Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2024/January

Files uploaded with NC or ND
undefined Hello everyone!

I think Wikinews need to discuss the use of files licensed NC (non-commercial) or ND (no derivates). I have mentioned it on Water_cooler/assistance but there are also a discussion on User talk:MGA73 and User talk:SVTCobra and File talk:Explosion near Palais des Nations 0011.jpeg.

According to wmf:Resolution:Licensing_policy free files are those with a "Free Content License". According to the definition at https://freedomdefined.org/Definition/1.0 it means it can be "copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose". So non-commercial and no-derivates are not defined as a free work. Same is written at Fair_use "Free content includes images in the public domain, under Creative Commons licenses (except for the "non-commercial" or "no derivatives" variants), ...".

All non-free works are forbidden on Wikimedia projects including Wikinews unless there is an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) that allows it (but "Such EDPs must be minimal."). Wikinews have an EDP and according to Fair use "Wikinews is more restrictive about fair use than Wikipedia." and "The use of non-free media outside the main article namespace does not constitute fair use, and is not permitted." and "Any use not covered by this whitelist is not allowed.".

So non-free files is only allowed under very strict rules, as I see it that means that:
 * 1) If they are not in use they should be deleted.
 * 2) Usually no more than 1 non-free file should be allowed in an article.

Some articles have many non-free files. Example:
 * Fifteen medals awarded on London Paralympics fourth night of track and field has 42 photos (I have not checked but I think most are non-free).
 * Photo Essay: Cherry Blossoms Bloom in DC has 10 non-free photos. Further more there is no breaking news to this story.

I hope we could hava discussion to clarify how to understand the policies so it is clear what should happen NC/ND-files. --MGA73 (talk) 20:31, 11 January 2024 (UTC)


 * It is certainly true that Wikinews has been very lax about enforcing the use of non-free use rationale over the years, and it needs to be addressed. I think MGA73 has elsewhere mentioned the quote Wikinews is more restrictive about fair use than Wikipedia, which was added in 2005 in this edit and seemingly never questioned or debated. I would assert this to be patently false, even if it is stated on one of our policy pages (our EDP page) and I think the rest of the EDP bears that out. While I am not a copyright lawyer (or any kind of lawyer), I am quite certain that news reporting is afforded one of the broadest windows of fair-use under US law which I believe is what we operate under. It's right up there with educational use, which I don't know if Wikipedia qualifies for. It is extremely unfortunate that we have so many NC and ND image files. They should have been challenged at the time of upload, especially as in the case of MGA73's two examples. The image files were, in both cases, uploaded by the authors of the articles. The articles were CC-BY, so why did they upload under a different license? We may never know. Clearly, they wanted them to be part of the article. That said, I do not quite understand where the idea of just one fair-use image per article came from. Clearly, people were not paying attention to this section of our EDP, and this is a problem. -- SVTCobra 23:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * public service media, although this conflicts with the core idea of free copyright, there is no conflict with public media services. At that time, everyone will disseminate news for non-profit purposes. I think this should be separated from the characteristics of Wikinews and keep them. There is no problem with non-commercial copyright. In fact, there is no problem with different authorisations for pictures and articles. Wikipedia says that only one image can be used for reasonable use, which is also unreasonable for Wikinews. Because of the operation of Wikipedia, this is called the rational use of a picture, but Wikinews is different from a news report with multiple picture themes. News reporting agencies often do not use only one non-only version. The right picture is used as a fair use. when all news media and TV stations report one news story, To report a news story, you need to use multiple non-free copyrighted content as a fair use. The relevant general rule of Wikipedia is completely painless because news reports have special needs to add more than one picture. Kitabc12345 (talk) 16:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Kitabc12345 Editors on Wikinews can add as many free images as they think is relevant in an article. But they can only add non-free images if they are needed. And they have to provice a good reason for every single non-free photo. Also the non-free images should be low resolution. The reason is not the law but the resolution made by the WMF that all wikiprojetcts should only host and use free information. So the law allow non-commercial photos but WMF does not unless they qualify as fair use. --MGA73 (talk) 10:20, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can re-licence images taken by myself. There were rules at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Paralympics about images taken by journalists as opposed to photographers. I will have a photographer with me in Paris though. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Hawkeye, you may be the closest we have to an active user who may know something about the stipulations by the IPC for the paralympics (looks like same applied to the 2014 winter games, too. What do you recall about when the press passes were issued? IPC must have known that Wikinews would be hosting and publishing the images, right?, do you think we need an exemption to our exemption doctrine, specifically dealing with these particular IPC photosets? From what I can gather, the Wikinews presence at these games directly involved help (if not funding) directly from the WMF to make this happen. It would seem a terrible shame to flush all these images, just because some resolution got rubber-stamped saying "all media needs to be totally free" while they forgot this whole deal. SVTCobra 09:53, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, it could be a good idea to have an exception that if there are some restriction forced upon the photographers by IPC for example then the photo can be uploaded as NC. But I wonder how other news media will handle that because most other news media are commercial? Per c:Commons:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter we could ignore the NC requirement but it would probably damage the possibility for future co-work. --MGA73 (talk) 15:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I am obviously not an expert, but I think Hawkeye said something about different conditions for "journalists" vs "photographers" in the case of IPC. SVTCobra 18:41, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikinews.org updates?
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews#Multilingual_portal Regarding the current state of the portal website, Chinese is not included among the languages listed. Instead, there are many inactive languages that have been dormant for years. It should be considered to include Chinese among the major languages. It is inconvenient to search for "wikinews" in English and then open the Chinese Wikinews. As one of the few actively maintained languages, it is quite unreasonable to require additional steps to access the Chinese version. According to the total number of active users, the Chinese Wikinews is the fifth largest Wikinews project. I wonder if there are any design requests or consultations for other languages. Kitabc12345 (talk) 07:01, 13 January 2024 (UTC)


 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikinews_screenshot.png#mw-jump-to-license
 * Because I found that this design actually exists, but I don’t know why it is not in this state now. This design seems to be very good-looking. Kitabc12345 (talk) 07:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I get your point, but I don't think the page is managed from en.wikinews.org ... if fact I don't know who created and/or maintains it. Per the meta link you provided, it has something to do with Phabricator and Gerrit, neither of which I know much about. SVTCobra 11:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, there's a link on the meta page to request a new language. Cheers, SVTCobra 12:19, 13 January 2024 (UTC)