I noticed quite a few images by wikiVisual that appear to have the wrong license. For example, one of the articles I started that has images documents a copyrighted computer game, which should be tagged with fair use. Instead, the license is copyright wikihow Inc, which is incorrect. Another article has screenshots of Wikipedia whose content is licensed under CC BY-SA. Yet it is still tagged with the same wikiVisual tag. Isn’t this going to expose wikihow and wikiVisual to potential legal issues?
I am on mobile right now so I will edit this when I am on my PC.
Example: https://www.wikihow.com/Patrol-New-Articles-on-Wikipedia#/Image:Patrol-New-Articles-on-Wikipedia-Step-1.jpg
This is an image of a Wikipedia page, and Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License
Another example: https://www.wikihow.com/Change-Your-Password-on-TikTok#/Image:Change-Your-Password-on-TikTok-Step-2.jpg
This is an image of the TikTok app, an app that wikiHow, Inc. has no rights to, other than the rights provided by the fair use/fair dealing doctrine.
Pinging @JayneG
and @Chris_H
as there probably is something that I may be missing. For example, they may have gotten permission from the company to use the screenshots, etc.
This is the second
time I have encountered image licensing issues, the other time being a good-faith contributor posting for several years mislicensing images on accident.
In terms of images made/drawn by wikiHow, I see no problem with that. I see potential problems with using copyrighted screenshots under a non-fair use claim that wikiHow does not have the rights to.
I think everything that goes through the Wikivisual bot is automatically tagged with the Wikivisual license, especially since most uploads aren’t tech-related in this way. Chris and Jayne can probably figure out a way to get the tech screenshots tagged differently if it’s causing a problem, but I don’t think this is deliberate.
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Maybe I should wait for a response by Jayne or Chris. I have a feeling I am missing information such as licensing deals for using copyrighted screenshots on wikiHow. Just wait and see…
AA, just wanted to point out the typo in the post title. It’ll make it hard if you want to search for this thread later.
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@CageyCat
: Yep, I noticed a problem with image licensing, not image licenaing.
1 Like
JayneG
8
Yeah, I imagine this is just because of the way that wikiVisual images are tagged. I will check in this week to double check, and possibly see if there’s anything we can do about changing how screenshots are licensed.
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In the meantime, maybe use AWB to update the licensing of images on tech articles? Idk…
Eric
10
I wouldn’t worry about suggesting additional action regarding these images at this time. Since we’ve been using the same process for years and have not run into any issues, it’s not likely that all things need to be dropped so that immediate focus can be given to this. Jayne mentioned she will look into it, so I think it’s okay to continue to focus on other areas where you can help out on wikiHow, but don’t feel like you need to continue to worry about this.
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JayneG
11
Just popping back after checking in about this. We do not have any licensing deals, and although it would be ideal to tag these correctly when they’re uploaded, it’s unlikely that we’re going to be able to change the process at the moment. As Eric mentioned, we’ve been using this process for years and not had any issues - so it’s not going to receive any engineering priority at this stage.
If you see any that you really think need changing, you are welcome to edit the image page and change the licensing. Perhaps if there’s a particular category that need updating, you could use the AWB, but, again, as Eric mentioned, it’s not something to worry about or prioritize.
3 Likes
