Jake's Portrait in Danger Sort Of

[theinternetftw]

And by that marginally over-the-top title I mean that the portrait being used for Jake's wikipedia page has been (auto?) flagged for deletion for "permission reasons" despite being under a CC license: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portraiture_-_Jake_Rodkin.png

 

Scroll until you see a red thing, which is the notice.

 

Can anyone with the knowledge to navigate Wikipedia's absurdly miserable, petty, and bureaucratic processes please do so?

[BigJKO]

Jesus, Wikipedia.. There's a link to the flickr image, which has a CC license. This is bullshit..

[Merus]

Right, ten minutes of digging through Wikipedia's bullshit got me this:

 

The flickr image is not the same size as the uploaded image, so their automatic 'read flickr and check its license' bot went 'these aren't the same images'. Someone went to have a look at it manually and noticed that Blambo's flickr account has only one image, which is indicative of someone uploading something to Flickr to try and scrub copyright from an image. So there is a note on the page now saying 'contact us and prove that the actual creator exists, and released this account under creative commons'.

 

In terms of petty miserable bullshit, this feels to me like garden-variety conflict between allowing people to upload anything they want and the general internet believing copyright should only apply to Sonic the Hedgehog original characters.

 

There's probably a joke to make about the irony of Steve being hit by this that I'd follow through on if I were more of a dick.

 

edit: the solution: Blambo needs to email permissions-commons@wikimedia.org with the following text:

 

I hereby affirm that I, Ray Chen, the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of [sPECIFY THE WORK HERE - describe the work to be released in detail, attach the work to the email, or give the URL of the work if online]

I agree to publish that work under the free license "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported".

I acknowledge that by doing so I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product or otherwise, and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws.

I am aware that this agreement is not limited to Wikipedia or related sites.

I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be claimed to have been made by me.

I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.

[sENDER'S NAME AND DETAILS (to allow future verification of authenticity)]
[sENDER'S AUTHORITY (Are you the copyright-holder, director, appointed representative of, etc.)]
[DATE]

[BigJKO]

Blambo, get on that immediately!

[Blambo]

I sent the email!

[elmuerte]

And why would they believe Blambo made his creation? Just because of the email? I just feels like a catch 22.

[Blambo]

I should probably email again to confirm from the yahoo mail account linked to the flickr, or in some other way link that account to myself.

 

EDIT: Sent it from my yahoo email, which is linked to my flickr account.

[James]

To be fair to Wikipedia, their going beyond what's required by copyright law is a deliberate policy in order to place themselves beyond reproach in terms of freeness. If they had a more laissez-faire attitude like a site such as YouTube, the subject of the freeness of the content could become horribly muddied, which I think matters. Sure, the bureaucracy can be annoying at times and absurd at others, but I think that's kind of inevitable for a site with literally hundreds of thousands of contributors. I think it's amazing that it runs as well as it does. Rigid systems exist because editors have to deal with tons of this stuff every day, and presumably a lot of the time people are trying to cheat the system.

[BigJKO]

And why would they believe Blambo made his creation? Just because of the email? I just feels like a catch 22.

 

I don't know.. how would we even know? How can we be sure Blambo even made any of these in the first place? How would Wikipedia ever verify that someone ever made anything ever?!

[Merus]

I would imagine that if they get an email from the copyright holder, they can then claim plausible deniability. Someone actively lied to Wikimedia, as opposed to Wikimedia being taken in by a deception they didn't have time to research.

[Merus]

Oh hey the image got deleted even after I did all that research.

[BigJKO]

That's really just amazing..

[Merus]

Fifteen whole minutes down the drain.

[tabacco]

If the internet could have neighborhood associations, Wikipedia would be one.

[JonCole]

This is the worst.

[dibs]

If the portrait gets removed from wikipedia, does it get removed from real life too?

[Ucantalas]

"Hello, I'm Agent Johnson with the Wikipedia Copyright Team, I'm here to take that portrait of you. Yes, we can't prove it's not copyright infringement, we had to remove it from the website and our policies state we must remove it from reality as well."

[elmuerte]

truly amazing stuff

 

Top notch.

[TychoCelchuuu]

There are some things I like about Wikipedia and lots more things I don't like about Wikipedia.

[Gormongous]

Oh hey the image got deleted even after I did all that research.

 

Can someone explain to me why? To the best of my ability to know, the license had all the requisite information. Did some passing editor just decide not to believe it?

[tabacco]

[subbes]

What bullshit.

[Gormongous]

 

But Blambo sent the license email twice! I don't understand Wikipedia.

[axemtitanium]

The file has been undeleted and majesty restored. Ping me on twitter next time Wikipedia bullshit happens since I'm generally pretty versed in it.

[JonCole]

You are a hero.