Title is completely misleading. There was no ethics breach in sourcing the original Lena photo.<p>It should also be made explicit here, that for decades Lena herself had no issue with the photo or it's use in CS.<p>Other people began to complain, and Lena felt they had a point about exploitation of women, and agreed to back that cause.
I was going to object that the original had a complicated background and lots of contrasting colors (which is important when testing graphics algorithms), but this one actually fits the bill too. The background might be white, but there are still plenty of dark areas.
20 years later the person in the picture regrets his presence in the picture and for perpetuating micro toxic masculinity aggression by making light of the very situation the late brave Lena faced and suffered through her time and it is with this in mind that the person in the picture would no longer want to be included in hyper reality image research papers.
What makes it ethically sourced? Both this and the original was taken with consent. Is it that noone will get horny from this new one? Because in that case I have bad news, some people love round bearded men.<p>But seriously, I don't understand how this is better than the original. They have the same issues.