Erickson, K, Rodriguez Perez, F and Rodriguez Perez, J (2018) What is the Commons Worth? Estimating the Value of Wikimedia Imagery by Observing Downstream Use. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration. OpenSym ’18: The 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, 22-24 Aug 2018, Paris, France. ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) , pp. 1-6. ISBN 978-1-4503-5936-8
Abstract
The Wikimedia Commons (WC) is a peer-produced repository of freely licensed images, videos, sounds and interactive media, containing more than 45 million files. This paper attempts to quantify the societal value of the WC by tracking the downstream use of images found on the platform. We take a random sample of 10,000 images from WC and apply an automated reverse-image search to each, recording when and where they are used ‘in the wild’. We detect 54,758 down- stream uses of the initial sample and we characterise these at the level of generic and country-code top-level domains (TLDs). We analyse the impact of specific variables on the odds that an image is used. The random sampling technique enables us to estimate overall value of all images contained on the platform. Drawing on the method employed by Heald et al (2015), we find a potential contribution of USD $28.9 billion from downstream use of Wikimedia Commons images over the lifetime of the project.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. This is an author accepted version of a paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Open Collaboration, uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self archiving policy. |
Keywords: | copyright; Creative Commons; Economic valuation; peer production; Wikimedia Commons |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 04 Jul 2018 13:59 |
Last Modified: | 02 Feb 2022 15:40 |
Published Version: | https://dl.acm.org/ |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) |
Identification Number: | 10.1145/3233391.3233533 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:132898 |