Commons:Deletion requests/Images of Fabelfroh 2008

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This deletion debate is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Images of Fabelfroh 2008

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images
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Plus a lot more not listed here. See the user's gallery for the remaining images uploaded with the extra "restrictions". (His request, however, is for all his uploads from 2007 and 2008, a total of nearly 2000 high quality images.)

Nomination
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I nominate the newer Pictures of User:Fabelfroh for mass deletion. Those pictures are licensed CC-BY-SA-NC-3.0 in their metadata. This is not a valid license. In the Infobox there is a CC-BY-SA-3.0 template, however with the restriction ... a commercial use of the image is only possible with the permission of the author. This is clearly against Commons:Licensing#Acceptable_licenses which doesn't allow this restriction. Currently it looks like Fabelfroh is not willing to make his work commercially available anymore. Unfortunately. I still hope he changes his mind because his work is great! Ikiwaner 20:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion
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  • Delete There is no option but to delete the relevant images with this non-commercial restriction if User:Fabelfroh isn't prepared to change this as seems to be the case. However, despite this user's request request to delete "ALL photos of 2007, 2008 and ALL moss photos too. And I mean ALL", only those photos with invalid licenses can and should be deleted. I'd like to leave this a few days though to see if any other solution can be found. I wouldn't like for us to have to delete all these images then find there is a way to keep them. Adambro 23:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This deletion request is for those explicit NC-images only. About 250 of Fabelfrohs 1800 images are affected. I think the other images are OK since they are without further restrictions. Fabelfroh can't redraw a license he once gave. --Ikiwaner 04:46, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Oh, we could technically keep them as I pointed out on his talk page. The license these are under makes it perfectly clear that that those additional restrictions don't apply or are completely optional. If the metadata and the license tag don't match, then it's dual-licensed and either one can be used. Anyone's allow to remove the NC part from the metadata (implying we choose the other). This isn't a licensing issue since these are CC-BY-SA-3.0 and nothing more. This is a "it right to hold the author to these terms against their will?" If the author wasn't a member of the community and this was some random website's material, it would be different. I still would prefer a better rationale for removing these from Commons but regardless I don't think people would feel comfortable keeping them. Rocket000 04:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment And there's a lot more discussion of the above-mentioned issue here, between the Rocket and I. I worried about informed consent, the Rocket made the good point that "it is the licensor's responsibility to understand the terms and conditions they are willfully agreeing to". But then, isn't there some responsibility on our part to make people know what they are consenting to? That a certain new user (who I dealt with today) who persistently uploaded materials as "all rights reserved, contact us if you want to us it" should trouble us enough, but here we're talking someone who has been uploading materials to Commons since 2005. How is this possible? If he really had no idea about this (and there's a case to be made for him being fully aware of it), are we stating our requirements explicitly and forcefully enough? And for goodness' sake, how did FP and QI reviewers miss this? Do they even understand the problem here?
    These, I think, are serious issues that need to be discussed. Maybe we need to be more annoying about this at upload time. Or maybe he knew the deal around here and was just screwing with us all along, using Commons for self-promotion. Discuss. Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 06:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment If the copyrights are indeed partly owned by the university (which I'm not sure about, as Germany doesn't have the same work for hire laws that the US has), then the CC license was not valid in the first place. In that case we can't do anything but delete all images affected by this, not only those with a NC statement. I am sure that the Urheberrecht (similar, but not equal to copyright) always belongs to the author and is non-tranferable. Usage rights, on the other hand are implicitly tranfered to the employer. The question is whether these can be transfered exclusively and whether they were transfered exclusively in this case. --rimshottalk 06:17, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is my worry as well. Basically, if the user incorrectly specifies the usage rights he has on his own copyrighted works, would this be classified as what we call in the rest of the world: "a copyright violation" ? Are we supposed to subject to the entity that has the usage rights? I seems to be so. TheDJ 11:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I'm generally finding myself in agreement with Rocket's dual licensing comments. I do share Lewis' concerns re QI and FP, and I really don't know what to do about it at this stage. Reviewer education is needed. But I don't think deleting the images will help in that regard. giggy (:O) 10:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Incidentally, if help is needed in closing this (if kept), I can use Giggabot; specifically approved for this sort of thing. Just give me a yell. giggy (:O) 10:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      We can't keep these images, even if the uploader has violated the license by specifying additional conditions which aren't valid, it should be clear that he hasn't and doesn't agree to release these images under an allowed license. We can't just remove the additional conditions and keep them. It is very disappointing that as I understand it, some of these photos have gone through the FP and QI processes despite these issues and it highlights a lack of scrutiny which has to go beyond simply looking whether it is a good or interesting photo or whatever. I'm not very familiar with either of these processes but checking the licensing should be the first stage of both as it is the most important. It doesn't matter how great an image is if it shouldn't be on Commons. The only option I see available unless the uploads changes his position. Adambro 11:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete non-commercial is non-commercial. The intent of the author with these specific images is obvious once you read his license (basically an adaptation of cc-by-sa-3.0). This is not a revoke, but simply a license that is not allowed on Commons (If I add additional non-compatible requirements to the GPL license in my software, the FSF won't recognize it as GPL software either). Also there is the possibility of an incorrect interpretation of the usage rights that could be granted by this user (some usage rights possibly lay with the university as mentioned above by rimshot). As such the rights might not be HIS to grant, and as such there might be a partial copyright violation with all images uploaded, even those that do not have the -NC adaptation. The problem is how can we distinguish between his personal photo's and photo's that were taken as part of his University work? TheDJ 11:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • To clarify my difference with Rocket000 in this case, who asserts that due to: "There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specified here. This License constitutes the entire agreement, Licensor shall not be bound by any additional provisions that may appear in any communication from" might technically enable us to remove this NC restriction from his images. I'm not so sure about this. I think that because of the way our licenses are made "visible", Fabelfroh effectively changed the license, instead of making such "additional provisions that may appear in any communication from You." I also therefore propose we move the attribution to a separate "section" (possibly just a simple <hr> beneath the CC-BY-SA license to make the difference more clear.
      • Fabelfroh didn't change the license. It stills says CC-BY-SA-3.0, right? You're arguing against what the actual legal document says, not me. Rocket000 14:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, what i assert is that he used a different license and put the CC-BY-SA-3.0 sticker on his own license. The assertion is that as soon as you change this license, you can no longer call that license by the same name, without violating the license. As such, he created a derivative of the license that misused the "moniker" CC-BY-SA-3.0 without actually being the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license, and that this is probably illegal. It does not necessarily mean that the works automatically are subject to this license (at least not in all countries in the world, especially if this was not the intent of the licensee). I understand what you are trying to say, but that is something that applies mostly to derivative works, where you have the issue of contamination ( a piece of a work forces a new work into a certain license) or with revoking licenses. TheDJ 19:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Also note that this is an assertion. I'm not saying its true, but i'm saying that things like this can be very complicated. What you quote from the license is there more to protect the license itself, and possibly the licensor and the licensed work from 3rd party distribution. In practicality I think is not a given that it traps the licensor into a license once he has put the string "CC-BY-SA-3.0" on a work. In many courts throughout the world, the original intent of the copyright holder will be important and the question will be raised if the string "CC-BY-SA-3.0|withrestrictions" will be recognized as a separate/new license, that illegally carries the CC-BY-SA-3.0 moniker, as opposed to it being "CC-BY-SA-3.0 license with illegal and not relevant additions by the copyright holder". When you say "technically" you mean "to the letter of the license", but unfortunately copyright law is much more vague when you actually bring it into a court, even if you have licenses that are as well defined and relatively "clear" as those of CC seem to be. TheDJ 20:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Those are great hard to replace photos that took a lot of labor to upload and organize. It seems like Kristian Peters name appears as author 4 times on each page and Fabelfroh few times too, but there is no mention of any university copyrights. I think the university restriction was probably invented afterwards to explain tinkering with the copyright templates. --Jarekt 12:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Freely licensed and within our scope. ...and for the following reasons:

  • Fabelfroh has never made the claim he didn't know non-commercial licenses weren't allowed. Actually, all the evidence points to him knowing full well all along. The most obvious and compelling reason for this assertion is that he only included this little restriction in the metadata. Now obviously, if you don't want to allow commercial use, you're going make sure people know that! The common person doesn't check the metadata—I think I first pointed this out and I only check if because of the current discussion. This seems kinda deceiving to me.
  • As I said above, just because the license tag and the EXIF data don't match doesn't mean there's an issue. It just means it's dual licensed and since one is a free license, this is allowed on Commons.
  • So the license is fine. What about the additional statement: "Also a commercial use of the image is only possible with the permission of the author"? Well, according to the actual legal part of the license he willfully and publicly stated it was released under, this addition restriction is completely optional.
  • After being informed that additional restrictions can be safely ignored by anyone, he continued to license his images with the additional text. Again, the common person isn't going to know everything about the Creative Commons licenses (as some previous comments show). Whether or not it's intended, this is pretty misleading not unlike the metadata situation.
  • This isn't the first time Fabelfroh has added additional restrictions on top of licenses that don't allow it.[1][2][3]
    • The issue with the GFDL addition is that is makes it completely incompatible with "real" GFDL licensed material. If it was even possible to add anything in the first place (which it's not, without calling it something else). The same goes for any share-alike license. You can't "share-alike" if everyone has their own customized copy-left license. This is staple of all copyleft licenses.
    • Originally, I believe this was done as a honest misunderstanding of the license as the original beginning said "For clarity over section 4 of the GFDL license..." This was later changed to "In addition to and for clarity over section 4 of the GFDL license..." so he plainly knew he was making additions.
  • His knowledge of the GFDL (like clarifying Section 4 for us) suggests he's not as clueless about these licenses as it may seem.
  • There's a history here of trying to restrict the use of his photos while still being allowed to enjoy Commons with all his QIs, FPs, praise, and of course, exposure.

There's one issue left I didn't touch on... he now says he doesn't have full rights to these images. To put it bluntly, I simply don't believe this:

  • He never mentions this in the license. For someone so concerned1 2 with us following the letter of these licenses, you'd think he won't leave out a small detail like the copyright holder of his own license.
  • Usually, when there's kind of joint deal with photographers and their employers (I guess that's the relationship) the terms are layed-out beforehand and agreed upon. His ability to continuously change the license doesn't suggest this happened.
  • Even his metadata says he owns the copyright in so many words: He owns the original copyright. So what, that means he sold out on us? He owns the original copyright but "sold" part of it to some university? He's contradicting himself.
  • He originally stated that it was his intention to limit commercial use, not some third party: The idea behind the addition was to restrict commercial use to wiki(m|p)edia only. And that still is my intention.
  • Previous to this "university owns part of the copyright" claim, he said he couldn't change it due to some dubious compatibility issue with Flickr.

Some are amazed that this has gone unnoticed for so long. I'm not. He's been here since 2005. He's a well know user with what looks like a standard license (and it technically is). The NC part is hidden away where no one looks. And that extra condition was added in like it was just some additional attribution-specifying after thought. Who checks the license of well established users every time they view one of their images?

I said keep because I believe the user is the sole copyright holder and knew exactly what he was doing. When he couldn't get his way, he decided that he rather not let us have any of the images from the last two years (and the moss ones for some reason) regardless of the licenses attached to them. Should we really keep them... that's up to the community. Like I said I don't think many will feel comfortable keeping them, so the question is do we honor this user request and delete "ALL photos of 2007, 2008 and ALL moss photos too. And I mean ALL." or do we pick and choose and go with only the ones listed here? Or do we accuse the user of uploading things with false licenses he had no right to do and delete them all as copyvios? Rocket000 14:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest we'd be better concentrating on the non-commercial issue and worry about his suggestion that he might not be the copyright holder of some of the images separately. As you note, for him to turn around and say this now is somewhat suspect. Adambro 16:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"according to the actual legal part of the license he willfully and publicly stated it was released under, this addition restriction is completely optional", well, the license does say that. But then, are we really saying that the courts will interpret a license atomistically, as if it had some separate existence apart from the intent of the author? Lewis Collard! (hai thar, wut u doin) 17:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think we have different ideas about what his intentions were. Rocket000 19:55, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do not understand how Rocket000 uses this as an argument for keeping the images: The idea behind the addition was to restrict commercial use to wiki(m|p)edia only. And that still is my intention. To me that's the sad reason why this is not a formalistic discussion but the lack of Fabelfrohs will to allow unlimited commercial use. Given the assumption that WikiM|Pedia is a non commercial project no commercial use is allowed at all. --Ikiwaner 17:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because licenses are irrevocable. Rocket000 19:53, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Wouldn't it be better if when you uploaded an image you _had_ to select a valid license and that would be listed on the image description page in a non-editable way so there was no way to write additions or other non-valid licenses ? The chosen license should also not be changable by the user itself after upload. /Daniel78 19:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unfortunately, the credit/acknowledgement line was used for this, which simply needs to be user editable. This is why I suggested we make a clearer separation in this CC-BY-SA license about what part deals with the actual license, and what part deals with the required credit line of this license. That would make cases like this easier to spot, and it would be harder to fool non-Commons people in this world. TheDJ 19:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Even so, but it seems all people have to do is say they don't want to allow commercial use anymore and people disregard what the license says anyway. Rocket000 19:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Rocket000 arguments. --Jarekt 14:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and scrub the invalid extra conditions. Fabelfroh has made his bed, now he gets to lie in it. First-time user, I can see giving them the benefit of the doubt, but Fabelfroh has been around a long time, and now has only the choices of accepting the free license or publicly admitting to dishonesty. Stan Shebs 09:03, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete In my opinion, if there is an apparent licensing conflict then we ought to accept the licensor's apparent intent at face value and act accordingly. It appears that Fabelfroh's intent from the beginning on these images was to include a restriction limiting commercial use. Yes, that is self-contradictory with the inclusion of the CC-BY-SA-3.0 tag. Either this contradiction is intentional (which I see no specific evidence of) or the contradiction is the result of a simple mistake. The people voting Keep here want to exploit that mistake by using only the CC-BY-SA portions of the license to determine that these works are in actuality free of commercial restrictions.

    Personally, I do not consider that to be ethical. If it one assumes Fabelfroh never intended to forgo the commercial restrictions, then saying that Fabelfroh waived these provisions by error is essentially trying to exploit Fabelfroh's mistake to her detriment and our advantage. Beyond the mere question of ethics, it is not obvious whether simply removing the contradictory clauses would be legal either. Contract law establishes that an agreement may be void if the agreement contains a mistake and the non-mistaken party is aware of the mistake and attempts to exploit it to his advantage. It is possible, though probably not obvious, that attempting to exploit Fabelfroh's mistake in order to invalidate the commercial clauses and force Fabelfroh into a position she never intended would be sufficiently grievous to void the entire proceeding, and in essence generate the legal finding that CC-BY-SA was never appropriately agreed to in the first place. Hence, I think we have to be concerned that the contradictory clauses create a situation where, in essense, the accompanying CC-BY-SA statement has been tainted to such a degree as to be legally unenforcable.

    In the face of complicated issues like this, I don't think it is really our place to assert to the rest of the world that these images are bona fide free content. If Fabelfroh won't agree to remove the restrictions herself, then I think the only appropriate course of action is to delete the images. If, as some apparently believe, Fabelfroh has been attempting to exploit our system for her own advantage by willfully including the questionable licenses, then I think that is all the more reason to remove the content and insist on only content that is unambiguously allowed. Dragons flight 02:28, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep for the moment. My reading of the extra terms is that they are intended to allow non CC-BY-SA usage, with the permission of the user. But I agree they need to be clarified one way or the other. Regards, Ben Aveling 07:19, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of making a another even larger mass deletion request, let's also deal with Fabelfroh's request to delete all his images from 2007 and 2008 (plus some other non-specified images). If you're going on perceived intent here and not what the license says, we should remove all images he doesn't want to be free. Deleting only the ones uploaded after this change would still be going by the letter of the law in a way. He has requested these all be tagged for a deletion request, but I feel these can be dealt with together (and IMO, the fate of both should be the same). Rocket000 15:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think we've got to make a distinction between images he uploaded and released under a free license and those that he didn't. I think it is important to note that he didn't upload the later images under an acceptable license and then wanted to delete them when it came to light that this would allow commercial use. It should be obvious that with the later images, he never agreed to release them under an accepted license. So whilst I think we should delete the later images because he never really agreed to release them freely, those earlier images without the additional restriction regarding commercial use were released under an acceptable license and so should be kept. There are no grounds to delete the earlier images since he can't withdraw the license and so any images before the December 2007 change should be kept, any after should be deleted. I'd therefore suggest that we concentrate on discussing these later images. Adambro 15:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, everything he uploaded is under a free license. CC-BY-SA-3.0 is indeed a free license (and he hasn't removed that after being informed extra restrictions are null and void, btw). It's the intent we are considering, which appears to be the same in both cases (the user himself doesn't make a distinction). Of course he can't withdraw the license in either case, but can we hold him to it? And if we can, should we? Rocket000 01:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This issue isn't if can Fabelfroh withdraw consent. The issue is if Fabelfroh was able to give consent in the first place. Regards, Ben Aveling 23:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We can't do that. If Fabelfroh didn't have permission to upload under a free license, we can't keep them. Regards, Ben Aveling 22:35, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted. all image uploaded since December 26, 2007 as they arent under a free licenses. Images upload prior to this were uploaded under a free license and relicensed, questions remain as to whether the uploader was able to release the images or not and whether the uploader understood the licensing. For the issue of clarity images these should be identified and renominated. I'll ask User:Giggy to do the mass deletion. Gnangarra 02:35, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Slowly working through it, any help is appreciated. giggy (:O) 02:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Busy with some other stuff. Will get to it, but it may take a few days, unless anyone else wants to take it on board. giggy (:O) 03:31, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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