BR Bullpen talk:Image use policy

Should BR Bullpen be limited to fair use and user contributed images? If the official policy of BR Bullpen is to release data under the GnuFDL, it seems to me that images that have been released under the FDL should be acceptable.

Also, FWIW, the "Fair use" link goes to Wikipedia's page discussing the doctrine of fair use, not to their fair use policy page. --Roger 15:16, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

What would be the policy on using Creative Commons photos from Flickr? --MichaelEng 00:47, 4 July 2006 (EDT)

I think that a CC license should be OK, though it's possible that somebody might consider BB-ref to be commercial and thus not allowed to use images with a no commercial use restriction. OTOH, that's not what the policy says; it says PD and user contributed only. I think that means that we need to revise the policy- copying Wikipedia's policy outright would be a good start- but I'm not sure that I have the right to do that. --Roger 01:22, 4 July 2006 (EDT)

How about modifying the image use policy to allow CC with a majority vote of the nine active admins. Vote for. --MichaelEng 19:14, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

I disagree with allowing all Creative Commons licenses. My understanding is that the Bullpen is supposed to be under GFDL, so I think that a reasonable policy would be to allow only licenses that are compatible with the GFDL. I don't know exactly which CC licenses are GFDL compatible, but I'm fairly sure that some of them, like the ones including a non-commercial requirement, aren't.

I think that this may matter in the long run. At some point, somebody might want to package the Bullpen up and turn it into a commercial work. As an example Sean might want to package the data from BB-ref with the Bullpen to make a fantastic electronic baseball encyclopedia. It would be best if somebody doing that didn't have to sort through all of the pictures to figure out which ones were available under which license so they'd know what they could include legitimately.

At the very least, I think that we need to improve the quality of our picture license tracking. As far as I can tell, there's no metadata associated with pictures to indicate where they came from or what terms they're available under. That means that there's no automated way of telling the difference between a picture that I included under the GFDL from a picture of a baseball card that somebody is claiming as fair use from a picture from Getty Images that somebody put here in violation of copyright. I think that we desperately need to start tracking that kind of thing just as they do on Wikipedia. Until we have a way of tracking where our images came from, any image policy is a bad joke. --Roger 19:47, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

As much as I'd love to be able to get more images on here, I'm a bit cloudy on what's legal and what isn't, so I don't feel comfortable voting one way or the other. -Chisoxfan 20:07, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

I for one think that graphic examples enhance any article, and have uploaded many logos which the wikipedia policy states is ok for illustration. (Hopefully users here think they help the article) However, the wikipedia policy also lists under things not ok:

"An image of a Barry Bonds baseball card, to illustrate the article on Barry Bonds. A sports card image is a legitimate fair use if it is used only to illustrate the article (or an article section) whose topic is the card itself; see the Honus Wagner article."

I've uploaded some of my cards in the past, and now wonder if baseball cards are ok. --Just me 21:25, 6 July 2006 (EDT)

Certainly anything from before 1923 should be OK because its copyright has expired, putting it in the public domain. It's also possible that the copyrights on many older cards have been allowed to lapse, though you'd need to dig up evidence of that before using them. It might be productive to write to one of the card companies and ask them for permission to use images from older cards to illustrate articles. The worst thing that could happen would be that we'd get a clarification from them on their attitude toward our use of their images. --Roger 12:47, 7 July 2006 (EDT)

Reading through the GFDL license, it would seem that it only applies to the text and/or a full-fledged document (such as that encyclopedia that Rgmoore mentioned). However, there seems to be no mention of images within the GFDL license, which would mean that they must fall under some other copyright status (i.e. not GFDL). Also, it is my understanding that "fair use" images do not fall under a GFDL license. Also see Wikipedia:Copyrights which seems states that there is a difference in the terms of release of the text and images; which is why there are image tags.

Right now the only images permissable on the site are those:

1. under "fair use," which would include team, league, and university logos, scaled-down card images, book covers, etc or
2. pictures that have been released under a GFDL license

My proposal is to expand the image use policy to include:

1. works in the Public Domain of the nation where the Bullpen's servers are located (United States?)
   1. covers pre-1923 cards, Chicago Historical Society images, flag images (which were from the Open Clip Art gallery)
2. works for which the owners has absolved all rights to
   1. see Muncie Reds page
3. images released under a GFDL
4. images released under certain CC licenses

• Attribution alone (by) - should be fine
  • Possible unuseable images:
    • Attribution + ShareAlike (by-sa) - would we be sharing alike?
    • Attribution + Noncommercial (by-nc) - is the Bullpen non-comercial?
    • Attribution + NoDerivs (by-nd) - would external application resizing be derivitive, since the Media-Wiki software's resize does not work
    • Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) - see above
    • Attribution + Noncommercial + ShareAlike (by-nc-sa) - see above

From the list of images on the site as of 7 July, I have come up with a list of general "image tags" (based off of wikipedia) we should identify our images with:

PUBLIC DOMAIN

• {{USA-PD}} - images in the public domain
• {{NoRights}} - the owner of the image relenques all rights to it

OTHER

• {{CC...}} - released under a CC license (... would be by-sa, by, by-nd, etc.)
• {{GFDL}} - released under a GFDL license

FAIR USE

• {{FairUse}} - generic fair use; reasons would have to be stated
• {{BaseballCard}} - illustrate a player, even if the uploader does not own the card (we are apparently in the clear with, see Trauty's Talk page); reasons would be part of the template
• {{Logo}} - image of as team/league logo for illustration purpopses; reasons would be part of the template
• {{SchoolLogo}} - image of a university team/college athletic conference logo for illustration purpopses; reasons would be part of the template
• {{Book}} - image of as book cover for illustration purpopses; reasons would be part of the template

There are likely some others that I am missing.

Additionally, all images should have source information of their description page, stating where the image was gotten from (i.e. the site or page but not a hyperlink to the image directly). For common sites, source templates may be used. Some examples are:

SOURCES

• {{WikipediaImage}} - for images from Wikipedia (parameter to show source)
• {{TWBaseball}} - for images from the Taiwan Baseball wiki (parameter to show source)
• {{MLB-CR}} - for images from MLB.com (parameter to show source)
• {{CHS}} - for images from the Chicago Daily News at Library of Congress site (parameter to show source)
• {{LOC}} - for images from the Library of Congress site (parameter to show source)

For baseball cards I would think that the year, maker, and player name or card number should be included.

In addition if these tags are put into place any image without a source or coyright tag within a two-weeks of its posting should be deleted. From the listing that I have around 765 have no information at all, not even a description {{NoInfo}}, while ~250 have no release terms {{NoReleaseTerms}}.

Finally images should have a description and a file name such that a user without images for example can make sense of the image.

Good Names: Corneliusreid.jpg, 81CardinalsFutures.jpg, BakersfieldDodgers54.jpg, UNCWilmington.jpg

Not-so-good Names: Davidd1.jpg, Ott.jpg, 1965t282.jpg, U50BaseballTeam.jpg

--MichaelEng 19:48, 9 July 2006 (EDT)

I like the general structure of Michael's categorizations. I think that the big thing is that we need to add a structure that ensures that images are tagged on upload. The more effort that's required to add a tag, the less likely it is that the tag will be added. Currently the system requires great effort, since there's no guidance on adding copyright information; uploaders have to actively seek it- if they even know that they're supposed to include it.

Ideally, the upload page should have a dropbox with a selection of commonly used tags plus an "other" selection that users can select when appropriate. The dropbox would also have a blank line that's the default selection and a javascript validator that wouldn't allow users to submit if the selection were still blank. That way users would actually be forced to select a copyright tag before they could upload. --Roger 21:11, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

I went ahead and tagged nearly all of the images that uploaded before 7 July with the above tags. See here for the list. Images without (Rollback) Top were not tagged for some reason. Images tagged with {{NoInfo}} need information on the file added, those with {{ReleaseTerms}} need release terms added. Most of the image tag templates still need to be created.

The wikipedia upload file page has a drop-down box like what Rgmoore mentioned and it may be part of the Media-Wiki 1.6+ installation, but I am not sure. --MichaelEng 06:04, 11 July 2006 (EDT)

I'd like to add a point of clarification to the discussion of why there has to be a different policy on images than on text. There's an important practical difference: we can rewrite existing information into text that is not legally derivative of other works, but we can't do the same thing for images. As a practical example, I could write an article about the 1954 World Series based on Retrosheet play-by-play that would classify as a new writing for which I could set a copyright license of my choice- the GFDL if it's posted here on the Bullpen. But I can't go back and create a new photograph of Willie Mays's catch; I have to depend on somebody else's photograph that is almost certainly under copyright. I may be able to get a photograph, but only under non GFDL terms. That limitation means that we need to be more flexible about fixed media like photographs than we are about text.

One obvious exception is things like drawings and diagrams that we can create over from scratch. If I want to make a diagram of the layout of an infield (which I actually do, at the moment) I am free to do so and I can release it under any terms I choose. For those cases, I think that we should have a policy favoring images that are released with explicit permission to copy- such as public domain or GFDL license- over ones for which our permission is implicit- such as claims of fair use. --Roger 15:22, 11 July 2006 (EDT)

I think I have tagged all my uploads and deleted images I probably shouldn't have uploaded. Sorry for all the edits. --Just me 00:07, 14 July 2006 (EDT)

Now that we have Image tags, this page needs a drastic rewrite. --Roger 15:07, 1 September 2006 (EDT)

There are still quite a few images with no tags and/or questions about fair use issues here --Jeff 13:33, 6 December 2007 (EST)