redcross.org>Date: 4 March 2016 at 11:58
Dear Sir,
I am a long term volunteer for Wikimedia Commons, the site that supports Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects with over 30 million educational images. One of my projects last year was to work with the Wellcome Library to upload 100,000 images relating to the history of medicine, and several thousand of these were educational posters for HIV education programmes, including those run by the American Red Cross.[1]
There are 68 posters that are under review, to assess whether the original CC-BY license used by the Wellcome is still appropriate. Most of these posters were printed more than 20 years ago and have high educational value for illustrating Wikipedia articles on the public understanding of HIV and the role of the Red Cross in changing perceptions of the importance of safe-sex practices for non-white and non-gay people.
For the posters to be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles, the images must be released on a CC-BY or similar license, without any other constraints on reuse apart from whatever attribution you prefer. Without evidence of this release, the images will have to be deleted from Wikimedia Commons and from any of the many different language Wikipedias they may be used in.
Would it be possible for you to confirm that the American Red Cross will accept us continuing to host the images on the current CC-BY-4.0 license, or if a subset of the 68 posters can be kept?
Links:
1. Search link showing scans of 68 relevant posters: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=red+cross+incategory%3A%22AIDS+Poster+from+Wellcome+Images+%28check+needed%29%22&title=Special%3ASearch
Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.
[Fae]