Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
I would like us to be able to disable right click downloads of images directly from Wikipedia articles.
By downloading images with the right click of the mouse, people do not get to see any license information, and they assume the images are 'free' for everyone, or maybe credit 'image:Wikipedia'. This heavily conflicts with our free licenses of course, but we can't blame this on our readers.
By making one-click downloads more difficult, we are both protecting our generous image donors, and making it much clearer to the public under what small restrictions they are allowed to reuse the content. In doing so, we as the Wikimedia-movement are doing a better job of educating people about the 'free' in our projects, but also about free licenses in general.
Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):
- Filip Naudts, Flemish photographer, is one of those generous image donors to our projects, who has uploaded over a hundred images. We had a request for comments because of his request to be credited with his images when they are used in our articles. One of the comments, which makes sense to me, was that we (the community) might be lacking in our information about reuse. And while a vote on how to deal with this and similar cases on the Dutch Wikipedia is underway, I would like to know if and how it would be possible for us to disable right click downloads, so that we at least alert our re-users to the requirements for re-use when a download is made.
- ticket:2021100510004446 in VRTS is from a reader in October, who received a bill from a attorney for not properly crediting the photographer on his website with a photograph he had downloaded from Wikipedia. He just downloaded the image directly from a Wikipedia article and was unaware of the respective re-use rules, but was now asked to pay 1,500 euros for the use of the image by the author's lawyer.
Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
By disabling right click downloads people need to click the image and get the media viewer pop-up, or get directed to Wikimedia Commons, which would at least make it less easy to just download without further reading, and drawing more attention to the license under which the image (or media file in general) can be re-used, and how to give proper attribution to the author.