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Wikipedia's fair use policy, or fair use in the abstract?

I added the following; WAS 4.250 promptly removed it.

While Wikipedia itself is nonprofit and educational, our policy is not to use content that can be defended only on that basis, because we want our content to be freely reusable even in commercial contexts.

Seems to me to be important to say. This is not the encyclopedia article Fair use. This is Wikipedia:Fair use: a guideline. The fact that Wikipedia could legally use our nonprofit and educational status to defend certain uses could be important if anyone ever tried to sue us, but is otherwise irrelevant. Such use goes against policy. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I removed it with this comment "this is a guideline article not a policy article. Maybe referring to a policy article? Maybe I should have added a [citation needed] rather than delete? we WANT that tis true. how to say it is another." My comment clearly indicates it is the word "policy" used in a guideline without referring to which policy page is referred to that I have a problem with. If in fact it is not a policy, then the statement could go into this guideline something like: We want our content to be freely reusable in as many places as possible, even in commercial contexts; therefore, content should be as free as possible and any content or placement of content that might be a problem (fair use only pictures on articles or in user space) needs to be weighed against its usefulness as part of an encyclopedia. In other words delete pictures on user pages IF they are going to get in the way of the goal of an encyclopedia but don't delete fair use pictures in articles where they are important and encyclopedic just because a commercial enterprise might have a problem. The goal is the encyclopedia. WAS 4.250 16:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Then again Wikipedia:Fair use criteria a sub-section of this guideline, already says that. WAS 4.250 17:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Disputed namespace-only section

As this is disputed, I've moved this here for discussion, as neither unexplained removal (Karmafist) nor unexplained restoration (others) are very productive.

  • The material should only be used in the article namespace. They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages. They should be linked, not inlined, from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion. Because "fair use" material is not copyright infringement on Wikipedia only when used for strictly encyclopedic reasons, their use in other contexts is likely copyright infringement.

So what exactly does it mean? Are there any guidelines supporting its (anonymous) addition? Are its assertions about fair use true? Personally, I don't think it adds anything helpful. Fair use generally covers purposes of analysis or review, so use on talk pages ought to be OK. Tearlach 18:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I think the meaning should be fairly obvious. As for supporting guidelines I'll do you one better and point to WP:CSD#I5 which is policy. I mean if copyrighted images that only exsist outside the main namespace can be speedily deleted, it stands to reason that they should not exist outside the main namespace in the first place, no? --Sherool (talk) 01:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Thanks Tearlach. Like i've said before, if there was an actual reason why copyrights were any different on user/talk pages and article pages, I wouldn't have a problem. The issue right now seems to be the invisible line in the minds of users just beyond the border of WP:UP and WP:TP more than any real world law. karmafist 20:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
      • You say "if there was an actual reason why copyrights were any different on user/talk pages and article pages" and I respond that the right to copy under law under "fair use" has everything to do with the difference between user/talk pages and article pages. I am all for fair use. But fair use does NOT mean either "copy anything" or "copy nothing" or "here is a rule for what you can copy". Fair use is an evolving concept, impacted by corporate donations and voter outrage alike. There is no magic formula. The benefit to the owner of a creative work IS WEIGHED against the benefit to the society and its peoples. WAS 4.250 22:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
        • Could you convert that comment into something actually conveys some kind of information about what you think this article should say? What exactly are you proposing, or objecting to, or whatever? Tearlach 23:44, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
          • I agree with your removal of that paragraph. The use of "only" and "never" is not only contrary to the letter and spirit of "fair use", it is contrary to the legal standing of each participant as the owner and responsible person with regard to all their contributions. The contributor OWNS the copyright to their contribution even though it is contributed under the agreed upon license. Each contributor is responsible for their own behavior. Acting otherwise seems to this nonlawyer to possibly make the wikipedia foundation MORE legally liable, not less. WAS 4.250 00:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
            • Only and never might not convey the legal issues of fair use, but this is supposed to be about about how to use fair use images on Wikipedia. Not about all the intricacies of the law (that goes in Fair use). Most users don't have a degree in copyright law, so I think it's a good idea to have a guideline/policy that A) err on the side of caution rather than trying to walk the knifes edge of what we can get away with without beeing sued, and B) Disalow stuff that while not illegal, does not benefit the project in any way, but instead add unnessesary red tape (verifying wether this particular image used on this particular page is in fact fair use and such) --Sherool (talk) 01:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The way I see it is this: The intention of this project is to create a free licensed encyclopedia, however "fair use" images is allowed if there are no anternatives and including it greatly enchances the article. Therefore seeing as we don't need to use fair use images in userpages, and doing so does not benefit the project in any way a sensible policy would be to simply say that we don't allow it. The image situation on this Wiki is already a mess of titanic proportions, there are like 30.000 images without any kind of copyright tags (and I'd be willing to bet that 99% of them are copyrighted) that are in the process of beeing tagged, another good 2000 pending speedy deletion. Not to mention a unknown number of copyvos tagged PD or GFDL by people who assume they own everyting they upload for some reason. So I think saying that "fair use" should only be used in actual articles is the least we can do to try to get a grip on the situation. It doesn't hurt the project in any way so IMHO it should be a no brainer. Also for those who say that this is just a guideline and can be ignored consider WP:CSD#I5 (which IS official policy) which clearly states that copyrighted material not used in any article (not just "not used", but not used in articles) can be speedily deleted. I consider that a strong indication that use of "fair use" images outside articles are frowned upon. --Sherool (talk) 00:56, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Sherool's explanation is generally correct; I'll add a bit to this. A large portion of our ability to claim fair use is that we are using the images in educational encyclopedia articles. When we use images outside the article space, this does not apply so our fair use claim is much weakened. Furthermore, why risk copyright infringement on pages that don't even contribute to the encyclopedia? JYolkowski // talk 02:16, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Please don't reinstate material unilaterally under the guise of "minor edit"; the point is still under discussion. As I said previously, "fair use" generally covers use for the purposes of review or analysis. There's no point in adding impediments to quotation of material for discussion on talk pages, when such use is allowed. Tearlach 02:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

One of the many problems with this discussion is some people are talking about text and others are talking about images. "Fair use materials" refers to text as well as images and other things. WAS 4.250 09:12, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Honestly, I do not see how text could be considered fair use (unless there is somepoint that I am missing). But, my main concern is about images. Myself, Karmafist and other users have been discussing this very issue at the User Democrat template. My opinion is that we should not use any fair use logos or photos inside our user spaces, let alone, in user templates (article templates, I will have to think about that one). My reasoning is this: in order for an image to be fair use, they should be used in a manner to enhance an article or be able to illustrate something that no amount of text can do. However, if we start to use fair use images for every template, on every page, for any ol reason, even just for pure decoration. cheapens the value of fair use and it welcomes more posibilities of abuse. And, not to mention, having fair use images on user pages was a no-no a few days ago before the FU policy was changed. We should try, as much as possible, to use as less fair use images as we possibly could. I am not saying to throw out fair use as a policy, that will be something that will invite not only more problems, plus we cannot survive without fair use. But, as Carnildo has diligently done in the past few months, asked users to take out FU images in articles that are up for WP:FAC and have them either replaced by a free photo or have it removed from the article and not replaced. While this task, while it is a good start, will be hard to do, with all of the images that, already mentioned, do not have a source or the image sources and licenses are false. While we can, and should, start debating this important policy on Wikipedia, I think we should try to be bold and start doing something, like deleting fair use orphans and also using templates like fairusereplace and ask the community to start taking up the camera or fire up the GIMP and provide us with many free photos and images as we can. We should also try to use the Commons more often too, since they have plenty for us to use. Zach (Smack Back) 09:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Honestly, I do not see how text could be considered fair use.
It most certainly can; it's one of the fundamentals of copyright law. Fair use is the (admittedly fuzzy) guideline for how much of a copyrighted text you can quote verbatim. But it works much the same way for images and text: purposes of discussion/review/analysis are one of the factors that favour classification as fair use, hence my defence of inclusion of Talk pages. Tearlach 19:54, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Then I assume you have no protest with the "new and improved" version below that specify that this applies to images. Wikipedia:Fair use#Text is the guidelines for fair use of text. --Sherool (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
You assumed correctly. No protests about the new version that applies to images specifically. Zach (Smack Back) 09:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

How about this?

People seem to mainly have issues with the passage suggesting that using fair use in other namespaces are automaticaly copyright violations, and that's it's no exceptions ever. So how about this change to adress those issues:

Fair use images should only be used in the article namespace. They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages. They should be linked, not inlined, from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion. This is because it is the policy of the Wikimedia Foundation to allow an unfree image only if no free alternative exists and only if it significantly improves the article it is included on. All other uses, even if legal under the fair use clauses of copyright law, should be avoided to keep the use of unfree images to a minimum. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis if there is a broad consensus that doing so is necessary to the goal of creating a free encyclopedia (like the templates used as part of the Main Page).

Whew, ok I'm not that good at writing short bits, could probably use some trimming, but you get the gist of it. The way I figure it's Wikimedia policy is that the criterea to speedily delete unfree images that where not used in articles came straight from the top (IIRC), so I don't think it's beeing too persumptuous, but we can change that bit to "comunity consensus" if it's an issue. --Sherool (talk) 14:46, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree completely with what Sherool said. (I modified the proposed paragraph a bit.) dbenbenn | talk 18:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Perfect, I love this idea. Zach (Smack Back) 19:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Much improved, it at least leaves an exception. I'm still not a huge fan of the "they should never be used on templates ..." passage, but this is a step in the right direction. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Maybe for stub templates, FU images should be a no-no, but for infobox templates, it is still a toss-up with me. But, this is a good step in the right direction. Zach (Smack Back) 19:48, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Most infobox type templates can (and do) take images as a parameters, they rarely if ever need the images to be "hard coded" in the template itself. "Hard coded" infobox templates are of limited use and should either be substed into theyr respective articles to be replaced by a more flexible infobox template like {{infobox CVG}} for games and so on. --Sherool (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I have no problem with the infoboxes either, so I am pretty happy with what is above.Zach (Smack Back) 20:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
The above is a nice compromise... I think it's fairly clear that Fair Use wouldn't apply to talk pages, but since some people are bent out of shape about it, change it to simply saying Wikimedia won't let them do it, as that's certainly accurate. DreamGuy 21:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
It looks good to me. Except I'd unbold. I think we have a consensus on the key elements: 1."fair use images" not "fair use materials" is the topic for this paragraph 2. this is a guideline page not a policy page 3. exceptions exist 4.the goal is a great and widely used encyclopedia and those two goals must be balanced. Good work guys. WAS 4.250 21:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I'd unbold as well (specifically unbold "never"). Otherwise, let's go with this for now, and we can always continue discussion/debate if there's still lingering issues (better to have this passage in, in some form, than not at all). —Locke Cole • t • c 09:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Good job, I think this is really good. JYolkowski // talk 00:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Looks good. My only concern is that I don't think the Wikimedia Foundation has any sort of policy on the use of fair-use materials, it's the English Wikipedia that has the policy. Most other Wikipedias don't allow non-free images at all. --Carnildo 05:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Carnildo, while I am not sure why most other languages do not accept fair use/non-free photos, but I am just glad that we got the issue about the photos out of the way. Zach (Smack Back) 05:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

If text could never be fair use, you could never quote a poem, song lyrics, or a passage in a book for purposes of review. In fact, you couldn't cite a chapter title (!) or indicate that an author had used a particular word or phrase to characterize someone or something. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I know that we do not post a lot of song lyrics, I mostly seem them as either being PD or complete copyvios. But I know there are songs that are WP:FA, so I will take a peek and see how FU text works. But, since the main issues I have been trying to resolve was the images, and the above looks good to me, so I will let y'all fight over texts, since y'all are more knowledgable about text than I do. Zach (Smack Back) 09:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but an elimination of all fair use content from user space without some kind of legal justification(real world, not wikilaw), isn't really acceptable to me. I'm willing to hear compromises, but absolute thinking or terminology (Always, Never, etc.) doesn't take into the vast array of different situations that may arise given the different subjects that use fair use. karmafist 10:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Part of this goes to the deeper issue of Wikipedia embracing the GFDL. Because, ultimately, all content (even user pages I guess) is to be released under the GFDL, having fair-use images goes against that. (Someone correct me if I'm getting this at all wrong). Unfortunately I don't think it's realistic to have a quality encyclopedia (let alone community) without utilizing non-GFDL content (specifically, images). But getting the foundation to change course on this to allow for "by permission" (such as the Firefox logo on the userbox there, or the DNC logo on the Democrat userbox) will probably be nigh impossible. What we've gained with the current rewrite is some leeway, an exception, and you might be able to utilize that in the individual cases you're concerned with.
If you want to try and get the foundation to change their view on this, I'm all for it (because, again, I don't think it's realistic to have a fully GFDL encyclopedia; images and all). —Locke Cole • t • c 10:32, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
But, the main underlying issue I have is will Wikipedia suck if we took out the icons from the user templates that are under the fair use guideline. I will say no, because all of those user boxes , while letting people know they use X, Y and Z, adds little to no significant value to Wikipedia or it's content. For all we know, this could all be moot with templates, like user boxes, probably winding up at TFD. I still think that we should be able to find/draw/use icons that are under the free licenses for the various templates and not have to rely on various fair use icons. You got people here who love to shoot the camera or fire up the GIMP to make the things you want to use. Plus, as for any real world law, I still think it will be hard to find it, since laws do not catch up to technology very well so the only thing we have to go by is Wikilaw, and that is that we should not use FU images on templates or on the userspace. Zach (Smack Back) 21:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Unprotecting

This page was protected by someone involved in the edit war, a no no. Unprotecting. Next time, please make a request on RfP. Thanks. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 09:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Poorly written sentence in WP:FUC

Neither photographs nor sound clips, however, cannot usually be "transformed" in this way.

...in the second paragraph on WP:FUC, seems an example of incorrect grammar. It looks like changing it to "Photographs and sound clips, however, cannot usually be "transformed" in this way." would satisfy grammar and preserve the intent of the sentence, but User:Carnildo reverted that type of change saying that consensus was required to "change policy". If the proposed change isn't the intent of the sentence, then we need to know exactly what was intended with the current wording.

Soooo, here we are:

  1. Is there consensus to change the wording of this sentence?
  2. Is consensus really needed for minor grammatical changes, even if the grammatical error appears on a policy page?

--Syrthiss 15:15, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

How about–
Neither photographs nor sound clips, however, can usually be "transformed" in this way.
Or does that not work in context? —Locke Cole • t • c 15:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
That would also work for me. :) --Syrthiss 15:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Attributed quotations

Wikipedia:Fair use criteria needs to explicitly allow the use of short, attributed, quotations in text. Morwen - Talk 21:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fair use criteria is a subsection of the guideline page Wikipedia:Fair use which states "Brief, attributed quotations of copyrighted text used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea may be used under fair use. Text must be used verbatim: any alterations must be clearly marked as an elipsis ([...]) or insertion ([added text]) or change of emphasis ([emphasis added]). All copyrighted text must be attributed. In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials (such as newspapers and wire services), movie scripts, or any other copyrighted text is not fair use and is prohibited by Wikipedia policy." WAS 4.250 21:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Aircraft images

Most of the aircraft articles lack images. However, doing a quick google search usually picks up a photo or two of the subject. Obviously, these are copyrighted works by definition (in fact, the USAF museum recently added a "no redistribution" policy on all images on their website even though most of their images are works of the US government and thus not copyrightable). However, I was wondering if it would be possible to utilize thumbnail-sized (say, 250 pixels wide) versions in Wikipedia articles under the Fair Use clause (the Wikipedia policy pages on the topic are not helpful here) for illustrative purposes.

I'm specifically talking about old photos of old aircraft that may no longer exist or be available for photography but are too new to call copyrights expired. The goal is not to raid Airliners.net or USAF Museum (honoring their request) but to provide a single small thumbnail image to illustrate what something like an XP-41 looked like. Essentially, the only other way I can think of to illustrate the old/rare aircraft is to make drawings from the photos and then post those.

Curious what others here think on this matter. - Emt147 Burninate! 19:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

  • "No redistribution" is a policy without teeth unless there is a copyright on the photograph — if they have already "distributed" the image once themselves, that is ("no distribution" policies are only really effective if they don't distribute the information -- then it makes it impossible to get at. If it is already out there, and are not copyrighted, they are nothing more than a wishful intent or, at best, a "terms of service" which is only enforceable in very limited situations). If they are really created by employees of the USAF then it shouldn't matter in principle, though there are sometimes complications in these things (contractors to the federal government often have their own copyright clauses, for example). But anyway, assuming you want to honor that and there are no other sources: I think in such a case if there is no other photograph of an airplane you could definitely make a good case for "fair use" at the very least for even somewhat larger photographs than that. At least, that's my take on it.--Fastfission 21:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I poked around the site a bit but couldn't find anything which said I couldn't redistribute -- what page had that on it? In any event, I would take their official privacy/permissions page as probably being more authoratative, and you can link to it on every image you upload for good measure. The only thing you have to watch out for is anything which is credited to someone other than a USAF employee (i.e. a press photographer), because that would change the copyright situation. Honestly it looks like fair game to me. --Fastfission 21:07, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It's on some pages but not others. I think they're in the process of updating the entire database. That doesn't help with non-US aircraft though (aside from USSR). Here's a question: a lot of books credit photographs as "from the collection of so-and-so." I strongly suspect that the So-and-so simply provided the photos but did not actually take them (unless they were an exceptionally well-traveled person with unlimited access to one-off prototypes). Is that an "author unknown, hence who cares" policy or a copyright loophole? - Emt147 Burninate! 04:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think part of it is that not all the USAF Museum's photo collection is government, and they don't want to put the work into being sure which is and which isn't. There are photos taken by volunteers and photos from corporate collections donated to the museum. As for the 'from the collection of ...' it seems that the common assumption is that, absent other arrangements, if you own the original negative or slide you own the rights. That seems to be the common modus operandi for transportation photographs too. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 14:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Or here's a better question. If I color a black and white photograph, can I release my work into public domain? - Emt147 Burninate! 20:41, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Short answer: Only if the original black and white photograph is in the public domain. Long answer: If you color a photograph, you are creating a derivative work — only the coloring job would count towards a new copyright claim, and it would probably not be a very strong copyright claim. If the underlying work is in the public domain, you could say, "The coloring job/choice is released into the public domain as well," in effect, but that would be the only thing you had any say over. If the underlying work is copyrighted, it is doubtful that your derivative creation would have much if any real copyright claim that would trump the original copyright holder (details would of course depend on the work in question, but generally speaking). --Fastfission 21:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Makes sense, I wasn't sure if coloring constituted enough original work to transfer the copyright. In all honesty, I fail to see why anyone would try to enforce copyrights on a 1930s (or even 1950s) vintage company PR photo of an aircraft (which is what's available for most of these) but given recent attacks on the scale modeling community (Canadian government requesting fees for RCAF insignia on decals and Boeing and Lockheed asking for royalties on scale models of their paid-for-by-taxpayers products) stranger things have happened. - Emt147 Burninate! 21:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Policy

Are you guys ok with the change that was done to make this "official policy"? Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 04:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

NVM, it was reverted, but that gives me a serious thought: should this still be a "guideline" or should we make the push to make this an official policy on WP. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 05:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't know when the template was first changed to "policy," but the first I saw of it was Talrias changing it tonight. [1] Guidelines can't be turned into policy on the basis of one or two people altering a tag. Please post the proposed change more widely and find out what most people think first. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
My understanding is that there are good reasons why this needs to permanently remain labelled as a guideline. Jkelly 06:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
That doesn;'t make any sense to me. My understanding is that it's always been a policy, and if it's only a guideline we just screwed ourselves legally. DreamGuy 06:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
DreamGuy, how does it being a guideline cause us a legal problem? SlimVirgin (talk) 06:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I do not know, but if it will be ok with you all, I wish to ask the Community if we should have this as a policy or as a guideline. While I hope it can become policy, I still believe that even if that fails, this should still have a lot of teeth, even tagged as a guideline. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 06:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
If it's only a guideline, editors can and will violate it on a whim. As an organization, we have to demonstrate good faith that we are trying to follow all applicable copyright laws to the best of our ability, so that if someone screws up (which happens all the time here) and someone threatens a lawsuit, we can say, oh, that's against out policy, that editor obviously wasn;t aware of it, oops, we'll take care of it, no harm intended. If this is worded as a guideline, then we are basically saying, hey, ignore it if you want to, which means we're toast legally if it ever gets that far. Guidelines are for soft things, where we can;t get into trouble if someone decides to ignore them. Anything with a legal basis would almost have to be a policy, and especially this one. With all the tons of copyright violations we have going on at any given time that we just don;t have the manpower to check, we need a strong policy, otherwise we are being reckless legally. If we had a team of lawyers check every usage of every image, well then sure, let's only have it be a guideline, but then that's so not the case here. DreamGuy 06:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I've left the page itself as a guideline but marked the criteria as policy. This accurately represents the situation as it exists today. Compliance with the section labeled as "fair use policy" is pretty much entirely required of all editors. Kelly Martin (talk) 06:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm good with that. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 06:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

(two edit conflicts) DreamGuy, those are fair points, although if anyone threatened a lawsuit, the image would be removed whether this page was a policy or a guideline. Perhaps those of you who want the page to be policy could post on the mailing list, village pump, and so on, to try to get more editors involved in the decision? I'm not familiar enough with it to know this, but often pages have to be edited quite extensively before being moved to policy, because there are certain things guidelines may suggest that would be inappropriate if they were mandated, but I don't know whether that's the case here. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

"although if anyone threatened a lawsuit, the image would be removed whether this page was a policy or a guideline", true, but that's not really enough. If it's only a guideline and people then can claim fair use for anything and everything, we've insitutionally accepted it, and we are putting the onus of copyright owners to have to vigilantly defend their rights. If someone just had a complaint about one image, ok, fine, we remove it, if the lawyers from Time-Warner start counting up all abuses of their copyrights for all their various TV shows, magazines, websites, etc., they'd have to pay big money to track them all down, and our guidelines would just let someone put new ones back up again. Legally we have to have our own house in order, we can't depend upon outside forces to police us, as that becomes a finanical drain on them. With as hands off as we are and without people checking we need a policy. And if the situation ever gets quite bad, the policy won't help us either. We have to be seen to have a good faith effort to keep it all legal. DreamGuy 07:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Does "article" include Portals?

One criteria is "The material must be used in at least one article." Does this mean that an image that is used in a Portal, but which is not used in an article, fails this criteria? (or should that line of the guideline be fixed, or are there two definitions of "article" with different scopes). Thanks. Gronky 08:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

To be on the safe side, I would not count portals as "at least one article." But, if the powers-that-be think that is fine, then I will have no problems with it. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 09:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I think Portals should count as articles. They are linked to from articles (e.g. Mathematics links to Portal:Mathematics). dbenbenn | talk 18:56, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. --Fastfission 19:11, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Portals are part of the encyclopedia, rather than part of the process. They're intended for users, not contributors. However, it's harder to claim fair use for a portal page since it's so general - just like it is on general-topic pages. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 14:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Text from TV Series Opening: Fair Use Violation?

At the Avatar: The Last Airbender page, the full text of two versions of a spoken-word opening title sequence to a television show are reprinted entire. The long open is 143 words, and the short open is 87 words, but both are full versions of the title sequence. It doesn't seem like fair use to me, but I can't quite grok wikipolicy on this. Can I get an opinion?--172.174.245.222 09:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Neither criticism nor parody occur on that page so fair use in this case would be educational value that does not cut into the derivative market for the copyright owners. Short answer: this article acts as an advertizement for the show and not a substitute for it, so it's ok as is. More could be copied were it to be used as part of a critical analysis. But if more and more and more is added just for educational use, at SOME point we are giving away for free a derivitave work they could be selling, which in a case like this would make it NOT fair use but a copyright violation in spite of its educational value. As I say, you could get around this to some degree if nine tenths of the article were analysis copied from a third source (since we don't include original research); but I doubt such a thing is going to occur. WAS 4.250 15:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The really interesting question is what happens when you add up all of wikipedia's articles and talk pages for all the shows on a given TV network and ask if this is unfair competition with an online site sponsored by that TV network that covers the same ground. That company may decide they want the eyes that are looking at wikipedia and ask us to drasticly cut back the total content that simply repeats their copyrighted creative work. My guess is we would comply in a heartbeat, with some here glad to be rid of both the fancruft and fancruft contributors. The key to that not happening is either content that is analysis from third parties or content that serves as advertizement for the copyright owners and not replacement for existing or potential derivative works. WAS 4.250 16:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Unfair competition isn't something we need to worry about in terms of fair use, and fair use works in terms of the individual copyrighted works, not the number of copyrighted works total -- that is, a dozen "fair use"s does not add up to a copyright infringement. But I understand you are making a practical argument as well, and I agree we probably wouldn't bother risking a lawsuit for fancruft. --Fastfission 19:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Analogy

In regards to this edit I find the analogy a little confusing. If we are to analogize for clarity, I recommend something less, um, distracting (?) as an analogy, in fear that editors will somehow conflate a debate about what is pronography and what might be "fair use". I am also confused by the use of the word "enough". Jkelly 19:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

That was trying to find an illustration of the transformative factor (as the Stanford page calls it ) that is always part of "fair use". Maybe someone else can come up with a better suggestion. Sorry about the wonky grammar, I'mm not a native speaker. Pilatus 20:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Law Students

A group of Harvard Law School students are currently taking a class in Cyberlaw and contributing to this Wikipedia, coordinated through Wikipedia:Wikiproject Cyberlaw and a Wiki at Harvard is being used to organize notes on what they are learning, of which one topic is Fair use. It may be of interest to some what is the latest interpretation of the laws they are learning. See here for one of these overviews of where this is appropriate. User:AlMac|(talk) 21:31, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair use images in userspace

For what it's worth, I've generated a report of the top 100 user pages, sorted by number of fair-use images on them, see User:Interiot/Reports/FairUsers. --Interiot 09:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The question I have is: if the page is nothing more than a mere collection of fair use photos, would it be easier to MFD the said page or remove all images? Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 18:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
For the "list of everything I uploaded" pages, I think the images should be turned into links ([[:Image:..]]), or someone should ask the owner to do so... some of the images look like they may be able to be retagged as something more free (at which point the image could be shown on the page again), and these kinds of users contribute a lot to Wikipeida.
For sandbox pages... policy doesn't currently mention what to do about them, does it? If a sandbox page is no longer being actively used, I think it should be redirected or blanked. If the page IS being actively used to develop an article, I think the page should be treated as if it were in the main space, since it's effectively another version of the mainspace article, and is being used to further the goals of the encyclopedia. --Interiot 19:03, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Alright. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 20:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Though Stan Shebs brings up a good point on wikien-l [2], that user lists of fair-use images, even if done via [[Image:..]], don't seem to be any different than the gallery presented at Category:Fair use images. eg. the category displays fair-use images in a way that's not necessary to describe the product in question. So.... is Category:Fair use images in violation of WP:FAIR? If it's not, does that mean user "lists of everything I uploaded" also aren't in violation of WP:FAIR? --Interiot 18:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I seem to remember this coming up somewhere else before. I think the conclution was that thumbnails for organisational purposes where ok with regards to the law (IANAL though). As for WP:FAIR I think this would be one of those caste-by-case exceptions where where displaying the images are the lesser of "evils". If the category is removed these images become much harder to keep track of (whatlinkshere could be used instead, but it's far from optimal). The "list of everyting I have uploader" type galleries are not categories though, and they rarely serve any kind of organisational purpose, a list of links would work equaly well in those cases. If people are worried about people overwriting theyr images they should instead twist the arm of some dev to make sure image uploads and reverts are noted on people's watchlists. --Sherool (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I was using a thumbnail gallery of Promotional images for organisational purposes, really, for example a wek ago I replaced many of them with higher quality ones. I was asked to not displaying those in line with this policy, and I made a list instead. But I think if it's not for illustration purposes, a gallery like these is useful and this policy is too restrictive. --Marc Lacoste 23:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Big_Brother_UK_series_6#Images

Hi, folks. I asked this question on Wikipedia:Publicity photos, but no-one replied, so I don't know how to take that. I'd appreciate some input Talk:Big_Brother_UK_series_6#Images. It involves photographs being taken from Channel 4's website and used in the article. They've been uploaded, added, tagged and deleted several times now. Because of the criteria about publicity photos, (specifically about press kits, copyright notices, creator, etc.), I don't feel we can use these images. Newer users disagree, and it's now taken more time to argue with him than it is to tag and delete them! Could someone please have a look and help me out? The JPS 12:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for a "summary" guideline/policy on fair use.

Fair use of copyrighted works on Wikipedia should only be claimed upon vigerous defense of the following claims, and a case by case analysis of how the proposed use both fits the legal tests of fair use and siginfigantly furthers our goal of producing an encyclopedia.

The following list is meant as a checklist to help guide the extensive deliberation necessary before trying to claim fair use, in hopes that it will help in weeding out legally questionable material before its added to Wikipedia, and also help in deciding where its appropriate to remove such material.

  1. Will the inclusion of the fair use material have a clear and compelling benefit towards improving an encyclopedic article?
  2. Are there absolutely no reasonable alternative materials under suitable license already existing or able to be produced that can be used for the same purpose?
  3. Does the proposed fair use avoid causing harm to the legitimate interests of the rights holder? Any use that reduces the value of the copyrighted work, or reduces the ability of the rights holder to profit from that work might be considered harmful. For example, if you are making available a large enough portion that the rights-holder may no longer be able to sell legitimate copies, its likely that your harm to the rights of the copyright holder is greater than any claim of fair use)
  4. Does the proposed fair use further an academic, educational, identifyingidentification, or critical purpose that cannot be achieved without invoking fair use?
  5. Does the proposed fair use fit indisputably and clearly within the established legal precedents and legal standards for fair use? Remember that fair use is a deliberate grey area within copyright law - there are no hard-and-fast rules of what is and isn't allowed. Because of the volunteer nature and finite resources of this project and of many of its contributors, it is best to steer well on the side of caution and find clear cases in favor of uses similar to what you propose.
  6. Does the proposed fair use avoid endangering our ability to distribute our content under GFDL? (Issues to look at here are how much content is being included, what proportion of the article consists of such content, and how signifigant it is to the article.)
  7. Are you willing to be sued as an individual by the rights-holder and possibly found liable in a court of law should they disagree with your interpetation of fair use?Do you understand that copyright infringment can expose both yourself and Wikipedia to civil liability, as well as in some cases criminal liability, and have you honestly evaluated the risks involved in claiming fair use in this case?

If you can truthfully answer yes to all of the above and defend these answers with objective facts, then your claim of fair use may actually be fair use. Otherwise, please refrain from trying to claim fair use or use the material under question under such claims.

I think by aggressively applying the above standards, we would signifigantly reduce accidental and "good-faith" copyright violations, therefore helping protect our contributors and project from legal action, and therefore I propose that the above be adopted as a basic policy on fair use, to be suplemented by a broaded reaching and more detailed guideline on the same. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 21:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC) - Edited - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 02:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

  • A few thoughts: #3-6: change "proposed fair use" to "proposed use"; the entire question is whether it is "fair" or not. #3: simplify to something like "Will the proposed use likely make the copyrighted work decline in value for the copyright holder, or remove the possibility of future profits for the copyrightholder?" I am not sure in #4 if "indentifying" makes sense in that group; "academic" is probably not right either (academia is, technically, a location). #5 -- doesn't this beg the question (that is, isn't this questionnaire supposed to help establish whether it is fair use or not)? #6 -- this is somewhat misleading, as our images are not distributed under GFDL, just our textual content. #7 -- a bit unfair, I think, and a little too harsh. I think our policy should be oriented around prevention of being sued rather than outright fear of it. --Fastfission 23:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I really like this summary, but I thought some changes might improve it. Point #4 (above) seems to be covered by points #1 and #2. And I don't think point #6 (above) is legally relevant -- if the use is legitimately "fair" according to the other points, then it doesn't affect the GFDL, and if it isn't, then the previous points should weed the image out already. I also reworded a few bits for clarity, etc. What do you think? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 19:54, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Quadell's version

In general, materials should only be used on Wikipedia if they are available under a free license. However, there are cases where the use of copyrighted material would be appropriate. These are called "fair use cases". The following list is meant as a checklist to help guide the extensive deliberation necessary before trying to claim fair use.

  1. Will the inclusion of the fair use material have a clear and compelling benefit towards improving an encyclopedic article? If not, the material should not be used.
  2. Is it possible to find or create a an alternative material under a free license that would fulfill the same purpose? If such alternative material exists or could reasonably be created, then the work in question should not be used.
  3. Could the proposed use on Wikipedia be seen as causing harm to the legitimate interests of the copyright holder? If so, it should not be used. Any use that reduces the value of the copyrighted work, or reduces the ability of the rights holder to profit from that work, might be considered harmful. (For example, if you are making available a large enough portion that the rights-holder may no longer be able to sell legitimate copies, its likely that your harm to the rights of the copyright holder is greater than any claim of fair use.)
  4. Do you understand that copyright infringment can expose both yourself and Wikipedia to civil liability, as well as in some cases criminal liability, and have you honestly evaluated the risks involved in claiming fair use in this case? If not, you should not include the material on Wikipedia.

If the material can clearly and objectively be shown to have passed these tests, then a valid fair use claim can probably be made. If any of these points are in doubt, the material should not be used. Remember that fair use is a deliberately grey area within copyright law - there are no hard-and-fast rules of what is and isn't allowed. Because of the volunteer nature and finite resources of this project, it is best to steer well on the side of caution.

Section 9 change proposal

I think section 9 of this policy goes a little overboard on restricting images. No fair use images in a userspace at all? I recently ran into this issue when someone changed Template:User OregonState to take out the beavers logo, per this policy. The exact wording on a sports team logo licence is "It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of logos to illustrate the corporation, sports team, or organization in question on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law." The use of this image in a userbox declaring one is part of this university is exactly that, it is being used as a means to illustrate the organization in question, which qualifies as fair use. But, per this section of the policy, the simple fact that all fair use images don't have this wording means we can't use any fair use images in our userspace, dispite actually being legal to do so for many images. I propose we make an exception for all free use images tagged as a sports team logo to be able to be used freely in userpages and userbox templates, assuming my interpretation of the legality of use is correct. Thoughts? VegaDark 03:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

This has been argued repeatedly. The opposition to it is that there is no justification for infringing on unfree copyrighted material in a free encyclopedia when it isn't furthering an encyclopedia article, that userspace decoration with unfree-copyrighted images further complicates Wikipedia's already complicated relationship to copyright infringement, and, finally, and perhaps most importantly, that such a change in lawsuit exposure would have to come from the Board. Lots and lots of users would like to decorate their userpages with logos and other unfree material, but the situation seems unlikely to change. Jkelly 03:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, is that no sports team is going to complain about their logo being on Wikipedia, let alone sue. I'm guessing they would be thrilled at the free exposure. That is part of the reason I only suggested sports team logos be an exception, instead of all images that would technically be legal to show on userpages. It is both legal and logical to allow this exception, IMO. VegaDark 04:19, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
"Because there is a sizable gray area in which fair use may or may not apply, there is never a guarantee that your use will qualify as a fair use." [3] Because there is no guarantee, we use fair use images in as few places as possible, only where it's really required to directly advance the goals of wikipedia; that is, on a very limited number of encyclopedia pages, not on user pages. --Interiot 04:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
And, if we allow sports logos, then other fair use images will have to be allowed too. But, as the others have said, fair use is a pretty grey area that Wikipedia should try to make "ungrey" by having policies such as this. While we have not been enforcing this as we should have for X time, but with the userboxes issues, the fair use criteria was shapped up and now we are enforcing it. While I wish we did this earlier, I still think that it would be much easier on the Foundation, and for us in general, to have rules such as this to limit the use of fair use in Wikipedia. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 06:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC) (the guy who changed the mentioned template)

Yeah, the arbcom rules unanimously that no fairuse images can go in user space (or anywhere except article space). So even if it isn't a legal problem, it's against Wikipedia policy. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:53, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I know it's against Wikipedia policy. I'm not complaining that people are deleting these images from user pages, I can't fault them for following policy. What I'd like to see is the policy change so it wouldn't be against policy (for sports logos only, for now), as once again it seems kind of silly to bundle up all fair use images into one category when different types have different legal uses for them. VegaDark 22:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I sympathize, but I really doubt that it will happen. Weighing everything together, I don't think it should happen. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
This whole discussion misses an essential point: that such logos are typically trademarked as well as copyrighted; trademark protections are much more restrictive than copyright protections. And trademark holders are required to defend their marks, even in the absence of economic damage, or risk losing their trademark rights. Monicasdude 05:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Counter examples

There seems to me to be a lack of clarity regarding the use of images from news agencies. In my mind, we shouldn't be claiming fair use in most cases because a) it would have a significant financial impact on the copyright holder, and b) we generally aren't commenting on the image itself but rather the subject of the image. See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fair_use/Archive_2#Images_from_agencies_i.e._wireimages_and_ap where this has been discussed before. What brought this to my attention was this image, the uploader asked me if it qualified for fair use, and I had a hard time finding any answer to that question. Could we include in the counter example section of this page something to the effect of In most cases, images produced by a news agency are not fair use in an article about that news event. What do people think of that? Matt 21:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

We do have a "No free equivalent is available" rationale that is used for a bunch of the "famous" news photos, but a good counterexample might be some London bombing pictures, because (as I recall) we have some free images taken by Wikipedians, and our fair use rationale for similar news agency photos is very weak. Thumbing through commons and/or wikinews will probably turn up other relevant examples. Stan 00:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... I interpret "No free equivalent is available" as an added requirement in WP policy, not a legal principle. In other words, WP will refuse an image that could arguably be fair use if a free equivilant could be produced. But WP can not make an image that doesn't meet the legal requirements of fair use into a fair use image by simply saying "no copyright holders want to release their images." That's just how I see it. Matt 02:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I think you're right, unfortunately. "No free equivalent is available" is a Wikipedia policy, not a legally valid fair-use rationalle. But we should refrain from using news images, in my opinion, only if Wikipedia would be seen as competing with the copyright holder, or if the use could be seen as detracting from the value of the original. For instance, if President Bush were caught on film drinking vodka, the photographer would be able to make money by licensing the photo to others. Our use could be seen as detracting from the value of the work and competing. But a copyrighted news photo from 1970 would be different, I think. We wouldn't be competing with the news source, and the value of the image would not be hurt by its promotion anymore, I think. But this is definitely gray area. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 19:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
While the existence of a free equivalent argueably weakens a fair use claim, the lack of one probably does nothing to strengthen the claim. In other words, if a reasonable alternate exists, we probably have no legitimate claim to fair use! - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 05:09, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Another question. It says on the page that "The use must not attempt to 'supersede the objects' of the original". What does this mean? If a news agency publishes a photo because people will pay to use it in their news stories, doesn't our use of it in an encyclopedia article 'supersede the objects' of the original? Matt 02:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't have any idea what that means. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 19:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I understand it to mean that if the rightholder produced or commissioned the work for a given purpose, using it in a way that is sufficiently similar to its original purpose that it devalues it for the rightholder, is "supersceding the original". However, I don't like this phrasing because its very unclear. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 05:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I've brought this issue up on the village pump Matt 00:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

What about museum website photos of their collection?

I can't find a lot of discussion concerning using images from a historical museum website. In particular, I am speaking about photos of artifacts in their collection, artifacts like weapons or musical instruments or desks, etc. For example, let's say I'm writing an article on flutes and I wanted to show (in addition to describing) what flutes looked like in the mid-18th century. So, here's a picture of a 1750 flute at the the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

On their website, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston says "Provided the source is cited, personal, educational, and non-commercial use (as defined by fair use in US copyright law) is permitted." [4] Certainly using this photo to illustrate my article would be at least non-commercial and (I would hope!) educational as well. And IMHO it would also be "fair use".

Thoughts, anyone?? BostonBay 04:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

If it's a photo of something in their collection, then it should be possible for a Wikipedian to make a free-license replacement. In that case, the photo doesn't qualify for "fair use" under Wikipedia policy. --Carnildo 07:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
So, according to your opinion, we could use a museum photo if it were not possible for a Wikipedian to photograph that object him/herself (e.g. too fragile, locked away, on loan to the Tibetan Museum of Ancient Music, no longer in collection, etc). Thanks. BostonBay 18:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
That's right, and it's not Carnildo's legal opinion; it's Wikipedia policy. Legally, the ability to find a free, suitable replacement doesn't affect a claim of fair use. But Jimbo has said we shouldn't include fair use images if it's possible a free image could replace it. By the way, if the piece is on loan to a Tibetan Museum, a Tibetan Wikipedian could still photograph it and upload the GFDL image, so the location doesn't matter. But if it's destroyed or not available to the public, then it can be used -- so long as a reasonable fair use rationalle is provided. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 19:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Isn't that rather an extreme interpretation? You are saying that no fair use image can be used if it is theoretically possible to obtain one which is free. So someone uses a fair use image of the back of the moon, but it is struck out because theoretically a wikipedian could build his own rocket, and take a free use picture, since there is no legal restriction on photographing the moon? It is mereley technically infeasible? Surely the correct interpretation has to be that a free image must first be actually obtainable, but that when obtained is always preferable to a free use one??Sandpiper 22:36, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
It's called the "reasonable Wikipedian" standard: Is there a reasonable chance that one out of the 100,000 people who have contributed more than 10 edits will have or be able to create a picture of it? In the case of the back side of the Moon, there's no shortage of public domain images from NASA, so there's no reason to use a fair-use one. --Carnildo 06:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Promotional?

Sorry, I'm sure you've had this question a billion times... Image:Astriaalimage.jpeg was uploaded. I found that it comes from the band's official website but is not in an area labelled as "promotional" or "press" or "press kit". It lives here and you can navigate to it by going to their official page and selecting "THE KULT" (yes, it's one of those charming extreme heavy metal bands). Does this really qualify as promotional/press kit? If so, that opens up a lot of images for use IMHO. I could become an image-uploading maniac! Thanks for the input.  :) —Wknight94 (talk) 14:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

it looks promotional to me, since the photo has the name of each band-member around their feet. But, I notice that the above image has been cropped and moved to Image:Astriaalimage2.jpeg. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 14:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
(Yes, I'm going to nominate the unused one for deletion as an altered duplicate.) So any picture of a band purposely posing like that is basically considered promotional? Just about every official band website has pictures like that so it would really open a Pandora's Box. It doesn't quite fit the policy as I read it which says promotional material usually lives in an area labelled as press or promotional, etc. Not to fight you - I just want to be sure before I start downloading pictures of every band I can find. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that's fine, but be careful to stay within the bounds of fair use. Don't use more photos than necessary to illustrate an article. (e.g. One band photo of Black Sabbath on the article is fair use; ten is not. Even three is pushing it.) Also, the photo shouldn't be any larger or of any better quality than is necessary. (e.g. Image:'82 Misfits.jpg is probably okay, but Image:1039936 mondays300.jpg is better, and Image:1024wallpaper9.jpg is arguably a violation - it should be shrunk in an image editor before uploading.) – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Since you called attention to it, I've degraded the quality of Image:1024wallpaper9.jpg, removed one of the references to it, and added comments detailing the fair use rationale on the image description page. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 05:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Very Important - Remember that copyright law and avoiding lawsuits are the major factors here!

To those who would support a liberal policy on fair use, please remember that the courts are not likely to be as liberal as we would like them to be, and if they or rights holders see things differently than we do, the Wikimedia Foundation as well as individual Wikipedians are at risk for lawsuits.

It should also be noted that because intelectual property rights are subject to erosion by failure of a rightsholder to vigerously defend their rights, many commercial rightsholders have adopted extremely zealous (and very often extremely overzealous) policies of litigation against any perceived abuse of their property

As very few of us can afford to defend against legal action even if it is unjust, it is vital that we avoid anything that would give someone reason to sue either the foundation or Wikipedia contributors. Please act accordingly, and take this into serious consideration when deliberating policy on fair use.


Remember: Lawsuits are a bad thing! - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 04:59, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


Wow. Is this directed at any particular deliberation here? —Wknight94 (talk) 18:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Not really, just that a number of the threads here suggest a lack of understanding of the legalities or a complete disregard of them. I admit I'm not a lawyer, but I have studied the law enough to know fair use is legally a very grey area by design - its not clear where the line's drawn, but if you do step over it, theres a very real chance of being sued. The only way to know for sure with fair use is to test it, the only way to avoid being sued for sure is NOT to test it. I'm just hoping everybody will understand why we can't afford to take chances with copyright. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 19:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Well how about let's decide not to write an encyclopedia because somebody might write something accusing somebody of shooting John F. Kennedy and we'll get sued. Let's just shut down the whole project then. --Nerd42 03:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Right -- arguing that people should keep in mind the principle of avoiding lawsuits when using copyrighted material out of license is the same thing as saying don't both to make an encyclopedia at all. Riiight. --Fastfission 04:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not saying we should operate under constant fear of being sued - however, copyright violations are like standing out in an open field with a 50 foot metal rod in your hands in an electrical storm. It doesn't make sense to allow blatent or even careless disregard for copyright (although, careless violations are something we can just correct and move on)... We know that copyvios are an *unnecessary* exposure to lawsuits, and we know that they can be avoided by careful citing of sources, careful tracking of license, and due caution in claiming fair use. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 14:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

SVG images for fair use

After working with a few SVG images, it has been brought to my attention that this format results, in effect, an infinite-resolution image. Unlike GIF, JPEG, and PNG formats, SVG are vector based, which means that a user can infinitely expand the image size on a Wikipedia article and there will be no change in the resolution. Because a infinite-resolution image may be harder to justify under fair use, I therefore recommend that we should ban SVG images from Wikipedia that are only used as fair use. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I think that even if someone, say, gets an SVG logo from some company's website, they should render it at the required resolution and save it as a PNG. JYolkowski // talk 21:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Geesh. It's a pain finding all the locations where this discussion is taking place. Please see the argument against this position that I posted here. In short, SVG is exactly as finite resolution as a PNG. For the case of logos especially some could take the png we distribute and use automatic fancy scaling (trace, simplify, and scale the vector) and get the same results as scaling the SVG. The use of PNG only eliminates a step. --Gmaxwell 22:55, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It's a non-trivial step though. Tracing and re-creation of copyrighted content is not the same thing as simply being able to use it. It is like saying that distribution of written music is no different an issue that distributing recordings of the music, since anyone could re-create the recording with a studio and some musical ability. The latter is an extreme example but I think it illustrates my point. (I think your argument there about how SVGs have "less information" than PNGs is fallacious. They contain less physical bits but clearly more "information".) I think the more options we give people at re-using copyrighted content, the better a case against us would be that we encourage copyright infringement, but whether we should take that into account in this instance, I don't know. --Fastfission 15:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
    • SVG images don't have more information simply because they're infinite resolution. "Limited resolution" as it applies to SVG's should be taken to mean that it has sufficient detail, to, for instance, reproduce a printed CD cover that will make most people think it's genuine. That kind of detail doesn't magically appear when you convert a low-res JPEG to SVG. --Interiot 16:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
      • CD covers generally wouldn't be in SVG format in the first place. Where this comes into play most often with fair-use images is with logos. This gets more into the area of trademark law than copyright law. We should be fine there, as we're not pretending to be or to represent the companies in question. Furthermore, in practice, most companies want their logo to be represented in the clearest form possible, not as a pixelated JPEG. There's no law or Foundation policy justifying the "no SVG" bit that was added to WP:FUC, so I have removed it. Let's not lapse into m:Copyright paranoia. If a trademark holder actually complains, the Foundation can address the issue then. No need to pre-emptively harm our quality. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 06:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
      • On the other hand, that kind of detail does appear when you use a good tracing program on a web-quality comic strip. --Carnildo 05:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggest "Permission" image policy

Why can't non-fair use images be used with the holder's permission? --Nerd42 03:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

  • In a nutshell: the only licenses that can be used on Wikipedia are ones which can be used by re-distributors of Wikipedia content. If an image is used for permission on Wikipedia only, then it can't be used by distributors. Images which are only licensed for "educational" or "non-profit" use only are also not "free" enough for our policy. None of this is up for negotiation, as it was formed by order from Jimbo. --Fastfission 04:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Surely we can create some kind of legal form for permission-granters to sign to enable the Wikimedia Foundation to use their images. A new type of liscense perhaps? For people who decide to let the Wikimedia Foundation (and distributors) to use their images in specific ways but nobody else? Material on user pages, for example, doesn't go to distributors. Or does it? --Nerd42 04:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, material on user pages is released under the GFDL, which means anyone can reproduce it. About the {{Permission}} tag, we had one for a while, but it's no longer used. Here's why: all of Wikipedia has to be released under the GFDL, which means that for an image to be used on Wikipedia, anyone else has to be able to use it (providing they also release their work under the GFDL). If there were images that couldn't be re-used, then Wikipedia couldn't all be released under the GFDL, and it wouldn't really be a free encyclopedia anymore. Ironically, if only Wikipedia has permission to use an image, then Wikipedia can't use that image. That's just the way the GFDL works. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 04:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
      • It's not that we couldn't create a way for people to allow Wikimedia and no one else to use their images, it's that we don't want to. And by "we" I mean, the people who run Wikipedia, especially (but not limited to) Jimbo. Material on user pages is also licensed under the GFDL, and can be downloaded and re-used by distributors, yes. There are ways that distributors can choose to not download user pages if they don't want to, but there is no license requirement that they not do such a thing. --Fastfission 04:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo itself violates policy

See my posting at Image talk:Wiki.png. --Nerd42 03:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Your objection seems to be about the use of a font. In the United States, font faces can't be copyrighted (font files can, but not the basic design elements) and in any event, using a font in a graphic does not mean one forfeits a copyright claim to the image. --Fastfission 04:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't think you quite understand the policy. "Free" is used in the sense of free content: "having no legal restriction relative to people's freedom to use, redistribute, improve, and share the content." Since using a font in the image does not add any legal restriction to it, it cannot be a factor in whether it is "more free" or "less free". --Fastfission 04:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Use of sports teams logos

Plenty of articles about sports teams (e.g. Arsenal F.C.) use copies of that team's crest or logo in the article about that team, which I am sure is fine with fair use guidelines. However, I've noticed more recently that people have started to use the logo images in league tables (e.g. 1993-94 in English football) and player bios (e.g. Thierry Henry), and I am not sure whether this is allowed, particularly under policy #8 ("The material must contribute significantly to the article [...] and must not serve a purely decorative purpose"). Can someone clarify? Thanks. Qwghlm 13:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Boy, this is really a gray area. It would probably be best to only use a logo image on pages about the organization itself, but I'd say this is a safe area of wiggle-room. But others would disagree. I don't think it would be a legal problem, myself, although we have lots of restriction on fair-use images on Wikipedia other than legal ones. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 13:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Question about a band photo

Would this image be elligible for fair use? It says on the band's page at Emperor Norton that it's a "HI-RES PRESS PHOTOGRAPH", but I'm not sure if that's enough for it to qualify. Help would be appreciated. --Closedmouth 12:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be better to shrink the image down. You can do this using MS-Paint, the GIMP, Picasa, or almost any other image program. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 12:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, so you're saying it should be okay to upload it, without violating any copyrights? --Closedmouth 04:53, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
You can make a fair use claim, probably with the {{promophoto}} template and/or {{Non-free fair use in}}. Don't forget a fair use rationale. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 15:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
What about the statement on the bottom of that site: "Unauthorized Use Prohibited." ? I admit, though, that the fact they've provided a high-res version makes fair-use more accepatble than most. The JPS 15:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Fair use actually only covers situations like this, where you don't have an explicit license from the copyright holder. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks for your help. --Closedmouth 01:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

House Resolution 683 may change Fair Use laws

Interesting document about potential changes in fair use law in the US: Judiciary Committee letter on House Resolution 683 (pdf file). To quote:

Our specific concerns are that H.R. 683 would [...] eliminate the protection in current law for non-commercial use of a mark (section 43(c)(4)(B) of the Lanham Act).

This is probably something we should follow closely. — Catherine\talk 22:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

So, what will happen if this protection is lifted? User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 06:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Everything using {{logo}} would need to either be deleted or hosted off-shore. Not so good. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 15:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Will it affect other images or only logos? User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 05:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Anything a corporation has registered as a trademark, or can argue in court is a "famous" representation of their company. The paper's example is that, Walter Mondale's use of the Wendy's "Where's the beef?" slogan to diss Gary Hart in a political speech could, in theory, be subject to legal action. If the law is enacted in a way similar to other trademark law, Wendy's might even be obligated to pursue legal action to "protect" their mark/slogan, or risk losing trademark protection for it at all. The law would also affect the ability of rival companies to refer to their competitors by name/logo/etc. in their own text or promotional materials. Please take the time to read the document -- it's very clear on the issues. — Catherine\talk 04:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

USPS Stamp images

Hi, looking for some guidance on possible fair use of {{USPSstamp}} to illustrate the subject on the stamp. If you have any insight, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#USPS post-1978 stamp images. Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 15:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

RFC fair use claim

Could someone comment on this fair use claim? Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. Matt 05:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I will try and break the file up, get rid of the radio intro, spam, and all of that stuff. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 05:50, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I broke up the first part already, it's about 43 seconds long. While it is longer than the 30 second rule that we have, TLC is explaning how their reality TV show worked, in a nutshell, and that is being compared to what INXS is doing. This sound clip I have will probably be best suited for the article of the TV show, RU Da Girl, if that is what it is called. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 05:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Breaking up the file is fine, but IMO I think it belongs on the band's entry, not the TV show's. --Cjmarsicano 13:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The first file is about the TV show hosted by the surviving memebers of TLC. The second one will be talking about their latest music coming out, but I am trying to get rid of the spam (mostly radio idents and personal expereinces of the DJ). However, Cjmarsicano, what I can suggest to you is that once I get the sound files up, we can past an internet link to the website where the sound file originally came from, but also check the copyright of the recording too. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 14:36, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Zscout, I presumed that the copyright in the sound file belonged to the radio station that conducted the interview. I'd recommend keeping that as the copyright owner with the phrase "subject to revision" (not unlike record labels where the publishing credits would read "subject to additional publishing information" or "Publisher Pending". Thanks again. --CJ Marsicano 18:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that is correct, the copyright of the recording belongs to the radio station WHTZ-FM (call sign Z100). However, I ran into this issue: http://www.z100.com/cc-common/tou.html#copyandtrade says "Clear Channel provides this Clear Channel Website and related services for your personal non-commercial use only and subject to your compliance with this Terms of Use Agreement (the “Agreement”)." I see that as a problem since Jimbo Wales has not allowed non-commercial media on Wikipedia since May of 2005. I will let others comment on this before any futher action is taken. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 00:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
If we're claiming fair use for the clip, then the non-commercial restrictions don't matter because fair use can be used only when we don't have a licence. Having said that, I agree with MattKingston's assertion that this clip doesn't really qualify as fair use. The article in question doesn't have any commentary about the interview in question, and I don't see this interview as being sufficiently significant that text wouldn't do as well. JYolkowski // talk 01:08, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Are you talking about the entire interview, or the fragments that Zscout has ready to post? If it's the entire interview, fine, but don't stop Z from posting newly edited, fair-use-sized fragments relevant to the article or any of its subsections. As I am presuming Zscout's fragments to be, I am confident that they will meet fair use guidlines and be relevant to the article. --CJ Marsicano 06:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Image:TLCinterview72605-ruthegirl.ogg is the 43 second clip I got. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 14:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
When y'all get this worked out, let me know what to delete. I see no consensus right now -Nv8200p talk 18:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Very ambiguous sentence

"If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use", you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates)." "Names and dates" plural? Your own name and the date you did this? The identity of the copyright holder (not necessarily a person) and the date of the work? Could someone please reword this to say what it means? - Jmabel | Talk 07:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Tortured syntax

"Wikisource theoretically allows fair use of copyrighted texts, but it is rarely, if not never, accepted in practice since Wikisource is to archive works published elsewhere like a library, making the possibility of fair use extremely limited." Again, if someone knows what this means to say, please reword. - Jmabel | Talk 07:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Do we need anything about other projects' guidelines in here at all? Jkelly 22:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't think so, no. I think that saying that these guidelines are specific to the English Wikipedia should be enough, IMHO. JYolkowski // talk 22:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

screen shot limit of one?

I notice in the upload dialog box, it says "Screenshots (one per article)". I don't see the "one per article" limit expressed anywhere else. Is this a policy, just a guideline, or am I misreading what's written? --Rob 10:55, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Our guidelines say to use as little copyrighted material as possible, e.g. not using two screenshots when a single one would do. There isn't any formal limit though. Having said that, it's hard to get that across in one small line in the license selector, so I think that saying "one per article" is probably a reasonable idea. JYolkowski // talk 22:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

National Geographic News photos can be used for any purpose??

I couldn't help but notice that the photo accompanying the article describing the discovery of KV63 (6060210_egypt_big.jpg) says that the image is copyrighted but that the copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose?

Can someone expand upon this? Are all National Geographic photos available in this manner?? I couldn't find anything like this on the website whatsoever. BostonBay 21:53, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I think this is just someone misunderstanding copyright. It's extremely unlikely that National Geographic would make a blanket waiver like that. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 21:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
The majority of stuff tagged with {{CopyrightedFreeUse}} is improperly tagged. Lots of scary stuff in that category. JYolkowski // talk 22:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Any National Geographic photo published before 1923 is public domain. --Carnildo 04:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Too bad, 'cause there are some nice pictures there at National Geographic. I guess I just find it strange that I find a lot of hard line pronouncements laid down here in this forum, like "nearly every Fair Use image should be eliminated" but I find exceptions even on the Main Page. Not only the KV63 photo, fr'instance, but a recent Fair Use snap shot of Starcraft and today's Fair Use photo of Douglas Adams.

Don't get me wrong - Fair Use definitely has a role here in Wikipedia - it would be impossible to build a good encyclopedia with only PD images. It's just that there's such a gulf between what is being said and what is being done.

I'll get off that soapbox now. BostonBay 23:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

The main reason for various people wanting to avoid fair-use photos is that the fair use rules under United States law contradict copyright regulations in many other countries. Hypothetically, if an Irish citizen were to grab the contents of Wikipedia and host it on his own site in Ireland — which is certainly allowed under the GFDL — then he might be sued in Ireland by the people and companies who hold the copyrights of lots of the images here on Wikipedia. This is probably not a practical concern to anyone; it's unlikely this would happen; but it does go against the spirit of the GFDL, where content that we create with a GFDL license is supposed to be free to use. The Wikipedia database as a whole isn't really GFDL content because of the fair-use images.
I agree, the KV63 photo wasn't fair use and should not have been on the main page. Any Starcraft screenshot is fair use, as is a screenshot of a TV show or movie, if that screenshot is used only in an article about that TV show or movie or computer game, and if (the consensus has it here on Wikipedia) only one is used. The Douglas Adams photo was probably the publicity photo, which are considered fair use if the photo was released by the person to promote themselves or their products.
Now, to National Geographic, all their content is copyrighted to them, and isn't even fair use in the United States. With the exception, as mentioned above, of pre-1923 content. Tempshill 20:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair use of baseball cards images

I was wondering about the fair use of images of baseball and football cards (w/o expired copyrights) in articles not about the cards, but about the players they depict.

My thinking is that the fair use claim on cards is at the very least much weaker than the claim for magazine covers (which is currently widely-debated) since the image of the front of the card arguably constitutes half the value of the product (the other half being the back of the card). I'm interested largely because of a number of recent uploads like Image:DavidsonFrontSmall.jpg (a 1967 Topps card). For this discussion, let's leave the fact that the images are also mislabeled as {{NoRightsReserved}}. ×Meegs 10:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I have a hard time seeing how baseball cards fall under fair use and this is probably a timely discussion as I have noticed many images of cards being uploaded and used in articles recently. No Guru 16:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm presuming that football and baseball cards images are fair use and I know some are in Public Domain, but the newer cards are clearly not PD or {{NoRightsReserved}} but as long that the card is used for the subject like the Davidson card for the Ben Davidson article, I think it's ok. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 00:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Doesn't look like fair use to me. There's no discussion of the card in question. --Carnildo 02:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
    • The cards are conceptually similar to postage stamps, and we don't allow those to be used as substitute portraits - the valid uses are in discussing the stamp as a stamp. There are probably a couple cases where the card appearance itself is of interest, or if the sole surviving image of a player was on a card, that could be justified, but otherwise no. On the other hand, I bet a lot of oldercard copyrights have expired, but it would take some serious research to prove that. Stan 15:51, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

The use of an image of an athlete on a collectible card to illustrate the article on the athlete is not fair use. Compare the fourth "Counterexample" bullet at Wikipedia:Fair use#Counterexamples, noting that a press agency photo of Subject A, used to illustrate an article on Subject A, isn't a legitimate fair use. Same thing goes for a photo on a collectible card. Tempshill 20:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to have an "official" policy regarding sports cards to refer to as it seems many baseball cards get uploaded every day. No Guru 20:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll add a mention in the fair use article here, since it should be noncontroversial and straightforward. If you see a baseball card upload, that's easy, just mark it "subst:nld" for "no license" and tell the uploader to stop uploading copyrighted content to Wikipedia. Unless, as I mentioned, it's solely for illustrating an article about the card itself, which is unlikely here; an individual baseball card is quite un-notable. Tempshill 20:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. No Guru 20:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, and thanks for numbering the counterexamples too. ×Meegs 20:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Bingo. It would be fair use on an article about the cards themselves.... It's not, generally, fair use when the the discussion in only indirectly related to the copyrighted work itself (The card is copyrighted, the player is not). My favorite 'test' for likelyhood of clear fair use justification is the replacement test: "Would it break or otherwise harm the article if I simply replaced this image with another simmlar image from another source?"... For a baseball/football player, it wouldn't it might even improve it. On an article about the set of cards, it obviously would cause harm (i.e. some random picture of another companies card, or a random picture of a baseball player on an article about a specific line of cards wouldn't make sense). Based on this alone you can say that the probability of the first being a legitimate claim of fair use is far less than the second. We need to be more diligent about applying this test on Wikipedia because it also fits well with our goal of providing as much free content as possible, since if we can replace something it is probably possible to replace it with something free. --Gmaxwell 20:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
The way I read fair use is that if there is no free alternative we can use any copyrighted image as long as it is of low resolution and it's use on Wikipedia would not affect any commercial value the image may (or may not) have? As the baseball card is the whole of a work it's use may be interpreted as unfair use in which case it might be safer to find a screenshot of the player (very small part of a video recording). Arniep 01:24, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
That's correct about the baseball card being the whole of the work, and also even if you were to crop the card so only the photo were visible, you're still appropriating someone else's copyrighted work to illustrate the article; it's not a fair use. And actually according to this project page, frames from a film or video are to be used under the fair use doctrine if they're used to illustrate an article about that film or video, not an article about the athlete. Tempshill 18:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
A main problem is that a free or fair use image from players in the 50s, 60s are very hard to come-by and a sport card may be the only image possible. --Jaranda wat's sup 00:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Right, and in that case we're hosed. The fact that it is hard to find a free photo doesn't let us just use whatever copyrighted photo we happen to have handy. The best source might be one of those corny team photos that teams used to issue; we would use that under the 'publicity' fair use, and say "He's in the 2nd row, third from the right." Tempshill 18:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Starship Troopers

Hi, I'm looking for a volunteer with a background in Fair Use to help me out. I recently had an article I was working on, Starship Troopers, promoted to FA status. However, there was a serious debate about whether or not I could use book covers from the novel on the page. To make things easier, I took them all down and put them on my scrap page, User:Palm dogg/Starship Troopers. I'd really like to use at least a few of them, but don't want to reignite an old firestorm. Would someone who knows more about this subject please either take a look at them, or post on my Talk Page what criteria I would need to include any of these images? Speed is essential, since this article will probably be on the Main Page soon, and these images will be deleted in a few days if they are still orphaned. Thanks! Palm_Dogg 07:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I commented here. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't able to locate the serious debate you refer to, but agree with Quadell - a single book cover image should clearly be in the article and qualifies as fair use. Tempshill 20:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

OK, thanks for the response. I trust then, that the use of about the same number of book covers by the article The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is also not fair use. If it is, could someone please explain the difference? Palm_Dogg 19:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The last time I looked at The Protocols of the Elders of Zion there were a lot of covers... but looking just now I saw that someone had arranged a large number of them into a gallery. That is not at all okay. I blanked the gallery and left a note on the Talk page. Some of those images may be improperly tagged as being under an unfree copyright, however, and I would appreciate some assistance from other editors in determining whether or not this is the case. Jkelly 20:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
So it was okay when they weren't in the gallery? I don't mean to be annoying, but Starship Troopers took a lot of flak for having those covers up, whereas this page seems to have been given a pass. I'd really like to include them, so I'm going to press the issue. Palm_Dogg 21:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Playboy covers - I don't get it

Could someone explain to me why the cover shots from the lists of people appearing in Playboy have been removed? It would seem that they all fall under the points that are listed on the fair use tag, especially "to illustrate the publication of the issue of the magazine in question". Is it because of the last sentence of that tag which states: "To the uploader: please add a detailed fair use rationale for each use, as described on Wikipedia:Image description page, as well as the source of the work and copyright information."? Thanks, Dismas|(talk) 14:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the issue is that this is just a list. It didn't involve a discussion of the magazine at any length. In most cases the cover would be ok, in article about the magazine, the specific issue, or about the person on its cover (if it discussed their appearance in the body of article). Basically, as a list-only, this amounts to just a photo gallery. If more was written on each issue, than maybe it would qualify. But, of coures, I can't speak for the person who removed it. --Rob 16:15, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, yes it is a list but it also lists information about each issue as far as who the Playmate of the Month was, who was interviewed, who was on the cover, and other notes about the issue. I'll talk to the person who actually did the deleting though. Thanks for your comments! Dismas|(talk) 19:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
The list can stay, but probably it is a good idea to keep the photos out. If the guys want to see pics of the covers, they could visit Playboy magazine or the article on each model. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 23:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Dismas contacted me on my talk page about this--I'm the one who removed them. Basically there are two problems: one is, as Thivierr says, that a list with fair use images provides too little information to qualify as commentary on the image. The other is simply the sheer number of images copyrighted by the same magazine that are in use. The goal of those pages seemed to be to include an image of every cover of Playboy ever made, which is the sort of thing that makes both copyright-holders and our board anxious. They're all up for deletion at WP:IFD, unless the iamges are used for other pages. Chick Bowen 02:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
First of all, thanks to Chick and everyone else for explaining everything to me. Secondly, it's been mentioned that the covers could be used if an issue had it's own article. I don't intend on doing that because even though there are a number of landmark issues, I can easily see where some over-zealous editor would start creating articles for each and every month's issue when it just isn't necessary. Not every issue is notable and then you get into arguments over which ones are notable and which aren't. Although I hate to see the covers go because they provided some color to an otherwise bland looking list, I can understand the justification that has been supplied. Dismas|(talk) 02:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

"Tagging for review" policy is way too weak

The "Tagging for review" policy proposal on this project page is far too lenient. There are several dozen people every day who upload images they find from around the web, and add a Fair Use tag (or CopyrightedFreeUse, etc) because they think it will prevent the image from getting deleted. They don't care.

If I see a fair use tag on something that is gratuitous copyright infringement and that is clearly not a fair use, and the uploader has not made any effort to explain the rationale for the fair use tag, then I just change the tag to "no license". Everyone else should do the same. If the uploader has made any effort to document why it's a fair use, then the fair use review tags are appropriate. Tempshill 20:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I tend to agree - but err on the side of politeness. If it's questionable, it would be best to contact the uploader instead. Then again, if it's egregious (and there are many egregiously-tagged images), then I support that. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 21:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Maps

How should maps be treated? How about Google Maps? According to http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21422&topic=1141, the maps can be used, but under what license? minghan 17:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

They restrict commercial use, which means that they are not free enough for Wikipedia. Many of our editors have made their own maps. Jkelly 18:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Maps from the CIA are in the public domain, for example, the ones used in their World Factbook. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) Fair use policy 23:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
What if a screenshot of Google Earth with the map is taken? does that make any difference? minghan 14:58, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
That introduces even more copyrighted content. It's best always to use free maps. See Wikipedia:Blank maps for maps that can be edited for a particular purpose, and commons:Category:Maps for many many free maps, all of which can be edited or cropped as well. Chick Bowen 15:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Arguably there's no creativity whatsoever in a satellite image, since it's just slavish copying of a public-domain image (specifically the surface of the Earth, viewed from an entirely non-creative angle determined solely by technical issues involving where the satellite happens to be in orbit). However, composite images such as those used by Google Earth are trickier, and in any case there's not really any point when there are so many clearly free images available. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
There's just enough creativity in picking images in a way which will have the optimal image for people to use. Pictures at certain times of the day, without clouds, etc. etc. I think there's enough work there to qualify as "creative" under the law, since there are many alternative arrangements possible. I think any lawyer worth their snuff could demonstrate that everything that looks like a "purely technical" decision really involves all sorts of subjective value judgments, which is why some satellite images are better than others. --Fastfission 05:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Request you take a look at Procrastination

Somebody cut and pasted 2 lists (that make up the core of the article) from other websites. I read the page on fair use, but couldn't find anything specific on including lists or chunks of text from copyrighted sources. Therefore, would somebody who is knowledgeabe about copyrights please tak a look at this article? Thank you. --Go for it! 14:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that that the lists should be removed and the sources simpy referenced in an External links section. No Guru 17:33, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
If you can tell that he copied and pasted a list, or any chunk of text, from another website and the content is copyrighted (meaning, 99.99% of the text on the Web), then it is a copyvio, and you should revert the changes, or chop them out with a hatchet, and inform the editor that this isn't allowed. Tempshill 18:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Help requested

I am loosing a battle at WP:Digimon about an image. I tagged as {{nosource}} as there is no source listed for the image. I keep getting reverted, being told that {{digimonimage}} is enough source. According to the tag ITS SELF, it states that there MUST be a source listed (as well as fair use rationale), which neither are listed. I am not going to keep adding the {{nolicense}} tag, because I'm not about to get sucked into an edit war, and violate the 3RR, but any assistance would be appreciated. Admrb♉ltz (T | C) 17:45, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I answered over at the link provided above. All image uploads need a source URL or other exact documentation (if it's not on the web, amazing as that sounds to us) so that other editors or other interested parties can verify the copyright status and provenance of the image. Tempshill 19:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I know that, but needed someone else to back me up :) Admrb♉ltz (T | C) 23:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I wanted some more input on Image:Former BSA.jpg, which I submitted for IFD a few months ago. See the long description of why the image should have been kept at the image's page, as well as Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2006 February 9/archive for the full details of how the discussion played out. In summary, his argument is that there is no copyright on the trademark, and that we can use it in an editorial or artistic context.

However, remember that trademarks remain valid as long as the owner actively uses and defends them, which the BSA does — see copyright notices on their website. [5] In addition, as a registered trademark (note the (R) in versions), it is uncontestable after five years of being registered, regardless of how generic it may be. Therefore, as a trademark, the court precedents the uploader cites say that we can use the logos in an non-commercial editorial or artistic context.

"Editorial or artistic context" refers to fair use in commentary, parody, and the like, which is not the same as releasing it under the public domain — it's still a fair use commentary. Regardless, we can't fall back on these court precedents on the first place, because Wikipedia explicitly forbids the use of images with a non-commercial clause.

As a result, we must fall back on fair use of a registered trademark. Defacing logos is permitted under fair use — but I don't see how it makes it public domain. In reference to the second tag on the image, "Derivative work based on an image produced prior to 1923," it's not — it's, again, a registered trademark that remains valid as long as the owner actively uses and defends them. As a result, it's not supposed to be used in user pages and templates, as it is now, and should be an orphaned fair use image. What does everyone think? Thanks. — Rebelguys2 talk 23:18, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you're confusing trademark and copyright law here. The image has no copyright, and therefore considerations of fair use (a copyright doctrine) are irrelevant, but it may have a trademark. Laws regarding the use of trademarks, however, are much more lenient than those regarding the use of copyright; basically, as long as it's clear that the symbol isn't being used in any kind of official capacity, it's fine. Given that the image in question will be used exclusively in contexts that express disapproval of the Boy Scouts, there is no danger of anyone thinking its use indicates affiliation with the Boy Scouts of America, and therefore there is no trademark issue. No copyright, no trademark, so it's all good. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Do we know for a fact that that particular version of the logo is copyright-free? It looks sufficiently modern enough that even if based on a derivative public domain version of the logo from pre-1923, the current one is probably copyrighted. (The absence of a copyright symbol is not enough to establish a lack of copyright claim under the Berne Convention). --Fastfission 01:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yearbook photos

are yearbook photos fair use?--Geedubber 01:49, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Use of cover images

The current project page says Cover art from various items, for identification and critical commentary are a permited class of fair use. It is not clear from this if the "identification and critical commentary" must be of the work itself, or if persons dipicted in the cover image (e.g. stars of a move) may be the subjects of ID and comment. That is, is it legit to use a cover under fair use in an article about a person dipicted on that cover, such as a muscian or an actor. Some are removing such images as not legit fair use, but there is no clear policy statement that this is against our fsir use policy. Others are fairly frequently using such images for such purposes, but againg there is no clear statemetn thwt this is allowed. We shoiuld come to a clear decision, one way or the other, and edit the project page to make this explicit. It is my view that cover images can legitimately be used to illustrate articles about persons dipicted there, but only if no freeer alternative is redily available. DES (talk) 16:35, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

  • The safest approach, in my view, is that cover images should be used to illustrate and identify the media itself. A picture of a Ronald Reagan biography cover which simply says, "Ronald Reagan" as its caption is simply using the picture on the cover of the book as an illustration and has no relation to the book itself. However if the caption was "So-and-so wrote a book about Ronald Reagan in 1992 which received much praise" or something like that, then it is clear that the caption is illustrating the picture of the book cover. This is not only a more "correct" sort of caption (the picture is of a book cover, not of Ronald Reagan), but I think it is more "fair use" safe as well -- we are not using the photograph incidentally, but rather making direct reference to the item of media whose cover art we are appropriating. Now whether there would be a sharp legal distinction between the two usages, I'm not sure, but it seems like a reasonable conjecture and would be in line with better captioning in any event. --Fastfission 17:06, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

An image of a book or DVD with an unfree copyright may be used to illustrate a Wikipedia article about that book or DVD and normally may not be used for any other purpose. Its a matter of being fair to the owner of the copyright. If the image is critical for another Wikipedia article, whether it is critical enough should be discussed an that article's talk page. Using a person's image from an image of their autobiographical book seems warrented; but possibly not warrented if the book was not an autobiography. Taking the photographer's work can't be done just cause it makes the article look nicer. Always ask yourself how important the image is and what's "fair" to everyone involved. WAS 4.250 22:23, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it is slightly broader than that: for example, stage musicals are often illustrated by pictures of their original cast albums; that seems to be to fall well within fair use. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:59, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

So should there also be a criterion such as "The material may only be used in the context of discussion of the material itself, not its subject matter. For instance, the use of a frame from a movie to identify an actor would not be fair use."? Such usage would be transformative, which is the most important criterion according to Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music; it would also, in the example cited, most likely not noticeably impinge on the work's commercial value. However, it would not really be "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research", and it would be used commercially by mirrors of Wikipedia. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that statement is a great idea. It would indeed be criticism / comment if used to discuss the material. Your last point, I think, doesn't mean we shouldn't do this; that last point applies to all fair-use images and is the reason for the criticism that surfaces periodically that we should eradicate all fair-use image uploads and restrict ourselves to true GFDL content. Tempshill 19:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:FUC?

--Greasysteve13 09:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I guess we could go with WP:FUCR, but that's even worse. Any suggestions? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I always chuckle when I see it abbreviated. Weatherman90 01:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Good suggestion.--Greasysteve13 08:52, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with it? VdSV9•♫ 16:55, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
It could be pronounced the same as the word Fuck.--Greasysteve13 14:13, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Self portraits

Under "Paintings and other works of visual art": how about also adding explicit mention of self-portraits, used to illustrate an article on an artist. It's pretty hard for me to imagine a circumstance where that wouldn't be fair use, since it uniquely provides both an illustration of the artists style and an image of the person. - Jmabel | Talk 05:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

NYC subway bullets

I have created SVG images of the NYC subway bullets. I was wondering if these would be protected by copyright since they are so simple, and if so, is my fair use rationale sound? Specifically, does the fact the image is so simple and can be easily recreated negate the "not easily reproducable" guideline. – flamurai (t) 07:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Typefaces are not eligible for copyright in the U.S., so I would say that this is certainly not protected by copyright. These should be tagged {{PD-ineligible}}. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 13:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. – flamurai (t) 17:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

No third party use

What is the status of the tags which allow fair use on Wikipedia but no third party use. I thought that this was no longer permitted? Rmhermen 13:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

These aren't permitted. New images uploaded with these restrictions may be immediately tagged {{nld}}. For older images, we're theoretically trying to ask the uploaders for fuller permission, but eventually they will all go away. We're really just waiting for Jimbo's hammer to come down about it. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Thoughts on running a bot through to begin popping them out of articles? Many featured articles have such illustrations... Perhaps we need to turn up the heat some to get people to do something about these images... I'd rather remove them from articles now then have a panic rush to delete them later. It's be what, a year? It's long past time. --Gmaxwell 16:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable to me, although I'd recommend advertising this action heavily before doing it. It's bound to be controversial, so it would be best to have a lot of obvious consensus behind you before doing it. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 18:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm confused. "Fair use" is legal use despite the license. Having a license that says "fair use" is allowed doesn't give you anything that you didn't have before. Are you sure that is what is meant? All fair use images could be problematic for third parties depending on the nature of the third party use. Why not use {{Non-free fair use in}} with a rationale? --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Some of the no-3rd-party (n3p) images could be used under a fair use doctrine, but many others could not. For instance Image:CowKillerDrees.jpg and Image:Greyhound.c2.680pix.jpg wouldn't pass our fair-use guidelines because free replacements could be made. If an image is usable under a fair use claim as well as a n3p permission, it can be tagged {{PermissionAndFairUse}}, or tagged with {{Non-free fair use in}} along with the licensing tag. But if it's only tagged {{Copyrighted}}, then no fair use claim is made. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 18:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Only if our use is actually fair use. There is a fair amount of content used on our site which can't be claimed as fair use here (or for similar use elsewhere... obviously), so people went and got limited permission for Wikipedia to distribute the content. We later realized the damage this was doing, because if you give someone the options of unrestricted/copyleft/wikipedia-only they overwhelmingly pick wikipedia-only 'just in case', and that goofs up our goal of providing free content. For images which we can actually use as fair use, we just need to tag them to indicate as much. We don't even need to maintain any mention of the permission since it's preserved in the history of the image page, and in my view it's better if we don't because it causes people to believe that the fair use claim doesn't need to be as strong as a without-permission image. What Quadell, whom I edit conflicted with, said is also correct. --Gmaxwell 18:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
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