[UbuntuWomen] Work Play Day - Discussion and Review of Announcement and Photo Model Release Waiver

Tue Apr 6 02:19:06 UTC 2010

On Mon, 2010-04-05 at 22:14 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Amber Graner <akgraner at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Elizabeth Krumbach <lyz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >> >> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Amber Graner <akgraner at ubuntu.com>
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>> However, before we can tell the world about it, we need to look at the
> >> >>> announcement and the photo/model release waiver and see if the team,
> >> >>> Canonical, or the CC may have noticed something we may have
> >> >>> unintentionally,
> >> >>> especially when it comes to using photos of minors.  Please take a
> >> >>> look at
> >> >>> the proposed competition announcement [3] as well as the Sample
> >> >>> photo/model
> >> >>> release form  and please take a moment to let us know your thoughts.
> >> >>
> >> >> Could you explain what the purpose of the "release form" is? It's
> >> >> rather difficult to evaluate it without understanding what problems it
> >> >> is trying to solve, and at the moment I can't see it.
> >> >
> >> > AFAIK the problem here is the use of photos of minors in promotional
> >> > material/contests/etc has limitations in some countries, permission
> >> > from parents is required.
> >>
> >> I can see that this would be what the first and sixth paragraphs of
> >> the document are addressing, but not the second to fifth paragraphs
> >> inclusive. Is there another problem that has caused the insertion of
> >> these provisions?
> >
> > We have never done this before so there no problem that has caused the
> > inclusion of provisions.  We are trying to avoid any problems by making sure
> > we are addressing this properly.  Are there changes we should make and if so
> > where? We are asking for the reasons Lyz mentioned above.
> 
> I personally find all of paragraphs 2-5 in the document to be formal,
> unnecessarily legalistic, and at times disturbing. I don't see why the
> person submitting a photo needs to transfer property in that photo to
> the Ubuntu Women and Ubuntu Projects (and I don't think that those
> projects are capable of possessing property anyway, as they aren't
> legal persons). I don't understand why we need the right to edit the
> photos. Most disturbing of all is that someone who submits a photo
> would have to indemnify the project against claims from third parties.
> 
> Waivers like this will act as a barrier to submissions. The more
> legalistic the waiver and the more swingeing its provisions, the
> higher the barrier to submission.
> 
> I asked about what problem the document was trying to solve because of
> course, if there is a good reason for some of these things, then that
> might change my opinion. If the only problem is to ensure that the
> people sending the photos have a legal right to do so, I would suggest
> something much simpler in a single sentence saying exactly that: "[I
> am the lawful parent or guardian of the subject appearing in this
> photograph and] I authorize the Ubuntu Women project to use this
> photograph as described at [link to announcement] under the terms of
> the Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives license."

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for weighing in on this.

The reason we undertook to have this waiver is primarily to afford the
named entities some additional flexibility in /using/ the results of the
competition that is not afforded by default under a by-nc-nd CC licence,
which is what our layman understanding of these licences tells us is the
most responsible licence to release a child's digital likeness under.

We want these photos to be able to be remixed, both commercially (by
Canonical's marketing department, folks who run Ubuntu classes which
charge tuition fees etc) and non-commercially by various aspects of the
Ubuntu Women and Ubuntu Projects, whilst affording the applicants some
protection from being misused without recourse for things which may
unduly upset the Parents and/or Guardians. 

We want the Parents and Guardians participating to be able to trust that
the virtual likeness of their child/charge has some protection, and not
feel that they have been tricked by us or the project when their child's
picture appears somewhere really distasteful and they're not able to do
anything about it.

JanC raised a specific concern during an IRC discussion which relates
directly to such incidents as in the following NL case:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http://blog.iusmentis.com/2008/07/03/geen-portretrecht-bij-op-straat-genomen-foto/&prev=_t

I can understand your concern about it limiting the potential pool of
submissions, but to be honest I believe that the most responsible way to
undertake this is to use a strict CC licence such as by-nc-nd with an
explicit waiver for the intended uses to have additional freedoms. It's
not actually about us taking ownership of the photo, but rather allowing
Parents and Guardians to protect the likeness without also making it
unusable to a vast proportion of the intended beneficiaries.

Maybe the crucial issue is the way we've described it. If that needs
working on, then we're quite willing to take your advice on how to
communicate the above intent in a layman-coherent manner that is also
legally useful if a problem should arise.

Maybe we are being too defensive here, we don't know; but we /really/ do
not want to be complacent to a degree that causes someone unnecessary
anguish. As I stated before, we're not lawyers, and that's why we've
held off releasing this officially and instead sought comment from those
who are legal professionals. If you have further questions as to what
we're trying to achieve here, then please do not hesitate to ask.

-- 
Melissa Draper

w: http://meldraweb.com & http://geekosophical.net
p: +61 4 0472 2736