User:Gmaxwell/on sxc

Since I'm going to be in Germany for the week, I won't be very available to answer questions. I've decided to distill some information from multiple sources which will hopefully answer whatever comes up.

A statement

Points which are indisputable

1. Stock.xchng (hereafter SXC) is a for-profit website offering a large collection of user submitted 'stock' photographs at no cost.
2. SXC has a license page.
3. The SXC license contains terms which are obviously unacceptable on any Wikimedia project, such as:
   1. "You may not use the Image for pornographic, unlawful or other immoral purposes, for spreading hate or discrimination, or to defame or victimise other people, societies, cultures.
   2. SELLING AND REDISTRIBUTION OF THE IMAGE (INDIVIDUALLY OR ALONG WITH OTHER IMAGES) IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN! DO NOT SHARE THE IMAGE WITH OTHERS!
   3. Always ask permission from the photographer if you want to use the Image: On "print on demand" items such as t-shirts, postcards, mouse pads, mugs (e.g. on sites like Cafepress), or on any similar mass produced item that would contain the Image in a dominant way.
   4. etc.
4. The SXC license is currently linked from every image page in the most prominent way reasonably possible. It is one of the most prominent links on the page, right below the image itself.
5. To access high resolution versions of these photos you must create an account. When you do this you are forced to, at a minimum, scroll through and accept the SXC license.
6. To upload images to SXC you are also, currently, required to view and accept the SXC license.
7. It used to be possible to upload an image without being forced to view the license text. It wasn't clear which uploaders expected these terms to be followed and which didn't. Multiple parties from Wikimedia, myself included, have contacted SXC in the last year to request they make the licensing terms more clear and Wikimedia-friendly. Although I'm aware of no official response, they adjusted the site to make viewing the SXC license completely unavoidable.
8. A non-trivial number of SXC users are aware of the SXC boilerplate license and expect them to be followed. This is supported by:
   1. Email correspondence with SXC users
   2. Text on some SXC user pages directing users to read the site agreement
   3. Traffic on the policy section of the SXC user formus, where there are statements of preference for SXC's terms and concerns that their work might still be used indirectly by pornography.
9. It appears likely that a non-trivial number of SXC uploaders have not read the license and actually intend their work to be under a very permissive license.
   1. The same is true of Wikimedia sites. We don't even require our users to view the GFDL, and the SXC license is both shorter and easier to understand than the GFDL.
10. Any basis which allows us to ignore the SXC license could also be used by anyone to justify ignoring the license for the content held on Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons.
11. SXC users are generally easy to contact.
    1. The site requires confirmed email.
    2. You are requested, and demanded, in many places to contact uploaders.
    3. Quite a few uploaders have user pages which request contact for any use.
12. I have contacted a small number of SXC users. Half of the users I contacted indicated that their works are only available under terms which we can't accept.
    1. The most common set of unacceptable terms seemed to be rules which basically denied wholesale commercial exploitation of their work. Use of their work as a part of a larger commercial work appeared to be acceptable to most. This is similar to the sampling+ license.
13. Commons policy has decided, by majority vote, to ignore the SXC licence.
    1. Even though there are SXC users who obviously intend for us to follow it.
14. Commons policy has decided, by majority vote, to interpret the demands in the SXC licenses which forbid us making a mirror collection as forbidding us to categorize or templatize SXC images.
    1. This has made it difficult to gauge the amount of SXC use we have.
       • I have measured it by reading the external links table. There are over 1400 SXC images on commons.
15. Several users have complained about our policy. They have been completely ignored.
16. Hundreds of these images are tagged as public domain rather that copyrighted free use. I can find no evidence that any of the SXC users wanted to give up attribution at the same time as being contacted.
17. Copyright law is not something we can decide to ignore via vote.
18. We are ethically obligated to avoid, to the best of our ability, misleading users who obtain content from us about the license status of the works they obtain from us.

Other points

1. The concern has been raised that if we contact users they will change their minds. I think MikeSnow said it best last night in my discussion with him on this matter:
   • <MikeSnow> The answer to that is, "They're not changing their minds unless you can show that they were properly asked in the first place"'
   • <MikeSnow> If we're getting stuff from outside sources under any kind of terms whatsoever
   • <MikeSnow> then we should be prepared to show that we follow their terms, or lose the material
2. Because we can't tell which users know and expect us to follow the SXC terms, we must contact all of them
   1. But contacting them is easy, there was little excuse not to do it in the first place.
3. Nothing in the standing commons policy forbids copying the license data from the source images pages.

My changes

1. I have discussed my concerns on this matter with numerous Wikipedia/Wikimedia folks. With the exception of the response I've had from some policy bound users on commons, everyone else has believed that it is obvious that the only correct action can be to contact the copyright holders.
   • Given the facts stated at the top, there can be no rational argument to do otherwise.
2. After discovering the sheer number of images on commons, I created a tag to advise our users about the state of these images, and began the process to tag them.
3. After that I updated the commons policy page to remove inconsistency.
   • I welcome further discussion on our policy.
4. Commons policy has no say on this matter. We carry outside legal and ethical obligations which we can not ignore. Some of these images are not free, and even if we ignore for a moment our outside obligations, we are acting in opposition to the goals of this project by including them.
5. I will be contacting the copyright holders.
6. Users who edit war against the warning are endangering our users and our project. If they continue we will ultimately be forced to take the unfortunate step of ejecting them from our projects.

Comments

Please leave any comments down here, rather than inline. Refer to the numbers from the numbered list. --Gmaxwell 18:04, 12 March 2006 (UTC)