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

[Matthew East]

Hi Melissa,

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 3:19 AM, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com> wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for the additional explanation, which is definitely useful in
helping me understand what you are trying to achieve here.

However I do feel that there is something wrong with asking the
individual to release the image under a free license which retains
many of the author's rights, but then taking away all of the
individual's rights at the same time with the waiver. I can see that
you are trying to get the best of both worlds by, as you put it,
"allowing Parents and Guardians to protect the likeness without also
making it unusable to a vast proportion of the intended
beneficiaries". But I don't think that you can have the best of both
worlds. I don't think it's coherent as a matter of logic, but more
importantly I don't think it is right from an ethical point of view. I
think it needs to be clear from the beginning what rights the project
will have in respect of the image from the start.

I also think it's very important that the people submitting the images
know clearly in advance what the image could be used for. That will
manage expectations.

As a result what I would suggest is that you have a think about
whether it is more important to have freedom over what to do with the
photo, or to afford the author/parent/guardian confidence in
protecting the image. Then you can choose a license which is suitable
for the uses that the photo will be put to, scrap the waiver, and
include something that makes sure that you have the parent/guardian's
consent to that license.

This is all just my personal opinion, of course. Others may disagree.

> 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

I think this explanation must appear in the announcement.

> It's
> not actually about us taking ownership of the photo

Ok, so paragraph 2 can go, regardless of whether my other points are accepted.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF