Wikinews talk:Upload media

Several problems with this proposed policy:

• It violates the permanence objective: Wikimedia Commons does not guarantee that an image will not be changed, while Wikinews wants that guarantee. Better to upload images to Wikinews so it can be assured that another project won't change them or decide they don't matter a week, year, decade or 50 years from now.
• It restricts content to only what Wikimedia Commons will accept, when this is an independent project with its own guidelines and policies.
• It requires a license, blocking the use of public domain material, including that released to the public domain by the creator.
• It misleads about what fair use is. Use of images from other media is unlikely to be fair use, but that's presented as the reason for not using fair use images. Fair use would really be images like stills from terrorist videos, product shots, company logos and such, none of which can be used under this policy because such things aren't accepted at Wikimedia Commons. Jamesday 15:57, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bad idea...

Under this policy, we could not use fair use that other media sources would use…pictures like corporate logos (for an article about that company) and such. I noticed that Special:Upload has been turned off. I'm not liking this… Francisco Melendez 19:19, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I concur. It is standard practice at many business reporting outlets to use corporate logos to quickly visually communicate which companies a given story is about.

If the foundation refuses to change the rules for the Commons, then Wikinews needs an alternative repository for its fair-use images to avoid artificially constraining the quality of the reporting on this site.

Why can't we post images directly onto the Wikinews servers, just as Wikipedia serves fair use images from its own servers?

I agree that we shouldn't rip off images from other news sites, but we don't have to resort to that in quite a few cases where we can acquire or produce fair-use images on our own.

Please change this policy.

— DV 05:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So perhaps a better policy is like the following?

1. Sourcing - Clarify the source.
2. Source restriction - Never take images from other news media, or other entities that are in competitive relation with Wikinews.
3. Explanation - Give your defense/explanation why it is a fair use.
4. Indemnification - In case of a legal trouble, the uploader compensate Wikimedia Foundation or any other Wikimedia participants for attorny's fees, damages, other fees associated with the trouble.

When it comes to legal risk, I am not sure if we should simply decide based on logal-governance. So I would suggest that we contact the Foundation if we come to some concensus or narrow down to a few options. How does that sound?

Tomos 05:43, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)