Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-05-29/Serendipity

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• "All of this is tantamount to taking your property without your permission: that is, stealing." No it is not. It is lamentable - despicable - behaviour, and may involve fraud, but it is no more "stealing" than when we are falsely accused of that, when we copy PD images from the websites of other organisations and put them on Commons. Please do not perpetuate such misleading labelling. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:37, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, while this is an interesting report, "stealing" is an inappropriate term for this kind of reuse of PD images. There is the term copyfraud, although it seems that it does not apply to all of the behaviours described, either. Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:59, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

If you pretend to have something you actually don't (rights) and you exploit the thing you pretend to have for money, that's much closer to the definition of stealing than You Wouldn't Steal a Car ever was. Though from that point of view, it's their customers who get the short end of the stick. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Aaron Swartz: free at Commons, up to $189 at Alamy

• Nice to see some attention for this subject. CC BY(-SA) was somewhat of a deterrent some years ago. But BY(-SA) doesn't stop anyone from selling it, unlike BY NC (NonCommercial) which we don't consider free (free as in free speech). It was a matter of time: File:Khun Sa (photo by Satharn Pairaoh).jpg (BY-SA) for up to €189 on Alamy, File:Sakyamuni Buddha.jpg (BY-SA) for up to €189 on Alamy and Aaron Swartz at a Boston Wiki Meetup in 2009 (BY-SA) also for up to €189 on Alamy. You have to consider the customers of slimeballs like Alamy: newspapers/sites, TV shows, some of the larger online content creators. Most of them just pay because they believe they are paying for a license and don't want trouble. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Indeed, Aaron Swartz for sale at Alamy would have been a much better title for this article. Vysotsky (talk) 11:12, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Libre is not free as in free speech, which we don't have on Wikipedia; it's free as in free enterprise: the right of corporate America to profit from our work. What Alamy (and others) do is nothing less than a shakedown, and it is possible because people find it easier to pay than fight. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:21, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

  Alamy doesn't even have to be involved. Years ago I was contacted by a textbook publisher about permission to use this file, which I gave. They insisted on paying me even though I reminded them they didn't have to ... I got the impression that their legal department wanted to have all the i's dotted and t's crossed.

  Whatever ... I didn't mind the $200 check, I can tell you that much.

  And, of course, there's the opposite phenomenon, whereby Big Media would just scrape up photos they found on the Internet without paying, much less notifying, the original photographer who was often some guy/gal who just uploaded stuff to his/her Flickr/Shutterfly/Webshots stream never thinking anyone but the other people on those sites would care enough to look at them, much less reuse them. Often this happened because the editorial assistants under deadline pressure just assumed that if it was on the Internet, anyone could use it. Until Richard Liebowitz, anyway. Daniel Case (talk) 17:54, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

May I suggest expanding the Alamy#Criticism, an article that gets many more views than this piece here? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:17, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Quite right. (Be careful with stats, though: this Serendipity piece had 1859 views in 2 days, whereas the Alamy article topped at 2055 views in the last 20 days.) Vysotsky (talk) 20:53, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Apologies. You are right: a Wiki article is more important, and thanks to anyone improving that article. Vysotsky (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2022 (UTC)