- Wakefield throws a knuckleball.
It was a year ago that my father, my wife and I saw the Red Sox play the Orioles at Camden Yards. A photo I took of Tim Wakefield (at left) is now his Wikipedia photo, and a photo I took of Jonathan Papelbon is now his Wikipedia photo. That’s because those photos, like many of my photos on Flickr, are released under a Creative Commons license that allows those photos to be reused by others. Since I’m not a professional photographer, I’m happy to give them away; since Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, its contributors are happy to have access to free photos. Wikipedia gets photos, I get a kick out of seeing my photos on Wikipedia. Everybody wins.
Now that I free-license and distribute my photos, I get occasional requests and comments. Free advertising, plus you sometimes get to see your work become the main photo for a Wikipedia article. *cough* four-leaf clover *cough*
I, too, have been pretty happy with take-up of my CC licensed work on Flickr.
Creative Commons Rocks. Also Project Gutenberg and anything Larry Lessig is involved with!
But then would I be able to grab the photo off of wiki? My understanding is that the answer is probably not. (unless specifically stated it was OK). What do you think?
The terms under which any image is used on Wikipedia are described on that image’s page. For example, on the Tim Wakefield entry, scroll down to the photo and click on it. On the following page, below the photo, you’ll see this text: “This image is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution ShareAlike License v.2.0.” That license specifies that you would be able to grab that photo off of Wikipedia and reproduce it, provided that you attribute the photograph to me.
You can perform the same check with any image on Wikipedia. The overwhelming majority of the time you’ll find that those images are available for reproduction freely, which is how they came to be used on Wikipedia in the first place.