I and others have added some more arguments to the Meta page which
addresses the points made by the proponents of 'non-commercial' only
harmonisation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Panorama_2015_EVA_GESAC#Comment
To widen our statements in support of full freedom, it would be useful
to know of evidence that film makers and/or professional photographers
avoid working in Italy, France, Belgium or any of the restrictice
countries specifically because of their lack of freedom of panorama.
Please add evidence to that page if you can.
Michael
Carcharoth mailto:carcharot...@googlemail.com
28 June 2015 12:28
These are excellent points raised by Michael Maggs. The bit about
non-commercial licenses in particular. That has always been difficult
to explain to people who are quite happy for Wikipedia to use their
images or images of their works, but don't want people to profit
commercially from those images or their works.
It can be hard to explain that Wikipedia is free ('gratis'), but we
want people to be able to reuse and repackage the material (including
images) and create commercial products from them. Some people quite
rightly back away from that when they realise what they would be
allowing people to do with the images.
Freedom of panorama (or rather, lack of it) has particularly
unfortunate effects, in that people who are unaware of these
provisions think they can upload their photography to Commons and are
then very often discouraged and de-motivated when they are told that
the images they contributed will be deleted. It is this motivational
aspect that I think is overlooked by those who want to encourage
people to contribute to Wikipedia and Commons and other Wikimedia
projects. My feeling is that vast numbers of potential and current
contributors decide Wikipedia is not for them when this happens, and
they walk away and we lose out when that happens.
The effect is magnified when this happens to photos that have been
*used with no problems for many years*. Potentially photos that people
uploaded to Commons many years ago may get retrospectively deleted. If
this does run into the tens and hundreds of thousands, the
motivational effect on those who uploaded pictures or use them to
illustrate their articles, could be immense.
If these changes take effect (and that is a big if) and if Commons (as
seems likely) goes on a big deletion spree, then the practical effect
is likely to be to discourage large numbers of (in some cases) highly
active contributors to the point where they may even cease
contributing. That is something that should be considered, IMO.
Can anyone here think of any way to mitigate the impact on people who
may not understand why their images are being deleted, if it does come
to that eventually?
Carcharoth
snip
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Michael Maggs mailto:mich...@maggs.name
22 June 2015 20:02
This has been mentioned before by Dimi, but bears repeating.
While we may all think it's *outrageous* that tens of thousands of
images may have to be deleted from Commons, we do have to make sure we
have messages that will resonate with those who don't agree with us or
who don't care. If our only message is that open content will be
harmed, we have no answer to those who reply 'so what?'
In countries such as France and Belgium, that currently have no
Freedom of Panorama, we need to address arguments like these:
1. Why should people be allowed to make money by using an architect's
intellectual property without permission?
2. Why does Wikipedia, a hobbyist website, think it's OK to steal
other people's rights?
3. Non-commercial use won't be affected, so this is not an issue of
freedom at all. It just stops people making money from someone else's
creative work.
4. If Wikipedia holds itself out as non-commercial, it can and should
accept non-commercial licences. The argument that 'images will have to
be deleted' is based on your private internal rule which could easily
be changed.
Remember that in some countries there is a long history of supporting
rights holders, that millions of people don't know what 'open' means,
don't care, and won't be persuadable by any sort of argument based on
freedom to view. To them, freedom of panorama is just a way of
illicitly taking away an artist's right to protect his or her own
creative work.
Probably most of us reading this will say that these arguments hold no
water, but we need to tackle them head-on.
Michael
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