Negotiating a licence change for Commons
Very often I come across a photo that would be useful for a Wikipedia article, or Critter of the Week, or for a Wikipedian in Residence project. But it’s under a closed licence: All Rights Reserved, or CC BY-NC or even CC BY-NC-ND. Sometimes the copyright owner doesn’t realise what licence they’ve chosen, and would be very happy releasing the photo for Wikimedia Commons. My job is to help them.
Politely email them. In that initial email you have to concisely explain a) what copyright is, b) what Creative Commons is, c) why Wikipedia only accepts open Creative Commons licences, and d) that they could change that licence and you can help them.
This is hard! I’ve developed some email templates for approaching people on Flickr and iNaturalist which you’re welcome to adapt.
If they agree, it may be as simple as getting them to change the Flickr licence for the the photo, or adjusting their settings in iNaturalist (a process that also really needs a Help guide), and then you can do the Commons upload yourself. Sorted.
But they might email you the photo for you to take care of. If so, start by uploading it to Commons:
Stating that you’re not the copyright owner
Using a standard open licence (CC Attribution Share-Alike is usual)
Giving the source as “Supplied by author” and adding the template text {{subst:PP}} to the field – this is important
And crediting them by name
Fill in the rest of the photo metadata, categories, caption, structured data as usual, then make a note of the file name and licence.
Go to the Commons Interactive Release Generator. You’re going to generate a paragraph of legalese text as if you were the photo owner, sparing them this pain. See the example on this page which explains the wording. You’ll almost certainly be entering the information “<<their name>>”, “creator”, “media work”, and the name of the file you just uploaded to Commons. Copy the paragraph of generated text it spits out.
Mail the donor with careful instructions to send that paragraph of text (quote it; I separate it with ======= bars before and after so it’s super clear) to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org ASAP, and to CC you in the email. If they haven’t done it in a week, remind them.
When a Commons volunteer receives that email, they’ll change the {{subst:PP}} template you entered into a “permission received” template, and the photo is officially open-licensed. Well done.
