too, is self-defeating if it allows someone to put my work into some crappy collage or print it incompetently. (That last one really drives traditional wedding photographers crazy.)

So no top-echelon photographer of the sort who is normally contracted to shoot celebrity portraits is ever going to say "Well, this photo is junk that I can't sell - so I'll just let it be published where millions of people will see it and come to associate my name with crappy work." It just ain't gonna happen.

There's an old saying among photographers about how to properly assemble a portfolio. Divide your work into 4 piles. Pile 1 is the stuff that's not good enough. Pile 2 is the stuff that's almost good enough and you might put it in your portfolio if you have a particular hole you need to fill. Pile 3 is good enough to include in your portfolio. Pile 4 is those few, rare photos among the "good enough" that are something transcendant, that make you draw a sharp breath and say a little "Wow!" to yourself every time you see them. Then:

Throw away piles 1, 2 and 3.

Start over, repeating the process with pile 4. Continue periodically for 10 years. If you're lucky, you may actually have a good portfolio at the end of that process.

Now, nobody actually does this. The practical consideration of stopping and selling a few photos so you can eat gets in the way. But the mindset is there. Releasing suboptimal work, no matter what public good it may do on the pages of Wikipedia, just goes against the grain of any good photographer.

They want to eat their cake and keep it

[Arancaytar]

"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.

Photographer maintains copyright

[incense]

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?

Really

[noundi]

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.

Venue for Professional Photographers

[gonz]

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

The NYT doesn't understand the web

[Shin-LaC]

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."

Re:The NYT doesn't understand the web

[Shin-LaC]

This web thing is pretty new, after all. We need to give them time to adapt their process. Right now they're probably still waiting to see where it goes.

ALTERNATE BONUS ENDING:

Actually, apart from all the internal search links which are probably auto-generated, there is one external link in that article that was clearly inserted by hand: the phrase "in his Web site" links to Jerry Avenaim's website.
In other words, they didn't bother with the links actually relevant to the story's content, but they took time to link to the personal website of some photographer guy they interviewed. That's just adding insult to injury.

I see where they're both coming from.

[Shag]

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.

Re:I see where they're both coming from.

[julesh]

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.

Re:that's one way of looking at it...

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Muhc ado about nothing

[Blublu]

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.

Here's the thing...

[SirFozzie]

(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.

Wiki content is not just for viewing

[physicsphairy]

"'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.

Pictures?

[MadKeithV]

I swear, I read wikipedia for the articles, not for the pictures!

About that 'maintain the copyright' quote...

[bheer]

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.

Re:About that 'maintain the copyright' quote...

[slim]

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

It really would compromise the core free-ness thing in a practical way though.

Currently Wikipedia works like "We're collaborating on this work, which you can take a copy of, to do whatever you like".

With your modification it would be, "We're collaborating on this work. You can browse the premium edition here, or you can take a copy of the second class edition to do whatever you like".

To me that's a massive difference, and a slippery slope.

Re:Photographers do maintain the copyright of cour

[Jugalator]

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)

Re:Silly license

[slim]

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.

Image uploads are restricted

[dalesc]

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.

Re:Freedom versus high quality - with a twist

[PopeRatzo]

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.