Mailing List Archive

On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net> wrote:

> What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the
> pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for
> free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA.
> Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA
> were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid
> but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to
> be able to accept only the best.

Right, I am not soooo sure that the ESA (or any other organisation,
NASA included, for that matter) will let any random Wikipedian hop on
the next satellite to take pictures of <insert name of planet here>.
I'd love too, but hey, I don't think this is going to happen any time
soon.

I believe you will also understand the importance of monitoring what
pictures get in and out concerning satellites, space shuttles and
other highly technological objects.

>
> I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
> than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
> something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
> don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
> the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
> hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
> practice.

Let us not jump to conclusions too fast here. :-)
What you call "European chauvinism" I will rather call "lack of
means", "lack of human ressources to write the right contracts with
the n number of national laws involved in the launching of this or
that satellite and the building of this or that camera" etc. There are
reasons for the ESA and other organisations not being able to release
their pictures under a free license and they go far beyond a manichean
"good people who release in the public domain what they produce with
public money" vs "bad people who want to keep stuff for themselves". I
don't think "pressure" as you put it, is the way to go.

Let me also try to maybe tone down the questions that David was trying
to get through here and give a different angle.

The question is not that the ESA or these other organisations *do not*
want to release their pictures for a wider use. As a matter of fact,
it is the ESA who came to us (Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia
France) and asked us for advice on how to go about this, and how they
could make their pictures (more) freely available. However, they have
some conditions.

Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions
(CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think
about it).

One of their condition is that those images can't be used for
political propaganda, for example.

Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
this.

To bounce on something David said, there is much work to do in the
evangelisation of those organisations, and a lot to explain about the
pros and the cons of "free material". Most of their objections need to
be understood in the light of what these organisations can do (with
the restrictions that apply to them) and what they want to do. My take
is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient,
pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then
another story altogether.

What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
but one that is worth debating.

One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change
their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a
stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for
everyone's best interest?"

Delphine
--
~notafish
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On 11/21/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions
> (CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think
> about it).

I think its important to carefully consider the difference between
"use" limitations and "redistribution" limitations. They are different
things.

> One of their condition is that those images can't be used for
> political propaganda, for example.

How would this materially differ from a restriction that the work
could not be used by the military or by anyone who builds weapons?

Or a restriction that the work couldn't be used by religious institutions?
...or a restriction that it couldn't be used to advocate democracy?

To the extent that political propaganda, military machinery, religion,
or democracy are all legal and accepted parts of our societies we can
conclude that they are all valid pursuits of man.

(here I wrote a long essay on our duty to the public as part of our
mission of facilitating the sharing of knowledge, but I removed it
because it was too far offtopic and would be better covered separately
at a later time)

[snip]
> of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
> our free sense) *except* for political propaganda.

Is it really the case that a narrow prohibition on political
propaganda is *all* they would want?

I ask this because often we have run into people who have said they
would only release under -ND because they had a concern that
downstream users might modify the work and misrepresent them.

I can sympathize with this concern but I offer that the CC-By (and
-SA) licenses contain a clause which allows the author to, as his
option and at any time, demand any downstream user *not* provide
attribution if he doesn't want to be associated with them or their
work.. and that the author could reasonably make the request in
advance. I also offer that almost every country has both fraud and
defamation laws which provide better protection than copyright can,
and that in cases of obviously evil use a court could declare a
release under a free license to be an unconscionable agreement and
nullify it...

... so I offer these things, only to find out that many people who
have claimed to be concerned about harm to their reputation are
actually concerned about things far broader and more difficult.

> Would that in any
> way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
> we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
> this.

I think we need to be even more specific before we can really discuss
it. This is an area where the details matter a lot.

The idea of discriminating based on use strikes me as terribly bad
from a number of different angles.

Exactly what are they trying to prevent? It's very important..

For example, lets imagine that their only concern is that a politician
will take credit for their work in their political advertisement. If
this is really the case, then there situation is not so different from
an author of Free Content who really doesn't want a commercial
redistributor hiding the fact that the work was given freely to the
public. ...
Both can be solved through similar means: A more aggressive
attribution or license notice requirement.

Would I support a license with a more aggressive attribution or
license notice requirement? I already do... Although I get a lot of
flack on our projects by releasing my images under the GFDL-1.2 except
by exception.

So if thats really their point, I think we could find an easy solution
through means which differ from a direct exclusion of certain natures
of use.

Now, lets imaging another possibility: Lets imagine that they don't
want their images used in political ads because they are concerned
about criticism. Perhaps the politician might show photographs of
gold-plated hammers and point out overspending.

Would I support a license which enabled this sort of prohibition?
*Not* *on* *your* *life*.

If thats really what they wanted, however, they probably wouldn't
settle on an agreement that would only limit politicians... it would
seem logical to try to limit us as well.

[snip]
> is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient,
> pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then
> another story altogether.

While I agree with the concept of "can do" and "want to do", and have
personally advocated a soft interpretation of "replicable" and
"non-replicable" as the basis for fair use decisions on enwiki... We
need to keep in mind that in this case 'can do' and 'want to do' only
differ by how high we're calling... One man's "can't" is his bosses
"don't want". So the difference is quantitative (how much work to
change the policy) more than qualitative.

> What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
> a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
> Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
> political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
> but one that is worth debating.

If restriction X is okay, we should go with it.. and open it to
everyone.. After all, it's okay.
If the restriction is not okay, taking it will cause harm... it will
remove our leverage. We have leverage today, and it's only growing.

> One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change
> their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a
> stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for
> everyone's best interest?"

Lets try filling in the variable:

"ESA must change their ways..."
I don't agree. They can keep their images private. Thats their
business and their choice. We will cover their articles with what free
images we can get, and they will look silly compared to NASA.

"Wikimedia must change their ways..."
Again I don't agree. We shouldn't change our ways simply because
someone else has a differing agenda.

:)
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