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German Gov't Donates 100,000 Images To Wikipedia
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Dec 06, 2008 12:23 PM
from the only-80000-are-of-beer-and-sausages dept.
from the only-80000-are-of-beer-and-sausages dept.
Raul654 writes "The German Federal Archive has agreed to donate 100,000 images to Wikipedia under the German version of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. These pictures cover a period from 1860 to present. This is the largest picture donation ever to Wikipedia, and possibly the largest in the history of the free culture movement."
Apparently, this is part of a project which will eventually make 11 million photos available for public use.
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Raul654 writes "In December, we discussed the German Federal Archive's agreement, at the urging of Wikimedia Deutschland, to donate 100,000 pictures to Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. At the time that was the largest picture donation ever to Wikipedia, and thought to be largest in the history of the free culture movement. Now Wikimedia Deutschland has reached a similar agreement with the Saxon State and University Library, which will donate 250,000 pictures to Wikipedia under CCA-ShareAlike. On a not-unrelated note: Microsoft has announced that it will discontinue its Encarta encyclopedia."
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I'm Confused Why We Don't See This En Masse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm Confused Why We Don't See This En Masse (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
that's one of the arguments being presented (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say if it was a decisive factor in this particular image donation, but that's one of the arguments free-content proponents have been using to try to get other governments to open up at least some portion of their images: pointing out that since there is this large public-domain repository of US government images, if they want to promote their history and culture on par with that of the US, they need to provide us with a similarly high-quality, free-licensed collection of images.
Otherwise a large portion of generic examples are going to be US-based ones, simply because they gave us the images whereas other countries didn't.
Sometimes it leads to almost comical results, where dozens of other countries' leaders, ministers, and other figures are illustrated on Wikipedia by a photograph of them shaking hands with Reagan or Carter or Kissinger or whoever, because that US-visit photograph was freely released by the US State Department, while their photographs from back home are under a more restrictive copyright.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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To be fair, the US government rule that works by government employees are not copyrighted has provided for a lot of free images used on Wikipedia. European governments, for example, are much more restrictive about copyrights.
Actually, that's just because Europeans are better photographers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But doing that wouldn't give the people in power any additional power!
Remember, governments only ever grow.
Re:I'm Confused Why We Don't See This En Masse (Score:4, Insightful)
You would think that Governments--who exist to serve the people...
I think this is where it starts going wrong. Government institutions are basically working in their own self interest, and the only thing that makes government in check is the pressure put on it by people.
When legislators are looking over bills, in the back of their minds, there is the question, "Will this help me get elected again?" If it doesn't give them money or support, it's a bad move for them politically. How can any good government exist in such a system, except through constant pressure from voters?
Parent
I can easily answer this (Score:2)
Since you refer to "Freedom of Information Act" I'm assuming you're speaking in an American context.
We already do this. Look here:
United States Library of Congress [loc.gov]
The National Archives [archives.gov]
Perhaps I'm not giving enough credit to Wikipedia/Wikimedia, but I haven't heard much about involvment by professional preservationists who know how to catalog and preserve the stuff, even in a digital context. I speak of the hardcore phd librarian and historian/librarian hybrid types who know how to do this stuff.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's socialist about governmental transparency?
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I eat cheese, you insensitive etc.
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Two words: National Security.
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
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Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
This is an outdated model. Nowadays, it's Fear, Uncertainty, and Debt
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Hmm, your response made me first thought you were talking about cryptography, you weren't, but, what's the legality of Obama encrypting all his emails before publishing them? I.e. if he sent them encrypted to the receiving party, and in case they don't have a known key-pair, give them a call with the (symmetric) decryption password?
AFAIK, the stupid law that is preventing the President to live in the 21st century is the fact that all written statements must be made public, whereas phone calls are okay, so i
Re:I'm Confused Why We Don't See This En Masse (Score:4, Informative)
Obama "can't" send emails due to the presidential records act. More specifically, he can send all the emails he wants, but any email the president sends is a matter of public record.
Parent
Nice (Score:3, Interesting)
With all the stories over various entities trying to screw everyone over fair-use, such as the one over a state claiming copyright [boingboing.net] over their written laws,, this is a nice change. What I like about creative commons is that it is one way for a content holder to hold on to their 'rights', yet allow the material to be used by the general public. This saves our culture being lost in the cellars of town hall or of those of some other 'IP owner'.
Torrent? (Score:2)
Is there any way to get direct access to these images without going through the Wikimedia webpage, i.e. a torrent containing them all or so?
German speakers: help wanted (Score:5, Interesting)
For any German speakers out there: Most (all?) of these pictures lack English captions. I'm sure the people on Commons could use all the assistance they can get translating the German captions (especially into English). You can register an account on Commons [wikimedia.org] and help.
Also, props go to Wikimedia Deutchland [wikimedia.de], which arranged this donation.
sometimes translation to German, too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the captions are in need of being rewritten into a reasonable form even in German, especially older ones that are either out of date or hilariously biased. The worst are probably those that were apparently entered during World War II and never updated.
For example, this one [wikimedia.org] (which has in fact been updated), originally came with a caption that reads roughly:
Parent
Re:sometimes translation to German, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:sometimes translation to German, too! (Score:5, Informative)
There is a disclaimer to that effect. Add a better (correct) description, but leave the original unchanged for documentary purposes.
It's quite a task to translate these descriptions. Those that I looked at all contained words or even concepts that people don't even know anymore ("Institute for Race Hygiene and Crime", wtf?)
Parent
Re:sometimes translation to German, too! (Score:5, Informative)
"Institute for Race Hygiene and Crime".
It was sort of cross between the DHS and the guantanamo "Combatant Status Review Tribunal".
Parent
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Tss. You know, the thing people have about Godwining threads is that comparing Nazi institutions to modern ones trivialises a system that caused a world war and directly killed 6 million Jews, 250,000 Romany people, thousands of homosexuals, mental patients, mentally handicapped persons and opposition figures. While certain innovations of the Bush administration make its propaganda abroad about human rights and freedom look silly (various dictators have taken to quoting Bush phrases when justifying atrociti
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hitler came to power because he had a street gang, called the Brownshirts, ensuring he would. The existing Weimar government was “blind in the right eye”, meaning it came down hard on left-wing gangs but ignored right-wing gangs like the Brownshirts. Hitler’s rise to power came because the existing German government was broken and allowed intimidation to beat (literally) democracy.
But this information will never make much of an impression on people because people need A Moral Lesson. The M
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't changing the original caption a form of "politically correct" motivated revisionism of history ?
If the caption is part of the picture, I can't see why anyone would want to modify it, unless this person wants to hide something.
Translating them is another matter, but real translations should be done, not edulcorated ones.
depends on the purpose (Score:2)
I agree the original caption should be retained for historical purposes, but Wikimedia Commons images also have captions, which are intended to be neutral and descriptive. So one of those should be written as well, if the original caption doesn't fit those criteria.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know when I read a modern encyclopedia, I expect to see captions like A Rumanian Jew and his family, 1938, pictured mid-scheme. In the glistening of his eyes is discernible a vile contempt for the purity and virtue of the German nation.
Y'know, they gotta keep it authentic.
Re:sometimes translation to German, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally whenever I read an encyclopedia I want to see the original caption, or its translated version, as well as some lengthy textual, factual and neutral explanation about the context this picture was taken in. And if Hitler or Staline had mustaches when the picture was taken, I want to see them on the picture shown to me 60 or more years later.
If we begin to rewrite history by modifying original captions, instead of explaining why they were written this way, what's to stop us from modifying pictures themselves ? After all many countries used (haha !) to do this. I propose you put "Painter of the XXth century" as the caption below every picture of Hitler, instead of "German politician who inspired and directed the extermination of millions of people for dubious reasons"...
Not sure if you understand this point of view, but historical artifacts like pictures are what they are, and have to be used as historical artifacts, nothing less, nothing more, and despite their content being "shocking" for some people.
Parent
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I'm not talking about historical revisionism. The original captions are of course an intrinsic part of the primary source documents.
But when images are captioned in documentary stuff, the captions are not, by convention, part of the source itself. They are generally used as a meta-narrative, and so their tone should reflect that.
The original captions themselves certainly belong with the picture (perhaps they are part of the picture) but in secondary and tertiary documents, they ought to be inside the pictur
Oh, no! An image of the german WWII killer joke! (Score:2)
Some of the captions are in need of being rewritten into a reasonable form even in German, especially older ones that are either out of date or hilariously biased. The worst are probably those that were apparently entered during World War II and never updated.
If one of these pops up, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_joke [wikipedia.org], we will need to be very careful about the translation!
Each translator should only be exposed to two words, each.
Re:sometimes translation to German, too! (Score:5, Informative)
Kaftans were a common item of apparel for Central European Jews in those times, and served as an ethnic stereotype. "Kaftan-Jew" would be a pejorative comparable to, say, "towelhead" for an Arab.
rj
Parent
Re:German speakers: help wanted (Score:5, Informative)
A link to the actual photos: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_German_Federal_Archive [wikimedia.org]
-molo
Parent
Taking bets on deletion (Score:2, Informative)
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Commons has different image policies than Wikipeida. It will take pretty much any picture as long as it is of passable quality and acceptable copyright status.
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Yes, Commons doesn't have any "notability" or "relevance" requirements. But Wikipedia is, in a way, more lenient in that you can post "fair use" images if no truly free alternative exists, and it meets some other requirements (not too large in resolution, doesn't infringe on owner's blah blah blah).
So for instance the Journey self-titled album cover art [wikipedia.org] is acceptable for use in the article about same in Wikipedia. But this image would not be allowed in Commons because it is not a truly free image.
Its a trap (Score:2)
Well, its the government, what else do they do? :)
Nazi Era (Score:3, Interesting)
a geopolitical analysis of the possible motivation (Score:2)
The US government releases its stuff as public domain material.
The EU governments do not. UK government has Crown Copyright. Other governments have normal copyright. (IANAL).
This means that as free culture gets more popular and people spend more of their time reading free publications rather than proprietary publications, the US government has a hige advantage in being able to provide these free publications with free content, effectively projecting the US culture to the world.
But the EU governments do no
Re:Fortunately or unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong stereotype I'm afraid. I think this action will affect pictures like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Einsatzgruppen_Killing.jpg [wikipedia.org]
So hopefully clusterfucks like this won't happen in future
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Einsatzgruppen-Killingfull.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Parent
Re:Fortunately or unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
So, this photo SHOULD be in the public domain, but so should works that are not chronicles of shame. For example, it is a travisty that the 'Happy Birthday' song is still under copyright.
Parent
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I'd say the link shows more the evil of people who give too much value to ideology (in this case, following a internal and arbitrary policy) over common sense.
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I don't know about public domain, but certainly the unrestricted use of such images should be permitted under "fair use" provisions of any sane copyright law. Like the image of the American flag raised out of the rubble of the WTC, or the image of the naked Vietnamese girl running to escape the bombing, or the image of the firefighter saving a small child from the wreckage of the Oklahoma Federal building -- these images are all copyrighted but there's no way the copyright holders would be able to prevent
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What's insane is that some of the arguments presented were very valid -- including that anonymous Nazi photos were considered public domain, a point completely ignored by the final reviewer(s).
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CC isn't the GPL, there is no requirement to include the source for a CC piece of work.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Correct, because the CC doesn't make the distinction between binary and source versions of a piece of work. Which makes sense, as it's rather difficult to demand the negatives of a photo made 50 years ago (and you would gain little from doing so).
CC-SA-AT however does come very close to the GPL IMHO. In most cases with data you can modify the 'binary' directly without needing a 'source' version and for many kinds of data
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No. You're not required to do any of those things. Personal use is utterly unrestricted. If you wish to share or redistribute the image or a derivative, then you do so under the terms of the license.
But the terms of that license are way looser than most Free Software licenses.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike is not exactly an onerous or hard-to-comply-with license. It is also fairly easy to understand and interpret (unlike, say, the GFDL).
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That Heilmann worked for the German Democratic Republic's Ministry for State Security has been well known for a while, he is objecting to claims on Wikipedia that he was a pornographer and the like, which there is very little evidence of. Someone said it better than I could [slashdot.org]
He never wanted to block the whole german Wikipedia.
The wrong article got attention due to the press and the editors actually saw that the content was wrong and fixed it.
He didn't complain about anything about his stasi-past. He apologized afterwards for the blockade, saying he never wanted to affect so many people or hide anything.
What would you do if you had a Wikipedia page with a wrong (and citation-free) content and wikipedias policy says, you can't change it.
What does this have to do with the collabor