Commons:Bad sources

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This is a list of so called bad sources that initially appear usable on Commons but on closer inspection are not usable or are self-contradictory. Files from any of these sources should be tagged with the {{subst:nld}} ("no license") or {{subst:npd}} ("no permission") templates. Doing so will place such files in the adequate subcategory of Category:Unknown.

• For problematic sources, see Problematic sources.
• For usable sources see PD sources.

Contents 1 List of bad sources 1.1 www.fotodatenbank.com 1.2 Flags of the World 1.3 GM Media Online photos 1.4 pixelquelle.de 1.5 www.20minutos.es 1.6 Freesound 1.7 www.publico.es 1.8 Stock.Xchng 1.9 Seebeforeyoudie.net 1.10 World Stadiums 1.11 Netherlands Ministry of Defence 1.12 World News 1.13 Official PSD

[edit] List of bad sources

[edit] www.fotodatenbank.com

The usage conditions [1] are restrictive:

• The images must not be provided for download (elsewhere) in the Internet. (original German: "Die Bilder dürfen nicht im Internet zum Download angeboten werden.")
• The images must not be included in (other) collections of images. (German: "Die Bilder dürfen nicht in Bildersammlungen einverleibt werden.")

These are only two of more very clear hints, that this page is an unusable source.

[edit] Flags of the World

FoTW's copyright policy contains several unacceptable restrictions:

• ...use the material for non-commercial and non-political purposes only
• if you distribute our materials by a non-Internet way (e.g., floppy disks or CD-ROM) you cannot sell these media
• you limit your use to a maximum of 5% of the images or content of the website

Do not upload any images from this site.

[edit] GM Media Online photos

While they claim to be licensing their images under the Creative Commons Attribution license, the page that links to it adds several more restrictions, namely,

The use of these images for advertising, marketing, or any other commercial purposes is prohibited. These images can be cropped, but may not be altered in any other way, and each should bear the credit line "© GM Corp."

Despite the text of the license they linked to from their page, their intent is quite clearly to allow a non-commercial, no-derivatives attribution license, which is not acceptable on the Commons. Whether linking to the CC-BY license would invalidate these stated restrictions is a finer legal point than we are qualified to deal with; furthermore, even if this would lean in our favor, it is also good form to respect the intent of copyright holders, rather than try and catch them out on legal technicalities like this.

[edit] pixelquelle.de

As with fotodatenbank.com, the usage conditions [2] are restrictive:

• Images can be used (...) excluding collections of images or similar where PixelQuelle.de images can be dowloaded or bought. (original: (...) "Ausgeschlossen hiervon sind Bilddatenbanken, Bildkataloge oder ähnliche, bei denen PixelQuelle.de Fotos zum Download oder Verkauf angeboten werden.")

[edit] www.20minutos.es

Even though they use the CC-by license it should be noted that it applies only in the case that they are the original creator of material. In other words, text, photographs and other media originating from other news agencies is not covered by the CC license:

1.- Esta licencia no se aplica a los contenidos publicados por 20minutos procedentes de los terceros siguientes: Textos, gráficos, informaciones e imágenes que vayan firmados o sean atribuidos a Agencias, Reuters, Efe, Europa Press, Korpa, Atlas, France Press, AP, Lanetro, Meteotemp, TPI o J.M. Nieto. Tampoco los anuncios clasificados ya sean textos o fotos o cualquier otro proporcionados por compraventa.com en el área de clasificados de 20minutos.es. Para reproducir dichos contenidos necesitarás el consentimiento de los terceros.'

1. This license does not apply to the content published by 20 minutos obtained from the following third parties: Text, graphics, information and images signed or attributed to Agencias, Reuters, Efe, Europa Press, Korpa, Atlas, France Press, AP, Lanetro, Meteotemp, TPI o J.M. Nieto. Nor do classified advertisement, either in text or pictures or any other provided by compraventa.com on the classifieds sections of 20minutos.es. In order to reproduce such content, you will need consent from the third party.

Moreover, drawings by 20minutos's cartoonists Eneko, Humberto and Calpurnio are placed under CC-by-nc-sa licence (no commercial use), which is not compatible with Wikimedia Commons.

[edit] Freesound

The license used by Freesound, the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License contains clauses that make it non-free, including not allowing unmodified copies of the work to be used for commercial purposes, even though it can be used for derivative works for commercial purposes.

[edit] www.publico.es

They use (for their own work) the CC-by-nc-nd licence (neither commercial use nor derivative works), which is not compatible with Wikimedia Commons.

[edit] Stock.Xchng

See also Commons:Stock.xchng images.

Images sourced from Stock.xchng (sxc.hu) are not allowed on Wikimedia Commons, unless they are explicitly licensed under a free license. Preferably those permissions are recorded in OTRS. All Stock.xchng image that have not been independently released under a free license are subject to speedy deletion since July 1, 2007. See Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Sxc-warning and Template:Sxc-warning for more information.

[edit] Seebeforeyoudie.net

Although Seebeforeyoudie will gladly give you a free release for the images on their site, they don't actually have the right to do that. Seebeforeyoudie accepts open submissions from the Internet, and doesn't require their users to agree to any license at upload. They do not even appear to make an effort to ensure that the uploader is the copyright holder. As such any claim that they make about their images being freely licensed is inaccurate at best.

[edit] World Stadiums

The site claims that you can use any of its images (which are watermarked) as long as references are made to their site.[3] It also does explicitly allow free modifications of the image, which supposedly means no one can remove their watermark. The key point is that none of the pictures hosted on World Stadiums can be determined to be free of copyright. They do not attribute the authors of the pictures. Most of their photos are copyright violations (taken from forums, official sites, scans of magazines and newspapers, etc): cropped and resized copies of copyrighted images. Others are resized versions of images licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike, but World Stadiums do not attribute the licensors as required by the license.

[edit] Netherlands Ministry of Defence

Per Commons:Deletion requests/Incorrect PD Netherlands (government works), commercial usage of the images at this site is not allowed. Therefore, though they may seem to be allowable here as government work, they do not fall within Commons scope per COM:SCOPE#Non-allowable licence terms.

[edit] World News

The site claims images are in the PD, even though they are copyrighted. See also Commons:Deletion requests/File:773ER Pakistan.jpg.

[edit] Official PSD

"A community of graphic artists creating and sharing free raw image files!" - thats the slogan. The website is intended non-commercial but they also allow for cc-by licensing. Regretably they take their slogans "creating" with a grain of salt. For example Vince-Carter-Magic-PSD32033 (and all images shown as related images) are taken from elsewhere, published on other websites the EXIF of this images reads "Copyright Notice: Copyright 2009 NBAE (Photo by Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images)". linksearch