Over the past three years, I've had a half dozen requests from various people asking for permission to use this shingles picture from my cancer blog. Requests have come from professors writing medical text books, nurses preparing journal submissions, and, mostly, from television stations running pieces on the virus that causes shingles, herpes zoster.

When the requests come from regular ole' people, things are easy. When they're from companies (old world media like television stations), things get complicated because they want me to sign legal paperwork giving them rights to the picture. Since I'm giving away the pictures for free, it really annoys me to have to parse the legalese, fill out paperwork, mail it to them, etc.

So I decided to make my first contribution to Wikimedia Commons: Shingles on the chest, released under the GNU Free Documentation License or Creative Commons 3.0 (share or remix allowed with attribution). Hopefully this will satisfy and future comers so I don't need to sign any more contracts!