Wikipediocracy

Michaeldsuarez wrote: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems/Archive_31#User:MaybeMaybeMaybe

MaybeMaybeMaybe (as "Princess Mérida") seems to have uploaded vast piles of stuff from Flickr like this.

If you look carefully, you see that although it's apparently licensed CC Attribution 2.0 on Commons, on Flickr it's Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 (thus not suitable for Commons). So does that mean Flickr allowed the original uploader to change the license after uploading (pretty weird if so, CC licenses are non-revocable), or did the transfer bot screw up verifying the license? Who wins in a my-word-against-yours contest between a photographer and Commons bot operator if the original creator wants it taken down?

Either way, there's now a crap image - as opposed to crap photo; but the photo plus watermark is pointless, nobody's going to bother Photoshopping it into usefulness - with a weird license conflict on Commons, with no outward sign that anything's wrong. Fantastic. God knows how many other cases like this there are.

Hex wrote:

Michaeldsuarez wrote: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems/Archive_31#User:MaybeMaybeMaybe

MaybeMaybeMaybe (as "Princess Mérida") seems to have uploaded vast piles of stuff from Flickr like this.

If you look carefully, you see that although it's apparently licensed CC Attribution 2.0 on Commons, on Flickr it's Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 (thus not suitable for Commons). So does that mean Flickr allowed the original uploader to change the license after uploading (pretty weird if so, CC licenses are non-revocable), or did the transfer bot screw up verifying the license? Who wins in a my-word-against-yours contest between a photographer and Commons bot operator if the original creator wants it taken down?

Either way, there's now a crap image - as opposed to crap photo; but the photo plus watermark is pointless, nobody's going to bother Photoshopping it into usefulness - with a weird license conflict on Commons, with no outward sign that anything's wrong. Fantastic. God knows how many other cases like this there are.

Commons doesn't care what the license is it just cares what the license was when the bot raptured it. Flickr images sometimes have their license changed once the owner notices that they've been uploaded to Commons.

Flickr users can can the license at will. "To change the license for a specific picture, just open up "Owner settings" near the bottom of your photo page and edit the license."

Alternatively you open up the organizer drag all your content to the top pane, and change the license on everything all at once.

You never know whether the license is correct or not, many CC-BY licensed images on flickr are actually ARR images collected from around the web. A whole load can be sourced to photo-agencies.

Moonage Daydream wrote:Flickr users can can the license at will.

But can they can the can can?

Tippi Hadron wrote:

Moonage Daydream wrote:Flickr users can can the license at will.

But can they can the can can?

Oh Yeah

Moonage Daydream wrote:Commons doesn't care what the license is it just cares what the license was...

When it comes to CC licenses, AIUI, there's no such thing as is or was, only is or isn't. But oh man:

A Yahoo spokesperson says the company does not keep track of the changes to CC attributions on particular photos, and advises people who want to use CC-licensed images to keep records of their own, for instance by taking a screenshot of the originating Flickr page.

I've known a few people who've worked at Flickr at different points. They sometimes related stories of features failing to make it through Yahoo's torturous bureaucracy, getting spiked because of one management faction being at war with another. The above quote has got to be the result of an unimplemented feature; the people I knew were all more than savvy enough to understand that Creative Commons licenses are not revokable.

So my conclusion is that allowing slurping from Flickr at all is a massively dangerous thing while Flickr's license management is so utterly broken. Woo.

Moonage Daydream wrote:when the bot raptured it.

If that was a typo for "captured", it was a great one. Otherwise, nicely phrased.

Hex wrote:

Moonage Daydream wrote:Commons doesn't care what the license is it just cares what the license was...

When it comes to CC licenses, AIUI, there's no such thing as is or was, only is or isn't. But oh man:

A Yahoo spokesperson says the company does not keep track of the changes to CC attributions on particular photos, and advises people who want to use CC-licensed images to keep records of their own, for instance by taking a screenshot of the originating Flickr page.

I've known a few people who've worked at Flickr at different points. They sometimes related stories of features failing to make it through Yahoo's torturous bureaucracy, getting spiked because of one management faction being at war with another. The above quote has got to be the result of an unimplemented feature; the people I knew were all more than savvy enough to understand that Creative Commons licenses are not revokable.

So my conclusion is that allowing slurping from Flickr at all is a massively dangerous thing while Flickr's license management is so utterly broken. Woo.

flickr were considering recording it 6 years ago.
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/ ... eply169992

Some years ago there was someone that wanted to set up a site that escrowed CC licenses for a fee. The scheme was scuppered by flickr users saying that such a scheme was effectively commercializing the licenses.

In any case, as I've said here many times before YOU cannot rely on a CC license at face value, whether its from flickr or wikipedia or anywhere else. You should always contact the supposed creator to obtain get a paper trail.

The really fundamental concepts of the various CC-like licences are too complicated for the casual user to grasp as they are at odds with their simplistic, common sense view. They are offered this complex legal option at the click of the button, and along with many things in this world I think it is unreasonable for a layman to enter into an apparently irrevocable contract that wishes away their rights. When they realise that this is not what they want, the solution offered, especially by Wikipedians like Fae, is to laugh in their face.

While the Free Movement appears superficially attractive, the downsides of this are never explained with the same gusto as the upsides, e.g. why doesn't Flickr say: "Click this button if you do not mind your photographs being used in ways that might embarrass or upset you (e.g. pornography), used as content for publications with no recompense to yourself, used by other people with no clear attribution to yourself (attrib: Wikimedia Commons being a favourite example), hacked about in ways that might annoy you, as well as all the nice things you hope people will use your pictures for. Remember, once clicked, you can never change your mind."

lilburne wrote:flickr were considering recording it 6 years ago.

(My emphasis)

POW. Nixed feature. I totally called it.

lilburne wrote:In any case, as I've said here many times before YOU cannot rely on a CC license at face value, whether its from flickr or wikipedia or anywhere else. You should always contact the supposed creator to obtain get a paper trail.

Good advice. But for a whacking great image host (that was at least for some time) the market leader in such services, to ignore getting licensing right, when they knew the casual user/layman that dogbiscuit refers to would be relying on them,* is absolutely inexcusable.

* There's a specific CC-licensed image search on Flickr, for God's sake.

dogbiscuit wrote:The really fundamental concepts of the various CC-like licences are too complicated for the casual user to grasp as they are at odds with their simplistic, common sense view. They are offered this complex legal option at the click of the button, and along with many things in this world I think it is unreasonable for a layman to enter into an apparently irrevocable contract that wishes away their rights. When they realise that this is not what they want, the solution offered, especially by Wikipedians like Fae, is to laugh in their face.

Thanks, well put. One could write a whole textbook on how Wikimedia projects abuse and misuse copyrights and copyrighted material.
It would be a damned boring book, of course. Only attorneys would be able to understand it.

Hex wrote:

lilburne wrote:flickr were considering recording it 6 years ago.

(My emphasis)

POW. Nixed feature. I totally called it.

lilburne wrote:In any case, as I've said here many times before YOU cannot rely on a CC license at face value, whether its from flickr or wikipedia or anywhere else. You should always contact the supposed creator to obtain get a paper trail.

Good advice. But for a whacking great image host (that was at least for some time) the market leader in such services, to ignore getting licensing right, when they knew the casual user/layman that dogbiscuit refers to would be relying on them,* is absolutely inexcusable.

* There's a specific CC-licensed image search on Flickr, for God's sake.

I suspect that the real issue is that the CC license is only valid at the point that it was offered to you, and that the creator can change (revoke) it at any time. For example if I posted a photo on flickr a week ago as CC-BY and then yesterday made it CC-BY-SA. If you come across it today then you can only reuse it under the CC-BY-SA license, you can't use it under the CC-BY license because it was never offered to you under that license.

For flickr to give a list of licenses with dates would mean that if someone uploaded a bunch of stuff as CC-BY and then uploaded another batch of photos under the license by mistake and changed it to ARR a short while later then any one could come along and say that they got the image during the intervening period. Stewart Butterfield, and indeed Yahoo, had far more respect for the creators to allow that to happen.

lilburne wrote: I suspect that the real issue is that the CC license is only valid at the point that it was offered to you, and that the creator can change (revoke) it at any time. For example if I posted a photo on flickr a week ago as CC-BY and then yesterday made it CC-BY-SA. If you come across it today then you can only reuse it under the CC-BY-SA license, you can't use it under the CC-BY license because it was never offered to you under that license.

If someone gave me a dated screenshot of your Flickr account (the technique Yahoo themselves recommend) during the point that your photo was CC-BY, I would be able to offer it as CC-BY. CC licenses are legally binding and unrevokable; that you are able to "change" the license of your images on Flickr after CC licensing them at all is completely and utterly bizarre. It would take a lawyer to explain what the consequences are for you as a content creator if you "change" the license; but my feeling is that whoever has proof of the earliest license wins.

lilburne wrote:if someone uploaded a bunch of stuff as CC-BY and then uploaded another batch of photos under the license by mistake and changed it to ARR a short while later then any one could come along and say that they got the image during the intervening period. Stewart Butterfield, and indeed Yahoo, had far more respect for the creators to allow that to happen.

That's entirely the creator's fault. Allowing someone to screw up and cause a mangled legal ambiguity is not "respect". It's also massive disrespect for content reusers, who are first-class individuals in the CC scheme, to create a system that leaves them wondering if the person that created these works is going to "change" their license and start a fight with them. The CC system was not designed for content reusers to have to have a library of look-I-can-prove-it documents just in case someone chooses their mind.

Hex wrote: The CC system was not designed for content reusers to have to have a library of look-I-can-prove-it documents just in case someone chooses their mind.

Nor was the CC system designed for a bunch of under socialised freaks who take other peoples work and include it with their collection of white penises on the off chance someone somewhere might possibly need it some day.

CC licences take evertything from the creator except attribution. Wikipedia effectively takes even that.

Hex wrote:That's entirely the creator's fault. Allowing someone to screw up and cause a mangled legal ambiguity is not "respect". It's also massive disrespect for content reusers, who are first-class individuals in the CC scheme, to create a system that leaves them wondering if the person that created these works is going to "change" their license and start a fight with them. The CC system was not designed for content reusers to have to have a library of look-I-can-prove-it documents just in case someone chooses their mind.

When I see the words "entirely the creator's fault" used in the context of a mistake (or as I would contend, an inability to grasp the far reaching consequences of the licence), where you put the rights of the re-user above the rights of the creator, then I know that there is something pretty fucked up about the argument.

As I often mention, because people outside Europe don't seem to grasp how things work, there is a lot of law in the UK that works on the premise that contracts are more complicated than the average person can cope with, so if they are not crystal clear, or have hidden implications, the courts can strike them out as unreasonable contracts. Add that together with the consumer protection laws where basically we can return a product on the flimsiest of pretexts, nominally "unsatisfactory" defined in the widest sense, and you have a culture where the onus is on everyone to ensure arrangements are clear and fair.

At its heart, there is a fraud in the free licensing, and that fraud is that there is no harm, only benefit. This is then compounded by arguments based on the principle that because things can be copied freely, things other than physical objects have no real value, and it is unreasonable for someone who might have spent millions on some electronic creation to retain rights to something that can so readily be replicated.

Is it right that the iPod has (only) made Apple so much money when it is useless without the content, the vast majority of which generated no money for the content creators? If every user paid 1 cent to the artist for the right to listen to a track to the iPod in perpetuity (that would cost me about $150 for my entire collection) would that be unreasonable?