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I'm not an expert on Wikipedia policy, but I would suspect that likelihood of being sued is not a consideration when evaluating if a photo should have a license attached or not.
As far as I can tell, the policy is very simple - photos must have a license. Happy to be corrected if I'm overlooking some policy details here.
The Charlottesville photo he mentioned has no license submitted with it, only excuses for why it's fair use.
Quite the opposite. There's a licensing section that clearly indicates that it's a copyrighted image that's used under fair use.
"Copyrighted image" is not a license, and neither is "fair use". If this fulfills the requirements, they could just write "fair use" under the mugshot.
Copyright is obviously a license.
Yes, that's one way to add a license to a photo. However, as I mentioned, nobody actually did this.
A copyright is the right of the copyright holder to decide who can publish a copyrighted work under which conditions. A license is a document written by the copyright holder that specifies those conditions, and who they apply to. So no, copyright is obviously not a license. "Fair use" is an exception in the American copyright law that allows people to publish a copyrighted work if certain conditions are met. "Copyrighted image under fair use" literally means "we have no license for this, but we believe the fair use exceptions apply".
Do you want to make a bet on how long it will stay up if I reupload the image, and state that it's fair use?
Do you want to actually do it, or to merely feel secure in your continued belief that Wikipedia maliciously deleted that picture (in a manner indistinguishable from neutral routine gruntwork)?
It would be an interesting experiment, but I'm not interested if it turns out a prompt deletion for another made up procedural reason wouldn't change anyone's mind.
And I'm assuming producing another log of innocuous-looking deletions for that same "made-up" procedural reason will not change your mind either? Do you believe organisations are unlikely to have procedural reasons that don't serve political agendas contrary to yours?
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The point of the "Licensing" section is to lay out why the image is allowed for use on Wikipedia/Commons. This can be if the image is freely licensed, or (on Wikipedia) if it's copyrighted but still usable under free use. If there is no "Licensing" section, then the image is subject to deletion. I am not sure what the point of confusion is here.
If you upload the image to Wikipedia and state that it's free use (similar to the Charleston example), I do not think it will be removed due to missing licensing info (which is what happened last time). Will it stay up forever and ever? I have no idea.
By the way, it seems that the image was not even deleted manually, but rather by automation.
You're claiming that the Wikipedia editors are just neutrally applying their internal procedures. We're claiming that the photo was removed because the Wikipedia editors don't want it to be published on Wikipedia, and are using any procedural rule as an excuse. A way to disprove my belief would be to reupload the photo and address the issues from the previous removal. What is a way to disprove yours? Isn't it unfalsifiable?
Maybe? This doesn't explicitly say anything about what could have happened to the image.
It's crazy that you would say this considering that I acknowledged that there are plenty of rules that can be bent to make things happen. My actual claim is that there isn't evidence that the photo was removed for this reason, and that the actual reason the photo was removed is actually quite unambiguous.
If you upload the photo to Wikipedia with licensing info and it gets removed, I'll agree that the licensing rule is also abused.
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So what's the problem? The mugshot would be "copyright Waukesha Sheriff's dept" (assuming that it's copyrightable, as you suggest) and the rationale some variation on 'fair use'.
The problem is that it did not include that, and thus it did not have a license attached. Hence, removed for not having a license.
Riiight...
I don't understand why you find this hard to believe considering that's plainly the justification written for the deletion. This is not one of the (many) rules that can be bent for fun and profit, this one really is just that simple.
Because they can write whatever they want. If someone reversed what's written under which photo, and it remained unquestinedd by other editors, would you be able to tell something is amiss?
There is literally no license for the Charlottesville photo.
I don't understand the question. If there's no license for a photo, it can be deleted per the stated policy. This is a simple, binary question - does the photo include license information?
edit: Now that I look at it, you cannot upload copyrighted images to Commons at all, even if they are fair use (I did mention I'm not an expert on Wikipedia policy). The mugshot was on Commons, so even if it did have a licensing section, it would have been deleted since it's probably non-free. It would need to have been on Wikipedia, which does allow non-freely licensed images, provided, again, that the TPS report is fully filled out.
There is licensing information, hence the section entitled "Licensing" in large print, which is the requirement (see policy linked above).
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I wonder if the dudes that used to upload pictures of their semen submitted them with an accompanying license.
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