File talk:Celebrity Eclipse-1.jpg
Copyright issues
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Commons has a policy of discouraging or not permitting embedded watermarks. That is the freely chosen policy of all their users, and it is a collective decision that is, and must be, accepted by all users. Within the wikipedia format it doesn't present photographers with disincentives to make their work freely available, because re-use within the wikipedia format ensures that the embedded metadata is copied over, and copyright issues are satisfied. However, outside the Wikipedia format the 'no watermarks' policy can contribute to other perverse effects.
Wikipedia Commons is an invaluable, irreplaceable resource. It enables photographers to make their copyright images freely available to all others to re-use as they please. Whether on Wikipedia pages or other websites. That includes commercial websites run as part of profit-making trading enterprises. Before the advent of the internet and Wikipedia, traders had to obtain images for their adverts from various other fee-charging image libraries. Some still do. Some use good quality images from Commons, and I have no problem with that. As long as they abide by the license terms and accredit the photographer.
Sadly, there are some who don't accredit the photographer. Some even use software that can wipe clean the metadata embedded in the image. In effect those re-users are stealing the intellectual property of the photographer. By stealing images without accreditation they steal the photographer's ideas and judgement. These offenders have recently included a major UK charity who's patron is Royalty. The present sovereign's daughter no less. Some, like this one, and to their credit, respond to an email with a swift apology and a promise to make a correction. Others don't respond at all, and commercial traders are not the worst offenders; they usually have hard-earned trading reputations to consider. Reputations that are easily lost and are commercially valuable. The worst offenders are websites that have no discernable commercial motivation; that are apparently vanity sites or web-blogs. Their most usual response is no response, compelling the photographer to either forget it, or engage in a lengthy and often futile exchange with the web hoster.
A problem that appears to have no simple answer, - at least in the UK. I believe that in the USA such behaviour is unlawful.
That leaves photographers having to make difficult choices. Whether to continue making images freely available on Commons. Or not.
The view taken by Brian Burnell at present is the former. However the latter option is frequently reviewed - usually after the latest abuse of Commons. A quick search of Google Images often seems like the Wild West out there, with little point in the Creative Commons licensing system; because there is no mechanism for it to be enforced; and without enforcement there is no freedom under law.
