danmichaelo
Blur tool
Feature request, though it'd be a separate tool. (I imagine most of the elements are there.)
Often I'll have an image that is good for transfer to Commons apart from some prominent, copyrighted element. Instead of the hassle of downloading the item and futzing around with GIMP, how nice would it be to instead load the image in a blurtool similar to croptool that will blur a rectangular region of the image and thus clear it for upload without infringing as a derivative work. Eh?
Hehe, yeah, probably not as part of CropTool, but I think I see the usefulness. Do you have some examples of images at Commons that have been blurred successfully? I wonder what kind of blur works best.
Not sure if there's a category for blurred images (kind of doubt it), but the first one that comes to mind was a recent request: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electronics_Boutique_-Store_4565(10-13-09).jpg
And as an example of one that needs blurring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nintendo-DS_Rumble_Pack.jpg
I can't copy on other countries' copyright laws, but in the U.S. many cases would be 'de minimis': not an infringement because of the minor proportion of the work they make up. IANAL, but I would bet your first example would be covered under this provision, and the second one (now blurred) would not. Of course, Commons images need to be free in both the United States and the country of origin if different, so it would be a case-by-case basis not only because of the need for human gauging of how minimal the use is, but also for that reason..
