Wikipedia:WikiProject Images and Media/Free/Contacts/Napalm Records/Petition 003

Hello!

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, non commercial licenses (that is, licenses that do not allow commercial reuse, like the one you selected) are not allowed in Wikipedia. This is because Wikipedia wants to have content that is "free" (as in freedom, and not free as in "free beer") for anyone to learn, modify and redistribute, for commercial and non-commercial purposes, worldwide. The best licenses compatible with Wikipedia nowadays are the GNU Free Documentation License, the Creative Commons Attribution and the Creative Commons Share Alike. It may seem contradictory that Wikipedia, aiming at free content, asks contributors to accept the fact that the content itself could be used commercially. However, in the true spirit of being "free", it is only natural to do so.

In example, Wikipedia offers all its data for others to use. Several mirrors like About.com and Answers.com use information from Wikipedia, adding ads, which is considered using content from Wikipedia for commercial purposes:

article about "Visions of Atlantis" the article held at answers.com mirror held by AllExperts, a site maintained by about.com
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visions_of_Atlantis is the original
 * http://www.answers.com/topic/visions-of-atlantis is the version of
 * http://en.allexperts.com/e/v/vi/visions_of_atlantis.htm is the

Other examples are the CD version of Wikipedia (2,000 articles were compiled in a CD which is distributed for a fee to those who do not have access to the site) or the future printed version (which is to be distributed in places either without computers or without electricity), which in some locations can be considered a commercial use of the images.

As I said, although it would be really nice, we don't really need to include album or single covers, just band images, and not all images, just one image per band. And not even a high resolution image, a smaller version would also be useful. And finally, not even a updated image, it can be a year or two year old image. It is very likely that an image with these restrictions will _still_ be better than the best fan made picture.

Again, I hope I have clarified the necessity of allowing commercial reuse of the content. I know this is asking a little too much, especially when considering promotional material has always been considered for non commercial purposes. However, it is also my belief (I hope a shared one) that releasing a promotional image per band under a free license does not damage the ability of Napalm Records to make profit from the others (and probably not even the free image itself) or to effectively use them to promote the bands in question, as the free images th  emselves will be used in articles through the hundreds of mirrors Wikipedia currently has. In Internet, nowadays, only MySpace and YouTube are better advertising than Wikipedia.

Best regards, Roberto X