Releases for photographs

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 07:58:42PM -0400, Jon Stanley wrote:
> On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 3:13 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > As a project, we'd very much like to continue having people
> > participate through photography, for materials like our one-page
> > release notes[2].  To do that, we probably need to have a general
> > release form that covers photos of people to be published on the wiki,
> > or reproduced in paper formats for release and publicity materials
> > related to the Fedora Project.  Unlike the licenses we require for
> > code, though, the release would only be for Fedora's use and no one
> > else's.
> .
> Really? When I did the usability testing with Mo at FUDCon Toronto, I
> had to sign a release for that which stated that the raw footage would
> be released as CC-BY-ND or something of that nature. I'd be much more
> comfortable with a non-free license such as that which still gives
> protection to the subject while still allowing use by others than
> simply Fedora.

The problem with Creative Commons licenses is that they don't affect
your rights of publicity or privacy.  In fact, they specifically say
they *don't* cover those rights, and if I understand that correctly,
it means CC licenses can't be used to protect those rights.  (IANAL,
after all.)

> > Assuming we reach a point of having such a release, we'd add a note to
> > the wiki footer about the specific exception to our CC BY-SA 3.0
> > licensing where photographs of people are concerned.  We'd link to an
> > appropriate new section on the Legal page indicating the restrictions
> > around the content, explain why, and point to the release form.
> 
> Seems reasonable, but probably should be a little more prominent than that.

The only issue being we have a limited amount of space in our footer
and don't want to overwhelm it with content about one specific legal
issue.  Here's the page where we cover general Legal information on
the wiki:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Main

So that's where we'd point from the footer text.  We're trying to
incorporate the same site design across the Fedora Project so it's
easiest if we direct somewhere consistently from all our sites, and
the wiki gives us a way to do that.  There are ACLs on the page to
keep it from being publicly modified, because it contains site-wide
legal information.

> > * Given the rights people generally have in the use of their faces and
> >  bodies in published materials, is this an appropriate place for us
> >  to make an exception to our principle of reusability and
> >  remixability?
> 
> Absolutely on the remixability side, but I think they should be
> reusable in their original context (which may be hard to do - if
> someone includes a photo of me in a book about some unscrupulous
> topic, does the inclusion of that unaltered photo into a larger
> aggregate make it a derivative work, such that the protections of
> CC-BY-ND would apply?). If the reusability concerns can't be resolved
> separate from the remixability concerns, then I personally (and I
> think many others) would opt to forgo the reusability than to have no
> protection.

It would make it a derivative work.  But publishing your picture alone
or in a different context might not be.  Obviously you already see the
problem cropping up here! :-)

> > * Are there ways you wouldn't be comfortable with the Fedora Project
> >  using a photo of you?
> 
> Not in any context having to do with Fedora as it exists today. The
> issue becomes some future unknown - what if some FPL without a moral
> compass comes along and decides that porn.fp.o is the right thing to
> do? Obviously that's an extreme example that would never fly, but it'd
> be nice to have some sort of assurance that won't happen. I realize
> that this puts me in conflict with my previous paragraph. Live with
> it. :)

Noted. :-) I'd say this is another of the areas where our community
expects and demands that we not mistreat their trust in the
contributions they provide.  The costs of not meeting that trust are
high enough to be a very effective incentive to Do The Right Thing.

> > * Would you like to have the ability to grant this kind of release
> >  within the Fedora Account System?
> 
> Yes, the easier the better!

Since this permission isn't connected to a CLA, this type of flag may
only be manageable for people who are registered contributors.  But if
there's a reasonable way we can provide it, we can add a RFE to FAS
for it once we're sure it solves a problem for us.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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