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Distribution

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. I know that copyright laws still apply to Wikipedia, but with the right mentioning of each source in each place it is used on Wikipedia it should be alright to let copyrighted material go everywhere on this website. [Ex) You want to nominate a picture for featured picture that has a copyright on it. The picture already states under its link that it is copyrighted, and cite's its sources.] None of this goes against any copyright law in any way if I understand it correctly. I would like to know whether we could make this possible. I believe that it would make a stronger encyclopedia. :-) Why1991 03:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

No. By "free" we mean unencumbered by copyright for any use. Images that we use under fair use are probably legal to use when we're using them educationally, but wouldn't be legal to slap on the cover of a book, for example. Featured content needs to satisfy all our pillars, including being free. We shouldn't and won't feature a picture, regardless of how eye-catching or educational it is, unless it satisfies that basic rule. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Hey, I'm all for fair use, trust me, but featured content is used as a motivational tool (in some cases) for the generation of free media. Material used under fair use rationale shouldn't be eligible for featured status so as to preserve the motivational tool. --Jeff 04:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The general idea is to concentrate our efforts on making Wikipedia as free as is possible and not to find a way to include more copyrighted material. Fair use is meant to be a temporary solution with regard to images where a free equivalent could not be created or obtained. Many langage versions of Wikipedia do not allow fair use images at all.

It would be nice if we could encourage more professional photographers to donate their surplus material to Wikipedia. I am sure that there are professionals who take loads of pictures and then only use a proportion of them. A photograph which for a professional might seem less than perfect could be very useful for Wikipedia.

There are also some very nice featured pictures (like Image:Tour eiffel at sunrise from the trocadero.jpg, Image:Bodie ghost town.jpg and Image:Windbuchencom.jpg) which suggests that the present system can produce good results. It would probably reduce the incentive to create featured pictures if copyrighted material were allowed to become featured pictures.

In a way it is also very fitting that the encyclopedia which can be written by anyone provided that they licence their contributions under a free license also can be illustrated by anyone provided that they licence their images under a free licence. --Oden 12:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Some uses aren't temporary at all. e.g. the images in Campbell's Soup Cans will be Fair Use for years until their copyrights expire. Appraiser 20:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it is worth mentioning that Image:Tour eiffel at sunrise from the trocadero.jpg is under copyright (of course, it is also a freely licensed work by a Wikipedian). Jkelly 19:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
It would be nice if we could encourage more professional photographers to donate their surplus material to Wikipedia. Why? Photography is how they make their living. This to me is the same as, "It would be nice if oil companies donated their surplus gasoline..." Just because you don't value the skill, time, effort, energy, and training it takes to become a professional photographer doesn't mean Wikipedia shouldn't.
I think it's quite clear that the current policy direction is steering Wikipedia away from the inclusion of professional photos at all, due to what some see as their numerous rights issues, and within a year, it's entirely possible that Wikipedia will be copyright-photo free. Peering in to the future, it's not hard to see "fair use" eliminated altogether, for both images and text. Then... you have the English language version of the German Wikipedia. Which, to put it mildly, is not nearly as useful an encyclopedia as it is today. Will people still enthusiatically contribute to such a project? There will always be User:Angr and the like, but boy, a lot of the enthusiasm surrounding the project today likely evaporate. I mean, who, in the general public, wants to use a "public domain and amateur photos only" encyclopedia? However, the "free-ness" of Wikipedia will mean it finally is able to be commerically sold by Jimbo/Foundation types... but the "sucki-ness" of it may mean there's not so many takers.
Just a few thoughts... Oh, and can someone give me a good explanation why fair use TEXT and fair use PHOTOS are treated so differently? I have yet to see a "no fair use photo" editor or admin make a serious case for eliminating fair use text. Jenolen speak it! 19:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi. Please give some thought as to whether or not it is necessary for you to post more or less the same diatribe under every section header. A single well-reasoned concise comment can often be much more effective than repetitive variations on a theme. For example, the above is entirely unrelated to the question of Featured Pictures, and, incidentally, suggests that you are unclear about the difference between copyright and licensing. You can read about the latter at Licensing. Jkelly 20:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that comment was unfair. Jenolen is pointing out that some people in this discussion want to make sure that copyrighted photos don't even appear on Wikipedia. If they can't even apear, they certainly can't become Featured. Johntex\talk 20:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Hm. I think that you're reaching by framing this as anything but "threadjacking", but there's a larger point as well. For instance, I am convinced that you do actually know the difference between copyright and licensing, but now you're repeating the mistake (or perhaps fallen for an extraordinarily outlandish straw man, but I doubt that). Jkelly 20:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Goodness! I was unaware I was such a burden. Trolling! Threadjacking! Yikes! My sincere apologies to all who have had to put up with it; I was under the mistaken impression this was a debate - or a place to discuss Wikipedia policies and their implementation. I'll be happy to shut up now... my sincere, sincere apologies. Jenolen speak it! 00:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


I first thought that User:Jenolen was simply trolling, since the argument and statement seem to lack a foundation in logic and reason. But here goes:

  1. Doctors and lawyers sometimes donate their time and resources (pro bono, Interplast, Operation Smile, The Smile Train, The Flying Hospital etc.). Software developers write software and release it as freeware. Wikipedia is written by people who are donating their time and creative efforts, and the Wikimedia commons has over a million free media files. Oil is a commodity that cannot be shared, but intellectual property (like a photograph) can be multiplied millions of times with no loss of quality. Try uploading a quart of oil on Wikipedia...
  2. The difference between text and images is that the use of fair use text is very limited (to verbatim quotes for instance) and almost always irreplacable while the use of fair use images is almost endemic and more often than not replaceable (window blinds for instance or the Mission District, see this e-mail). Another difference is licensing. If editors were to introduce large portions of text verbatim and claim fair use then these contributions would certainly be reverted. We also have {{copyvio}} (which complements {{imagevio}} which is used for images). There is also {{db-copyvio}} and for repeated instances {{db-g4}}. For user talk pages there is {{nothanks}} for texts which complements {{badfairuse}} for images.

Non nobis solum! --Oden 22:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I tried uploading a quart of oil to Wikipedia; sadly, Chowbok marked it for speedy deletion. ;)
First, about "free" work -- many people seem to think there is something "easy" about making a living as a photographer, writer, or other creative artist. As someone who does make a living as a writer - and contributes to Wikipedia as a decreasingly-satisfying hobby - I see this all the time. "You're a writer... can't you write me up something for free? Then we'll split the money after we sell it..." Photographers being asked to "donate" their "unused" photos is similar -- I mean, you're talking about asking a person to give away their bread and butter. Photos like that aren't "unused," they perhaps just haven't found a market yet. But taking professional quality photos isn't easy, by any stretch of the imagination, and I found this "hey, you're not using 'em, can we have 'em for free?" attitude to be very, very disrespectful.
Meanwhile, as to fair use and text -- while there is no (or very, very little) verbatim text used in, say, our entry on Harry Potter, it is fair use that makes it possible for us to upload a detailed summary of plots, characters, etc. But I don't see any "No fair use photo" Wikipedians making the argument that there should be no fair use of plot summaries, descriptions, etc. There are very clearly two different standards. And it's just odd. If we were as tolerant of fair use photos as were are in other areas of the encyclopedia, we wouldn't be having any debate at all. Jenolen speak it! 00:19, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
We copy verbatim plot summaries from copyrighted sources? Where exactly is that from? Or are you saying that summaries of copyrighted works are "fair use" of that work? That just seems like a very strange argument to me, and one which I don't think any court case has tested. If we had an extremely detailed description of a copyrighted photo, that would be just fine. It's complete apples and oranges. Mak (talk)
Not verbatim plot summaries, ANY plot summaries of copyrighted works. I refer you to the archives of this page, where John K wrote:
Plot summaries are not external facts separable from the creation of the author. Thus, to give them, we need to invoke fair use. The plot summary is pretty clearly a derivative work from the original copyrighted work, and as such, any effort to use it must be done based on a fair use defense.
This was uncontroverted at the time, and I assume it to be true. If this is a misunderstanding of the need to invoke a fair use claim to use detailed plot summaries (as we do on many, many pages), my apologies. Jenolen speak it! 00:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
After reading the thread provided by ReyBrujo below I understand that some plot summaries could be considered copyright violations if they are too long and detailed, so the idea of a fair use defense might be necessary in such cases (especially if the article only consists of a plot summary). Of course the best solution is to rewrite the text and reduce the size of the plot summary and expand the rest of the article. --Oden 02:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Just to clarify, unless you're sticking to the most meager of plot synopses (such as "Superman (1978) is about a benevolent alien who can fly"), fair use is always necessary for summaries of copyrighted works. The point is that when that summary becomes more detailed and substantial than the article actually requires in order to academically describe and comment on the work, the fair use defense may fail because the article has just turned itself into a Reader's Digest abridgement or a fan guide. Postdlf 03:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Well Jenolen, this argument is much better than the straw man argument about petroleum products! Naturally I don't expect someone to give up their livelihood, my argument is based on the fact that there is a presumption towards copyright. A photographer is a professional who strives for excellence, while many of the media files which are available as free content are made by amateurs. It isn't unreasonable to entertain the idea that material which does not meet the high standards of a professional could still find use as free content (compare with b-roll). Such material is not likely to displace any market role either.

As far as plot summarys go, my impression is that they are not fair use if they are paraphrased (see copyright). But a copyright expert might know where to draw the line between free content and fair use as regards text. --Oden 01:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Check this thread at writing about fiction, which gives some insight about plot summaries and copyright violation. -- ReyBrujo 01:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
There are actually a bunch of professional photographers contributing images already - for instance Roland Zumbühl has a whole category on commons even, see Commons:Category:Picswiss. (I know that one because his better photos displaced some of my amateur efforts.) They do it for the same reasons that professionals in other fields participate in WP; for instance, many professional writers contribute text, even - wait for it - User:Jenolen from time to time. :-) We don't need every professional photographer to participate either; if one in a hundred photographers worldwide were to contribute regularly, we would have a deluge of excellent material. Right now I think the problem is getting their attention; there are lots of other places to upload, and most people think of WP as a place where writers volunteer, not photographers. Stan 14:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

'Fair use' rationale

Should we make it more explicit on the project page that the various 'fair use' templates do not constitute a "detailed fair use rationale", and that the rationale must include specific details on how the particular image is discussed in the article? -- Donald Albury 14:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Silly me, when I was working on fair use templates, I thought I was adding detailed rationale so as to avoid the ridiculous rationales that people were writing on their own ("I feel this is fair use", as if feelings somehow made it OK). Stan 14:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Er, an image is not uploaded as part of an article. It seems to me that most of the fair use templates do more or less constitute detailed rationales, as Stan says. john k 21:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree. We have those templates for standard uses (album covers in articles on the albums, screenshots in articles on the audio visual works) where the rationale is exactly same for each such use. Writing out a separate rationale in such cases would seem like a waste of time, as all that would be accomplished is the insertion of the image and article name variables in the standard boilerplate contained in the templates. Postdlf 21:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. We do not make fair use uploaders suffer enough. Rationales can and do vary enough that a template cannot encompass them. Removing the requirement to write detailed specific rationales is a recipe for having thousands of images for which it would be simply impossible to find out why they are supposedly fair use without a lot of talk (which would probably happen at WP:IFD). Explaining why exactly the image one has just uploaded and included in an article is really fair use is not a waste of time—failing to do so until a deletion debate is. —xyzzyn 22:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The point is that where the use matches an established template, the templates already explain why it is fair use and to simply restate that is redundant. It's simply ridiculous to claim that it is "impossible" to find out whether an album cover is actually being used on an article about that album, or a comic book cover on an article about that comic book, and it's even more ridiculous to think that judgment is somehow aided if the template is retyped (unless you can give some examples of such impossibility). If the use of the image doesn't actually fit the use described in the template that was applied, then the template should be removed and the image tagged as unlicensed, or the "fair use disputed" tag should be added. Those remedies don't change at all based on whether a template has been misapplied or a hand-typed rationale is invalid.
One further thing I want to point out: this isn't "us vs. them." We're all capable of correcting procedural problems, and should work towards helping the situation rather than levelling blame or imposing labor ("you uploaded it, so you must suffer the burden!"). If anyone is seeing themselves purely as a Wikicop enforcing their authoritay against uploaders rather than a collaborator on expanding and improving content, they should take a break or just take up another task. If you see a problem that is obviously fixable (such as an album cover only used in an album article lacking an album cover FU rationale template), please fix it. If you don't believe it's fixable, then tag it for deletion and notify the uploader. I've seen quite a few instances of wasted effort expended "enforcing" where even less effort would have been necessary to correct it (such as listing an image for deletion on the belief that its use in an infobox is not FU, but elsewhere in the article would be). Postdlf 23:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I’m not above accepting ‘See template.’ as a rationale if the template is truly detailed and appropriate and can be reasonably expected to remain stable—or is {{subst}}ed; see {{PD-USSR}} for a non-trivial example where this would have been an issue (fair use law is actually somewhat less complicated than the legal chaos that is the polyjurisprudence of the CIS, but Wikipedia policy can change).
The problem with missing rationales is that checking a fair use claim is not trivial; it is even less trivial if one does not actually know what exactly the claim is, i. e. what one should check. Is it an iconic image or is it crucial for critical commentary? Or is it a legitimate case of fair use for identification? This must be determined for each article where the image appears, and it’s much easier to do that if a specific fair use rationale is given. Sure, even without it, it takes maybe ten minutes (for a truly obscure topic) to be reasonably thorough—but there are lots of fair use images, lots of fair use uploaders and, apparently, few users who check this stuff.
Afaict, there are practically no situations where it would be useful to upload many fair use images at once. When uploading a single fair use image, the work involved in writing the rationale is small. (After all, the uploader has already read relevant policy and help pages and has carefully considered whether and with what justification a fair use claim can be made, right?) Ideally, the uploader is also best qualified to explain why the image is necessary. If, instead of the uploader, others were to add a rationale, they would have to duplicate the uploader’s effort in determining the status of the image as pertaining to the fair use criteria; isn’t that redundant?
And it is ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. ‘Us’ being pretty much everybody, ‘them’ being images with bogus fair use claims, wrong licence tags, inclusions in articles where they aren’t fair use and other problems of this kind. We should endeavour to keep them in check. —xyzzyn 19:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for some kind of machinery, like "fairusein", but more elaborate, that ties images to articles better, so for instance we can check image usages without scrolling through long articles. It's also a useful anti-vandalism check - I had to re-upload a couple images once because the vandal deleted part of an article and then the images were orfu'd without anybody realizing that a vandal was at work. I just want to avoid the amateur legalese that people invent when they're told they have to write something, but don't known quite what is being demanded of them. Templates have the huge advantage of leveraging the wordsmithing across many similar images. Stan 22:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Campbell's Soup Cans Fair Usage

I have nominated Campbell's Soup Cans as a featured article. Among the most serious complaints about the candidate article is the use of fair use images. The following images are included in the article:

Additionally, I link to image:Warhol-Marilyns.jpg.

Can you tell me what I have to do to pass the fair usage rules for these images. TonyTheTiger 18:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

As someone who does not favour extensive application of fair use, I can't see what's wrong with most of those images. I would not object very strongly over them. However, I do think that a few images are not really necessary and could be removed. The first image next to the lead and the last four images are solid, I think - they illustrate things mentioned in the article body. The other images are on shakier ground, though, because we don't really discuss them. The second image (the sketch) could use some explanation about how Warhol started his sketches. The hundred cans image and the box image aren't the subject of much (if any) discussion, so unless we can add something in about them, they should probably go. Johnleemk | Talk 22:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

mainspace categorization?

These wikipedia maintenance space articles shouldn't be classed with the mainspace encyclopedic categorization. I created Category:Wikipedia fair use as a better categorization structure, and linked from the mainspace; but I can't figure out where the category is on this page? Embedded in some template? ... also, the fair use media categories (e.g., Category:Fair use media) are confusing. Do they have mainspace encyclopedic significance, or are they only used for wikipedia maintenance? Thoughts? --lquilter 20:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the mainspace category inclusion from this page. I agree that for maintenance, etc. the categories should be moved to Category:Wikipedia fair use media or similar. I think it's important to segregate mainspace content from Wikipedia space content, and there are strong precedents for this. Mak (talk) 21:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Policy of Wikipedia screenshots

I recently came upon a subpage in userspace with many screenshots of Wikipedia. Some are tagged with {{web-screenshot}} and others are tagged with {{wikipedia-screenshot}}. Are these legal outside article namespace?--NMajdan•talk 14:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Depends... {{wikipedia-screenshot}} is a hopeless tag IMHO, it just mention the license of the text and the software, but such screenshots usualy also include pictures and often the users entire browser interface as well. If all you can see is text and interface elements then fair enough. But if the screenshot includes (non-free) images and the browser and/or bits of the OS interface I don't rely think we can say it's a GPL/GFDL image (probably can't say that if the images are CC licensed either), and then there is the Wikipedia logo which is not free licensed either. Blah, composite works are a pain... Dunno of the "rule" about copyrighted stuff in the background of photos not beeing a problem would apply somehow. I have generaly just treated them as fair use in the past if there is any hint of non-free (or unknown) material in the shot. Dunno what the reasoning behind it is, or if there even is one. It's more or less been grandfathered in since the early days I think. --Sherool (talk) 14:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Definitely not the web-screenshot ones. ed g2s • talk 14:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Should this template be deleted? Most people aren't just going to take a screenshot of the window, they are going to take a screenshot of the whole screen. The wikipedia-screenshot license would just serve as a scapegoat.--NMajdan•talk 22:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Provoking a feeding frenzy

Who wants to attack XXl List of Reviewed Albums first? Postdlf 20:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted it. The list itself is copyrightable, invalidating the article itself. I believe all the images are used fairly in other articles, though. Mak (talk) 20:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Maybe I wasn't understanding what the posting was (not difficult considering the lack of context/content), but I thought it was just a list of albums the magazine had reviewed at one time or another, making it a list of editorial decisions, not a list that was an editorial decision. Contrast "List of 2006 movies Roger Ebert gave four stars" (not copyrightable) with "Roger Ebert's Top Ten Movies of 2006" (copyrightable). It was basically just a cover gallery with no content, regardless, so I just would have deleted it based on one of the other 100 or so reasons. ; ) Postdlf 20:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

{{DVDcover}}

This tag states the purpose of the given image is "to illustrate the DVD in question". What does this mean, exactly? To simply "illustrate the DVD in question" seems very broad, even to encompass the usage of the image to decorate the article in which it is used. Reading the fair-use policy, criteria #8 would seem to preclude using the images in this fashion, but both editors' practices as well as the tag itself would seem to indicate otherwise. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it means the content of the DVD, such as a movie. You've got me thinking, though...in the case of theatrically released films, at least, should there be a difference between using thumbnails of the posters that advertised it to identify the film, or the DVD cover? The art may vary significantly, so these are not always even remotely the same image. Postdlf 03:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, the fair-use policy requires that the image contribute significantly to the article it is contained within. Except in the cases where a DVD cover is more available than a theatrical poster to represent the article, when does the cover to a DVD contribute significantly to its article?

Maybe if the article expressly discussed some important point about the cover of the DVD, that could be considered; but more often it is just used as decoration for an article, usually in the section listing DVD releases. (See Survivor_(TV_series)#DVD_releases & 7th_Heaven#DVD_releases for typical examples)

But again, this may be a symptomatic problem with respects to the {{DVDcover}} tag which, again, only requires it "to illustrate the DVD in question" — pd_THOR | =/\= | 15:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The above sections you showed don't appear as decorations at all, they are providing critical commentary on the DVD. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I believe Matthew Fenton is mistaken, the DVD covers do not seem to be used to provide critical commentary at all. Perhaps he is looking at a different article. In 7th Heaven, they are used simply to depict the cover of the particular season, for example. Where is this critical commentary? It is entirely possible that there is a section in the article devoted to this critical commentary and I have just missed it. On another topic, I personally do not object to DVD covers being used to illustrate the DVD in question provided there is a detailed fair-use rationale, as required by the license, on the image page itself. That said, I believe such use does contradict the fair-use policy itself. Using movie posters does not seem to be significantly better than using DVD covers. Both would clearly be legal fair-use but both would seem to violate Wikipedia's fair-use policy. --Yamla 16:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
So I take it we're ignoring this subject because we're uncomfortable with the idea of making a decision on whether using DVD covers to show a list of DVD releases (or similarly "fair-use" images in similar fashions) constitutes "contributing significantly" to the given article? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
No, just too few people think it's really a problem. Postdlf 20:27, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use and plot summaries

Per the discussion on distribution (above) I would suggest trying to expand the section in the guideline on fair use and texts to provide better guidance on plot summaries. This subject is related to the Manual of Style, but I think that there should be a clear statement of what constitutes unacceptable references to or use of fictional material in our articles. --Oden 07:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Criterion 9 and audio files

Criterion 9 limits the use of fair use media to article namespace. Does that also apply to audio files? (See User:Hotwiki#Stuffs_on_Wikipedia_I_have_started_and_added, scroll down to music samples.) --Oden 14:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Strictly yes, but by "usage", I think it is meant "inline usage". Links are acceptable; IIRC it is recommended that if you have a list on your userpage of fair use media you uploaded, you link to the media instead of including it inline. Johnleemk | Talk 16:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, it makes sense to link to the target in order to keep track of the files that a contributor has uploaded. If the user page looks like a fan site it would be a different thing. --Oden 00:31, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use question

I have a question about the WP:FU position with regard to images that have one of two issues:

  1. A particular matter illustrating something in the animal world is either rare, or uncommon and unpredictable. It would be all but impossible to set out to photograph it, however photographs do exist, circulated around the net as curiosities. Legally, all four of the criteria are easily met, particularly because such images almost always are lowish quality and taken by chance by amateurs, they have little commercial value when they do exist, are usually of curiosity value only, and are not treated as valuable by the snapshot-taker (for example they become widely emailed or copied around the net). The legal clauses 1-4 are met, and in policy terms points 1-9 are also met. Point 10 is difficult since the copyright holder has not visibly sought self-identification or copyright assertion. The image is used solely in an article where it is directly relevant to that article. Whatever the original photographer's name is, it seems that regardless of his identity the use of this image in a directly relevant article is deemed WP:FU and will pass the "if they sued us would we be okay" test.
  2. A movie still is desired to be used in an article. Movie stills -- single frames from movies of negligible value, used in an appropriate article -- are usually treated as always being permitted under WP:FU. However this happens to be a movie taken by an amateur, and whilst the movie source can be stated, the name of the copyright holder cannot be. However whatever his name is, it seems that regardless of the copyright holder's identity a still frame from any movie in a directly relevant article is deemed WP:FU and will pass the "if they sued us would we be okay" test.

I would like input on these two scenarios. The detail is deliberately omitted since it's the principle that is at issue. I think all the relevant details are above. In both cases it's substansively the same or a similar issue. Can someone consider these and give feedback, point by point? Thanks. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

For case 1, quality is not a justification. The reason low resolution is desired in WP:FU is that for high-resolution images, this reduces the impact on the market (i. e. there is still a reason to buy the original image instead of seeing it here). If the image is already in low resolution and it is reproduced verbatim, it replaces the original. This is bad. So is the fact that you don’t know who holds the copyright. Regarding the commercial value of the original, please consider that even Hollywood films are widely copied around the net, but we wouldn’t use that as a justification, would we? The copyright holder can still wish to sell the original; that you don’t know whether this is case (after all, you don’t even know who that is) isn’t a reason to assume otherwise.
For case 2, my understanding is that film screenshots are only usable if they actually contribute to the critical commentary. They should have lower quality than the original and their number should be small, so ‘always […] permitted’ isn’t quite true. Basically, you can only use the image where the film is discussed in detail, and if the film is discussed in detail, shouldn’t your priority be to establish the author/copyright holder? (Once you have that, or have evidence that the copyright holder is genuinely anonymous, the problem is pretty much solved.) —xyzzyn 05:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I take your point on image quality, it's valid. I don't think the Hollywood example adds much, since the main issues noted don't arise in the same way.
The issue is fair use. Fair use assumes that even if an owner of a copyright wishes to sell or exploit their original, there will be cases where the material may be used by third parties anyhow. It's an exception to the usual protection of a copyright holder, for material that is hard to source elsewhere, wanted for a good cause, and for use which would not usually be expected to impact the copyright owner significantly. In the present cases all of these are met so legally the matter seems clear. The only obstruction is one that we ourselves add to the legal requirements, a requirement not needed within law for fair use, namely that the copyright holder should be named. The point I am querying is that that's not a legal requirement, but one of our own additions; however in certain cases where we can justify FU on all other grounds, the present requirement to ID an owner is problematic. This ID adds nothing to the legal FU situation and is purely our own internal choice to self-impose as a requirement. My question then is that there seems little basis to require it, in cases where requiring it is counterproductive and having it wouldn't assist us comply with other copyright related matters. I'd change that policy to read that where it can be reasonably established, the copyright owner should be given, otherwise the source and a justification why FU would apply regardless of ownership is needed. FT2 (Talk | email) 15:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
How do you verify the fair use without knowing the copyright holder? An academic taking a picture of a rare plant as part of research is a very different situation than the photographer working on a coffeetable book of rare plants, and yet the images may look very much alike. If you don't give me enough information to doublecheck the material's status after you've moved on from WP, why would I want to keep it around? If the anonymous media is really that valuable, then it's going to be a "historic" item with books and websites commenting on it. We're supposed to be an encyclopedia, not the whole Internet; we don't have to have copies of everything that has ever been created. Stan 16:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree to a point; that's more an issue of sourcing a photograph to where and how it was published, rather than knowing who the copyright holder is. The hypothetical coffee table book photographer could own the copyright himself, could have assigned his rights to a media holding company, or he could have died and his widow inherited it. Knowing such facts seems irrelevant to me, and it's of course never been our practice to conduct such an investigation beyond what the published source will tell us. Postdlf 16:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
No, it has everything to do with fair use. WP lifting the contents of a book would have a very real effect on the right of the publisher and/or photographer to get the monetary benefit of their work. That's why we take a hard line on news agency photos - WP is now pageranked higher than many of AP's customers, so you have WP readers siphoning off page views (== ad revenue), and our use of AP photos could be directly tied to financial losses by AP customers, and in turn AP. Fair use is expressed in terms of effect on the copyright holder, so it is logically impossible to have a valid fair use rationale without knowing exactly who has the copyright. Stan 19:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd phrase some of this slightly differently. Crediting the copyright holder is unquestionably best practice in any fair use claim. We, as Wikipedia editors, are obliged to always follow best practice, and therefore must accept that there is an enormous amount of material that we are prevented from republishing. We cannot get around this by talking ourselves into thinking that WP:FUC number 10 can be ignored when it is inconvenient. That said, this concern is not necessarily any less important than our obligation as encyclopedia editors to provide our readers with properly sourced, reliable information and media, which is obviously not what is being described above. The question of Wikipedia's republishing media intended to drive web traffic is a much larger question, and I think it deserves, perhaps even needs, to be discussed seperately. Jkelly 19:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Stan, I think we're kind of talking past each other a little. Yes, the relevant consideration in fair use is the effect of that use on the copyright holder, but it's based on the commercial market that holder, whomever that is, can exploit using that work. So we have to know what the work is, which requires us to know where it came from, i.e., in what form it was previously published and what use it was put to. But to put it simply, if we know that a screenshot is from Star Wars, our considerations for using it are the same regardless of whether that copyright is currently held by Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox Home Video, or donated to Ms. Mildred Smith of Peoria, IL, because the commercial value of Star Wars in its primary and derivative markets is the same regardless of who actually owns it. That's my only point. Postdlf 20:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The SW example is not so useful, because screenshots are agreed to be fair use before and after a change of ownership. But in the AP example, if some photographer has a falling-out with them, withdraws AP's license to use the pics (dunno if that's possible, but let's suppose), and then puts them up on a website saying "copyright is mine, but feel free to use", those could become fair use for us when they weren't before. Now is their commercial value the same as before, or diminished because they're no longer getting the AP marketing machine? I think we get into a murky zone if we say that some image can't be fair use for us solely because it has the future potential to be a high-value illustration in a competing commercial online encyclopedia. (That would a clever line of reasoning to exclude all fair-use images though - "it might not be fair use in the future!") Stan 22:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
If a photographer states "feel free to use," that's a license; fair use is a claim you make when you don't have permission. And the commercial value at issue is the potential commercial value of the work. It isn't based on how commercially successful the particular copyright holder actually is or can be based on their individual resources and business acumen. Otherwise, the strength of copyright protection would vary based on who the holder is rather than what the creative work is. That's not the law. Postdlf 15:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
(And also Wikipedia is not a crystal ball.) FT2 (Talk | email) 00:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

In the case of 1 if what ever it is has been know long ebough (say 100 years plus) there should be some high quality PD drawings around.Geni 15:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Public domain documentation in photographs doesn't appear to exist. It's sufficiently rare that the majority of the few images are available because of a couple of billion or so snapshotters a few of whom saw and thought "thats interesting", not because of projects documenting it in the PD. It's specialised, just not the sort of thing most people will see, and not something most will seek to photograph. So photos evidencing and demonstrating are rare and mostly home snapshots that happen by chance and are treated as amusements and put online for humor or emailed round friends, taker unknown. FT2 (Talk | email) 00:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
So how about drawings? —xyzzyn 09:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

List of crossings of the Ohio River

MakeChooChooGoNow has twice removed free images, claiming they were fair use images being used for decorative purposes. I would appreciate "backup" if he reverts again. Thank you. --NE2 03:11, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

He also did the opposite to Cairo Rail Bridge - added decorative fair use. Is this a case of disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point? --NE2 03:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think so... they've spent quite a bit of editing time today appropriately adding {{imagewatermark}}. I think that they are just genuinely confused. Incidentally, I'm amused to note that we have finally done away with article writing and are now just producing very descriptive infoboxes. Jkelly 03:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
One day Wikipedia will consist of only one article with an enormous infobox. The article will contain the collective knowledge amassed by humanity. Of course, fair use images will not be allowed in the infobox... --Oden 05:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

linguistic map of the caucasus

This is a request I initially posted on the Can I use... page, but I haven't been receiving any replies there. I am really at odds, I guess alternatively I would also like to know whether I can use the image in question under fair use.


I am not sure whether I can use this linguistic map of the Caucasus.

The article on the languages of the Caucasus currently uses this map as an illustration. While it gives an overview of the linguistic situation in the region, it is far from accurate and leaves out a lot of the details, only showing 28 of the more than 51 languages spoken there. The map that I linked to in the first line, from HUNMAGYAR.ORG, would be a wonderful improvement, were it not that it sais here that their ethnographic maps come from National Geographic, which is not part of the American government and generally prohibits redistribution of its work (here). However, some of HUNMAGYAR.ORG's other ethnolinguistic maps, such as this one are also featured on Wikipedia (here), where they are attributed to the U.S. government, which makes them free to use. So, somewhere along the line, something does not add up. Can I reuse the map? Or alternatively, can I use it claiming fair use (like HUNMAGYAR.ORG itself does) as it is such a vital illustration for an article on the languages of the Caucasus?sephia karta 15:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In my (layperson’s) opinion, you will almost certainly not be able to use the map under fair use terms. The map is obviously scanned from a book. The text below the scale says ‘NGS CARTOGRAPHIC DIVISION’; I understand ‘NGS’ to refer to the National Geographic Society, so the image is not free, either. The other image is from the CIA; you can also find it at [1], along with other maps. (Is one of those maybe a good replacement?) If the map currently used in the article is inadequate and you cannot locate a free map, consider making one. (There are templates somewhere, so you would just have to find good sources and colour the map—but not by copying from another map.)
That an image is valuable, however, does not make it fair use—rather the opposite. —xyzzyn 15:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, now that's a speedy response, thanks! I hadn't noticed the 'NGS', I guess that settles it then. The problem with creating my own map is what you hinted upon, I have no good source other than that map itself, and I can't redraw it. sephia karta 17:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
In case you are referring to Languages of the Caucasus, that article needs references anyway; once those are in place, there should be enough substantiated information to make a map equivalent to the article. I guess there is enough research out there to place as many languages as you like in the region. ;) —xyzzyn 17:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
You know, if you create a map of your own, synthesizing information from several sources, the copyright is owned by you, and you are the one who can control whether it gets uploaded. However, this raises another thorny issue: Wikipedia's policy about original research. Maybe you can find a way to publish your map somewhere, then cite it here? Just a thought ... Cbdorsett 02:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
As long as you're working from published data, and are simply presenting the data, rather than interpreting it, there's no original research going on. --Carnildo 03:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Awards/Logos

Image:Mensa_select_seal.jpg Are pictures of awards/prizes considered logos? For example, could I post this here List of Mensa Select recipients? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Samwaltz (talk • contribs) 21:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

In general, the design of an award (an item given to people) is not also a logo (a graphic symbol that is readily recognised, used to identify an entity). AFAICT, Mensa logos are variations of this design; it’s part of the award, but the award itself is not a logo. (IANAL.) By the way, when referring to an unfree image on talk pages, please link to it inline (put a colon at the beginning of the link and omit any parameters). I’ve changed it here. —xyzzyn 21:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
But there are other awards pages which use the award logo, too, such as Spiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis. samwaltz 18:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
And those probably need to go, too. Unfortunately, outside of recent featured articles, existing Wikipedia material is not yet a good place to look for best practices on image use. —xyzzyn 23:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Two similar fair use images on one page?

Sometimes there are images tagged fair use as there are no other images available except copyrighted (or there can be more detailed description). However I found some articles where there are more then one copyrighted pictures related to only one fact of the article and all of them are marked fair use. It looks to me, that one illustration is fair use, but the others are only "decoration" - and should not be used. Is there any recommendation for that? Thanks. Okino 19:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Only one image should be used if the second doesn't really contribute any additional, relevant information, but whether this is the case has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Could you point to an example? Postdlf 19:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The example is (for example) La Fille Mal Gardée, but I feel really sorry, because I think there is much more pages than this one from a very agile (maybe too much) author.Okino

Ouch, way too many fair use images in that article, there are even fair use images in a gallery there. Many of those can be removed/replaced. Garion96 (talk) 20:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Though I'm also concerned by the gallery use, otherwise I can't imagine anyone not being at least familiar with ballet generally (if not that particular ballet) being able to judge what information each of those images provide; I certainly cannot (it's all a bunch of hopping people to my eyes). I'll presume that a photograph of a dance performance constitutes a derivative of that performance (though I have not read case law on this), so fair use is necessary, but it's not even clear to me that the photographs themselves were taken by the uploader; at least a couple of them I saw just stated "from my collection," and no license info for the photograph was given. Those photographs need to be sourced, and if the photographs are themselves under copyright by another, that issue needs to be discussed as well. I'd start it on that article's talk page rather than here, unless we have a lot of ballet experts loitering around. I just hope no one jumps to conclusions (and deletion tags) before the article contributors can explain things. Postdlf 20:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I've left a summary of the concerns on the article's talk page. Now we wait for response and then discuss. Postdlf 21:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It is difficult to find more of pages of this kind, also I am sure there are some. As another example, I found Papal Tiara. But what to do with the others? Okino 00:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You could leave a message on those articles like Postdlf just did on La Fille Mal Gardée and wait a while and see. You can always remove the fair use images if they really seem decoration and no on responds on the corresponding talk page. Of course if they are without a doubt just used for decorative purposed you can just remove them. Garion96 (talk) 00:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use extermination

Many useful, informative images are being deleted because a Free replacement "might reasonably be found or created". But in many cases, no such replacement exists or ever will exist. This is bad. We certainly shouldn't use fair use images if a Free image exists to replace it, but the fair use images shouldn't be deleted until after a replacement is found. — Omegatron 06:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, if we can easily replace an image then we should not resort to fair use in the first place, we should get / create the free image instead. "No one's done it yet" isn't a valid fair use argument, by any definition. -- Ned Scott 06:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
It seems that you haven't carefully read what Omegatron wrote. Badagnani 06:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I do agree with the first part of what he says, but the solution suggested seemed to be regarding all cases of fair use. My apologies if I have misinterpreted his words. -- Ned Scott 08:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
As opposed to "No one's done it yet," how about because "we legally can"? That seems like a perfectly valid fair-use argument to me, especially since we're apparently going out of our way to make articles less useful. - Stick Fig 09:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we really have to have this debate every two weeks, or can I just refer Omegatron to archives? ed g2s • talk 10:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably going to be a regular occurrence until the replaceability criterion becomes a normal part of image handling - I'd give it six months to a year. In going through the oldest fair-use images here, it's almost comical how many have better free equivalents on commons now, but apparently I'm the first person to look at these old images since they were uploaded years ago. Stan 17:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
As long as it continues to be silly and unreasonable, I'll be sure to chime in with my disagreement over it. You guys didn't win the last round because you were necessarily right; you won it because you had all the power already and wouldn't budge on the issue despite about a hundred attempts at compromise. I still see this as a winnable fight; this is still something I plan to fight for.
Consider the crop-ups a fact of life until you actually deal with the real issues here. - Stick Fig 17:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Just adding my voice to Stick Fig's previous post. The debates had on this subject are long from over as there hasn't been a definitive end. SF's correct in pointing out the only reason anything ended before was not a surrender but a lack of cooperation from those who implemented policy interpretation and enforcement changes without being properly vetted.--Jeff 10:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Ed and others, I think the image watchers could relax. Other users are willing to cooperate on reasonable deletions. I assume good faith and that some users are working hard to prevent problems with copyright violations. Communication on talk pages was absent yesterday before a mass deletion of about twenty images in each of two top priority articles in WikiProject Minnesota. I did not die of a stroke as I thought I would and went to the Village Pump for help (not forthcoming in a way I would have expected but them's the breaks). The only sign now of what happened is a couple of notes like "feel free to restore PD images." With other users I spent a few hours restoring those pages that I bet were edited in one flick of the wrist. I hope for some peace and calm. -Susanlesch 18:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably going to be a regular occurrence until the replaceability criterion becomes a normal part of image handling

What does that mean, exactly? — Omegatron 06:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
It means that they're going to eventually get their way on fair use images and feel they won't be subject to criticism as a result after it becomes more prevalent in the bloodstream. - Stick Fig 07:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
??? Who is going to get what way with what? — Omegatron 09:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Fair_Use/Publicity_photos has a good summary for you to look over. You're wading into a several months long debate over fair-use's place on Wikipedia.--Jeff 10:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
It would seem that the people permanently deleting "replaceable" images (and the text of {{Replaceable fair use}}) are not authorized by consensus, then. — Omegatron 18:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
In the early days of WP, lots of policies were winked at or only sporadically enforced. For instance, we used to have tens of thousands of images that had no description whatsoever, literally not a single byte, and now they're identified and whacked reasonably quickly. There was an intermediate period where I got nastygrams on my talk page from people trying to rationalize an image's lack of documentation, but of course that wasn't ever going to fly. Replaceability has always been a fair use criterion, but hasn't been taken seriously until recently, so we had "fair use" photos of schools uploaded by people living a block away and apparently too lazy to go outside and take their own photograph. We'll eventually develop a good sense of what is reasonable for replaceability, somewhere between a monthlong trek in the Amazon and getting up from the computer to point a phone camera out the window. (Although going by commons uploads, there are more Wikipedians in the Amazon than one might imagine.) Now I'm off to scout a remote part of the Mojave in preparation for the spring wildflower season, and to get pics of the reputed "world's tallest yucca"... Stan 15:48, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
And non-easily replacable photos? FT2 (Talk | email) 16:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

This image is not Free and may not be legally redistributable. If you can find or create a Free replacement, please contribute it to the project.

A mock-up of "putting a "non-Free" icon on each one". It's ugly, but it's better than deletion, and would actually encourage people to replace the image instead of just forgetting that the article was ever illustrated.
Even photos that seem like they could easily be replaced should be left on the project until they are actually replaced. It may, in fact, be completely impossible to create a replacement of equivalent quality.
We'll eventually develop a good sense of what is reasonable for replaceability
The criteria for replaceability is simple: If an image is easily replaceable, it will be replaced.
I fully support putting these in a prominent Category:Replaceable Non-Free images and linking it from places like Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia, or even putting a "non-Free" icon on each one to encourage their replacement, but this wholesale deletion of perfectly legal and encyclopedic content is harmful, and contradicts the project's goals. — Omegatron 18:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
One of those goals is to make a free encyclopaedia, ‘free’ as in ‘freedom’. —xyzzyn 18:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
And? — Omegatron 19:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
And fair use media aren’t. The best one can hope for is that it’s not illegal to include them, but even this is very questionable outside the USA. There is a tangible significant reason to insist on free media in the current manner, and it’s the fact that they provide a degree of legal safety that is unattainable with fair use media. That, in turn, is fundamental for letting people copy, display and sell Wikipedia material—which is, as above, one of the goals. —xyzzyn 21:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
It's too bad that logic and reason doesn't break into all of this. Maybe if it did, we'd see moderated solutions. Instead, all we're seeing are the same arguments we've seen you guys come up with for months – if it's free, it's instantly better.
All of the solutions we've come up with – talking to PR people, making illustrations as a replacement for fair-use images, fucking FORKING so that you guys have your own sandbox to play in, this perfectly reasonable solution Omegatron has suggested – have been turned down because you find holes on the argument.
And we're not even talking about the myriad of holes in the free argument – a lot of the content called "easily replaceable" isn't, quality (a paramount desire of an encyclopedia) isn't being taken in as a concern, the sheer lack of access unavailable to most free photographers over fair use, and so on.
Maybe as opposed to calling it "free," we should just call it "woefully unrealistic, contradictory and illogical." But it doesn't have the same ring as "free" does, does it? - Stick Fig 22:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, pardon me for being a compliant sheeple materialist, but I like the fact that, where I live, ‘free’ means, among other things, ‘free to copy and distribute without fear of getting caught by vampire lawyers’ (and also ‘not in jail’)—unlike ‘US fair use’. If you think unlimited inclusion of fair use images makes a big difference in quality, why don’t you fork the project to your own server and prove this by including lots of fair use media and showing that many readers and editors (compared to the current numbers here) prefer it that way? —xyzzyn 22:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Amateur photography may be "free" and commendable and but isn't it sometimes detrimental to Wikipedia? Yesterday I rated an (unnamed so no one feels bad) article for WikiProject Biography. At one point the subject was the greatest athlete in his field of all time, but in the infobox he looks like a overweight retiree on vacation. Over time who living or related to deceased would want to be in such an encyclopedia? -Susanlesch 22:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
A bad free photograph is great motivation for a good free photograph. — Matt Crypto 22:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
However, if it’s really antithetical to the text of the article, it’s probably OK to remove it. (I’d look for a replacement, but I don’t know which article that is…) —xyzzyn 22:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Stick Fig, you seem to be labouring under a misapprehension. Freedom isn't an "argument" advanced that you can find holes in. Freedom is a tenet of the project. Using non-free images directly harms our the purpose of the project by removing a significant motivation to contribute free content. — Matt Crypto 22:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Ideologues are impossible to argue with, as Stick Fig, myself and others have rediscovered here on Wikipedia. Logic will never convince people who feel there is a higher goal at stake. A personal attack has been removed from this comment. --Jeff 23:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Any debate over whether Wikipedia should sacrifice freedom for better pictures is like a debate over whether Wikipedia should suddenly become an online pet retailer. If we were "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, except for when we're not", then a debate might be useful. Nothing's stopping you from going and starting such a project, however. — Matt Crypto 00:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

We're a *free* *encyclopedia*. Those two principles are in tension, and the consensus has been that we should not sacrifice freedom when the encyclopedia could be improved by creating free content. Otherwise we could go as far as accepting NC-only text. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

We are first and foremost an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not GNUpedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is not the Free Software Foundation.
Our goal is to write an informative encyclopedia "of the highest possible quality" that is accessible to everyone; not to soapbox a Copyleft The World agenda. Whether mirrors can legally copy certain images without thought is irrelevant; the site is a heterogeneous mixture of copyrighted content with a variety of different, clearly-marked licenses, which will always include things that cannot legally be copied in certain circumstances.
Removing informative content that cannot be reproduced and that we have a moral and legally-protected right to use is clearly harmful to the project. Should we also purge the encyclopedia of all quotations and references to copyrighted material? We wouldn't want to get sued! Our fair use of that copyrighted text might be illegal to reproduce in other countries! A paraphrase is just as good, anyway, right?
I'm seeing a lot of high-quality, encyclopedic, and perfectly legal images being purged from articles in my watchlist over the past few months. In 2005, Jimbo said "I'm 100% committed to a goal of 'Britannica or better' quality for Wikipedia". I wonder if this is still the case. — Omegatron 19:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with your statement of ‘our’ goal. There are five pillars; you consider only one. —xyzzyn 19:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
And the first and foremost is? — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
The numerically first one is the first one. Note the absence of any mention of quality. I don’t think there’s a foremost one; as with pillars in general, remove one and the structure falls. It is ridiculous to try to see some kind of priority or conflict here. All five pillars are mandatory constraints; you can’t pick some and omit others as it suits you. —xyzzyn 17:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
I have a comment about the watermarking. I know with some fair use images, there is no determination on what we can do with the image. But, lets say we find some fair use images that turns out cannot be modified (ND for yall Creative Commons folks). What should we do about those? User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 19:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, supid me, I clicked the image and it is just an icon added to the image caption. That doesn't sound like a bad idea, but I think while the concept is very good, this could start a bunch of edit wars where none exist. People are already upset at us for trying to carry out the free contant pilar, but I am not sure if this will inflame the situation or not. I like to see most fair use pictures gone as some of yall do, but I am not sure if this is the way to go. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 19:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I clicked the image and it is just an icon added to the image caption
If we actually implemented this, we would build the icon into the software instead of adding it by hand. Clicking the icon would go to a page explaining that the tagged image is not Free, which means it can't be copied by mirrors and we'd prefer a Free replacement if possible.
I'm not claiming this is an ideal situation, though; it's just the first example that came to my head of an alternative solution to the silly "Fair use images inhibit the creation of free content" argument. Deleting images inhibits the creation of free replacements, too! Including them for their informational value, while clearly labeling that we'd prefer a Free replacement, would solve both problems.
this could start a bunch of edit wars where none exist
??? What do edit wars have to do with anything?
People are already upset at us for trying to carry out the free contant pilar
That's because it's too heavy-handed and harmful to the project. Everything is subject to interpretation and special cases, and these are being completely ignored for the sake of a deletion campaign that doesn't have consensus.
I like to see most fair use pictures gone as some of yall do, but I am not sure if this is the way to go.
I'd like to see most fair use images gone as well, but only the ones that can actually be replaced. Since we have a legally-protected fair use right to use certain copyrighted images, let's use them until they are actually replaced. If you're worried about the fair use images preventing Free ones from being created, we'll find a solution for that, like tagging the images. But we need to find a solution that doesn't cause permanent harm to the project in the process. — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Omegatron: freedom, as in free content, is a central value of both Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Your characterisation of our goal is flawed, because you fail to mention freedom. The stated mission of WMF is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." That should not be up for debate. Given the axiom that freedom is a central goal, then it can be argued quite pragmatically that fair use images inhibit the creation of free content, and hence hinder our goal. The same argument doesn't really apply to short text quotations, or references to historical material, or images for which there is no possibility of obtaining a free alternative. — Matt Crypto 20:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Your characterisation of our goal is flawed, because you fail to mention freedom.
What are you talking about? Freedom is absolutely central to this discussion. "Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."[2] In this case, our "encyclopedia of the highest possible quality" goal is in conflict with our free content goal. Which goal serves the other?
The same argument doesn't really apply to short text quotations
Of course it does. How do they differ? Every time you quote someone in an article, you're violating their copyright, but the fair use doctrine allows "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment", and so on.[3] If we wanted to be retarded about free content (as some people apparently do), we would remove all fair use quotations from articles and paraphrase them:

King's most influential and well-known public address is the "I Have A Dream" speech in which he talked about having a dream, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

This is a Free-content project, after all; we wouldn't want to violate his copyright...
or images for which there is no possibility of obtaining a free alternative
??? I thought that's what we're talking about. — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
"Fair use images inhibit the creation of free content". That has to be the silliest argument against fair use images I ever saw. And since they are all rather silly, that's saying something.  Grue  21:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
That's a largely content-free rebuttal. Please consider contributing more than your emotions to this discussion. — Matt Crypto 21:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Except I actually think there is some truth to it. People wouldn't be going out and digging up the PD photos from government sites or finding CC-licensed ones on flickr or taking GFDL ones themselves of subjects that we could just throw up a fair use photo and say we're done with it. I myself think the fair use limitations have gone too far against usage of photos of subjects that are difficult, or extremely impractical to recreate, but the argument that it inhibits creation makes sense. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
It almost certainly does inhibit creation of free images to some extent. As I've said before, though, there are all kinds of comparable things we could do to deleting not clearly immediately replaceable fair use images, that would similarly have the potential to encourage "good behavior," that we don't do. We don't delete badly written stubs because red links make it more likely that someone will write a decent article than a blue link that leads to a bad article, for instance. And, to my mind, badly written stubs are much worse, and more embarrassing, for wikipedia than fair use images are. the whole idea is leninist - the idea that we have to make things worse to make them better. I can accept this, maybe, to a very limited degree - that we should delete pictures that could blatantly be replaced by fair use images without very much trouble. But many pictures of living people, for instance, do not really fall under such a category. As others have said before, if "replaceability" is to be the criterion, we ought to have a sane and practical understanding of what that means, at the very least. Instead, the current situation appears, deliberately, to have an insane and impractical understanding of what "replaceable" means, in order to categorize as many fair use pictures as possible as being "replaceable." john k 09:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Tell me, Omegatron, what images does the Encyclopaedia Britannica use without permission of the copyright holder? —Bkell (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
How many images in Brittanica are under a copyleft license?
How many things are illustrated in Brittanica that will never be illustrated in Wikipedia because we prohibit using images even with the permission of the copyright holder? — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, of course our requirements are stricter than Britannica's. That's the entire idea—Wikipedia is not just another Encyclopaedia Britannica or World Book. But it's absurd to make the claim that in order to reach the quality of Britannica we need to allow fair use (or at least the kind of fair use that is claimed by 99% of unlicensed images on Wikipedia, the kind where the image is just taken without any permission from the copyright holder at all), because Britannica itself doesn't do that. Images used under some kind of "Wikipedia-only" license actually given by the copyright holder are not the real problem here; the number of these is insignificant compared to the number of "I found it on the Internet" fair-use images. Of course, Wikipedia-only licenses defeat the goal of Wikipedia, but I think we have worse things to worry about right now. —Bkell (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, of course our requirements are stricter than Britannica's. That's the entire idea
That's exactly wrong. The entire idea of Wikipedia is to be less restrictive than Britannica.
Of course, Wikipedia-only licenses defeat the goal of Wikipedia
??? What in the world do you think the goal of the project is? Removing fair use and wikipedia-only images is in direct conflict with our clearly stated goal of creating a knowledge resource of the highest possible quality and distributing it to as many people as possible. — Omegatron 16:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely right - we need to be putting more emphasis on building a complete reference work. That means taking advantage of fair-use images where legal to do so. Johntex\talk 18:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
"What in the world do you think the goal of the project is? Removing fair use and wikipedia-only images is in direct conflict with our clearly stated goal of creating a knowledge resource of the highest possible quality and distributing it to as many people as possible" OMG Omegatron, I could not agree more. It is getting to the point of pure ludicrous the number of photos that are being deleted here. I would be curious to know what the statistics are. From what I can see, the picture patrollers (who really make the policy, regardless of what the policy actually is) have the objective of making every single picture on Wikipedia amateur. There is no other sector of Wikipedia (even the copyright patrol of which I am heavily involved) has this impossible standard. In the John Mayer article there is a whole section on John Mayer's involvment with Fender and the ads campaign he was involved with. An example of the ad was put in the article. It was removed for lack of meeting the fair use criteria. I was flabbergasted. Is the company going to sue Wikipedia for - what? - free advertising? The picture was wholly relevant. And of course it was irreplaceable. What, should some groupie go hunt John Mayer down and ask him to pose with a Fender? What would that prove about his involvement with the company, his customized guitar line or his involvment with the ad campaign? And I personally have about 20 stories like this one.--Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 13:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

On why I'm investing so much into this fight

Recently, User:Stan Shebs posted something to my user page about how I'm pushing my limit, I will likely get myself blocked from the site with one more harshly-worded talk-page edit. I find this to be somewhat bombastic considering that I've only been forced to be hard-lined with my words as a result of a lack of compromise.

He also noted that I haven't been doing a lot of edits lately. This is true. I've mostly been focusing my limited time and energy outside of work and play on trying to follow the fair use issues here lately, because I find them to be essential to the structural integrity of the site. Why focus my energy on editing articles when all the things I like about the site are about to be taken away over an interpretation of policy?

I'm sorry if you guys don't like my harsh words. But honestly, I feel like I've tried to compromise with your ideology fruitlessly and my anger and frustration is a direct result of that. I'm not out to make enemies here with my comments. But you have to be willing to work with us and figure out ways to push for free content realistically. Not in a lab-controlled "this is what we could do if the world was perfect" situation like the creators of Debian seem to think is possible. Not in a "we're only being hard-line and bold because it's the only way something's going to happen" way like we seem to be encouraging.

No, we need to do it in a way which makes sense to more than 1% of the site's editing population. If we can't, we're seriously wasting our time and damaging the site irreparably.

User:Stan Shebs, please understand that I do get the core principles of WP, but I'm also someone who has direct experience in dealing with fair use images. They – the ones we can obtain legally – are hard enough to get. Do you seriously think we're going to have a realistic shot of getting a good-quality photo of someone just because they're alive? Sure, some of our users might get lucky. But it seems like we're sort of banking on a giant what-if policy.

What if we figured out a better way to do things instead of slashing and burning with no regards to anything other than the fact that the image is free? Man, that's all I've wanted the whole time. It's almost like I'm asking you all to kill someone. - Stick Fig 18:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

SF, as usual, is spot on. I too have recently been subject to accusations of personal attacks and can interpret it as nothing more than wiki-posturing because the individual in question disagrees with my opinions on fair-use. What a sad statement! "I disagree with you, so I'm going to apply a very liberal interpretation of what a personal attack is so that I can try and get you blocked". Hah! It seems the same is happening to someone else who shares an inclusive-leaning opinion on the manner; typical.--Jeff 23:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
It should be entierly possible to disagree with the fair use policy without resorting to "name calling". As far as I can tell no one have objected to you disagreeing with them, but rater your labeling of opponents as "jihadists". Now I'm sure we could have a facinating debate about wether or not that word should be considered insulting or not, jihad pretty much just means "effort" or "struggle", but it has become a pretty loaded word these days, usualy asosiated with extremist Islamists, who in turn are usualy asosiated with terrorism. So why throw that particular arabic word around in a heated debate? Some people could easily get the impression that you where eluding to them beeing terrorists wether you intended to or not. --Sherool (talk) 10:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Our German Future/Copyright Free versus Really Actually Truly Free

1) After surveying the developments of the past couple weeks, it now seems clearer to me than ever that the "free absolutists" are determined to turn the English-language Wikipedia into the English-language version of the German wikipedia -- with no fair use content at all. And that's fine ... that's their "mission," and bless their little misguided hearts, they're fulfilling it with vigor. I'm just not interested in working on that project. Many others likely won't be. Good luck to all!

2) I'm tired of "copyright free" and "free as in freedom/libre" being used as synonyms. They're not. It has become apparent to me that different factions of the anti-fair use folks use differing definitions of "free," and I'd like to see that stop. What some Wikipedians appear to be supporting, when it comes to images, is simply COPYRIGHT FREE images. It's an important distinction that these images are in no way "rights free" or what I think could be considered truly "libre," as I understand the term. Yes, if you take a photo of a celebrity, and "release" it under a "copyleft" license (and by the way -- where does the term "copyleft" appear in U.S. law? In state law? Or is it just a philosophy, not an actual, defined legal principle?), then sure, there are those on Wikipedia who think you're done "clearing" the rights of the photo. But I still don't know how they reconcile that with the people who, I've been told, come to Wikipedia looking for completely rights-free content they can reuse in any fashion, any time, for any purpose, including commercial purposes. When it comes to these fair use questions, which standard are we going to use? Just "copyright free", or truly "libre" free?

Jenolen speak it! 23:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I've always debated if the German Wiki is worthy of the title encyclopaedia, because quite frankly I've found it be much less useful when viewing it, and we have to think of those that might actually require images with text to make an article better. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 23:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Could you please explain what you understand as ‘libre’ and what as ‘copyright free’ (or link to definitions)? I’m a bit confused. —xyzzyn 23:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought that was clear from the original post. "Libre" - the "Free" in "Free Encyclopedia" - to me means content that is completely liberated from all rights concerns, and may therefore be reused in any manner, commercially or otherwise, in perpetuity. This is the oft-stated goal of some of the participants in the current fair use debate. "Copyright free," however, seems to be what a lot of other people are willing to settle for. This is content of the, "Hey, I took a photo of a celebrity - I own the rights to the photo - I release it into the public domain or under a Creative Commons license" variety. These photos make no claim as to dealing with the other rights issues the image may present, only the initial authorship and copyright to that particular photo. Jenolen speak it! 00:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
No problem, the jargon is simply far from optimal. Anyway, ‘free’ in ‘free encyclopaedia’ is the same as ‘libre’, and both mean rights equivalent e. g. to the GFDL or CC–BY–SA or greater (e. g. CC–BY), but not less (e. g. CC–NC or CC–ND). I wasn’t aware of ‘copyright free’ until you said it, and the term’s proper meaning is rather different from yours. ‘All rights released’ or ‘public domain’ or ‘liberated from all rights concerns’ content (e. g. CC–BY) is a subset of libre content; the GNU people call it ‘non-copyleft free’, meaning that not even the restrictions of ‘copyleft free’ (e. g. GFDL or CC–BY–SA) content apply. There are good points for either kind of freedom, but no practical way to make Wikipedia free in the ‘no concerns’ sense, so we can assume ‘free’ means ‘libre’ and includes content that is even less restricted and live with that.
‘Copyleft’ refers to a philosophy; you won’t find the term in law (at least I don’t think you will, but feel free to surprise me). It is not very significant for the GFDL or other licences, either. (The GFDL mentions it, but uses other language for the actual legal stuff.) However, it stands for a set of licences which do use legal terminology. It means, in particular, that the use of content is not unlimited. (See the GFDL for details.) While you’ll find that there are many proponents of copyleft here, I think almost all of them do not object to content that is non-copyleft free.
I hope this addresses your second point in this section. Disclaimer: IANAL. Explanations may be wrong. Prosecutors will be transgressicuted. —xyzzyn 01:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
I too took a look at the German Wikipedia several weeks ago after someone mentioned they were devoid of fair use content. I must say that their encyclopedia, in my minds eye (this is an opinion, you can't say I'm wrong about it), the German Wikipedia suffers greatly for lack of fair use content. It is so immeasurably lacking that I cringe at the thought of English Wikipedia descending down this path that some editors are dead set on making a reality. English Wikipedia stands at a precipice and is only one step is left before it takes the plunge towards resembling what the German Wiki is - devoid of illustration and only a fraction of usefulness of what it could be. For what? an idea, a movement, a misguided cabal of involved people who have deluded themselves into thinking their purpose is of a higher order when really they should be concentrated on providing a great resource.
I'm intentionally avoiding getting into arguing about specific points because it's been well shown that this debate is not about logical reasoning but about idealogy, so I'm going to start undermining the ideology rather than trying to reason with the jihadists.--Jeff 23:47, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
There is a tradeoff here: the more free, the less quality, the less information, the less usefulness. The people hurt are the real life users. The people helped by moving too far toward "free" are phantoms--they don't quite exist. Rjensen 23:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
How shall I put this. There are countries outside the US. The people living in them are not phantoms they really do exist.Geni 00:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
And not every country has a fair use or fair dealing clause along the same lines as the United States has. That is why the Germans took that approach when working on their image policy and other Wiki's are doing the same. While the servers are partially in the US, the Germans wnated to work within their laws to make it legal for use in Germany. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 01:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Importantly, this enabled them to release a DVD version of the German Wikipedia without knowingly violating German law.
AFAIK, the Spanish Wikipedia doesn't use any non-free images either.
If your country doesn't have a fair use doctrine similar to the US, you are entering a legal minefield when you try to distribute the content in your own country. If you print it as a book or burn it on a DVD, you can't say that the content is hosted in the US and therefore it's ok to claim fair use.
The tempation is huge, because everyone loves images, but in the case of many countries, you're actually limiting yourself in the long run. -- nyenyec ☎ 02:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
All non-free images will be clearly tagged, so anyone wanting to put something together should be able to come up with some kind of filter to remove all such images, shouldn't they? Geni, Zscout, Nyenyec, are you all in favor of banning fair use images entirely from English wikipedia or not? Whether or not the Germans or Spanish have a valid reason for their policies is kind of irrelevant. We aren't going to change policy at the German or Spanish wikipedia. The issue is what we should do here. Do you all believe that we should ban all fair use images? I don't see why the principal concern here should be the welfare of not yet existent downstream users, rather than actually existent wikipedia users. Downstream users can figure out themselves how to obey the law, and so long as we are careful about use of fair use images, and especially about tagging them, it shouldn't be too hard for them to do so. I don't see why there should be any expectation to go further than that to accommodate them. john k 09:03, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
And (speaking from my experience) people living in these countries are very thankful that they can view fair use images on Wikipedia, knowing that if Wikipedia was hosted in their own country, they wouldn't have such a convenience. And these people are not at all bothered to just omit the fair use content if they want to reproduce the Wikipedia article on their own website.  Grue  10:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
If we want to maximize "free" for our editors and users they should be free to add and see fair use materials. Otherwise their freedom is limited in order to make life a bit easier for future commercial resellers (who do not yet exist). (Those downstream users, who may or may not materialize someday can of course can strip or block all fair use materials if their lawyers tell them so--their lawyers don't yet exist of course.). Rjensen 09:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Your interpretation that "free" means "free to add fair use content" is certainly an original one, but still somewhat laughable. And many downstream users already exist (answers.com, WikiReaders ...) ed g2s • talk 09:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Freedom to sell products based on the labor of Wiki editors is much lower in my estimation than the freedom of Wiki editors to create the best encyclopedia and the freedom of users to find the best information in it. As for those phantom "downstream" users, not one has spoken out here. Presumably they don't much care. Rjensen 20:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
This whole thing was started for downstream use. Wiki editing was an unexpected development. See Nupedia and History of Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 21:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
That you don't care much for the copyleft nature of Wikipedia is sad, but completely irrelevant, as it is set in stone. ed g2s • talk 21:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Set in stone? No the Wikipedia has to obey US laws regarding its tax exempt status. That means it cannot be operated to benefit any for-profit organization, such as a downstream user who sells copies. Rjensen 21:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes: WP:5P. ed g2s • talk 22:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I never thought I'd say this, but being free should be a higher priority than quality. -- Ned Scott 11:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

To what extent? It's easy to say this, but one has to draw the line somewhere. Surely we can have good faith disagreements about where the line should be drawn when the two come into conflict. For instance, the German wikipedia draws the line much more strongly on the side of "freeness" than the English wikipedia does at the moment. This isn't a matter of prioritizing freeness over quality - that's a basically meaningless phrase. It's a matter of where to draw the line when the two come into conflict. I think most of us do not support drawing the line as far on the side of freedom as the German wikipedia do, although certainly several people do support this. Others seem to support more or less the status quo, and some of us support moving it a bit back in the other direction. But we shouldn't overdramatize the differences, especially when they are between supporters of the status quo and supporters of slight modifications in favor of allowing more fair use images. These positions aren't really that far apart, and the one side claiming the mantle of "freedom" only makes it harder to arrive at any kind of workable arrangement that would command closer to consensus support. john k 16:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Let me put it this way, if I sold a copy of Wikipedia then everything it included should be "legal" for selling it. If I understand correctly, that might still allow some fair use images, but won't include most. That needs to come first before quality. It's taken me a long time to realize that, and I have many mistakes to correct because of it. -- Ned Scott 21:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
You clearly have absolutely no idea what would be legal for selling, and how much fair use would be allowable. Our fair use policy is, in fact, not at all based on what is legally allowable, so the current policy certainly means there's no way to do this. As I understand it, so long as fair use images are marked, they can more or less easily be filtered out by a decent database, so anyone looking to sell wikipedia could simply strip all the fair use images. It doesn't seem worth damaging the quality of wikipedia in order to save these people the slight effort that would be required to remove fair use images. john k 19:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
But a "fair-use-filtered" copy of Wikipedia's content should be as complete and useful as possible, so, we should not only tag, but also minimize the use of unfree content. Indeed, a lot of things just sounds like monkey business here when you're on the opinion that re-users of our content are bad people. --Abu Badali 21:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
John k, to answer your question, I would like to see the amount of fair use reduced. Fair use should be used only when needed, and if there is a free photo, the fair use photo gets removed. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 16:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Isn't that more or less the current policy? In fact, from your description, your preferred position would mean an increase in fair use pictures on wikipedia. I perfectly agree that if there's a (minimally acceptable) free image, it should replace a fair use image. The issue we have generally debating is what to do when nobody has yet discovered a (minimally acceptable) free use image. The current policy is more or less that if it is vaguely conceivable that a free image might be found or created at some point in the future, we should delete the fair use image immediately. Others would seem to prefer that we always wait until a free image is available to delete the fair image. Still others (and I'll count myself among them) think that we ought to work to come up with clear, sensible guidelines for whether fair use images are "replaceable" or not. But the main dispute heretofore has been among a variety of different positions that all more or less conform to your statement above. john k 16:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Danger to Wikipedia tax-exempt status. Federal laws say that if "more than an insubstantial part of its activities benefit private interests, the organization will fail to qualify, or lose its tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3)."[4] That is if Wiki starts benefitting for-profit interests it may lose its tax exempt status. The question is whether adjusting fair use policy to help for-profit users will trigger this.Rjensen 22:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh gee, I wonder if they thought of that. (sarcasm) -- Ned Scott 22:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
it's our job to think of staying inside the law. Rjensen 23:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, no, it's not. That job is done by User:BradPatrick. -- Ned Scott 23:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Fails since deleting images is not part of foundation activities.Geni
the Foundation has 100% responsibility for Wikipedia and its policies--so it should avoid setting any policy that undermines its non-profit status. This is real money--people get tax deductions for giving cash--as just happened in the $1 million fund drive last week. Rjensen 00:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
The question of whether the use of Wikipedia's free content (both text and images) by third-parties for profit threatens Wikimedia's non-profit status is not going to be swung by our fair use policy for images. But, I have to ask, what evidence is there that this is even a real issue? At best, this seems to be legal paranoia; at worst, FUD. — Matt Crypto 01:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
You do realize that since the foundation receives more than 1/3 of its income from contributions from non-disqualified individuals, it is already safe from being classified as a private foundation under section 509(a)(2) and has no need to seek 509(a)(3) status as a supporting organization, which is all the link you provided applies to, right? No, you didn't, actually, because you were throwing out nonsense legal claims just as part of an argument. Please don't do that. I'm not a lawyer either, but at least I take the time to read the relevant laws. --RobthTalk 01:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Wiki is a 501c3 and the IRS says "An organization will be regarded as operated exclusively for one or more exempt purposes only if it engages primarily in activities that accomplish exempt purposes specified in section 501(c)(3). An organization will not be so regarded if more than an insubstantial part of its activities does not further an exempt purpose."[5] Will some Congressman demand an investigation by the IRS of Wikipedia. History suggests that Yes, sooner or later. Will Wikipedia be "clean" in terms of the rules? I hope so. Evidence on this page will be used to decide whether or not Wiki policies were designed to benefit private interests, so editors should be careful what they say. Rjensen 01:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see what you're getting at now. Please explain why ensuring that making content available for (for example) the production of inexpensive commercially sold textbooks produced by a third party, or for textbooks distributed by a nonprofit in countries without a fair use provision, would not be an exempt educational use under 501(c)(3). (Those aren't the only possible uses, of course, but they are in the spirit of those mentioned in Wikipedia's mission statement, and indicate why we choose to create free content.) Also note that the phrasing regarding benefitting private interests is "no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual" I would be very interested to hear how refusing to use fair use images in order to promote free content would be in any way problematic under this law, even if it were enforced directly by employees of the foundation. --RobthTalk 02:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Considering downstream use has always been apart of the plan, I seriously doubt they simply over-looked something so simple. Talk about grasping at straws. -- Ned Scott 02:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
We should let Brad deal with the tax-man, since I do not think most of us are qualified in tax law to make it worthwhile. Back to the original issue, John k wants a solution to the fair use issue. I assume we all want that, but the problem that I am facing is this; when we delete photos acording to our policy, it feels like that people upload it again and slap a fair use tag on it. Another problem that I am facing is a "boiler plate" template where if an image is X, then it gets ((fairuse-x)) with x being the type of image. There is a lot of that and I am not sure if that is helping or hurting the fair use issue. I believe it is hurting, since IMHO, an image isn't automatically fair use because it is X. I think that is a wrong way to go, since we have to explain why we want to use it, not because it is X and is available on a Google search. (Off to class now) User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 16:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
hopefuly people read the tmeplate and get some idea if the image is fair use or not.Geni 17:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
The templates are meant to cover a variety of commonly found fair use exceptions. If the image doesn't fit, it's not fair use, but that just means it shouldn't have that template, not that the templates are bad. Beyond that, I don't see any response to any of the specific issues I raised, which largely had to do with where we are to draw the line, particularly with respect to replaceability. john k 19:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
For replacability, we should be able to use any method at out disposial. We should be able to use flickr and email, among others, as methods to gain permission. We could also try to find someone with a camera and see if pictures could be taken. For historical events, that ain't possible. For album covers, it ain't possible. Celebs, it is a toss-up in my view. Buildings and statues and sculptures, the Commons has been kicking around that policy for a while now. But I think we should at least contact the uploader to at least say "Hey, we are trying to find a free image for X. If we find one, the fair use pic is deleted. If not, it's kept until a replacement is found." It is pretty much giving everyone a heads up. I also believe the community can be a bit more proactive too, but I am not sure what method would work best. Unless we come up with some kind of "welcome to image uploading" template, I am fresh out of ideas. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 03:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, Celebs is a toss-up, and that's exactly where we've been having problems. I think almost all of the conflict about policy has revolved around pictures of celebrities. What I'd like to have are some kind of guidelines as to what celebrity images are considered 'replaceable' and what aren't. The rest of it, I think, commands a pretty broad consensus. john k 05:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
If the celeb is dead, of course, getting a replacement will be hard. I also understand that some of the fair use photos we have of celebs at "achievements" are present at Wikipedia. One example I am alright with is when Halie Berry getting her Oscar, a historical achievement that cannot be recreated. But I think that if we really need photos for performers, just one would be fine. Then, the uploaders should explain why we need the other photos. I can't imagine having 6 or 7 different photos of the same celeb for an article. One is fine, IMHO, but I do not speak for other editors. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not just about mirrors

I think the people who are arguing down the value of free content are forgetting about the many other valuable reuses besides simple mirroring. Consider all our featured pictures -- could someone make and sell a poster out of any of them that a kid can put up on his bedroom wall and be inspired by? Yes, because they're free. You couldn't get that with fair use. Could they be modified into a cutaway diagram and included in a book and sold? Sure. Could a newspaper reprint our diagrams to illustrate its articles? Sure. Could someone take our text and stick it in a sidebar as background next to a news story? Sure! There are many other ways that you can reuse free content, and far beyond simple mirroring or what's possible under fair use. Dismissing it as "oh we shouldn't worry about the mirrors" forgets about the infinity of other possibilities that the free content pillar is intended to leave open. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion republication by a non-profit is OK. My point is that if we adjust our policies for the benefit of for-profit downstream users we open Wiki to political and legal trouble. If wiki has fair use on ZZZ.jpg then so do all the non-profit downstream users. The issue comes from for-profit downstream users who have fewer fair use rights than Wiki does, and who do not qualify as educational users for whom Wiki gets its tax benefits (that's what Wiki promised the IRS). Rjensen 02:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
What about nonprofits outside the US, where fair use provisions may not exist? And on what grounds do you maintain that making content available for for-profit reusers unaffiliated with the foundation (as well as all other reusers) would be problematic? --RobthTalk 02:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I;m only talking about US laws, which are strict about a 501c3. Wiki went to IRS promising non-profit educational uses only, so when for-profit uses are contemplated Wiki can get in legal trouble. There are a thousand different scenarios. But if we say that such an such postings by editors are forbidden because that will hurt for-profit downstream operations, then it may be a field day for the lawyers and politicians. Would Wiki win a lawsuit? Would wiki get pro bono lawyers to donate hundreds of hours of free legal services to defend it? I hope so. Rjensen 02:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
User:BradPatrick is that lawyer. He's also the interim Executive Director for the Foundation. I'm looking for a page to specifically answer your concern, but it seems to absurd too have been specifically addressed. No offense, but Wikipedia has now been around for a while and has a lot of legal consultation and help. This kind of thing would simply not go unnoticed. -- Ned Scott 03:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
The FSF is a nonprofit for whom the commercial exploitation of its content is now worth billions of dollars, and it would be quite beneficial to Microsoft and others for the FSF to be shut down by the IRS, and yet nobody has ever tried this, so I think it's a pretty implausible scenario. Is the soup kitchen no longer a nonprofit because they give Andy an empty can and he then sells paintings of it? :-) Stan 03:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have made that more clear; my point was that the concerns of foreign nonprofits regarding image use are very similar to those of American (or foreign) for-profit companies, since no fair use provision exists in those countries. As to the issue of whether benefitting for-profit reusers threatens our nonprofit status, the provision of the tax code you are referring to "no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual" is directed at preventing foundations from funnelling money to trustees, employees, or others with interests in the foundation; a "private shareholder or individual" is defined as "a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization." [6]. A fishing rod given to a poor man by a charity inures to his benefit, but does not impair that charity's 501c3 status; similarly, if we provide content for free reuse, it inures to a number of people's benefits, but this does not impair our status, since it is not substantially inuring to the beneift of those with personal and private interests in the foundation. Allowing commercial use, and thus increasing redistribution potential, is perfectly in accordance with our mission of producing content to distribute to the world. --RobthTalk 03:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Rjensen you do know that the wikimedia servers are in florida right? Why is this significant? Well you see under florida law it is illegal for someone who is not a member of the bar to give legal advice which would appear to be what you are attempting to do. In short you are not the only one who can do legal FUD.Geni 13:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

What does this have to do with anything? Do you think that someone on this talk page is against the concept of copyleft? Or doesn't see value in it? Obviously copyleft images are better, in every way. Any time a non-Free image can be replaced by a Free one of equal quality, it should be. I don't think anyone disputes this.

But there are many things that need to be illustrated in a high quality encyclopedia for which copyleft images will never exist. This is where the conflict occurs. We should still include as many informative images as we legally can. That they aren't copyleft and never will be can't be helped.

Saying "But then other people can't copy our content!" is absurd. They can still copy everything that is under a Free license, and when they reach clearly-marked fair use images or Wikipedia-only images or images copyrighted by the Wikimedia Foundation, they can skip them. Remember that our image namespace has many different licenses. Downstream users have to be aware of all of them and the legality of redistributing content under those licenses in their own country. We should certainly make it clear and easy for them to differentiate, as we already do, but it's not really our problem if other people violate copyright, and we shouldn't cripple the project for the sake of imaginary problems in circumstances we have no control over. — Omegatron 03:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Omegatron's analysis. Are these some legalese documents or opinions on the topic from the Wiki foundation? I'd sure like to read them--does anyone have the links? Rjensen 03:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Copyrights is a good place to start. -- Ned Scott 03:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I think most agree with that idea, but it's to what extent we define this that is under dispute. You know, another option has always been to apply the fair use to one of the downstream versions, rather than the original. Wikipedia could even host that fair use fork and be "as legal" as we are now (I think). We could even use placeholder tags in the articles so the text would auto-update with the original copy, but have places for images to be added. Of course those images would still have most of the same restrictions that we currently have, but it would allow for a truly free original copy, and allow for more gray areas that are educational use only. -- Ned Scott 03:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think very many people doubt that free content has value. That is not what people are saying. What we are saying is that fair-use content also has value, and that we should be more accepting of fair use images and the value they bring to the project. Johntex\talk 17:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

A different perspective

I see some arguments along the line of, "If we eliminate 'fair use' images, we need to eliminate all 'fair use' quotes from the text, as well." This is not a valid argument. 'Fair use' allows us to quote small parts of text under copyright. We can quote a line from a poem under copyright, but we can't quote half of that poem. Images are different. If we tried to quote 5% of an image, we would normally end up with something unintelligible. I can see 'fair use' of a small portion of an image under copyright in order to illustrate a discussion of a particular item in the image (that is not the focus of the image), of a painter's technique, etc. But, this wholesale slapping of images under copyright on articles because they 'look nice' has to stop. -- Donald Albury 12:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, a line from a poem is like a frame from a film. One frame is not the whole work. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 12:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Generaly frames of films are not being removed when they are used in the context of talking about that film.Geni 13:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Right, because they fall into clearly legitimate fair use like the text. Even among images, there can be the same distinction. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 13:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Partly that but it is also fairly safe to say that when they are used in that context they are imposible to replace but yes a single frame used in the context of talking about that frame should be fairly safe.Geni 13:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately most screenshots are being used when the frame isn't being discussed, such as in "List of (TV show) episodes", where the text amounts to two lines of plot summary, or infoboxes about specific episodes. This is not Good Thing. ed g2s • talk 14:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
The courts do recognize reduced-resolution images as being a form of excerpting, like a quotation from a poem. And the use of such thumbnails for identification purposes--not purposes of comment or criticism--has been upheld as fair use. See Kelly vs. Arriba Soft. Nareek 15:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
As long as the screenshot is representative and informative of the A/V work, it should be fine. Have you seen a lot of articles where what the screenshot depicts does not seem to relate to what the article describes about the work? I'll assume that's what you mean by "the frame isn't being discussed," because literally that makes little sense ("In this frame, Superman has his mouth half open as he vocalizes the beginning syllable in 'hello'."). Postdlf 16:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
In makes a lot of sense. in this frame superman is wearing costume X as designed by y yo atchive Z. He is lit in way b in order to produce a sense of j in the viewer. In a director trademark he has a small cholate bar tucked behind his ear.Geni 17:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I chose List of Seinfeld episodes pseudo-randomly from a search for "list of episodes". The first plot summary is "When Jerry gets a phone call from a woman he met out of town, George and "Kessler" (known as Kramer in all later episodes) weigh in on the situation." - and the oh-so-helpful image accompanying that is a picture of a man holding a microphone under a spotlight. To someone who has never seen this show, this image is completely an utterly useless, and has no apparent relevance to the text. If someone who has seen that show would like to tell my how that image contributes "significantly" to that piece of text and construct a strong Fair Use argument around it, I would be very impressed. ed g2s • talk 20:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I really don't see a problem with them, because they are mere thumbnails that, to my eyes, at least, often do help to identify the episode in question. That relationship is probably more evident from the individual episode articles, for which the list functions as a table of contents. Maybe more representative images could be chosen, but that is a matter of editorial judgment that mere repetitions of policy verbage can't resolve. Why don't you discuss with some of the regular Seinfeld article contributors whether better images could be chosen? Postdlf 20:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I believe Ed's point is that we don't really need images on these case, the evidence being that an almost-completely-random image is being used to do the task. We should have been using unfree material only when it's necessary, and not when it makes the website prettier. --Abu Badali 21:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Neither of you have presented "evidence" that the images are random, you've both just stated your opinion to that effect despite what appears to be your lack of familiarity with the subject or the articles. You and ed both need to stop brushing aside requests to consider subject matter more carefully, or, heaven forbid, take the time to talk to an article's contributors. It's as if you'd rather just quote snippets of policy and dictate outcomes than cooperate. The next step after you've formed your opinion that an image is not serving a sufficiently informative function should not be to immediately clamor for its deletion. Or am I misunderstanding something? Postdlf 21:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Wow. Well, even going beyond all of the reasons we've already argued about regarding fair use's place on Wikipedia and why it's good, I have to say that an impeachment of episodic screenshots of Seinfeld episodes is dire. To suggest that this content, which someone has labored significant on and with altruistic purposes, be removed is dangerous. Not only do you risk endangering the quality of the encyclopedia, but by doing so you also risk alienating some of the hardest working contributors. Adding images to Wikiepdia can be some of the most difficult and time consuming work and to have someone blow in as a tornado and destroy it all to uphold a flawed ideology is disheartening to the contributor and disastrous for the project's future.--Jeff 05:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
When you are uploading an Fair Use image the responsibility lies with you to provide a rationale of why it can be used, not with me to demonstrate that it is not relevant. Furthermore, as fair use is about context (the context here being a list), that it may make more sense upon reading another page cannot be used as part of it's rationale. We do not use unfree media as navigation aides. ed g2s • talk 21:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Ahem. Why don't you discuss with some of the regular Seinfeld article contributors whether better images could be chosen? You can also share your opinion with them that the images may be unnecessary. Postdlf 21:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
For two lines of text no image is necessary. If those two lines are inadequate without an image then they're not very good plot summaries. ed g2s • talk 21:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Because the debate started here the the example was being used to further the debate. Case studies are a fairly standard part of debates.Geni 22:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Anyway, if the image does not have a relevance that is obvious to a non-Seinfeld expert, then the text/caption isn't doing a good enough job to qualify as fair use. Fair use is all about correct usage at the moment, not an intention to get around to it some day. I never understand why people can't string together two words to talk about an image - takes me two minutes tops to come up with something useful to add. Stan 01:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Screen shots in LOEs

I've spent many hours arguing about episode screen shots in Lists of episodes. To this day I believe they are a legitimate use of fair use images and significantly improve the quality of many LOEs. But what I've come to realize is that even significant addition of quality is not important enough considering Wikipedia's free goals. Do we significantly hurt our articles by excluding these images? Yes. Have I spent hours and hours finding good screen shots for many of these lists? Yes. What I didn't realize is that it's not important to help people identify episodes, not compared to our free content goals. Using screen shots in most Lists of episodes is the wrong priority. Considering the amount of time spent on this, I would really like to find a way to preserve the screen-shot versions, but they do need to go from the Wikipedia version. It's very hard for me to admit that I was so wrong about something I believed so strongly in. I wasn't fully aware of how important the goal of being a free encyclopedia was.

Not to say that this is how I feel about all fair use images, or even all screen shots, but the normal use of screen shots on a typical LOEs is excessive. As far as what I will try to fix this problem, I want to explore the options of a content-fork with fair use that would be practical (as in, people would actually use it, and it would update with Wikipedia's text right away, etc). If you've taken the time to upload screen shots for a LOE, then I suggest such a path if you don't want all that work to go to waste. -- Ned Scott 06:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It took a while for others to get their head around the idea of us being free content. It took me a while and I made mistakes in the past with file uploads. It happens, everyone screws up and everyone changes their mind. That is what being a human is all about. What I would suggest is while photos can be removed from the lists in a phased matter, what should be done first is that if LOE's are being created now, I would not add photos to it. While we cannot stop others from doing it unless we change policy/get an edict from Jimbo, what we can do is just be examples on how to deal with fair use and either upload it under our strict guidelines or not upload fair use at all. It is a personal choice to use fair use or not. I am not sure what else I can personally suggest, since I stated my view that LOE's should not really have photos, but I am in the minority on that one. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
What seems to be the ongoing conflict here, of course, is the age-old conflict between what makes a good webpage or website (multimedia content - photos, text, links, etc.) and what a few people here have determined makes a "free" encyclopedia. And I don't think it's a stretch to say, given my experience here over the past three months, that the more Wikipedia runs away from being a good website, perhaps not coincidentally, the less useful it becomes as a good encyclopedia. Can you give away something nobody wants? By adhering to this extraordinarily strict fair use policy, Wikipedia seems destined to find out... Jenolen speak it! 10:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Some of the statements by the anti-fair use folks makes me think they are utilize Wikipedia through a text to speech application rather than with their eyes. Illustration is paramount to a useful resource and should not be discarded so haphazardly.--Jeff 11:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Could you share your reasons to believe that the "anti-fair use folks" dislike images in general and not only the overuse of unfree images? --Abu Badali 11:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Quite, I have uploaded hundreds of images to Commons, dozens of my own, and regularly vote on FPC. However when are article's purpose is to list episodes, a job that is performed at least adequately by using text only, I don't see the need to sacrifice our free content goals for the purpose of providing a visual cue on the off chance that it helps a few readers, but ultimately is not relevant to the article. ed g2s • talk 14:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Indeed we do have blind users of WP, who appreciate it when the text alone is useful. Stan 15:29, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

As it is not in serious dispute that these thumbnails legally qualify as fair use, and their removal will not encourage the creation of free images, and the screenshots are all tagged and categorized as fair use so they could easily be filtered out by downstream users, what's the concrete benefit of removing them? I'm looking for something a little less opaque than chants of "more free." Postdlf 15:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

"More free" is the cornerstone of our policy. As such it is not for me to reason why any media should be removed, but for you to reason why we really need to use it, something more opaque than "it might help you remember it if you've seen the show before". ed g2s • talk 16:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Could you explain in concrete terms how "more free" is accomplished by removing these thumbnails? What would this allow someone to do or not do that would not be possible with the thumbnails in the article? Postdlf 16:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
These screenshots help to build a culture of unnecessary unfree material usage on Wikipedia. Also, if the effort that was concentrated on finding and uploading them were used to something else, our Free Encyclopedia would have benefited better.--Abu Badali 17:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Less unfree material => content more free. I don't see how that needs any more explanation. ed g2s • talk 23:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I know you love your slogans, but if you're incapable of actually advancing the discussion, please don't bother. What would removing these thumbnails allow someone to do or not do that would not be possible with the thumbnails in the article? Postdlf 00:36, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
That slogan by Ed ignores the fact that free alternatives to certain things will never exist. There will never be a way to make a free alternative to a fair use shot from a film scene, or of a painting, for example. Johntex\talk 19:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Take advantage of all the benefits of free content of course. Surely you don't need me to spell out everything. ed g2s • talk 11:17, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I asked a very simple question (twice). If you don't know the answer, just say you don't know, but repeating "free" like a religious mantra is not accomplishing anything. Postdlf 18:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm puzzled here too. I've always approached the goal of free-ness from the angle of ensuring that the freely reproducible product obtained by removing the unfree elements from our overall content is equal in scope and quality to the product that would have been obtained by allowing only free elements in the first place (or in other words, that we do not include any unfree elements that impair the creation of free content). Do you believe that these images fail that test, or are you applying a different test for inclusion, and if so why? --RobthTalk 18:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

You cannot have plot summaries of copyrighted material without implicitly envoking fair use. Why this invocation of fair use is OK when it comes to text but is unacceptable when it involves images is one of the sacred mysteries of wikipedia policy. Nareek 16:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Plot summaries of copyrighted material are not necessarily covered by the original copyright, but that is a completely separate debate. ed g2s • talk 23:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
It's not the content of material that is protected by copyright, it is the expression. Facts cannot be copyrighted. We can easily include content as text if we present the content in our own expression, i.e., rewrite it. As we should be working from multiple sources, we want to blend those sources into the article anyway. The big problem I see with plot summaries is that they are often not based on reliable sources, but on the Wikipedia editor's personal analysis of the work. But that is another debate. I don't see how a properly written plot summary would infringe on a copyright. No infringement, no need to claim 'fair use'. -- Donald Albury 00:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
That's completely legally incorrect. This has been discussed numerous times on here, and the case law clearly only supports one side. Elements of fictional stories and fictional characters are not uncopyrightable "facts," but instead part of the copyrighted expression. Otherwise, you could paraphrase any work of fiction to your heart's content as long as you didn't use the original, exact words. Fair use is necessary to justify the summarization of copyrighted works. See Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998); Twin Peaks v. Publications Int'l, Ltd., 996 F.2d 1366 (2d Cir. 1993). Postdlf 00:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Old images donated to a library

This is related to my question on Wikipedia talk:Copyrights/Can I use...#Question about pretty old photos taken in the U.S. If a photograph was donated to a library, and it satisfies the fair use criteria (it's not replaceable, etc.), can I use it as fair use, despite not knowing who the actual copyright holder is? --NE2 00:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

You still need to know who the copyright holder is and you still need to look. Most libraries have information on when the photo is taken, where it was taken and who taken it. As what they said at the other page, if the photograph is in the public domain, it would not matter if it was published in a 1965 book. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 16:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Screw it... lack of pictures isn't a problem for an FA if no free images can be found, right? --NE2 11:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

At least have one, so it can be used on the front page. I can help you with the search for free content, so come onto my talk page and I will see what magic I can do. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 01:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I have some free images on Long Island Rail Road; the problem is with photographs of the early locomotives, which railfans seem to like. --NE2 12:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Protected template Template:Replaceable fair use controversial edit

Could some Admin undo this edit? --Abu Badali 17:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The edit seems perfectly reasonable and please don't canvass either, you may submit an edit protected request, So say we all! thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The rv that you made to this project page seems fairly questionable as well; clearly there's no consensus here, so let's stop pretending there is. I'm going to put that back in. If someone has a good reason to take it out, let's go for it, but for now, there's clear dispute on this issue, Abu Badali. - Stick Fig 17:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree there is no consensus across Wikipedia for such mass deletions. Johntex\talk 18:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
If you take out the warning, then the tag is purely decorative; there's no reason to pay any attention to it at all. Since that point of view also does not have consensus, it makes the tag just as misleading. It will just be another version of the old "please replace me with a free image" tag that everybody ignored for years on end. Stan 18:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Also note that the warning is connected to WP:CSD - the template should be consistent with the policy page. Stan 18:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Complying with CSD is a fine arguement if such CSD existed legitimately, but we run into the chicken and egg problem again. Ill advised and poor policy implemented by a group that did not seek outside opinion, who's modification of policy did not garnish attention until after heavy handed implementation, hardly justifies anything contained in a template.--Jeff 19:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
There is no consensus for changeing the template.Geni 18:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Be it that there was no consensus for the creation and implementation of the template firstly, except by those who were exclusively involved at the beginning and contrary opinions were only expressed later after heavy handed implementation became commonplace, I don't see a problem with changing the template to reflect the lack of consensus regarding it.--Jeff 19:49, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
we are discussing current actions not past ones.Geni 20:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
You don't dictate what we are and aren't discussing. That logic makes it all very convenient for you, haha. laughable.--Jeff 04:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
WP:NPA. The contents of the discussion are clearly documented and they clearly show we are dealing with current events.Geni 12:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Your definition of NPA is far too broad. Have you ever actually read WP:NPA? Maybe you mean WP:AGF.--Jeff 16:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

"Disputed" tag

I think it's unwise to characterize this page as "disputed". We may argue over specific points of what the page should say, but that's not what this tag says, it applies to the whole concept of having any guidelines at all for fair use on WP, and I don't think anybody agrees with that extreme (right?). In particular, I see uploaders taking this as license to upload every kind of copyvio imaginable, and we don't have the patrollers to keep up if that happens. Stan 18:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. WP:FU is a guideline, and even if we change all of it, it would still be a guideline. As far as I see, nobody objects the full content, but instead determined points. It is not like, say, WP:WAF where there were some who objected the existence of the guideline instead of some points of it. -- ReyBrujo 18:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Just because a few people agreed on something at one time doesn't make it binding and indisputable forever. When the rest of the world discovers the page and sees how much damage it's doing, they have every right to challenge it and try to undo the damage. Guidelines are descriptive codes of behavior created organically by consensus, not mandates enforced against the majority by small groups.
See Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, Wikipedia:How to create policy, Wikipedia:Consensus can change, and so on. — Omegatron 22:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I know. Currently, there is consensus to keep the custom tag instead of the premade one. -- ReyBrujo 23:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
evdences? remeber the total number of images on en is increaseing.Geni 18:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
What happened with the "In case of disputes, revert the page to the original wording and discuss in the talk page"? -- ReyBrujo 19:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
As far as I can see, the wording is unchanged. The tag notifies readers that discussion is happening here on the Talk page. Johntex\talk 19:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
We can add a custom box stating there is an ongoing discussion to clarify certain points. Personally, I associate that tag not with a discussion to clarify some points, but instead to demote the guideline to essay. -- ReyBrujo 19:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree we don't want to give that misimpression. Would you be willing to make such a custom box? It is not in my normal fields of contribution to create such a box. Johntex\talk 19:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Donedy done done.--Jeff 19:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Heh, even though I generally agree with Jeff on the phrasing, it seems Omegratron is not. Sigh. Stan 23:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Better Languange

In the "preamble" to the page, we currently have this gem:

An editor uploading copyrighted material to Wikipedia must provide a detailed fair use rationale; otherwise the uploaded material will be deleted.

A rational reading of this would seem to be that if a user DOES provide a detailed fair use rationale, their material will NOT be deleted. And, as we've seen several times, there are plenty of editors who will work their little tails off to find some other reason to delete. I propose we change these sentences to: "An editor uploading copyrighted material to Wikipedia must provide a detailed fair use rationale; failure to do so is one of many grounds for the material to be speedily deleted." Or something like that...

Of course, we could just strike this sentence altogether. The full list of requirements is immediately below it, so is this sentence repetitive?

Yours toward better writing, Jenolen speak it! 20:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your concept of "rational reading". From "not A implies B" we don't reach "A implies not B". (disclaimer: A = "provide a rationale". B = "the image gets deleted"). --Abu Badali 20:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I read what your wrote four times, and still don't understand it. Sorry. But in the sentence we're talking about, in this particular instance, "otherwise" is being used in a "consequence" sense. As in, "Come in from out of the rain; otherwise, you're going to get wet." The implication is, of course, that if you come in from out of the rain, you're NOT going to get wet. That's what I'm trying to clear up. "Provide a fair use rationale, otherwise, your image will be deleted" does not describe current policy. "Providing a fair use rationale is one of several steps you must take to make sure your image doesn't get deleted" is a much more accurate summary of current policy. Jenolen speak it! 23:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Regardless of what's rational or not, clear concise guidelines that lack subjectivity is always a noble aim. I like the changes, and perhaps wikifi the words "speedily deleted" to WP:CSD#Images.2FMedia--Jeff 20:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Speaking as one of the people responsible for the ‘gem’, I do not see how you read it the way you do. Besides that, the main objective of the paragraph was to express exactly what it actually says in the most compact way, since it deals with one of the major reasons for deletion. As for your proposal, it omits actually saying that the image will be deleted; this is counterproductive. —xyzzyn 20:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
You seem a bit defensive. :) how about... An editor uploading copyrighted material to Wikipedia must provide a detailed fair use rationale; failure to do so will result in the image being [[speedily deleted.--Jeff 20:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Since it’s closer to my version, it’s obviously superior. Just fix the links. —xyzzyn 21:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
A quick reminder -- maybe you were joking, but of course, you know there is no "my" version of Wikipedia. If your version is clearer, and makes more sense, then bless you! Jenolen speak it! 23:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Restricting Fair Use Images and deletion of all images in Category:Fair use images of art

I know there has been quite a bit of discussion about fair use on several places, but I think that Wikipedia has gone too far in a number of areas. Most notably I would like to bring up explicitly fair use images of modern art works.

As I've tried to ask elsewhere, I would like to see even one good example of what would traditionally be called art work, such as those images found in the articles of M. C. Escher or Norman Rockwell. The images (except perhaps the self-portraits) here are being used as essentially an on-line gallery of the works of these modern artists.

I would like to point out that these art works are also under copyright (registered copyright even!), and they are also available for use under commercial propritary licenses. But not the GFDL or anything compatable! No permission has been given to Wikipedia to reproduce these and other works of art that are very similar.

An argument has been made that if you were writing an article strictly about a notable piece of artwork (such as Hand with Reflecting Sphere (Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror)) is perhaps a legitimate fair-use application. I would counter that you still don't have copyright permission, and you are reproducing the entire work of art, even though admittedly the resolution is somewhat reduced from perhaps the "original". These are not thumbnails, but clearly illustrations of the work of art.

I support more the Italian Wikipedia's version of fair use, that only permits fair use for a specific number of areas that are also quite common uses of copyrighted content in many other countries other than even just the USA. See for example (if you can read Italian) it:Aiuto:Copyright immagini. If you want to read the gist of this in English, a variation of this philosophy has been implemented on Wikibooks at b:Wikibooks:Fair use policy.

I still think it is reasonable to have many of the images on Wikipedia that are used under fair-use, but there does reach a point of absurdity on this whole issue. Redistributing versions of modern art or even photography (such as in the article about Ansel Adams) is one of those areas that IMHO Wikipedia has gone too far. When images like Image:Hand with Reflecting Sphere.jpg have a disclaimer that requires the copyright holder to contact Brad Patrick and turn its removal into a WP:OFFICE, I think the fair-use principles have completely run out and there is no point to even having these images here. This is not simply the case of having a non-free image until we can get something better, but purely a case that there will never be a non-free image due to the nature of the content.

I strongly recommend that all of the images in the Category:Fair use images of art be deleted, and welcome contrary viewpoints to this action. I'm mentioning this here, as I think this is a policy shift and change that does need to be discussed among those who may have some opinion on this topic. --Robert Horning 21:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems a rather drastic and unnecessary solution to discrete and identifiable problems, and as you seem to think that our use of copyrighted material is necessarily improper, it seems to me more like you don't understand fair use. We rely on fair use precisely when we have no permission to use the copyrighted original; if the original were licensed freely, or not copyrighted, fair use would be irrelevant. That our copy of the original represents the entire work is not dispositive against fair use either, as courts have repeatedly held. What we need to do is ensure that the images are at lower than commercial print resolution, and are sufficiently justified by the articles in which they are used. Postdlf 22:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I'd point to Chuck Close as a solid fair use of copyrighted paintings.
P.P.S. All the images used in Ansel Adams are on Commons and believed to be in the public domain. Postdlf 22:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I would assure you that the Ansel Adams photography is most certainly copyrighted and not in the public domain. If they are on commons, I'm going to have to mark them for copyvios. Ansel Adams died in 1984, so his content won't enter the public domain until the year 2054 at the earliest, at least in the USA. And you had better believe that I understand fair use, but I strongly question the use of fair use in this situations. I'll comment more below. --Robert Horning 00:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
OK, I will conceed that the Ansel Adams photography that is on commons may be in the public domain, because he took one particular series of photographs as a contract employee of the U.S. Dept. of the Interior. I stand corrected on this particular issue. I had no idea, really! Almost all of the rest of the Ansel Adams photography is only available under propritary licenses, and as such does fit into this debate. Simply put, they can't be used unless we have permission, such as was done here for these images whose license was secured by some other licensing method. --Robert Horning 00:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
This category of fair-use images has perhaps the most consensus about how to use them correctly, so you're not going to find much enthusiasm for deletion. The OCILLA disclaimer was fashionable a while back; I think they should all be expunged in favor of a link from fair-use templates - we don't need thousands of copies of amateur-hour legalese, each slightly different, wandering around the image space. Stan 23:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Just because you have concensus doesn't make them legal to use. This is illegal misappropriation of fair use, particularly when it comes to images of art works. I'm not here to do a wholesale elimination of all images with fair use, but I am saying that when it comes to works of art that the justification is simply not there. The only "fair-use" justification for displaying art works is as a very small thumbnail, such as what Google does with their Google Images search. It is not to display an art work prominently in an article.
As I tried to point out, prove to me that there is anybody, and I mean anybody who is publishing a major website or publication that uses art works like these under fair use standards. By major website, I'm talking in the Alexa top 1000 or something similar, that would get notice by copyright holders. I don't think you can find anybody else except for those who don't give a hoot about copyright at all.
I find the excuse to use in particular these images in this category as something that could justify just about any copyrighted images of any kind for any purpose and at any quantity. It flys right in the face of what copyright really represents: controlling the right to copy! And we don't have permission to copy or reproduce this artwork or any derivatives of that artwork except through explicit permission of the artist (or their estate) that created the work. If we have permission (something compatable with the GFDL, for example), then we aren't using fair-use rationale for its publication.
Even if you perhaps could justify some very limited uses for such images, I am also contending that they are very much being abused here on Wikipedia. These images are being used not only because there is no other potential image to put in their place (still not a justification for fair use), but also in other places on Wikipedia where they are mainly being used for largely decorative values.
So tell me, what would appropriate uses for images be that are found in this category? --Robert Horning 00:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
First off, I want you to know that I really like your post. You're obviously well written and an intelligent person. But, I want you to know that you have fair-use completely wrong. Please read this fact sheet at copyright.gov for an easy to understand primer of fair use. In the primer, it states:
 Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction
 of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting,
 teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered
 in determining whether or not a particular use is fair
 1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial
  nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
 2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
 3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
 4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Wikipedia clearly falls under the first factor of determining fair use. CLEARLY AND INDISPUTABLY. Wikipedia educational aims and status as a non-profit grant Wikipedia extremely wide latitude in utilizing fair use.--Jeff 06:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Educational fair use simply does not apply to Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia project. It applies to instructors making very limited copies of copyrighted material for use directly in their instruction. Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corporation held that the large scale copying of copyrighted material for educational purposes can't be used as a rationale for fair use. This is the #1 reason why copy centers no longer publish course syllibi and reading materials, even though it used to be common practice.
Furthermore, Wikipedia is mirrored and used in commercial ventures, particularly with the use of the GFDL. I would like to point out that the GFDL is quite clear on permitting commercial activity for Wikipedia content, and the non-profit status of the Wikimedia Foundation is irrelevant in this case. If you can't use the images for commercial activity, then their use in Wikipedia articles invalidates the GFDL. Any fair-use material must be available under all of the terms of the GFDL. Rationalizing their use becuase Wikipedia is being done by volunteers is an excuse, not a valid legal argument.
I would also like to point out that the nature of the work (see USC 92 Section 107 (2)) here is clearly reproducing the artwork. My argument in deleting this entire category is precisely because the uses on Wikipedia are infringing precisely because the same asthetics that apply to the original art work apply here on Wikipedia as well. The intended audience for that artwork is essentally the same as consumers of Wikipedia, or that you can't suggest people using Wikipedia can't appreciate artwork. I assert that this content fails this test as well. In most cases it fails test #3 as well, as most of these images are full reproductions of the art work, often at substantially high resolution. To me, a "thumbnail" is roughly somthing 25 pixels by 25 pixels. Or something similar. That can be debated, but even if you suggest a thumbnail is something larger, you have to admit that many of the images in this category clearly are much larger than a mere thumbnail.
This also avoids my question, which is to demonstrate legitimate uses of the images in this category, and to get somebody else here to at least acknowledge that many of their uses are inappropriate and in violation of copyright. How should images in this category be used, if they are to be used at all? --Robert Horning 18:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
For Wikipedia, most of the time it's effectively a three-factor test. But we still need to satisfy all of the last three: it's an "and" situation rather than an "or" situation. --Carnildo 07:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point out that the GFDL is quite clear on permitting commercial activity for Wikipedia content

We're well aware.

If you can't use the images for commercial activity, then their use in Wikipedia articles invalidates the GFDL.

Content that doesn't belong to us can't be licensed under the GFDL in the first place. So it would "invalidate" nothing. — Omegatron 02:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Very insteresting article about recently finished appeal

Appeals court rejects challenge to "opt-out" copyright at Ars Technica. Good stuff there. A pity it did not work out, though. -- ReyBrujo 22:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

eh mostly just keeping US law sorta in line with the rest of the worlds.Geni 12:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes

I've started making some changes to the page (which haven't been reverted on sight!) Some issues follow. — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Primary and secondary goals

I added dubious tags to the bits that talked about our "primary goals". We all agree for the most part on our primary goals, but the bits where they conflict (like this topic) lend fuzziness and strife to defining exactly what our goals are. It currently says:

"The primary goal on Wikipedia is to create a free content ("free" as in "free speech") encyclopedia which can be used by downstream users."

If I had my way, I'd change this to:

"The primary goal on Wikipedia is to create a high-quality encyclopedia which can be used by downstream users."

The use of free content is very important, but ancillary, to this goal. This is certainly how I have always seen the project, and I know I'm not the only one. This is evidenced by the fact that permission-only images have been perfectly acceptable until recently. Related quotations:

  • "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." Vision Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation
  • "I certainly do not share the attitude that Wikipedia is better than Britannica merely because it is free. It is my intention that we aim at Britannica-or-better quality, period, free or non-free. We should strive to be the best." Jimbo, WikiEN-l, October 2006

Of course this would just be revert warred, so I'm not actually making the change yet. I officially dispute the current wording, however. Does the freeness of our content serve the purpose of distributing knowledge to as many people as possible, or does our encyclopedic content serve the purpose of promoting the concept of free content to the world? The answers to questions like these are wildly different depending on who you ask, and there's no official policy or objective either way. Explicitly saying one way or another will probably be futile, so we will most likely end up changing it to say something like "The Wikipedia community is divided over these primary goals. In the past, it was like this and fair use and permission-only images were allowed... Recently, policies have been changing, mostly due to mandates by Jimbo, though popular support is... Some see it as this, while others see it as this... In the future, this may or may not be whatever"

The text on Wikipedia:Fair use criteria is the worse of the two, and should be changed similarly.

Discuss. — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Freeness is a means so similar to the end as to be inextricable from it. The end is an encyclopedia that can be freely modified, reused, and distributed to the world. The only means to that end is some form of free content. Permission-only images are not acceptable under either definition you have listed above; they cannot be redistributed to downstream users or in any publication off Wikipedia. That said, I don't think your version fully explains our aim; our content is to be freely reusable for downstream users; "free as in speech" is the quickest way to explain this. --RobthTalk 03:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Omegatron is quite correct. Our main goal should be to create a useful reference work. We have commons to champion the idea of totally free images. We will use free images where it makes sense to do so, but we should not blindly adhere to a "free is better" mantra. Johntex\talk 03:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
    • It's not that "free is better"; it's that free is what we do. This encyclopedia isn't just meant to sit around on the internet; it's meant to be printed, reworked, distributed to the world by anyone who wants to--and the work they distribute should be the best possible. This is the essence of what we do, and it's the reason I contribute here. If you want to change this, you need to be thinking foundation level, not en.wp fair use talk page level. --RobthTalk 04:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
      • But free is not "what we do". What we do is build an encyclopedia. This idea that we are here primarily to push free content licenses is a new contruct. It is not why most of us are here. Go back just a few months in time and you can see how these policies used to read, for instance. Johntex\talk 04:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Then you better have a little chat with the folks in charge - they think that "Wikipedia is free content" is one of the five pillars of the project. That has been a cornerstone since I started four years ago, and hasn't changed a bit. There is absolutely no way that is going to change, and tinkering with this page to make it say something different is just asking for the destroying angels among the admins to come down and ban and delete everything in sight, fearless of any consequences. :-) Stan 07:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Our objective is to create a Free (as in speech, not as in beer) encyclopedia. This goal is why we are being endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.

Non-free encyclopedias already exist. The world does not need yet another non-free encyclopedia. We are not here to make another non-free encyclopedia. It is outside our remit to create another non-free encyclopedia. Therefore, I modestly propose that we do not set out to create another non-free encyclopedia.

Just my Eur0.02. --Kim Bruning 13:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

  • That's a misinterpretation of the Foundation Issues. The foundation issues don't say that no fair use images are allowed. Nor do they specify how much fair use should be allowed. As long as the foundation allows fair use, then we on .en Wikipedia are free to discuss how best to utilize free use content. If Jimbo ever decides by fiat to remove all fair use, or to specify exactly what fair use is allowed, then on that sad day there will be no more room for discussion. Until then, I will keep trying to make this a better reference work by openning our eyes to the advantages of legally permissible fair use. Johntex\talk 15:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I think we're aware of the pragmatic advantages. It's the disadvantages, both with respect to what we are as a project, and practically, with the creation of free content, that we're concerned about. — Matt Crypto 15:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Our tagline is, "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", not, "Wikipedia, the encyclopedia". — Matt Crypto 15:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Nor is our tagline "Wikipedia, the free stuff". Making an encyclopedia is central to our purpose, we need to build the best and most useful encyclopedia we can build. Go back a few months or a year ago, we were still "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" and yet we weren't deleting lots and lots of useful fair use material on the flimsy grounds that it is theoretcially "replaceable". That is where we need to get back to. Johntex\talk 15:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I think there was some collective shock as to the degree to which fair use was being used to supplant free material - the geniuses who replaced free images with unfree ones in articles didn't stop to think that there might be repercussions to their desires of the moment. Probably a lot of editors just assumed that everybody else bought into the "free content" part of the mission, not realizing there was another crowd who did not value freeness much. Stan 17:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

See the http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home for the answer. Ask yourself whether you would rather have freedom or knowledge for the reason. WAS 4.250 16:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

What, in particular, on that page are you calling to our attention? Johntex\talk 17:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


The end is an encyclopedia that can be freely modified, reused, and distributed to the world. The only means to that end is some form of free content.

Are you sure that all content released under one of our preferred free licenses can be modified, reused, and distributed? In every country under every form of copyright law?
Are you sure that fair use content can never be modified, reused, or distributed?
In most cases, the redistributability is similar for both. In all cases, it is the reuser's responsibility to understand whether such reuse is legal in their locale.

Permission-only images are not acceptable under either definition you have listed above; they cannot be redistributed to downstream users or in any publication off Wikipedia.

So what? The primary goal is to create a high-quality reference work that can be useful to as many people as possible. In the words of Jimbo, I'm 100% committed to a goal of "Britannica or better" quality for Wikipedia. What kinds of images does Britannica use?
There exists important, encyclopedic content in the world that cannot and will never be free, but which we can legally use (either by permission or fair use). It is our responsibility as a neutral repository of "the sum of all human knowledge" to include whatever information we legally can, even if it can't be redistributed in certain circumstances (just like our free content).

they think that "Wikipedia is free content" is one of the five pillars of the project.

So do we.
Then why would you propose to edit that out of the statement about Wikipedia on this project page? You can't have it both ways. It's a crucial point, because "good more important than free" was exactly the rationale used to supplant free images on some articles, eventually leading to this round of debate. Stan 01:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't get the wrong idea (and don't make straw men).
  • No one here is saying that free content is unimportant.
  • No one is saying we should replace free images with fair use images (unless the free images are garbage).
  • No one is saying that we shouldn't take copyright law seriously.
We are all in favor of replacing fair use or permission-only images with free ones whenever possible, but in many cases, this simply isn't possible, and doing so would leave a hole in the project. That's what we're talking about.
Everyone here agrees that free content is one of Wikipedia's primary goals. But creating a useful repository of knowledge to benefit all of mankind is also a primary goal. Some feel that one goal overrides the other; some feel the opposite. But there is no consensus and there is no set-in-stone mandate. That's what this discussion is about. — Omegatron 01:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Audio files and GFDL

"Spoken word audio clips of Wikipedia articles that incorporate copyrighted text pose legal problems (since the resulting audio file cannot be licensed under the GFDL) and should be avoided."

Why?

  1. Audio files don't have to be under the GFDL to be included on our project; they can be under a variety of licenses.
  2. If an audio file of Wikipedia text that contains copyrighted text cannot be made free, then neither can the article. I'm confused as to how quotations are a violation if the article text isn't.

How do we handle licensing of quotations in the article text, anyway? Most quotations are in fact copyright violations, permissible only under fair use, but our text content is always spoken of as if it were 100% GFDL. — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Since it has been possible to quote text since copyright was first invented, while images have been reproducible only recently, the right to quote text is much better established across legal systems than other sorts of "fair use" or similar concepts. Thus, text containing quotations is essentially freely reusable, unlike other fair use media. This provision seems to assume quotation rights would not be recognized in audio recordings under certain legal systems which would recognize them in text; I can't speak to whether or not this is actually the case. --RobthTalk 03:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Audio clips don't have to be GFDL licensed, however this is refering to audio that is a recording of someone reading a Wikipedia article, such recordings are derived from the article text with is GFDL licensed. In order to comply with the license terms such recordings have to be GFDL licensed as well. If you release the recording under any other license you have violated the terms under wich the GFDL allow derivative works of the article to be made and have in fact commited a copyright violation. All works based on another GFDL work must itself be GFDL licensed, nothing more nothing less, that's how the share-alike aspect of the license works. As for the legal aspects of mixing GFDL text and quotations and how it differs between text and sound recoding I rely don't have a clue. --Sherool (talk) 08:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Since it has been possible to quote text since copyright was first invented

Can you provide some evidence for this distinction between text quotation and images?

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”[7]

— Omegatron 01:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
See, for example, Dutch copyright law for a system in which quotation rights are recognized while fair use of images is not. Same applies in Germany [8] and numerous other systems of law which do not recognize fair use. Note also that the secion you've quoted regards US copyright law specifically, which is the exception, not the rule, on the large scale. --RobthTalk 06:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia's servers are located in the US. — Omegatron 02:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Images and identification

"Cover art from various items, for identification and critical commentary (not for identification without critical commentary)."
"An image of a living person that merely shows what they look like."

Can someone explain these? How is identification not fair use? You can't include a magazine or CD cover without commenting on the cover art itself? — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm skeptical of the first myself; Postdlf (a lawyer) has stated that it isn't a legal issue to use images in this way, and it isn't preventing a free image from being created. As for the second, our goal is to only use unfree content in situations where it is not impeding the creation of free content (the past has taught that an existing unfree image tends not to be replaced even when it would be relatively easy to do so. --RobthTalk 03:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
We should strike "merely shows what they look like". Showing what someone looks like is very important. Numerous studies show that most people are visually oriented. Plus, it is useful to people forming an impression on the subject. For an athlete, is she muscular or not? For a celebrity - is he what I would subjectively call handsome or not? For a politician - does he look old and frail or not? Etc. Johntex\talk 03:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Free images of people can be created.Geni 12:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Sure, and until they are created, we should keep a fair use image. Even if a free image is created, if it is no good, then we should keep a fair use image alongside. Johntex\talk 17:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
No, we shouldn't, for the very pragmatic reason that most of the incentive for people to go and hunt down a free image is eliminated. — Matt Crypto 17:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, we should, for the very pragmatic reason that our project should not suffer in usefulness while we sit and hope that someone uploads different images. Johntex\talk 17:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
It's better that the project is less well illustrated in the short term so that it ends up just as well-illustrated, but also free, in the long term. Freedom is a fundamental goal of the project, so this is the path we should take. — Matt Crypto 18:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that most of the caselaw relates either to Comment and Criticism or parody. So identification is even more anoying than normal on top of that: "Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

Now we mostly play around with the criticism and comment section since it is generaly the one we are closest to (I supose news reporting could kick in but eh risky). Identification is not listed there as a valid situation where fair use could apply.Geni 12:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It is covered under the word "commnent". Johntex\talk 17:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
To quote myself from up above:
The courts do recognize reduced-resolution images as being a form of excerpting, like a quotation from a poem. And the use of such thumbnails for identification purposes--not purposes of comment or criticism--has been upheld as fair use. See Kelly vs. Arriba Soft.
Nareek 18:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: cover art, it represents a rather insubstantial portion of the original creative work and typically has little to no independent commercial value. Our articles are academic commentary and "criticism" (read this as neutral explanation and deconstruction of the topic, or second-hand reporting of critical reviews, if you will) on the product, whether it's a book, album, magazine, etc. Using that product's cover to help identify and refer to that product is safe as fair use. See Triangle Publications, Inc. v. Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc., 626 F.2d 1171 (5th Cir. 1980) (ruling that copying of TV Guide covers in competitor's comparative commercial advertising qualified as fair use). Note that in Triangle, the ads did not have any comment specific to the issues depicted, let alone the covers themselves; the back issue covers were simply representative of the TV Guide publication generally.

Two caveats—in the event that a cover could have commercial value as a print, we should ensure that our copies are always smaller than commercial print size; and we should never crop the marks that identify the cover as a cover, such as the title, etc. Postdlf 18:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Low res

"The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible. Low-resolution images should be used instead of high-resolution images"

It needs to be clarified whether this means low-res thumbs on the article itself, or if the actual uploaded picture should be low-res. Probably the latter, but is it use in the article or on the internal image description page that counts? — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Basically, the goal here is that we should not be providing high resolution, downloadable images of people's copyrighted and unlicensed work. It's legally iffy to do so; this is why we have the {{fairusereduce}} tag. So yes, this applies to the images themselves, not just the use in the article. --RobthTalk 03:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I changed the page to explain this. — Omegatron 02:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

They should be linked, not inlined, from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion.

Completely unnecessary. — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. Fair use may not apply on a talk page, and there's no reason to take the risk. --RobthTalk 03:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
There have been edit wars over images, so there has been times to where the pictures are linked. These are few and far between, so they should be linked so debates can be solved. Once the discussions are solved, then we can procede with the outcome based on the agreement and also on our fair use policies. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use may not apply on a talk page

Using a thumbnail of an image in a discussion about the image itself is pretty much the definition of fair use.

so there has been times to where the pictures are linked

I think you're talking about something else. This is about discussions of fair use images on talk pages, not about controversial images and the like.
But whatever. This point isn't worth fighting over. — Omegatron 04:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Images that do not comply with this policy within 48 hours after notification

Why is this only 48 hours? Deleting images is permanent, and should not be done lightly. — Omegatron 03:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of images has not been permanent for some months now. 48 hours, in theory, allows us to eliminate new problematic uploads in a reasonably time-efficient manner. --RobthTalk 03:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
We have the ability to restore images, like how we restore pages from deletion. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 04:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
One of the problems is that people take uploading itself too lightly. Sorry if copyrights seem boring, but people don't really have a right to complain when they ignore all those messages that show up on the upload page. -- Ned Scott 05:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Ned that respect for copyright laws is extremely important. I would like to see a two-tier system where obvious copyright violations are disposed of immediately, but where we take time to deliberate more borderline cases. To keep things simpler and to aovid instruction-creep, I'm fine with just leaving it at 48 hours for now. It is not the main thing we need to be discussing, in my opinion. Johntex\talk 05:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there a link onto the welcome temaplates on how to upload images and our copyright policies. If not, I would strongly include that in the future. I think half of our problem, as what Ned suggests, is that most of the population doesn't know (or doesn't care) about copyright. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Equal or better quality

Incredible how people jump at the first opportunity to make a change to this criteria if they like it. Please, discuss. Remember the "if someone reverts your change, don't redo, but discuss" and therefore, "if you don't agree, leave the original revision and discuss" corollary? Why is that so difficult to understand? -- ReyBrujo 03:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, let's revert back to about a year ago before this policy got high-jacked. The business about about pushing for all free images is new and does not enjoy consensus of the commmunity. Johntex\talk 04:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
How about a compromise to "equal or nearly equal"? That still gives the option to replace a fair use image with a slightly lower quality free image, but it avoids the problem of swapping out useful fair use images with free ones that are so poor as to be nearly worthless. Johntex\talk 04:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if I sounded harsh. Between Everywhere Girl's deletion review, some cruft AFD and the stupid WP:SCV backlog that does not want to die, I am reaching my limit.
You do understand that any "compromise" we can reach here would not be enough, as we are only two? I would prefer a solution similar to the one at the fair use guideline, with a huge message box stating that some rewording has been suggested for the first point, and prepare the amendment for it. I do not think "acceptable" is a bad wording, but it is just me. -- ReyBrujo 04:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Why on earth I started this here instead of WP:FUC, where it should be discussed? Sorry for messing that up. -- ReyBrujo 04:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think people understand that if we really wanted quality first before all other considerations, we'd just copy anything and everything we wanted, word for word, with the "fair use claim" of educational use to better mankind. As strange as it sounds, we're not here to build quality first. Quality is extremely important, but the reason Wikipedia exists today is the goal to create content that can be released under the GFDL. Keep in mind, I am someone who's uploaded fair use images, and I will continue to upload fair use images, but not to improve quality. We should upload fair use only when it is necessary, not when it makes things better, even if it helps someone understand a topic better. Granted such a statement has it's own gray areas, but the attitude here with some people is down right alarming. Consensus can change, but Wikipedia's core goals cannot change and they should not change. While how we achieve the goals of Wikipedia is up for discussion, the goals themselves are not. -- Ned Scott 04:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind, it took me a while to realize this myself. -- Ned Scott 04:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I disagree with that statement. Even educational uses don't allow for blanket lifting of content. For instance, some of our info comes from textbooks specifically designed to be sold for educational uses. It would not be fair use to just copy them here and deprive the copyright owners of their revenue. We should definitely use appropriate fair use images to improve our quality, just as we use fair use textual quotations to improve our quality. Johntex\talk 04:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I like Robth's change much, much, infinitely much more than the "acceptable" one. Johntex? -- ReyBrujo 04:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Not bad! Of course, it still leads the door open for arguments about how good an image has to be to "serve the necessary encyclopedic purpose." but it is a start. Definitely better than the old wording. Johntex\talk 04:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Robth seems to have hit the sweet spot on the wording. -- Ned Scott 05:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, this is a far superior wording. Good job Robth! Borisblue 17:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
My example of coping "anything and everything" was an extreme to illustrate a point, and not meant to be taken literally. On this same line of thought, I believe there are fair use images that could very easily be used downstream even under commercial use (assuming the image is still just being used in the article itself). My point is that the original goals were to create a big ass repository of free info. We don't have to worry about recording history are making the sum of human knowledge just incase no one else does. Everything in Wikipedia can be found somewhere else, and probably in a better quality. The power of Wikipedia comes from the centralization of the knowledge and the fact that anyone can re-use the content without red tape. The wildly ironic thing is that it's painfully easy for us to use the content of Wikipedia with very laid back fair use claims because of the GFDL. There's nothing stopping anyone from having a list of episodes with the text from Wikipedia and screen shots from the show. We might be arguing for nothing. -- Ned Scott 05:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Most of the planet does not have fair sue so your claim is false.Geni 21:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
That is wrong. I challenge you to provide one single example of a country that does not recognize fair use for text. Moreover, China and several other populous countries have essentially zero protection of copryigtht. At any case, we follow US law on the US Wikiepdia, so the question of what they do in outer Slovenia or St. Paul Australia is not limiting on us. Johntex\talk 00:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
It might not be part of your vision, but I'd certainly like to see en: preloaded on OLPC machines sent to remote parts of Cameroon, India, etc. Certainly when I work on articles I have something like a Cameroonian high-school student in mind when thinking about whether I've set context sufficiently. Stan 01:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Do you think that India and Cameroon don't have fair dealing laws?
Do you think that free content licensing automatically makes redistribution legal under their local copyright law? — Omegatron 02:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
in terms of copyright yes. India probably has something simular to uk law. At a guess Cameroon probably follows french law but I don't deal with that much. Fair dealing has little if anything in common with fair use and when it comes to images is largely an irrelivance (pretty poor when it comes to text as well but things are somewhat messy there). In many ways de minimis would be the cloest to fair use under UK law.Geni 03:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Johntex UK law does not recognise "fair use" full stop. Now we've got the game playing out of the way we were talking about images rather than text so you rather appear to be moveing the goal posts.03:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
"Most of the planet does not have fair sue so your claim is false.Geni 21:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)"
Was this in response to something I said? If it's about my "wildly ironic thing" comment, I meant that it would be easy to make a fork of Wikipedia and then include fair use images. -- Ned Scott 15:48, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
IT was about ease of use fopr downstream users.Geni 18:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't keep off the grass

The debate here is often framed as being between the idealists who want to promote a free ("as in speech") dictionary and the pragmatists who don't care about ideals and just want to create a good (or at least pretty) encyclopedia.

I actually think the defense of fair use is an ideal worth fighting for. To me, we're like people who like in a city with a beautiful park covered with "keep off the grass" signs, with the powers that be confining us to a few barren pathways. Citizens in other cities walk on the grass in their parks without destroying them, and courts have upheld the public's right to walk on grass in a non-destructive manner.

Rather than joining together in a campaign to get rid of the signs, however, activists are split: While some want to force the city to respect our rights to walk on the grass, others are trying to create little scraps of privately owned grass for the public to walk on. These latter activists object very strenuously to people who ignore the "keep off the grass" signs--because it reduces the incentive to create private grass.

The basic Wikipedia goal is to allow the public to understand their own world. Increasing amounts of that world are copyrighted, and stuff that is copyrighted today will remain copyrighted until all of us are dead (thanks to Sonny Bono). To say that that's OK because we can make our own freely-licenced images is to miss the point--no matter how many images we create, the world is still out there, and if we can't depict the copyrighted parts of it, then huge chunks will forever (for us, the living, anyway) remain off limits.

I don't mean to put down the open source movement, of which the GFDL is a part--it's an important response to the corporatization of our culture. But when people start hyper-enforcing the draconian rules that the GFDL was meant to be a response to in order to make sure that the GFDL is necessary--it's a classic example of the means becoming the ends with lamentable results. Nareek 22:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

One, what you're proposing is not part of the WP mission. Other people, such as the EFF, engage in that much more effectively than WP ever can. Two, don't underestimate the ability of free content to crowd out unfree. The oldest part of WP, its article text, is already squeezing traditional encyclopedia makers out of business. Even my own average-quality photos are gradually popping up here and there where once a paid-for stock image might once have been used instead. When people see their proprietary photos routinely passed over for free ones, they're going to get real interested in their free-licensing options. In software, it used to be that everybody made their projects proprietary by default, and now it's commonplace for software projects to be open-source right from the start; twenty years ago only a handful of visionaries believed that this could possibly happen. Stan 23:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Page protection

As this talk page is also serving as talk page for Wikipedia:Fair use criteria, I'm posting here. There seems to be an edit war going on at that page. I've protected the page. Please try to reach an agreement here. I'll watch the page anyway, but anyone can request unprotection at my talk page or at WP:RfPP. Musical Linguist 00:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

  • *sigh* fair use is a risky legal examption. The conditions should be keep tight and what is and what's not is not somethign a community can decide. Only judges can, and we shouldn't be risking just for prettyfying articles, we should be cautious. Well done ML. -- Drini 00:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Sadly, protection won't work because most of the ones discussing here are administrators, and as you can see, still edit the page. -- ReyBrujo 01:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Disputed tag again

Ok, so, the famed disputed tag is there again. Let's put this clear: Do you object the policy (as in, wanting to demote this as guideline or essay) or points inside the policy? -- ReyBrujo 01:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Um. There's no such thing as "demoting to guideline or essay". You misunderstand how policy is made. See Policies and guidelines, especially The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.
If points within the policy are significantly disputed (look at the entire rest of this talk page), then the page is no longer policy. It will not be until consensus is reached. Then it becomes policy again.
The tag exists to inform people who are interested in the policy (especially "new editors referred to this page") that the page as written is disputed, and to direct them to the discussion of the dispute on the talk page. — Omegatron 01:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
It's kind of funny to see the page as a whole being disparaged down in the middle, at a section heading where people won't see it unless it's on their watchlist. Sort of a "stealth" tagging. The problem with stealth policy change is that the moment you act on it, it becomes widely visible! :-) So this tag is kind of pointless anywhere except at the top. Stan 01:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Unfortunately, we have some revert warriors. — Omegatron 02:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
And you had the idea of hiding it? Don't think that's gonna work, given the number of touchy admins involved. :-) Stan 02:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I didn't intend to hide anything. I added a tag to show visitors that the policy is disputed, and it was inappropriately changed to a custom "this page is being discussed" tag. So I tagged the policy section of the page, which is where most of the dispute is centered, and that was changed to the custom "not really disputed" tag, too. This behavior is unacceptable, as the page is very clearly disputed. — Omegatron 02:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I dumbed the point down since it was apparent that not even full protection would stop reverters. Again, read what you "gave me" to read: if you want to change the policy, discuss, don't just change it as you were doing. That is childish behaviour, not administrator-like. -- ReyBrujo 03:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The part that's disputed

Fair use images that are legally usable in the United States should not be deleted until a suitable, more free replacement has been found.

There is legitimate concern that this will discourage users from finding or creating free replacements, but there are other solutions that are more productive than deletion of encyclopedic content. — Omegatron 02:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Which are...? — Matt Crypto 02:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
There are a few ideas floating around. Watermarking or article-visible tagging of the images has been suggested, for instance. What ideas can you come up with? — Omegatron 02:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think a little copyright "C" floating in the corner (the suggestion way above) will really solve the disincentive problem. — Matt Crypto 02:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Do you think that deleting images encourages widespread free replacement? — Omegatron 02:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I've recently been clearing out years old unfree images. Judgeing by the content of some of them I'm going for yes.Geni 02:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. We've seen removal trigger replacements for unfree images we had for years. That it helps sometimes is hard to dispute. --Gmaxwell 02:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
But is it the only method to trigger replacements? Is it the best one? A while back there was a suggestion that a tag could be added to the image which would indicate, in a sufficiently annoying manner, that a given image is fair use but could be replaced with a free image. Was anything ever done about that? (I'm thinking of something like a red banner under the image — that could be even more of an incentive than mere removal.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

On Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), there is a suggestion to use a template like {{reqphoto}} on the talk page. — Omegatron 03:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a serious dispute about what our policy actually is on the talk page, so I've removed the disputed tag. It's true that we have one person here objecting to the standing policy, but that doesn't change that it is the policy. If you'd like to change the policy you should discuss it, not alter the policy pages to imply the policy isn't what it is simply because you think it shouldn't be.--Gmaxwell 02:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Policy does not exist without consensus. I don't see any consensus here. — Omegatron 03:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
And that gives you the right to modify the policy at will? Who now needs to read how to make a policy? -- ReyBrujo 03:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I for one also dispute that this policy is a good thing and agreed to by all. Georgewilliamherbert 03:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
There had been formal attempts to "lessen" the policy for portals, promotional content and lists, and this is only since I pay attention to this page. And all of them failed. The only amendment that was approved was the one for speedy deletion. Anyone is welcomed to create a new amendment for this policy. -- ReyBrujo 04:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Failed? Amendment? What are you talking about? This page does not have consensus and is therefore not policy, no matter what template you stick at the top. — Omegatron 02:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Again, do not just modify a policy without discussing. If you do not consider this a valid policy, I invite you to request its deletion. Or, if you do understand this is a policy and not a soapbox, you can leave a message at Jimbo's page to ask for his opinion about your changes, since it appears you do not want to create an amendment, or about the policy status of this page. -- ReyBrujo 03:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm of two minds about this "consensus" business. On the one hand, this situation is not that different than that of the perennial proposals to get rid of NPOV or NOR. We don't tag those policies as "disputed" every time a handful of users get together and decide that they are unworkable or inconvenient (or "getting in the way of building a good encyclopedia"). On the other hand, I don't have a lot of optimism about en: working this out on our own (perhaps part of the oft-discussed scaling problem) and I doubt that User:Jimbo Wales' suggestion is workable. So I sympathise with the temptation to just throw one's hands up and declare "There's no use in pretending that we collectively have either the resources or the community support to adhere to the spirit behind allowing fair use on en:". If we're not willing, or able, to clean up the mess, and instead spend time edit-warring[9] and name-calling[10] it may be more honest to admit that we can't come to grips with it, and wallpaper the related pages with boilerplate to that effect (but please don't take this as encouragement to go do that). Are we really sure that there is a consensus to be had? There are always going to be users advocating for using everything United States caselaw hasn't specifically disallowed and/or aren't interested in the free culture movement, and media that isn't freely licensed is still going to get deleted. Frankly, I wonder if the best thing to do with the page wouldn't be to say "[[Here]] is a long list of all the hoops you should jump through if you're uploading something that is not freely licensed, but, even if you follow every single one of them, be aware that it may be deleted for reasons that you may never get a personally satisfying explanation for." Perhaps that would avoid some of the ill-will generated when a file that took time and effort to upload and properly tag gets deleted because it wasn't being used correctly. Jkelly 04:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
aren't interested in the free culture movement
Do you really think that anyone here doesn't care about free content? — Omegatron 02:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a joke, right? Like I said before, I do believe fair use has a place here on Wikipedia, but I don't want to be associated with this kind of insanity. From the very start of Nupedia/Wikipedia and from the Wikimedia Foundation and from Jimbo Wales, our priority of being free and moving away from fair use is very high. I can understand if people here want to change things, but those priorities will never change. Don't get so full of yourself that you believe you can overwrite one of the core reasons why this project exists today.

It took me a year to realize just how high the priority of free is on Wikipedia. It's a major misconception and is the real reason why this is an issue. If more people knew from the start how high our free content priority was then we wouldn't have so many people stuck on using fair use. We need to focus on educating users from the start, so they don't get all mixed up. There's no reason that it should be this hard to become aware of so many things on Wikipedia, it's no wonder people think this way. Not just for fair use, but even for things like the MOS or when to not make a fictional character article. If you don't tell people about these things, and they get used to being able to do these things, they'll believe very strongly that it should be apart of Wikipedia. Lets fight the real core of this issue, lets convince the masses this is a good idea instead of having the same stupid argument every week. -- Ned Scott 04:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

As has been discussed on wikien-l and elsewhere - fair use is at least somewhat transitive (if it's ok for Wikipedia to use it in Fair Use, most others should be ok with using it in the same manner as well). The objective of "freely redistributable content" is met if we use fair use content in a manner consistent with the law. I don't think anyone disagrees with the policy of making Wikipedia as free as possible; the question is, whether the policy as enforced is being handled by people who (not my words) are enforcing "copyright paranoia", or who really have a reasonable balanced view of what's best for the project.
I and others greatly dispute that nuking all the Fair Use images is in the best interest of the project, OR required under our "freely redistributable" core goal. See the thread "[WikiEN-l] Nuke WP:CITE and WP:RS" in the Wikien-L archives for more. Georgewilliamherbert 04:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
As far as I understand, redistributing a DVD with fair use claims could be legal in US, but not in other countries. -- ReyBrujo 04:41, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
That's not relevant to the discussion at hand. There are country to country differences with other fair-use usage, yes. However, there are also countries where it's been asserted that the GFDL and GPL don't work, either, so redistributing our content there is problematic in a completely legal sense. We don't seem to stop all distribution while that's being sorted out. Georgewilliamherbert 04:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Like I said before, I do believe fair use images have a place on Wikipedia. Just about every image I've uploaded has been under fair use. I regret uploading most of the screen shots for the Lists of episodes, but not the other ones. -- Ned Scott 05:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
"The objective of "freely redistributable content" is met if we use fair use content in a manner consistent with the law." I read this and actually stood up and punched the wall in frustration, knowing that it was said in all good faith, but painfully illustrates the depth of misconception on this topic. The notion that fair use is freely redistributable on a scale anywhere comparable to that of freely licensed content is painfully inaccurate. Fair use is a concept confined to a very few legal systems. It might not apply to (to use my favorite example, and a medium in which I hope my writing will one day be incorporated) inexpensive commercially produced textbooks. Free licenses are designed to be applicable across legal systems, and valid for the greatest spectrum of uses possible; the only objection I have heard regarding the scope of their redistributability is that they might be considered an "unconscionable contract" under some systems. Please alert me to any objection of which I am not aware.
Furthermore, the statement that legality across national borders is "not relevant to the discussion at hand" is highly inaccurate. This project is not being created to sit here on the internet; it is meant to serve as a reservoir of freely redistributable content available to all who wish to use it, and being redistributable across legal systems is critical to that goal.
Finally, note that the elimination of fair use from en.wp is not being considered in this discussion, as your comment seems to assume. --RobthTalk 05:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
That may not be explicitly on the table, but some participants in this discussion have stated in the past that it is their goal. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
"First they came for the freely distributed promotional photos, and I did nothing...Then they came for pictures released for use by the "press, businesses, organizations, and individuals", and I did nothing... Then, one day, BOOM, En became the German Wikipedia." You know, that's how it happens. ;)
And a side reminder, to all Wikipedians who find themselves actually inflicting self-injury: It may be time to consider another hobby. It's just a website. You don't run it. These are not your problems. No amount of punching, hand-slamming, or monitor-cursing should be involved in your participation here. Wikipedia is not mandatory. Or, as David Letterman is so fond of noting, it's an exhibition, not a competion -- so please, folks, please... no wagering. Jenolen speak it! 10:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
To second Josiah's comment, the goal of eliminating Fair Use has both been stated, and followed, by some (there are informal projects by sets of people who will go around tagging-for-deletion fair use images, unless someone notices and objects).
The free redistributability across borders is a key goal, yes, but the intersection of that goal with the fair use / GFDL license validity issue is still an open discussion, not settled. Georgewilliamherbert 00:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The notion that fair use is freely redistributable on a scale anywhere comparable to that of freely licensed content is painfully inaccurate.

  • Common misconception: Fair use content is not redistributable by downstream users.
    • In reality: Fair use is common in many countries and chances are good that content used under it can be redistributed.
  • Common misconception: Free content can always be redistributed.
    • In reality: Free licensing just means that the copyright holder wishes it to be redistributable, but in many cases it is not. Nazi insignia, coats of arms, and images of money are a few examples of things that can be released under a free license, but which cannot be redistributed or used "for any purpose" in every country. (But our servers are located in the US, so we can include them on our particular website, and most people can still benefit from it.) With both fair use and free content, redistribution may or may not be legal, and a reuser is responsible for determining for themselves whether reuse is legal in their location for each thing that they reproduce.
  • Common misconception: The concept of redistribution is relevant to this discussion page.
    • In reality: The ability to redistribute content doesn't even matter. We're not talking about using fair use content in place of free content. We're talking about a very specific thing here: non-free content that cannot be replaced with free content. If you prohibit this content, you're purposefully leaving a hole in Wikipedia's coverage. Just because something might not be redistributable in certain circumstances doesn't mean it should be removed from the project. — Omegatron 02:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Fair use is common in many countries? Ok list them.Geni 03:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Berne Convention signatories.
Of course it varies between countries, but here's some info about the countries that have "fair use", "fair dealing", or have adopted the "fair practice" of the Berne Convention:
Fair dealing is in no way equiv to fair use. You claimed fair use was common. Back up the claim or withdraw it.Geni 03:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Why don't you explain how they are different for the purposes of this discussion? — Omegatron 17:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
because I generaly assume that people have read fair dealing and fair use. The differences are mostly in the type of use allowed. In particular the use of a work simply to identify a person would be near imposible.Geni 17:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict galore) Seems to be a misunderstanding there, not all signatories of the Bene convention have fair use or fair dealing, at least not in the form you seem to think. The Bene convention just says that quotations are permissable and that the extent of such is up to the legistation in each of the member states to descide. And indeed most countries do have various laws that permit quotations and various other users of copyrighted works in scertain contexts (news reporting, education etc), but US law is I by far the most liberal in this (followed by the Philipines who has basicaly just copied large portions of US law with a few minor rewrites) and so saying that what is fair use in the US would also be permissable in all Bene cignatory states is just not the case. The convention leaves the legistlation of this up to each signatory state, and the implementations are usualy only a restricted subset of what the US law permits. The extent of what is permited and not can only be learned by checking the local law in the nation in question, the Bene convention just establish a common "framework" and a few "constants" (such as automatic copyright protection of creative works), the legal implementations are still up to each signatory to work out for themselves so there rely is no such thing as "international copyright law", just a few shared princibles. and "US style" fair use rely is very rare, sad but true. --Sherool (talk) 18:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use of scientific diagrams to illustrate discoveries

I'm working on an article on particle physics (specifically, Oops-Leon), which I am planning to expand and would like to illustrate when I do. The article is about the discovery of a particle, and essentially the only way to illustrate that discovery (or the particle itself, for that matter) is to reproduce the plot that indirectly confirms its existence. Would this be allowed under fair use as an illustration of the discovery? -- SCZenz 11:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Is the source data for this plot in any way available to the public (that would generaly be needed to make an expermient verifiable right)? If so then no. That image would be replacable by a free diagram made by ourselves using the source data (raw data/facts can not be copyrighted), and as such not acceptable under our fair use criterea. --Sherool (talk) 12:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
It is not common practice to make detailed source data available to the public in particle physics, so no the raw data is not available. In any case, repeating their analysis (original research) would not illustrate their discovery. -- SCZenz 12:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
IANAL, but since that plot is part of what the article is about and has historical significance, its inclusion might well be fair use. Judging by a quick look at several relevant pages, Fermilab probably holds the copyright to works produced under government contracts (i. e. the plot is not public domain), so I suggest deleting the image from Commons, uploading a low-resolution version here, tagging it as fair use and writing a rationale. Concurrently, ask Fermilab whether they would release the image as CC–BY–SA or something like that—it can’t hurt.

—xyzzyn 14:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. By the way, if you have any insight about how to use improve the information Template_talk:PD-USGov-DOE (which is 100% ambiguous for Fermilab), please go for it! Oh, and one more question... would an illustration of the apparatus from the same preprint qualify as fair use for showing the experiment and how it was done? Presumably not, but I thought I'd double-check. -- SCZenz 19:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Depends. In legal terms, I guess the amount of fair use items matters, so you should use the absolute minimum. Here we have the additional constraint that if a free image can be obtained to replace the illustration, you shouldn’t use the non-free image. Would it be possible to make or obtain a free illustration? About Fermilab, I’ve changed the information to be more conservative for now and asked for expert opinions there. If you have the time to ask Fermilab about their copyright policy, feel free to do so. —xyzzyn 20:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe the apparatus exists any longer. The diagram could be replaced by a similar diagram I made myself, but my concern is that this would be a derivative work and hence un-licensable under GFDL. -- SCZenz 20:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
It would not be a derivative work unless you derived your drawing from it. If you found a variety of sources of information, and then drew an original diagram based (perhaps) on the layout of the diagram you refer to, but used your own artistic technique, and included other information from other reliable sources, and perhaps illustrated aspects that had not been covered well in the diagram you ferer to, then the drawing would probably be sufficiently different to be unique. You could offer that diagram into the public domain, and fair use would no longer be an issue. Atom 20:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Legally, a derivative work is one that incorporates copyrightable elements from another work. Factual scientific data is, in most cases, not copyrightable as it lacks the necessary creative element. Similarly, placing data on an x-y graph is too obvious and common to be, by itself, copyrightable. A scientific image may incorporate creative decisions in how a plot is rendered (sizing, colors, line widths, labeling, etc.), and those creative elements may be copyrightable. As a result, any replotting should copy only those aspects that are strictly necessary to convey the same factual content. To be honest though, many simple scientific graphs are arguably {{PD-ineligible}}, though we rarely mark them as such. Dragons flight 20:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
The analysis that goes into making a mass histogram from a physical experiment would seem to make it eligable for copyright. The plots we're talking about here would be similar to Image:Upsilon peak.jpg; although it's a straightforward histogram of a quantity, a tremendous amount of creative work went into turning raw data into that histogram. But does that not count because no creative decisions were made regarding the appearence of the plot? -- SCZenz 20:26, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
In the case of science, the guiding dichtomy is the distinction between "creative works" and "facts which were discovered". The latter class is entirely ineligible for copyright. The interpretation of this has been fairly liberal as regards natural truth. Science provides objectively correct ways of doing things. If the process of analysis follows an objectively determined sequence of steps such that another individual presented with the same measurements could reasonably produce an equivalent figure, then the process is not creative (in the meaning of copyright law) and thus ineligible for protection, regardless of how complicated that sequence may be. The US (unlike some other countries) has explicitly rejected the notion that the amount of work involved has any bearing on copyright. For example, an art restorer may expend hundreds of hours making an old painting look just like new, but because the goal is to reproduce the original (rather than create something new) the courts have ruled that the art restorer earns no access to copyright protection. But the exclusions in copyright law actually go further. The result of a "mechanical process" is never embued with more protection than the original. Where a mechanical process is any sequence of transformation, that once defined, can be performed correctly in only one way. And (somewhat strangely in my opinion) one gets no credit for the creativity that might be implied in choosing one mechanical process over another. Since most data analysis is, in this sense, a mechanical process, it is generally not possible to take raw factual data and produce data products that are copyrightable. Dragons flight 21:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I have to say (and it is only my opinion) that the image that you gave an example of is not copyritable. If you drew a similar image, based from the data, your image would not be copywritable either. Atom 20:41, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
There is a fine line there, the content is not protected but I believe the presentation of it can be. A sequence of numbers can be presented in a lot of ways, and at least in some parts of the world the mere choice of fonts, colors and layout or grap type to use can be considered creative enough to protect a spesific presentation of something, even if the underlying data itself is not. Hence it's generaly safer to redraw diagrams and such using the base data "just in case". --Sherool (talk) 16:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

OR is relaxed for images for the very reasons of being able to create a free alternative. WP:OR#Original images. -- Ned Scott 05:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That is, what I can make of it: if your conclusion is the same, thus you are not introducing new ideas/ conclusions, then it's ok? -- Ned Scott 05:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The GFDL and Fair Use

I have seen many arguments here that seemingly justify fair use under educational applications and the non-profit status of the Wikimedia Foundation.

I am arguing strongly here that this is a completely mistake notion, and something that needs to be ended clearly, with wording on this page making a very clear statement that educational fair use simply can not be used on Wikipedia! While I may be one of the first to acknowledge that benefits to an educational experience to those using Wikipedia, that is really stretching the definition of an instructor to the point I believe it breaks the whole concept altogether. Educational fair-use is only for instructors making very limited quantities of copyrighted material for use directly in their course of instruction. This would be like something attached to a course syllibus, shown in the classroom, or used as an illustrative hand-out.

This should never be a rationale or justification for inclusion of images or media on Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia project for that matter. If this is the only justification you are using for its inclusion, you have simply violated copyright.

As for the non-profit nature of the WMF, I am strongly asserting that it is completely irrelevant to the nature of the content of Wikipedia and what can be permitted. The GFDL in this situation trumps any discussion regarding the use of non-commercial applications for Wikipedia. The very reason why CC-by-SA-NC (and other non-commercial only license) images are not allowed also applies to using the non-commercial rationalization for fair use.

The GFDL itself requires that you can't restrict subsequent recipients of the GFDL'd material to non-commercial only applications. In short, if you include images that have a non-commercial reproduction only usage, they invalidate the GFDL simply by their inclusion. The only way that you can include these images is if they can also be reproduced under the same terms of the GFDL, or under even more liberal reproduction terms (such as the CC-by-SA license).

Rationalizing the use of images or text on Wikipedia because this is a non-profit or non-commercial group simply isn't appropriate mainly because the GFDL prohibits that sort of restriction. Or to be more clear about this point, if the WMF instead owned all contributions to Wikipedia and displayed this content under a propritary license (or the GFDL was changed to a non-commercial use only license), you might be able to justify applications of fair use because of the non-commercial nature of this project.

The GFDL, however, kills any attempt to use that as an excuse, and as such must have a much smaller number of images available that are legal to use under a fair-use argument. This has nothing to do with mirrors or any other sort of user that might eventually use this content. It has to do with freedom, and that the GFDL does not permit restricting commercial activity. --Robert Horning 19:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it's generally understood that Wikipedia content has to be usable by users beyond Wikipedia, including commercial users--so justifications based specifically on Wikipedia's noncommercial or other status don't fly. Fortunately, the types of fair use that fair use advocates generally advocate for--such as promotional photos and cover images--have a strong enough legal grounding that they don't require any particular kind of user to be fair. Nareek 19:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Still illegal to use by some wikipedias though. It's kind of annoying when certain articles can't be directly translated between wikis (to say the least) --Kim Bruning 20:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't think it is as understood sufficiently. Both of these rationalizations (educational fair use and the non-profit nature of the WMF) were expressed in discussions above for why certain kinds of images and materials are used on Wikipedia. I am simply pointing out here that this is something massively misunderstood and not a valid argument. This is also a very common new user mistake, to think that educational fair use is a legitmate justification for adding some kinds of content. As an administrator (not here on Wikipedia, but elsewhere on other WMF projects), I've come across several new users who simply put a fair use tag up and claim educational fair use, because what they are doing is educational in nature. I've unfortunately had to come down hard and delete content that was added using this justification. To see these arguments resurface again here on Wikipedia just makes me cringe, particularly when users I encounter are saying "It's OK on Wikipedia, why not here?" --Robert Horning 20:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand what the GFDL has to do with our activities here in the talk page about WP:FU, so therefore I don't really know why you posted what you did here. Well, the first paragraph sure, but the rest of it about the GFDL and other things is irrelevant to our fair-use discussion. Here, we are almost always (barring inappropriate tangents) talking about fair-use. Fair-use has to do with properly utilizing copyrighted works.. works that are always exclusively covered under licenses besides the GFDL, or no license at all. Moreover, images and media (which this section is almost exclusively about as well) are almost never licensed under GFDL. Most people prefer CC-BY-SA 2.5 or some other CC license that is wiki-friendly.--Jeff 20:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
No, this has to do with fair use discussions because the non-commercial nature of Wikipedia is being used as a justification for broadening the scope of fair use material that would be permissible on Wikipedia. I am pointing out that you can't make that broad of an assumption, explicitly because of the GFDL. There would be some sorts of images that you could use if this were available through a non-commercial use only license. But as a result of the GFDL being the underlying legal framework for all Wikipedia contributions, these images simply are not permitted.
I guess I'm trying to raise my voice here to note that fair use, IMHO, has gone way too far on Wikipedia and needs to be scaled back a bit. There are images here on Wikipedia that are claiming fair use when in fact that justification simply doesn't hold water. --Robert Horning 20:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Gosh, I don't know. I see what you mean, GFDL is the underlying strata upon which we build, but I always think of images and media we use under fair-use rationale as optional window dressings that are wholly seperate from being confused with GFDL and it's ability to be used commercially.
Here's how I think about it. en.wikipedia is the framework we all build upon. Text is GFDL and images are preferably free (PD, or CC-BY-SA 2.5 or whatever else) and when appropriate we use fair-use because en.wikipedia is an educational resource. Any downstream commercial use of en.wikipedia needs to cull out the FU images (which is easy to do) so that they remain consistent with the law. I firmly believe in en.wikipedia's goals as a useful educational resource and I don't believe that our goal in creating the "best free educational resource" needs to be superseded by caring about commercial downstream use having to cull out material we use under FU.
I think this all is resolvable without forking en into enfu as Ned and Stickfig have suggested. As I've mentioned, culling out FU images from data dumps is very easy. I'd rather not fork en into enfu, but if that's what has to happen so we can use fair-use to create a world class educational resource then I guess there isn't much other option..--Jeff 21:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
You don't get it. Wikipedia was created for downstream use. That's the entire fucking idea. They shouldn't take a back seat to that, ever. -- Ned Scott 00:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd phrase this as "Wikipedia is a project to give away a free, reusable encyclopedia." and being online, using wiki software, etc. is a means to that end. It's true that there are a lot of users here whose vision, or interest, begins and ends with being involved in a great website -- that's fine; their editorial contributions are just as valuable as the person who is thinking about the one laptop per child project, or ESL in Africa. Your obvious frustration when those editors insert themselves into licensing policy discussions is understandable, but to some degree it is just as much our responsibility to show why that actual end goal is important and attractive -= I understand why pointing to scraper sites doesn't strike people as persuasive. Jkelly 00:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
There is simply no evidence to suggest that including screenshots from Seinfeld, promotional pictures of the Ramones or cover images from Final Fantasy is going to prevent Wikipedia content from being used for educational purposes in Africa. That people believe so passionately in this evidence-free notion is something that frankly I do not get. Nareek 01:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
This was formatted as a response to me but I'm not sure what you might be expecting to hear, other than that if you are asserting expertise in IP law in every jurisdiction in Africa, I'd like to ask you if you would be willing to volunteer some time and energy. Jkelly 01:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Well I assume most will have inherited either the british "fair dealing" system or the french system.Geni 02:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I can assure you that there is no country in the world that publishers worry about sending their publications to because the fair-use promo photos and cover images that they contain might get them into legal hot water. It is only in the Rotisserie League legal system invented by Wikipedia where this is a potential problem. Nareek 12:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

You don't get it. Wikipedia was created for downstream use. That's the entire fucking idea.

No one's proposing otherwise.

I always think of images and media we use under fair-use rationale as optional window dressings that are wholly seperate from being confused with GFDL and it's ability to be used commercially.

That's exactly what these people aren't getting.
We're talking about content that cannot be released under the GFDL. It will never, ever be free. But it will be legal for us to use it on our particular website in certain circumstances. As long as it helps our goal of creating a neutral, reliable information resource, we should use it.
A downstream user can only reuse parts of the project that are legal in their jurisdiction, regardless of whether it's free or fair use. You can license Tiananmen Square images as liberally as you want and they still won't be freely reproducible in China. Should we delete them from the project since they aren't 100% reusable?

if you are asserting expertise in IP law in every jurisdiction in Africa, I'd like to ask you if you would be willing to volunteer some time and energy.

We don't have to know anything about IP law in Africa. A reuser in Africa needs to understand local law, and know whether reproduction of our content is legal. In most cases, our free content will be reproducible. In some cases it will not. In some cases, our fair use content will be reproducible. In some cases it will not. None of this is our problem. Prohibiting non-free content doesn't help downstream users at all, but it does hurt us. — Omegatron 03:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
"We're talking about content that 'cannot be released under the GFDL" you lie.Geni 03:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
??? — Omegatron 03:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Your edits clearly show that you support fair use when free equivs are posible.Geni 03:26, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Your posit is an unwarranted tangent that we've discussed before elsewhere. The removal of that section of {tl|rfu} certainly is no indication of preferring FU over free equivs. There's major disagreement over what "equivalent" means. I, for instance, don't believe a photo taken by someone with their cell phone and released under CC-BY-SA 2.5 is > a high quality photo released licensed for promotional use. I've suggested a few times that we should define thresholds in which free usurps a properly used high quality FU photograph(resolution, focus, etc), but I've yet to succeed in that effort.--Jeff 08:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and the RFU template is flawed because there's also a disagreement over whether images should be deleted before there's an actual replacement. I'm in the camp that believes FU shouldn't be deleted before a replacement is found. Neither of these 2 reasons are anti-free. I'd class them more as pro-inclusion.--Jeff 08:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
The second one is implicetly anti-free because it removes much of the insentive to be free.Geni 09:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

there's also a disagreement over whether images should be deleted before there's an actual replacement.

Surely you meant to say "Recently, a small number of users have started a campaign to change our official policies to delete images before an actual replacement is found". The official policies clearly state that fair use images are permitted until a free replacement becomes available. You'll need a lot more consensus than this before you can change official policy. — Omegatron 17:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
That oversight have been fixed (again). The fair use criteria is the policy that govern the use of unfree material on Wikipedia and it has never in it's exsitance permited fair use material to be used if a free licensed alternative could be created. So such images should never have been uploaded in the first place, nevermind staying untill a replacement is found. Though granted a few several year old images may have been uploaded before this policy existed. The only change in that regard has been to actualy enforce it more consistently, and that amendment was thouroughtly anounced, debated and approved over the course of several months (the fact that the majority of our 3+ million registered users never bother with policy issues and where unaware is not a mark against that consensus). No point in trying to pretend the policy does not exist. Been there had the RFC's and Jimbo himself dropped by and comfirmed that this was indeed the policy. So I suggest you stop beating that particular dead horse, the policy is there, you are free to argue for changing it, but untill it is changed the current version will be enforced. --Sherool (talk) 22:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Invalidating the GFDL

Omegatron has mentioned that the GFDL doesn't matter in this case. I am trying to point out that by having content on Wikipedia pages that can't be used under the GFDL, this invalidates the GFDL for that page and reverts all of the content, including the textual content, to private copyright status and in a certain line of thinking could make it illegal even for the WMF to "redistribute" the content. OK, I admit that is a stretch, but certainly it stops anybody else from copying the content of the Wikipedia article, or that you have to go through a very painful step by step process to even see if you are allowed to copy the article content.

Correct me here if I am missing something, but I see two very divergent viewpoints from this discussion:

  • Those who agressively want to use fair-use under any situation that is legally permissible, even if it would not normally be permitted in a commercial publication. Even if that content is not permitted to be reproduced beyond Wikipedia, that content should be still here.
  • A more conservative viewpoint that we do need to be concerned about potential reproduction of Wikipedia content and making sure that if you reproduce the article, with all of the images, that you are legally able to do so under the terms of the GFDL. And you are able to pass those rights onto 3rd parties, and even be able to allow people not necessarily living under American laws to also be able to reproduce this content.

I strongly argue that we need to be worried about what would be allowed if you try to reproduce any article or content here on Wikipedia. Besides trying to surf the fine edge of fair use doctrine to the point that some usage is clearly a copyvio, there is no reason why you need to be an IP lawyer if you want to reproduce a Wikipedia article. You should not have to go through each image, look up its license term, identify what its reason is for inclusion in the article, and have to decide for yourself if it a "free" image or not. Or if fair use even applies.

It doesn't matter what the actual license of the image or media (or textual quote, for that matter) is when you use it in an article. Don't muddle this issue with talk of CC-by-SA or other FLOSS licenses. When you copy a Wikipedia article, you are getting the whole content under the GFDL, warts and all. Including all of the associated media that is included with it. All that marking an image with an alternate license does is allow you to redistribute the image under slightly more liberal terms if you want to go through the effort of trying to identify the original license that it was included in Wikipedia under. Everything must be available for use under the terms of the GFDL, including fair use content. --Robert Horning 13:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Your interpretation is overly simplistic. The GFDL has nothing to do with the vast majority of images utilized on Wikipedia, nor should it.--Jeff 14:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Adding to what I said earlier... Every image that I've submitted to Wikipedia is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5, which requires attribution. If, as you say, any image used in an article falls under GFDL by having been included, then the GFDL would trump the license I chose to apply to my image which I retain copyright of. That's why you're wrong, because the GFDL has nothing to do with images on Wikipedia unless the author specifically says "I license this under the GFDL".--Jeff 15:08, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
On the contrary, the GFDL has everything to do with content on Wikipedia. All content including text, images, and other media, must either be licensed under the GFDL, or be under a license that can be redistributed under the terms of the GFDL. This can include public domain content, for instance, because you can also redistribute that stuff under the same terms as the GFDL. The same goes for CC-by-SA as well. If you can't redistribute the content under the GFDL, it simply can't be here. That you can redistribute content licensed under terms of the CC-by-SA license for purposes beyond those of the GFDL is irrelevant. The GFDL governs what can and can't be done with Wikipedia content. This must include fair use content as well. --Robert Horning 15:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
The GFDL is a license, and as such, unless the author explicitly says "I license this under the GFDL" then it is not licensed under the GFDL.--Jeff 15:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
By the way, see at the bottom? It says in the footer of every wikipedia page "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License", emphasis mine.--Jeff 15:29, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Verbatim_copying#Images Read that. I hope you stop barking up this tree as your are undeniably wrong.--Jeff 15:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, one of the goals in the GFDL was to prevent people from taking a free document (such as the Perl manual :-) ), adding some nonfree material, and restricting redistribution of the modified document. In particular, section 4's "You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License" could be interpreted to disallow any image whose license is not compatible. Addition of an image to a page certainly counts as modification, and the GFDL does apply to both image and text (for instance, it mentions that the images should be in editable formats). On the other hand, if one freely redistributes the modified document anyway, the license is achieving its intended purpose. So it's conceivable that it's a technical violation, but one of little interest. It would be worth pinging Eben Moglen to get additional insight. Maybe not a question one wants to ask though :-) , because if the answer is that it really is a GFDL violation, it not only kills all fair use on en: instantly, but also removes any possibility of fair-use forks too. Relicensing is impossible because we have no way to contact all the WP editors, even assuming they were amenable to relicensing. Stan 15:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, the "aggregation" argument for images seems weak; it would be more plausible if they were in separate galleries or some such. The real problem though is that any copyright holder (that's all of us) has standing to complain that a nonfree image added to text that they wrote is violating the GFDL. The first disgruntled editor to hire a lawyer could generate a lot of chaos... Stan 16:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Every article that quotes from a copyrighted text--or refers to the plot of a copyrighted work--is implicitly making a fair use claim. Such claims obviously do not invalidate the GFDL, else the whole Wikipedia project would be impossible.

I do agree with the general claim here that Wikipedia claims of fair use cannot be based on WP's non-commercial or non-profit status, because downstream users may not have that status. We can, on the other hand, assume that downstream users have some purpose related to educating the public; we don't need to guarantee that all images are safe for use on T-shirts or coffee mugs. Nareek 15:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how the GFDL is imagined to work with fair use quotations; there's no explicit allowance for it, and in the context of the original intended use (software manuals), quotations from copyrighted works are rarely seen. Stan 16:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Regrettably, I don't think Robert Horning understands fair use, copyright generally, or how licensing works; all of his conclusions are incorrect and seem to be based on completely mistaken premises. I would recommend that no one take his statements (in this section, or others) to be accurate reflections of the law.
As with anything, you can only give away what is yours to give, so anything that you did not author, you cannot license permission to use it. However, whenever your work incorporates or builds off of a work copyrighted by another author (i.e., is a derivative), you can still license whatever you contributed, and the GFDL will then govern what you authored. That other author's copyright still hangs over those incorporated portions, but only to impose some limitations rather than to defeat the GFDL license entirely. Anyone who wants to make use of your work ("downstream users") under the GFDL then needs to do one of two things: 1) either remove whatever element was not yours to license, such as by cropping out copyrighted images or quotes from an article, or 2) establish their own legal claim to use whatever underlying work yours built upon so they don't have to remove it. Postdlf 23:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
The GFDL was specifically designed to avoid that loophole. People were taking a supposedly-free manual, adding a bit of stuff, deleting the license statement, and then restricting redistribution. So the GFDL disallows mixing of GFDL bits with any bits that restrict redistribution, irrespective of whether it's easy or hard for a recipient to separate them again. That's why Jimbo suggested that WP images were "aggregrated" with WP text; that's the only form of mixing that the GFDL allows. However, the phrasing of the GFDL makes it clear that they're just addressing concerns that one GFDL document on a disk would "infect" everything else on it - note the specific reference to "volume of a storage or distribution medium". So I think Horning has raised a legitimate point about the GFDL. Does it matter? Well, you'd have to have a fair-use-hating editor that wrote the text of an article for which somebody else insisted on adding an unfree picture or quote, and he/she would have to hire a lawyer to write C&D, and then go to court if the Foundation decided to contest. Hard to say if WMF would spend money to defend unfree material... Stan 00:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, under your hypothetical the GFDL would prevent the deletion of the license statement, and whomever added the "bit of stuff," if they authored that stuff, would have to release that "stuff" under the GFDL as well. However, I don't see anything in the GFDL text addressing situations in which new GFDL content is created based on content that the author/modifier didn't author and so can't license. Postdlf 01:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ummm....

In case anyone here is unaware of it, not everything on Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL. Quotations are not. Most images are not.

  • All original Wikipedia text is distributed under the GFDL.
  • Text in Wikipedia, excluding quotations, has been released under the GNU Free Documentation License
  • Images used in Wikipedia may have their own, completely independent licensing scheme. Looking at an image's description page by clicking on the image itself should ideally tell you the copyright status of the image. Many images are either in the public domain or licensed under copyleft licenses (such as the GFDL), but many are copyrighted and used on Wikipedia under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law.

Just because we use different licenses for different content does not mean that it "invalidates the GFDL". Downstream users can use what they can use.

This isn't harmful to our goals, either. Our goal is to write a high quality encyclopedia that is as freely distributable as possible. Removing irreplaceable non-free content from the project does not make it any more freely distributable. It does, however, leave gaping holes in our supposedly neutral, comprehensive encyclopedia.

I do agree with the general claim here that Wikipedia claims of fair use cannot be based on WP's non-commercial or non-profit status, because downstream users may not have that status.

That's completely bogus. We can use anything that is legal for us to use, (and our non-commercial, non-profit educational status does make it more likely that our use will be considered fair). Whether or not downstream users are commercial has no relevance. If they can't use our content then they can't use our content. This might be because they're commercial and we're not. It might be because content is licensed only for use on our particular website. It be because our content is illegal to reproduce in that country, regardless of how freely we licensed it.

We should definitely replace fair use content with free content whenever possible.

We should certainly make it easy to reuse our content by clearly labeling the licensing and copyright holder of everything (which we already do).

But we shouldn't cripple our encyclopedia just because some (completely hypothetical) downstream user might have a problem legally reproducing something. That's their responsibility. Should we remove Image:Nazi Swastika.svg because a hypothetical downstream German user could go to prison for reproducing it? Maybe we can replace it with a GFDL text description instead. Should we remove Image:Tank Man (Tiananmen Square protester).jpg because downstream Chinese users can't reproduce it? When something can't be replaced with a free image, and can be used under US copyright law for purposes of criticism and commentary, we should use it.

I have yet to see any reason why we shouldn't, except the idea that it discourages free replacements, but, as we have said several times, there are other ways to encourage free replacements. — Omegatron 17:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Image licenses are only acceptable if they are as free, or more free than, the GFDL - i.e. "GFDL compatible". By free, we mean free from copyright restrictions, not any other laws (i.e. Nazi ensignia). Fair Use is not compatible with the GFDL. That you don't seem to care about downsteam users (the it's-their-problem mentality) is sad, but is not going to affect our policy. Our Fair Use policy never has been, and never will be, "if it's legal for us it's okay". ed g2s • talk 18:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Your statement flies contrary to established Wikipedia practice and policy.--Jeff 18:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
One of the many many anoying things abouit copyright law is that courts tend not to quite follow it. Formaly they have been advised against taking into account how much of a work is made up of fair use material. However we know from reading court judgements that they do take this into account. Thus being in a position where the other side can say "this so called free site contians ~320,000 bits of "fair use" media" is less than ideal.Geni 18:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Omegatron, you may not care about commercial downstream users, but I and a lot of other editors do. Why do you think the GNU licenses are phrased the way they are? It's just as important for commercial users to have the freedom to use the material as anybody else, and to be able to make a profit using it if they can figure out how. Stan 19:40, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Please read what I actually wrote before responding to it. — Omegatron 00:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Omegatron, I feel you have this very mistaken. The images here are an integral part of the article, not merely something auxillary and supplimental to it. As such, they must be capable of being distributed together with the GFDL under the same terms of the GFDL. This may mean a license that is perhaps even more open than the GFDL. I think that is accepted. But you can't include an image with a license that has conflicting terms to the GFDL (such as the CC-by-SA-NC or GPL). This also includes fair use on justifications that would be prohibited under the terms of the GFDL.
I also strongly disagree with the concept that you can add an image here on Wikipedia that would be impossible to be used by anybody copying the article, or being transmitted to a 3rd party, including commercial enterprises. The number of images that should be permitted on Wikipedia, including fair use images, can and should be significantly less than those that would be available to you if you were writing your own webpages on a private website. You can seek private propritary licensing and pay for a one-time use license or other arrangements that simply aren't available here in part because the content is distributed under the GFDL.
The only way to ensure that this content will remain free is if we are absolutely paranoid about copyright and say no to practically any and all claims of fair use except under the most strict and narrow definitions. If the images can be used by practically any author under certain limited circumstances, then their usage under the GFDL would also be permitted. This is not an issue of if the GFDL allows this, but if any copyrighted work can include these images. --Robert Horning 00:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

As such, they must be capable of being distributed together with the GFDL under the same terms of the GFDL.

I find that very hard to believe. We wouldn't be allowed to use any image license except GFDL if that were the case. — Omegatron 00:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. Some editors are heavily personally vested in the idea of everything on Wikipedia being free, and let's not confuse ourselves that it is their aim to "free" Wikipedia of any non-GFDL content (and through course, most of its' usefulness).--Jeff 00:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, that's a new one on me: which users are promoting the removal of all non-GFDL content? — Matt Crypto 00:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I certainly don't mean to include many people in that lot, but Robert Horning is one to be sure.--Jeff 00:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I said nothing of the sort. I just said that if you include fair-use material, it must also be compatable with the GFDL. You are putting words into my mouth that I did not say in the first place. If you add content that is available under a license other than the GFDL, it must be under a license that is "more free" than the GFDL, or has even fewer restrictions. It doesn't matter if it is an image or text. --Robert Horning 09:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what the problem is here with this concept. The collected article; images, text, audio, and more; is released under the GFDL. That you can have individual portions that may also be available under a license that is far more open, perhaps even with no license required at all (such as items in the public domain) is not a problem. If you want to release an image under the Creative Commons license scheme, that is compatable with the GFDL. But if you want to copy the entire article with all of the contents and images as originally put together, you must do that under the terms of the GFDL.

This is the viral nature of the GFDL (and GPL), and one of the huge reasons why some people hate these licenses from the FSF. Anything attached to them "becomes infected" with the "virus" of free content, forcing everything that is connected to them to ultimately have the same licensing scheme, especially when the whole thing is being delivered as a unit. If you publish a bunch of Wikipedia content on paper or on a CD-ROM, the whole thing (the book or the CD-ROM itself) is available only under the terms of the GFDL. This is the very nature of these sort of licenses.

Why is this such a hard concept to understand? I am not forcing anybody to stick with the terms of the GFDL when uploading individual images, or advocating the elimination of non-GFDL content. This is just a cold, hard fact about how articles and content in a situation like Wikipedia must be if you want to redistribute the content. And the original point I was trying to make here with this section: If you add fair use content whose justification for inclusion is only educational or the non-profit nature of Wikipedia, it can't be included in a Wikipedia article because it would invalidate the GFDL. --Robert Horning 09:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Uhm, you're being ignorant, sorry. No image on Wikipedia will ever be governed by the GFDL license unless the image itself is licensed under the GFDL; atleast so long as we allow fair-use on Wikipedia. Fair-use images are inconsistent with the GFDL and to argue that every page on Wikipedia automatically makes images included on it distributable under GFDL is analogous to saying "There should be no fair-use on Wikipedia". Your arguement is flawed; You are the one who "doesn't get it"..--Jeff 12:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I am hardly ignorant here. Please don't do these personal attacks, they are getting very tiresome and are not needed either. If you really want to get into a drag out fight, perhaps we need to get to some major name calling and really turn this into a blatant abuse of WP:NPA and get both of our accounts banned for life. Instead of name calling, please educate me and show me hard examples and not attacking my intelligence or my ability to pick up a textbook or other legal book at a law library and study copyright law. Or to discuss copyright with actual judges who have to hear cases about this topic. I have done that, can you say that? Let's just say that I'm invoking WP:NPA#Recurring attacks and telling you to cut it out not just for me but for anybody else here on this talk page or on Wikipedia in general. Study up on that particular bit of official policy before you start going off like this any more. You have been warned!
I don't know how else to respond other than we have a huge difference of opinion here. I'm speaking as somebody who has made derivitive works from Wikimedia projects and given them to 3rd parties, and in that content I have given it to those third parties under the GFDL. This is the existing framework for Wikipedia and why I menion this issue. The GFDL does not prohibit fair use content within the GFDL'd work, so where exactly did I say that there should be no fair use on Wikipedia? These are words being attributed to me that I simply did not say nor did I accept as my position on this issue anyway.
I am saying that fair use images may be used with GFDL'd content, but it must be under very tight restrictions. This may exclude many sorts of images that would normally be allowed for an author to put on their personal web page or to add to some sort of publication if they were writing that content for a non-profit group or for a college professor. Of course I'm repeating myself here.
And before you, Jeff, decide that the GFDL can't be invoked over the whole of a Wikipedia article including the images and everything that is a part of it, make sure that you are standing on firm ground legally. I am asserting that if you copy one of the articles that I have written and try to copy portions of it, including the images associated with it, and try to do so beyond the terms of the GFDL, I will sue you in court for at least $750,000+legal costs. I am also strongly suggesting that other copyright holders are just as likely to do that to you or me, and the nearly million dollars they might collect off of even one person is plenty of financial motivation to talk to a lawyer if there might be a problem. This is a real legal issue that can financially ruin you if you are not careful, not something that is merely a matter of personal opinion that can be waved away if the mood of a group of amatures goes one way or another. I certainly don't want to become the party to a copyright lawsuit because some clueless individual decides to add a fair-use image to an article that I've put a bunch of effort into, but the copyright holder decides to go after the "principle author" of that article.
And again, note that I am not forcing you or anybody else to change the license of content you have uploaded. If you have uploaded under a Creative Commons license, it is still available that way. Or you can re-license stuff you have copyrighted to some other licensing scheme including a strictly propritary license that must pay you royalties for its republication. But its use here on Wikipedia must meet the minimal standard of being compliant with the GFDL and used jointly with GFDL'd content. This should not be a hard concept to understand. --Robert Horning 21:06, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi. Be careful about making what could be understood as legal threats here. We're quite concerned about the potential for such threats to stifle real conversation. We make an exemption for someone dicussing their own copyright being infringed upon, which is what you were doing, but it is nevertheless best to stay well away from that line. Thanks for understanding. Jkelly
I am making a general legal threat for those who would violate my copyright. I hope that others would feel as inclinded as I am. I am not, however, trying to do this to intimidate any particular individual from contributing to Wikipedia, express a very contrary opinion to mine, nor am I suggesting that I want to go after anybody in response to a particular copyright violation at the moment. I do want to note that the legal threat issue is here, however, if we persistantly try to abuse fair use. I am much more likely because of my activity on Wikipedia to be the target of a copyright lawsuit than I am to be the one who is the plaintiff. One of the reasons I use my full legal name for my Wikimedia accounts is explicitly for coypright enforcement, as it is harder to dismiss a copyright claim for content I've written. At the same time, it sets me up as a clear target and somebody you can look up in a phone book if you really want to take the effort to try and find me. So I am being somewhat paranoid about what I do on Wikipedia for this reason. --Robert Horning 21:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Robert, saying you are ignorant is not an insult; it's just you are ignoring stated Wikipedia policy where we consider the pages aggregates of separately licensed items. To say you aren't ignoring that, an opinion held by Wikimedia foundation and Jimmy Wales, is ignorant by definition. My usage of the word is not meant as a personal attack or an insult.
Moving on to the 2nd paragraph; if you are one who "prepares derivatives" (whatever that means) it is your responsibility to ensure that your use of the images is consistent with the law. Here on en Wikipedia, given that our aim is to be a free encyclopedia, utilizes fair-use, and you're just going to have to live with that. GFDL will never cover fair-use images as it is legally incorrect to do so. The only solution would be to remove all material not consistent with distribution under the GFDL, and I assure you that I that I will be one of the loudest protesters should such a action ever be suggested.
There are even textual sections of articles which cannot be covered under the GFDL. Many articles utilize paraphrasing quotes. These invocations of fair-use make for an aggregate page. A page which some sections are licensed under the GFDL, some under creative commons, and some not licensed at all but used under copyright fair-use rationale present in US copyright law. Because of the aggregate nature of some pages, and despite your most earnest arguments to the contrary, that's the way it is.--Jeff 22:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Appealing to the words of Jimbo here is patently false. He is not a lawyer and his words in this situation are only so far as they would be expressed by any U.S. Citizen acting under an "IANAL" type premise. Perhaps if you quoted Brad Patrick, your words might hold a little more weight here as he is a lawyer and is concerned about IP laws how they relate to Wikimedia projects in general. Still, even Brad's perspective here is in regards to how it affects the bottom line for Wikimedia projects, so from that perspective the license of the articles is indeed seperate from that of images because they are regulated that way. And again (speaking redundantly here), I am not forcing you to change the license from CC-by-SA to GFDL for anything you have uploaded. You missed the entire point I was trying to make here.
As far as trying to make sense out of all of this and how it really will work in courts, we won't know until a lawsuit if filed somewhere. And the GFDL has never been tested in court in any way or form. In fact, only recently the GPL has even been a major issue in a few court cases, and in spite of original promise that the GPL was going to be central to the case they all ended up being decided upon other matters leaving the GPL as a very minor secondary issue. Indeed the Free Software Foundation usually drafts a few letters to people with the gist of the cease and desist letter reading essentially "We believe you are in violation of the terms of the Gnu Public License. While this license has never been tested in court, it has been used by tens of thousands of software packages for several decades now and most people are willing to work with us when they seem to have violated the terms of this license. If you want to question the validity of this license, would you like to be the first to do so in court?" Only SCO has even dared to try, and the FSF decided not to get involved even though their software is partly in the issue being raised so far. The FSF thought that IBM would do a better job than they could on this particular issue, as IBM was the company claiming copyright violations due to the GPL. SCO has backed down and the GPL is no longer an issue.
I mention this because free software licenses have a strong inheirant strength behind them that normally would kill almost any litigation brought against them and people contributing content under them. The problem as I see it, however, that much of the current abuse of copyright by individuals claiming fair use images when in fact it is not justified can't be similarly protected. And getting back to my original premise (again): The GFDL is a limiting factor on what can be used here on Wikipedia in terms of fair use. You can have some limited fair use content under the terms of the GFDL, but the scope of that fair use material is significantly less than what might be possible if you didn't have to worry about the GFDL at all. You can make a GFDL'd stamp catalog, for instance, that would incorporate fair use images of canceled stamps. And there is publishing preceedence to show that would be reasonable regardless of what copyright license you apply to the whole of the text. But you can't claim non-commercial or educational excemptions if the content you are producing is using the GFDL. --Robert Horning 21:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Illustrations?

I have some illustrations that are from a book first published in 1894. The book was reprinted in 1971, but I was wondering if the illustrations would still be considered public domain. Thanks nut-meg 18:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Works published before 1923 are currently in the public domain.--Jeff 19:18, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
that assumes publication in the US but assumeing that and that there were no modifications between the 1894 version then yes PD. However that may be rather a big assumption depending on the work.Geni 19:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
It was definitely published in the US, and it was a small publisher in the South as well. I do not believe the illustrations were added in 1971, but I can find out. nut-meg 19:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a very huge problem, where copyright is being asserted by a publisher when essentially nothing was changed. The problem here is that if it came to a legal challenge, you would have to find a copy of that book which was available prior to 1924, putting the content into the public domain. Or somehow convince the judge in the case that the content really was in the public domain and that the publisher is asserting copyright improperly.
This has been a big problem with groups like Distributed Proofreaders (aka the Gutenberg Project) where they try to search for the original version of the book and stay away from reprints for this exact reason.
So many publishers are used to asserting copyright on everything they touch, that they often don't even understand the concept of copyright, and the courts often don't really care either. Under the older system requiring formal copyright registration in the USA, things like this would have been caught by the Library of Congress and have their copyright thrown out. But under the "opt-out" system we currently have in America (and is common throughout Europe, which is why the USA went this way), such blatant abuses of copyright are unfortunately quite common. Especially for public domain content. --Robert Horning 09:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Expanding the WP:FU for too detailed plot summaries

Recently on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) there was a discussion about large Plot summaries in articles about creative works. It was mentioned that for instance large summaries are a violation of copyright by precedent of [11]. Another point was that having small plot summaries falls under fair use, but that WP:FUC holds that "the amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible".

This led the editors to believe that scene-by-scene plot summaries definetly do no qualify as such. I couldn't really find any indications towards this from any official wikipedia copyright or fair use policy however. Can we get this noted somewhere? Can we hold a discussion or anything that would result in this being added to either WP:COPYVIO or WP:FUC or both ? TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 22:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I was involved in the discussion he's mentioning, and I agree that we need to take a look at that issue. (I have a bunch of problems with that MOS page that have nothing to do with fair use, and if I recall correctly TheDJ and I were on opposite sides of much of that argument, but I agree with him on this one.)
The issue crept up because we were debating the amount of in-universe writing that is acceptable in an article. Someone (I think Postdlf, but I'm not sure off the top of my head) raised the point that an excessive amount of in-universe discussion is a violation of copyright law. My impression is that if we have gobs of copyrighted material in the article, we have a problem whether it's written from an in universe perspective or not.
The leading case was Castle Rock v. Carol Publishing Group, 150 F.3d 132 (CA2 1998). (If I may get in a gratuitous shot, that case involved a trivia book, clearly out-of-universe.) The two big problems that the Seinfeld Aptitude Test authors had were statutory fair use factors 3 and 4: "(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
Wikipedia walks a fine line with regard to these two, because in our attempt to be comprehensive we run the risk of creating a derivative work. There is a lucrative market for LucasFilm and Paramount Pictures for a Star Wars Encyclopedia or a Star Trek Encyclopedia-- both of which have been published-- and it cannot be good for that market if we've already created a free one. I certainly know that I've read articles about fictional creations that got me sufficiently caught up that I didn't need to go out and buy the comic book, which is a problem. I think we therefore need to be particularly vigilant about (3) and keep the use of copyrighted content to the minimum necessary for encyclopedic reference.
I think the existing Fair Use doctrine has the right answer-- the amount of copyrighted material must be minimized-- but I think it's worth spelling out this specific point, because there are enough articles about fictional and otherwise copyrighted subjects that it bears emphasizing. DCB4W 03:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use uploaders

From what i have read on the mailing list, it seems that fair-use images (or fair-use text, such as quotations) can't be uploaded on any wikipedias if the uploader isn't operating in the United States, because the user must primarily follow the laws of the country they are living in. Is it correct? And if quotations are licensed under fair-use, how can Wikiquote be safe? — Canderous Ordo 23:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

There are legitmate instances of what is called fair use in the USA that may also be permissable in other countries. Generally those uses are signifigantly much more restricted than would would be the case in the USA, but there may still be legitimate uses.
As far as what laws to operate under, that is a personal ethical thing you need to deal with. Keep in mind that if you are using a regsitered user account and attaching your name to the image, you are in effect putting yourself up for legal liability that you have copyright permission to use that content. If you are not an American Citizen nor live in the USA, U.S. courts are not going to go after you (most likely) but you may still have problems with the courts where you live. I would urge caution in most cases.
In terms of fair use textual quotations: It would be important to make sure you have a bibliographic reference to the material, generally a footnote or something similar, that could be used to note where you got the quote. And to keep the quotations generally fairly brief. How brief is subjective and depends on a number of factors, but generally use good judgement and don't quote the whole copyrighted work if it is short. This kind of textual quotation is generally accepted in nearly every country, including those that don't have a fair-use doctrine. Also, keep the quotation to something very relevant to the topic in the article you are including it in.
As for Wikiquote, I would urge going to the discussion areas on Wikiquote to debate that topic. fr.wikiquote was so bad with so many fair-use quotations and so strong of a question as to what was legitimate usage that it was simply shut down as a project by the WMF board of directors themselves and the whole thing deleted and restarted from scratch. It is possible to go to far down the road in allowing fair use materials. --Robert Horning 00:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Users Sherool and Geni are attempting to make an end run around consensus by simply changing our Copyright page, without any discussion--through sheer force. This deserves some scrutiny. Please have a look at this change. Badagnani 03:33, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like a fair edit. Not "currently available" and not available at all are different and importantly so; it's misleading to say that "currently available" is the standard. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 04:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
As I have been trying to point out for a while now removing that line is not a policy change, policy changed on that point a looong time ago, but somehow updating Wikipedia:Copyrights was neglected back when the fair use policy got implemented. I don't see why some people keep insisting that unless a seperate consensus is reached at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights the old wording can not be updated to reflect the current policy on this. --Sherool (talk) 09:13, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Given that any changes that were made to fair use policy are under extreme debate and disagreement, it is at the best disingenuous and at worst contrived and manipulative to go around deleting long-standing passages from other policy pages at this time. As I've stated numerous times, the policy and enforcement changes to WP:FU were made out of a consensus of like-minded individuals without outside input until they started pissing off people like me by deleting images en mass under the "replaceable fair use" rationale. So those editors who are changing policy need to leave it intact.--Jeff 10:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
you would rather then images were deleted through other means?Geni 14:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Top Ten Most Silly Reasons to Abolish Fair Use On Wikipedia

These are easy to refute.

Some enquired what are the other silly reasons to abolish fair use images, so I compiled a nice list. I hope you'll find it entertaining.  Grue  11:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Not really. Name-calling and setting up straw men is not a particularly valuable form of discussion. — Matt Crypto 11:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Excellent work Grue, really they are the only reasons the fair use police can come up with! I've yet to hear a valid reason from them about why fair use images are bad. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 11:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Ridiculous and absolutely pointless. —xyzzyn 12:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
umm Britannica does have free images. Quite hard to illustrate stuff about the american space program without useing free images.Geni 14:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think you can legally scan an image from Britannica and upload it on Wikimedia Commons. Which makes it not free.  Grue  18:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Brittannica of course also pays for it's images from press/photo agencies and such. We do not. Garion96 (talk) 19:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp..Geni 19:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

We need to hand this off.

take it to commons
take it to commons

Several folks are having some trouble with the political and legal environment we're working in.

That's fine, we can't know everything. En.wikipedia should do what it can do best: make quality english articles.

My proposal is to follow what many other wikipedias have done, when they came to the same realisation.

Disable image upload to en.wikipedia entirely, and hand over management of images and illustrations to the experts at commons:, like we should have done ages ago.

--Kim Bruning 14:00, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Heh. Not even vaguely feasible, unfortunately, unless we want to see every article about WWII stripped of illustration because, hey, some of those SS officers might show up and insist on enforcing their copyright. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Huh? commons:World War II. --Kim Bruning 14:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
If you actually look through those, you'll notice a distinct absence of German photos. And if you check the illustrations in, say, Waffen-SS, you'll notice that almost all of them are tagged as fair-use. (Broadly speaking, it's not entirely certain what the exact legal status of such materials is, so Commons will nuke them if they're uploaded there. They've done it before. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll just defer to commons then. If they get nuked on commons, they have no place here either, right? Either way, not my problem anymore. That and copyright law is broken, and will probably turn the 20th century into a black hole. That's also someone else's problem. My primary concern is to make sure the 21st doesn't go the same way. (But in this case, that responsibility gets handed off to commons too, where IMO it belongs. ) In short, I want to dump the entire images mess on commons, because I believe the glossy 3 page flier that claims that it's their problem. If you have concerns about fair use wwII images, well, you can take those to commons too. Good luck arguing with them. In the mean time, people here can get on with actually writing stuff, which is what we're best at. --Kim Bruning 14:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Which brings us back to my original point: the article editors on en: will be extremely upset if all their images get nuked because they don't meet the (significantly) stricter criteria on commons. The point of this little excercise can't be merely allowing en: admins to wash their hands of the image situation; buried beneath all of the layers of image-policy red tape, there's a project to write an encyclopedia here. Kirill Lokshin 14:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Count the stacks of red tape. Commons +enwiki = 2 stacks. Just commons = 1 stack. It's a 50% reduction in red tape. Article editors may or may not be upset at the loss of some number of images. Early last year I saw a list of I believe over 4000 images that might possibly be illegal, if anyone were to check too carefully. I really think we're doing a terrible job of policing wikipedia and keeping to the law here. There's a good reason I want to leave this to the experts. If people get angry because they lose that particular set of images and multimedia, they should petition congress. Once again, not our problem. There's no need for us to shoulder the burdens of the world. We're just some wiki writing some encyclopedia. --Kim Bruning 14:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
But the point is that these images aren't illegal (in the sense that nobody would actually sue over them). We just can't prove that to the standards demanded by commons (which are, admittedly, based on the fact that commons is an image database rather than an encyclopedia). What you're proposing, essentially, is that we give up on doing something crucial to our encyclopedia-building work because commons—which isn't building an encyclopedia—can't do the same thing. Kirill Lokshin 14:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Images are nice to have, not crucial. Commons is there to support us in our encyclopedia building work, in all languages. What did you think they were there for, sitting on their rear ends twiddeling their thumbs? --Kim Bruning 15:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
An encyclopedia isn't just text. Sure, you do without images for some topics (e.g. political history), but images are a pretty crucial form of explanation and information in others. — Matt Crypto 15:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
It is a (near) trivial truth that any image can be replaced by text. --Kim Bruning 19:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
What a strange place this Talk page is - I feel like Alice, fallen into the rabbithole. There is a fellow later on on this page who want to improve Wikipedia by "trash"-ing images. Here we have someone stating with apparent seriousness that images can be replaced by text. Images can be described by text, but only the simplest could ever be replaced. Can a piece of music be replaced by text? No, merely described, and rather inadequately at that. I really can't believe that some folks want to revert to the Dark Information Ages, when you shoved the telephone handset into a coupler and the bandwidth could only support text. C'mon, let's use all legal means to build a great encyclopedia. MapMaster 21:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
If by "replace" you mean "replace but convey the same information", you can hardly describe a person's appearance as well with prose as with an image, for example. More generally, it's a cliche, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Some concepts are just much, much, much, easier to explain with images. — Matt Crypto 19:40, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention that articles like Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima won't be particularly informative once they're stripped of images. Kirill Lokshin 20:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
When I said trivially, I meant trivially. At the very least, specialised languages like SVG can be used to describe an image to any level of accuracy. But SVG only holds a subset of concepts as used in English, so if SVG can do it, so can English. It's probably easier to describe a concept in some other way than in SVG, but it is possible. I don't need to show that words are always superior to images, only that words can be used in the place of an image. Done that. QED. --Kim Bruning 10:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
The natives at Commons would kill us if we tried that so no. They do not have our capacity to screen for copyvios and the like. simply moveing all the free stuff currently on EN would be a ~30% increase in their count of media files. I'm also not going to support putting part of our vandle fighting in the hands of a group with a record as bad as that of the common's admins.Geni 14:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Frankly doubt that. I think they'd be happy to help out. They might request we loan them some admins, of course. This would improve their vandal-fighting capability as well. --Kim Bruning 14:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
did you hear the fuss they made when spain when commons only? And spain is far smaller than we are.Geni 14:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
How about de? They also have superior performance to ours by most metrics. In part, I don't doubt it's because they've already specialised. --Kim Bruning 14:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking recently it wouldn't be such a bad idea to use the WikiNews system - i.e. make en.wiki image database for Fair Use only, and then semi protect uploading. This would significantly reduce the amount of obvious image copyright violations that we have to deal with. It would result in an increase in copyvios being uploaded to Commons, but they get dealt with fairly swiftly. ed g2s • talk 14:13, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a start. But if fair use is really legal&useful, perhaps we should propose that commons start handeling it. --Kim Bruning 14:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
The problem, frankly speaking, is that commons is run largely by European (particularly German) editors with a very different understanding of copyright issues from the average admin on en:. Kirill Lokshin 14:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Because of the "use" part of fair use there is no legit way for commons to deal with it.Geni 14:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Commons stresses this over and over and over: "If you want the concerns of your community to be heard when we form our consensus, send us people from your community". Will you volunteer? --Kim Bruning 14:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. The problem with that is, as far as I understand it, fair use is tied into how the image is used. Commons is a repository for lots of uses, but we're interested in whether an image is fair use within a certain Wikipedia article. That should probably be viewed as our problem, not Commons's. — Matt Crypto 14:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd just like to hand off all the discussion and dealing with images to one place, and one place only. Sort of like dousing a meta-scale Meatball:ForestFire ;-). If we would like to be able to use fair use images, in particular uses, how about creating a specially monitored namespace on commons for them, or some such? Wouldn't that work? --Kim Bruning 14:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think Commons can be expected to know all about the en: Wikipedia's fair use policy; that is, not just the legal bits, but under what circumstances we've decided on en: that fair use images can be used. Ed_g2s's solution seems a good idea to me: keeping only fair use images on en: moving all free images Commons. In fact, I thought that was the aim, but just requires a lot of effort to move all the free images to Commons. Perhaps we should protect uploads here as a first step. — Matt Crypto 14:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that's the point. Deciding when and when not to use fair use is more a question of law. --Kim Bruning 19:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
And when the long-awaited InstantCommons finally gets implemented, we get slapped with a lawsuit for feeding the things to every site on the web! ;-)
(More to the point: the images are fair-use only so long as they're distributed with the encyclopedia. Once on commons, they'd be disributed primarily as an image database, which would most certainly not be legal.) Kirill Lokshin 14:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Already ahead of you :-) : That's why they'd go in a different namespace, with limited distribution. --Kim Bruning 19:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

As both a commons and en: admin, I'd love to see commons pick up every free image from en: - right now people are moving images piecemeal, and there's duplication all over the place (the best was when somebody uploaded one of my commons images to fi: or something, then somebody copied it back to commons under a different name...). Practically speaking, commons is still dealing with the fallout from other WPs switching to commons-only (es: is the worst, for some reason). I'm hoping that after single-user signon is implemented, that moves to commons can be made trivial. We would need lots more common admins then, so people should be getting active on commons now and familiar enough with its workings to be made admins there. But if no other WPs are using fair-use images now, there's not much point in moving them off en: , unless you want them deleted - German editors in particular are prone to shoot unfree images on sight. :-) Stan 16:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

One of the advanagtages of takeing images from piecemeal is that at least one set of eyes lots at them so obvios copyvios get picked up.Geni 16:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Just like Stan, I am an admin both here and the Commons. Yes, we have been having a lot of issues with copyvios from es.wikipedia showing up on the Commons ever since ES stopped their local uploading. I have sat in the IRC channel and seen how frustrated some get. The problem we have too is with the deletion of images. It takes weeks to get images rid of because of having to make sure that every single wiki is not using the photo. With toolserv being flaky for months, we have had a hard time trying to deal with that. Frankly, I wish we were able to delete photos on sight at the Commons and not have to worry about what languages is using it or not. If we ignore that, then our deletion pace will be very quick. Until then, there is no way I can see the Commons absorbing the image load of EN. And, as someone said, the ES community is way smaller than ours. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 03:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use SVG images

According to WP:IUP, "Fair use icons, logos, drawings, maps, flags, and such should be uploaded in PNG format instead of SVG." Should fair use SVGs be converted to PNGs and then deleted since they can be scaled to large resolutions (violating #3 of WP:FUC)? ShadowHalo 03:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I love fair-use. Let me say that again: I love fair-use, especially for things like publicity photos and the like.. But I must live in an en.wiki where there are those who would have all non-GFDL content eliminated, post haste. Corporate logos are copyrighted works and I think this is a perfect area for compromise to an area where everyone can be happy where either side gives a bit. I'd be happy with png versions of the SVG logos.--Jeff 03:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
In practice, it doesn't really matter. Anything that can be easily represented in SVG would also scale quite cleanly if it was in PNG format. --Carnildo 03:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, and most SVG programs allow for the export into PNG. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 03:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
False. PNG does not scale up cleanly (information loss does not occur, but aliasing does occur). PNG does scale down looking ok, but still not cleanly by any definition (information loss occurs). PNG does not scale in the same way as SVG. PNG is not designed to scale in the first place. SVG is designed to scale cleanly (no information loss, no aliasing) . --Kim Bruning 10:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
The line in IUP was copied from an obscure guideline a year ago, and was disputed then. It's not policy, has been disputed since, and I've now removed it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

This came up before here and here, there's no consensus that SVGs are violating any more than a PNG and no wide support for removing them in favor of PNGs. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia:Logos (a guideline) says explicitly that JPEG is not acceptable for logos, because it is too lossy and doesn't look nice. ("Where possible, logos should be uploaded in PNG format. JPEG format should not be used as it is lossy and results in a less professional appearance.") Any visual artist or computer scientist will add that an SVG vector image is lower in resolution than any bitmap, whether JPEG or PNG. (That's why SVG files are so small compared to PNGs — they store less information.) However, by using a vector image we can present a corporate logo with very high fidelity — which seems to be the point of Wikipedia:Logos. The spirit of WP:LOGO, in my opinion, is that Wikipedia should not needlessly antagonize corporations by mispresenting their logos, nor should we tempt the copyright lawyers by transmitting lots of trademarked information (i.e., bits of image data). Using SVG vector images solves both those problems better than PNG: it's a high-fidelity format for excellent on-screen and print presentation, and yet the images don't contain even as much data as a PNG.
  • A good copyright-law brainteaser for SVG haterz ;-) — what about Image:HR Block logo.png, which happens to contain an exact, infinitely scalable image of H&R Block's green square? Should someone edit that image to make the square a little wavy around the edges, so H&R Block doesn't sue us for making unauthorized copies of their perfect square? (Also, what Night Gyr said.) --Quuxplusone 06:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

It's time to tag.

Cross-posted to the village pump.

aptured by the FBI on January 302007
FREE
Still at large. Reward for information.

One point of agreement that I've seen in the discussions about fair use is that it would be beneficial for us to mark fair use images as such. Because of numerous technical reasons, the best way to accomplish this will be to modify the image and append the notice to the image itself. I've prepared the infrastructure to do so and could have all of our images done in a matter of days if we wanted to move at that pace. My currently proposed notice is at Image:Notfree3.svg, feel free to suggest changes. Barring any launch problems, I plan to start doing this on Wednesday in a low speed manually operated manner. --Gmaxwell 03:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

See also earlier discussion at Wikipedia talk:Fair use/Fairuseexterminate

Discussion header 1

Maybe this is obvious, but... isn't that technically a derivative work, with all the legal baggage that entails? Kirill Lokshin 03:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't think so. These new images will be uploaded over the old ones, and adding a tag below an image is not creating a derivative image, as the original image is fully intact. This is simply adding more metadata to a lower part of the image that didn't exist before (if that makes any sense). --Cyde Weys 03:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I suggested a similar thing early on in my involvement here. I like it and I think Gmaxwell's method avoids the "derivative" problem by placing the watermark outside of the actual image, at the lower border. certainly a single image file can be governed by one part copyright and one part GFDL, just as our Wikipedia pages can be considered aggregates :).--Jeff 03:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice idea, but i think there is a better way to do this. We determine ourselves where images come from (wikipedia's database), and we also control the language with which they are added into wikipedia pages. Why not make this a dynamic part of the [[Image:]] inclusion ? We could automatically add such a marker, and we could even make it link to the copyright statement in the database. It will take the programmers some time i guess, but I think it's possible, and it might be better in the long run. (changing pictures is something we can always do, unchanging them will be harder). TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Performing it in the image tag is not a good idea because rather than dealing with several hundred thousands images which change very infrequently, we'd be dealing with N times that number of image inclusions. Performing it in the image tag would also require adding an additional key to the thumbnail name, which would just be messy. Doing it fully in mediawiki for the entire image was considered of course, but it would basically work the same way on the backend. I'm already effectively using mediawiki for this. The biggest challenge there is that identifying fair use images from the wikitext is actually somewhat hard because there are many dozens of tags/categories that might indicate the status. and it's a moving target. Oh, and yes.. Jeffness above has it: The reason that the mark is under the image rather than on the image is in part to avoid concerns about creating a derived work (also to avoid problems with placement, and poor contrast). --Gmaxwell 03:59, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I've loved this idea ever since I saw the example above with Patrick Stewart, but I keep forgetting to comment about it. Although I think it would be far more efficient and effective to something like DJ suggests, something with software, or even a template. -- Ned Scott 03:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you offering to code it?Geni 04:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
No, I do not have skills that area, which is why I also suggested a template of some kind for the time being. We don't even need to re-upload images to apply such a modification. It could be like {{Image fair use|Image Name.jpg|all the|normal|parameters for|images}}. Then, if the idea seems good and we keep going after a while (testing, reactions, feedback), start to suggest that all new images be tagged with that as apart of our image requirement, assuming we still like the idea. Nothing particularly on my mind, just thinking out loud for now. -- Ned Scott 22:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Gmaxwell's is a great idea and may also have the incidental effect of prompting people to go out and get more free images to replace fair use images. But can you make a better-looking "©NOT FREE" footer for it? It displeases my eyes. A space would be a good start, and a font more like Gill Sans would be good. And not all caps, either. - Mark 04:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Thats sounds great. If someone else doesn't do it first, I'll make those changes (And whatever else is suggested. --Gmaxwell 04:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the text can be pretty small and even in a medium gray - the extra block of white is going to be plenty attention-getting. Another possibility is to position at the top, and centered. What happens to images tagged as fair use that are actually PD? Doesn't happen often, but I've fixed a few. Stan 04:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I like the idea of putting it top-and-center. Of course, I also like the idea of making it red and blinking, so my judgement may be a little suspect here :-) --Carnildo 05:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's time to attribute authorship and copyright in the article for all images, instead on an image summary page that you have to click on? That blank field with "not free" seems to be a perfect place for a copyright notice. This seems the right time to ask. I would suggest an exception for free images used as icons, but as the debate on Template:Click has shown, people don't like clickable icons either... --GunnarRene 04:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Two thoughts: people may begin tagging images with incorrect free tags if they discover their fair use images are being modified (this happens here and at Commons when someone tags an image with a non compatible license that automatically tags the image for speedy deletion, and then they change it to {{GFDL-self}}). Also, maybe you could resize the image downwards? We don't need 2048x1024 fair use images :-) -- ReyBrujo 04:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Too spammy. We provide attribution in a manner which is consistent with text and universal to all mediawiki installs. Putting names more prominently will produce too much bad incentive: When someone wants in image on the article we'll never know if it is because they think the image is good or if it's because they want their "name in lights", a lot of opportunity for bad blood. Finally, it is feature creep. Lets solve one problem at a time. As far as multi-tagging goes, not only do I keep track of which images are tagged, I can detect the tagging in the image, and move it aside for human inspection. --Gmaxwell 05:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Too spammy only applies to individual photographers (the self-GFDL ones where random Joe Bloggs photograph some tourist landmark). I think it would be good to use credits in the historical public domain pictures we use. Stuff like the US Government, NASA pictures, and the Library of Congress pictures. The source of the photo is something that it would be good to credit in those cases. These are often unique photographic works, and we should be crediting the immense amount of archival and historical work, government resources, or space technology, that led to the creation and/or preservation of the picture. Carcharoth 13:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
In case it wasn't clear what I was talking about when rejecting Greg's blanket characterisation of adding credits as being "too spammy", have a look at Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Four pictures being used there. Three are (or appear to be) historical artworks, and one is a present-day photo. The artwork in the infobox credits the artist in the caption, and the date makes it clear that the artwork is not contemporary, but was done over 10 years later. The two watercolours of Montcalm further down the page are less well described - the first one credits the artist, but the second doesn't even do that. You have to click through to the image description page to find out that the artist was born over a century after the events he is painting. It might be based on eyewitness accounts, but it is still misleading not to make all this clear. Having more of the stuff on the image description page appear with the image as it displays would force people to think more about the origin of an image, and what it all means in context. There is no reason not to have NASA and Library of Congress images (which have their own tags) display their origin by default, rather than leave people to click through to find out that information. In the case of the final picture, a Creative Commons licensed present-day picture of a tourist information board/map, there is clearly no need to credit the photographer. But there are clearly cases where crediting the origin of an image by default would be an improvement on the current situation where people fail to properly caption and explain the origins of a picture, even when doing so would improve the encyclopedic aspect of the use of the image. Carcharoth 11:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully this is a stupid question, but what are you doing to avoid hitting the same image more than once? Adding row after row of tags would not be good. Secondly, I think agreeing to do this should include discussion in a wider forum than this one. Otherwise it would be difficult to respond to outsiders who think such tags look ugly and simply revert them. Dragons flight 04:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

PS. I would be one of those people tempted to revert. Such a tag only makes the images uglier for our primary audience, readers. It probably does little to help our secondary audience, reusers, since large scale reusers would have no way of processing those tags, and small scale reusers would often look at the image description page anyway to get the big version of the image. I will admit that it might encourage people to submit free replacements, but tagging all fair use images indescriminately would add an ugly footer to various logos, album covers, and other things where equivalent replacement is impossible. And after all, theoretically we want the only fair use on Wikipedia to be the irreplacable kind, right? So if someone did add "© Not Free" to an image I uploaded when I felt there was no expectation that it could be replaced with a free alternative, I probably would be tempted to revert. Dragons flight 05:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Well we coorect misunderstandings all the time... There is also an aspect of truth in advertising to this: We claim to be the free encyclopedia on every page, ... it makes sense if were going to have non-free things that we should identify them clearly. --Gmaxwell 05:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's a good point; there's a kind of transparency to this that I hadn't considered. Jkelly 05:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this suggestion (although I'm sure that we can tweak the tag itself). One advantage that all readers of this page should appreciate: if this feature is implemented, in a few months we should have a definitive answer to the question of whether deletion of replaceable free-use images is the only, or best, way to trigger replacement.

I would actually advocate for the copyright image being made slightly more obtrusive or ugly — red, perhaps? Alternatively, the copyright notice image could be part of a template which, when clicked upon, could lead the reader to a paragraph explaining our image policy and why free images are preferred, and inviting the reader to replace the image with a free equivalent if possible. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

This is only being considered for possibly replacable fair use images, right; like those on living persons? E.g. it's possible that somebody might photograph Osama bin Laden and GDFL the image while we still lack confirmation of his demise. --129.241.126.121 08:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It will most likely not be implemented for years if ever, but I have posted a enhancement request at bugzilla:8298 that I think would be very handy for this if it was ever implemented (feel free to vote for it, not sure how they pick items to work on). Basicaly the idea is to add a new magic word than when added to a image page (usualy via a template, such as a copyright tag, or a deletion template) allow for an arbitrary class parameter to be attached to the image in all articles that use it. This would allow us to write a stylesheet rule in the global stylesheed to define for example how all "fairuse" classed iamges should be presented in articles. Throw JavaScript into the mix and you can append text to the caption, superimpose a warning on top of the image itself and all sorts of stuff like that. Would have been a very handy feature. May be a pain to implement though, so I guess it's not a short term solution. --Sherool (talk) 08:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Certainly, a proposal to re-brand every copyrighted image on Wikipedia deserves wider exposure than this page affords; that's why I've cross-posted it to the Village Pump. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#It.27s_time_to_tag., for those who are interested in what other, non-fair-use-obsessed Wikipedians might think of this plan... Jenolen speak it! 09:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

EXIF (and other computer readables)

I think it would be a good idea to make the copyright info on all images and multimedia digitally readable as well. This would allow for rapid software based handeling.

I'm paging through the EXIF specs and haven't found custom tags yet, but perhaps we could somehow diddle the EXIF tags to include this kind of info as well? For SVG perhaps we could introduce an object or tag in the same way. That leaves PNG.

For bitmap based images, we might instead diddle the top left or bottom right corner, or some such. For other multi-media, like music, there's an ID3 or what have you.

--Kim Bruning 11:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the idea of using EXIF for stuff like this. Actually modifying the image is not that good an idea, because it will involve manipulating the image in software. Unless you are careful, you will lose image quality that way. Please make sure that the original images are kept so that things can be rolled back if needed, rather than modifying the image again to remove or replace the tag. Carcharoth 13:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
You typically don't lose image quality in digital images, unless you have no clue what you're doing. Welcome to the digital age ;-) --Kim Bruning 09:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Lossy data compression and lossless compression. That is pretty basic stuff, but it is still safest to assume that people don't know what they are doing unless they demonstrate proficiency with using tools like Photoshop and other advanced image manipulation software. Have you ever seen the results when someone who doesn't know what they are doing is let loose? :-) And have you never seen digital image 'experts' contradict each other in the same sentence? :-) Carcharoth 10:38, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know which digital image "experts" you've been talking to, but I rather suspect Gmaxwell(&co?) won't be using photoshop, or any other gui software (advanced or not). --Kim Bruning 12:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, OK. Does that avoid the problems with generation loss? I've just been reading user interface#Types - interesting stuff. Which interface do you think will be used here? Anyway, I just wanted to be sure that lossy formats like jpegs were not going to be uncompressed, edited and then recompressed. Sorry if everyone knew that already. Carcharoth 13:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm one of those image processing 'experts' you are talking about. I don't think we disagree as much as you think - perhaps we are oversimplifying things and each is doing that in different ways. So let me try to be concise: Yes, it is technically possible to manipulate lossily-compressed images (by this, we mostly mean JPEG - but perhaps also GIF) in some very specific and limited ways without losing image quality. You can certainly change or add to the EXIF data without messing things up. However, if you simply load the image into a general-purpose image manipulation program and change even so much as one bit of one pixel of the image and re-save it, the odds are extremely high that you'll degrade its quality in some way. In fact, in some programs, you don't even have to alter the image - merely loading and saving it again is enough to degrade it. Doing this repeatedly introduces 'generational degradation' similar to making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Having said that, for some classes of very specific change, you can write specialised software that won't degrade the image - but that's a tricky thing to do just right and requires 'deep guru' understanding of the compression scheme and the confidence to write your own code for loading and saving the image rather than using an off-the-shelf image library such as libjpeg. For lossless-compressed images (PNG for example), there should be absolutely no problem. However, I still think this is a terrible idea. SteveBaker 13:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for adding this. Don't worry about explaining at length - that is precisely what is needed here. You probably want to make sure GMaxwell, who started all this, is aware of what you wrote, as I'm just commenting, not actually doing anything. My personal experience (having read about it, not being any kind of image expert) is that it is always best to save the original data, and as much of that as possible, and only manipulate copies. That way you can go back to the original later if needed. This applies especially to the rotation of images done by "off the shelf" viewing programs. I've had bad experiences where I've rotated images from a digital camera in a viewing program and later discovered that the image had been messed up in some subtle way. Even using the rotation option on the camera sometimes messes things up if the camera software has been badly written. Simple rule-of-thumb. Have an unadulterated original in a doubly-backed up archive somewhere - record the original names of the files in a database, then start manipulating the images (renaming, cropping, adding masks, sharpening, cleaning, adding copyright and other information, updating and expanding EXIF data, IPTC data, and so on). As you say, some of this can be done without changing the image quality, but there are so many stages of manipulations that it is best to have an original to go back to later, if needed. I wonder how this is handled over at Commons? Do you know? Carcharoth 13:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

From the village pump

Unless I have misinterpreted your plans, I strongly advise not doing this until consensus is made. And I don't just mean an informal consensus in this space, but rather in a higher arena of discussion. Mainly, I have some concerns that altering existing images will compromise image resolution. Also, will your infrastructure work across different file types (jpg, png, …)? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Certainly seeking consensus is the reason it's been posted to VP. :), but it helps to bring it up again because it is very important. This is a large and important change and it's important to have wide knowledge of it.--Jeff 12:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


Whould this apply to that image?
Would this plan apply to Category:CopyrightByWikimedia ? Alex Bakharev 07:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Definitely, yes. For example, screenshot used to have a screenshot of Wikipedia displayed in Firefox. Firefox is free, but since Wikipedia is non-free, the image was replaced with a screenshot of a totally free nature. (I happen to oppose this tagging idea on anything but those images that are possibly replacable but are used under a credible free use claim. Those images used under an incredible fair use claim should be deleted. Those images that are fair-use and not replacealbe should never ever be tagged in article view, except as an optional feature for those users that want it. ) --129.241.214.53 12:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't it kind of be strange to have a "not free" take under a logo that says "the free encyclopedia"!? -newkai t-c 01:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I actually like the idea of displaying the notice across all non-freely licensed images. I'd suggest "not freely licensed," however, because "not free" is too ambiguous and really makes no sense out of context.
However, I'm rather shocked that the "best way" to apply the tag is actually to modify every image itself; I'm opposed if that's how it is to be implemented. Wouldn't that double the server space fair use images take up, as a new image version will be uploaded with the tag on top of the original without? And it will necessarily always be playing catch-up to new images... The only proper solution would automatically and immediately display the notice in articles across any images that are not tagged under a free license, without actually having to modify the image file itself. Postdlf 12:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
We are not that short of disk space.Geni 13:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, we sort of are. The images used by Wikipedia take up ~400 GB (according to Brion a few weeks ago), and for lack of adequate file servers there has not been a publicly released image dump in over a year. For practical purposes the lack of such dumps makes us a lot less free than the existence of fair use, since it makes it much more difficult to copy Wikipedia. I'd hate to think these actions might delay fixing that problem even further. Dragons flight 16:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
According to Brion unless you aare being paid to care about server load don't.Geni 20:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Since the lack of image dumps directly impacts both my personal needs as a reuser, and our mission to be a "free" encyclopedia, I plan on continuing to care. Dragons flight 20:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course this change wouldn't mindlessly double that ~400GB to ~800GB. It would only add an extra generation to the replaceable fair-use images. Since those are (presumably) a relatively small proportion of the images, and because fair-use images tend to be much lower resolution than pictures we take ourselves, I suspect that the growth in storage capacity wouldn't be all that much. I would be quite surprised if it ate up more than 10GB (I'm guessing 20% of the images at 1/3rd of the linear resolution of free images?). In any case, you can buy a 600GB hard drive for about $200...it's not that big of a deal. (But it's still a terrible idea) SteveBaker 13:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
My suggestion (bugzilla:8298) would do that, but it requires a software change, so unless we can get our hands on a dev willing to implement something like that post haste we do need to do something per image, wich I agee is not very ideal. --Sherool (talk) 14:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Just to be clear

Just to be clear, the idea is that this makes fair use images look "bad" or discouraged in some degree (without distracting or degrading the image's purpose of providing information)? I noticed some comments that say things like, oh lets make it less noticeable or this would look bad for pages with multiple FU images. Well.. isn't that the point? Like I said, whatever type of tag we use (below image, after image, on image, size, color, etc) that shouldn't hurt the reason we are using the image (to provide information) but it should make it look less desirable / silly / slightly tacky / less eye candy. As long as it doesn't stop the image from doing it's job, make it look inferior to free use images in its presentation. That is what we are doing, yes? -- Ned Scott 22:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

So you want to "trash" the images on hundreds of thousands of articles, and thereby trash the article, in order to discourage fair use? That falls under "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Let's face it, there are hundreds of thousands of fair use images for which there will never be a free substitute, barring some fundamental change in copyright law. Trashing these images will certainly not produce a free replacement - it will only trash Wikipedia. Let's look beyond narrow crusades and try to improve Wikipeda. MapMaster 20:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I thought the point of this was simply to further emphasise the copyrighted nature of these images, and indicate the fair-use context within which they are being used, rather than to actually degrade the quality of the images. As long as it is indicated that a copyrighted image is being justified in its inclusion through fair-use, I don't see why there would be any need to actually make the image look worse. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 07:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that this is an under-the-radar attempt by the anti-fair-use lobby to try to get rid of fair use images rather than a reasonable attempt to better label images. If it's the latter then I'd argue that any of our readers can find out the copyright status of any of our images just by clicking on it - and that's plenty good enough (since most readers don't give a damn). If it's the former - then this is the wrong way to promote that agenda. Note (above) people suggesting that the copyright notice be red and flashing - or that the entire image be tinted red or something. Lets be honest - that's not in an effort to inform our readers - it's an effort to make fair use images so ugly that they are utterly unusable. If there was a solid consensus on banning fair-use images then this tactic wouldn't be necessary. But since there is no such consensus, we should not adopt this change for that reason. So - the question comes down to "Do we need to inform the general public?" - and I think the answer is "No" - they would obviously prefer a cleanly designed, uncluttered page to one that's decorated with annoying little zits like this. SteveBaker 13:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Well no duh, of course it's to make the fair use images look worse. It doesn't matter as long as their function is not decreased, yes? Using fair use images should never be done to make our articles look pleasing to the eye (in such a way that is not necessary for the image's function). I see nothing wrong with this and fully support the idea. -- Ned Scott 19:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how this could possibly be described as "under-the-radar". Jkelly 19:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
OK - so it's "over the radar" - whatever. But the point is that there isn't yet (nor may there ever be) a consensus over what to do about fair use. That's undeniable - every time one of these debates starts up somewhere it turns into a flame-fest and finally fizzles out due to exhaustion. Without that consensus, the pro-fair-use lobby will see this as a campaign to deliberately trash legal and useful images. So this action would make this proposal turn into just another way to provoke a huge bust-up. Continually driving wedges into the community does nobody any good. SteveBaker 00:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
If anything, I would think that tagging them visually would help the argument to use more fair use images, because then you can say that people will still have motivation to find free images. Like I keep saying, of course we would not do something to the image that defeats the purpose of including the image. There may not be a consensus about fair use over-all, but there a consensus to use free alternatives as much as possible. We only use fair use when we have no free image (that is, an image that "does the job"). Are you saying we should not encourage people to find or create a free alternative? -- Ned Scott 05:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I can certainly agree that we want to encourage the production of free images. What I really, strongly, deeply object to is screwing up the normal functioning of a high quality encyclopedia in order to achive that goal. My favorite example is the Andy Warhol page - and the equivelant page on German Wikipedia. Take a look and you'll see what I mean - the German page is utterly useless - it's a total disaster. How do you talk about Andy Warhol without showing his unique art style? Try to stifle your laughter when you see the photo of a can of campbells soup on the German page...I broke out laughing when I saw it and it still makes me giggle to think about how pathetic that is. Now, the question is, can we provide a sufficiently subtle indication that a picture needs a replacement whilst not detracting from the quality of the encyclopedia. This worries me. A real subtle 'watermark' tucked into one corner of replaceable fair use images - might be OK (although not for JPEG images because of generational quality issues - and not in really low resolution images because it'll look like crap). But tinting the entire photo or sticking a bloody great flashing red label (as some people here are advocating) makes a perfectly good, legal article look like crap - and that's something I'll fight against. In a rational, reasonable world, we'd come to some reasonable compromise - but a lot of people here are rabid extremists and we are in the "if you give them an inch they'll take a yard" realms where compromise and consensus has broken down. SteveBaker 00:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Steve, you've summed up things pretty well. I have to admit, I can be a bit borderline "zomg, don't give an inch" sometimes, but in general I do see the value of many fair use images. I don't think anything should flash, nor should there be a large watermark, but it doesn't harm the image (or the image's job) to place a small icon in the corner or just below an image. -- Ned Scott 02:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Considering how fast discussion died down, I'm not sure it was a good idea to do the talk list transclusion like this. A lot of people look to their watch lists for updates to the conversation. Maybe we should just treat this as a true sub-talk page, rather than a translcuded section? It would be less confusing. -- Ned Scott 00:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I had no trouble following the conversation. It was a bit confusing for a while, but then it was pretty easy to follow. What I'd like is to hear back from GMaxwell. The bloke whose picture is up there alongside Jimbo's. :-) Greg (Maxwell) said "Barring any launch problems, I plan to start doing this on Wednesday in a low speed manually operated manner." - well, it is now Friday. Can we assume that this 'start' has not happened? It would be nice to get some feedback on the feedback. My position on fair use is that you will always need some fair-use content, but you need to actively educate the community on the acceptable boundaries, rather than go to extremes either way. Carcharoth 02:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Random bit of data

I have been doing some work with the November 4th database dump. In doing so I compiled a large list of images (85,000) that were used in articles in that dump and met some other criteria of interest to me. Suprisingly, I have now discovered that since November 4th, 6% of those images have been deleted. My suspicion is that the removal of those 5000+ images from Wikipedia during the last 10 weeks is largely a result of the fair-use-replaceable campaign, though I have done no analysis to confirm that. My other selection criteria in forming the list are somewhat biased towards living people and recent events, so the sample was probably a bit overweighted with fair use claims to begin with, though probably not dramatically so. Hence the 6% reduction in my sample probably overestimates the fraction of images removed from Wikipedia as a whole.

Even so, 6% feels like a lot to me. I had expected that the images used in most articles would be stable over only a matter of weeks, and that when they did change, additions would be far more likely than deletions. Whether this is good or not, I'm not sure, but it is at least one data point to consider when thinking about the evolution of images on Wikipedia. Dragons flight 03:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind we still have IFD, so we need to see how many images they processed. Another problem is that we had image vandalism in December, so while I think a lot of deletions were of fair use images, but not every single deletion was due to this. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 03:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Only images actually appearing in articles when the November dump was processed were even considered. That should exclude virtually all image vandalism. Dragons flight 04:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Most of our speedy deletion image cats run at over 200 a day so for any of them that is over 6000 a month replaceable fair use tends to be one of the smaller cats.Geni 04:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Er, um. I hope it's not that few. A *LOT* of images are deleted 7 days after upload for lack of source data, I posted stats on this last year. I'd expect to see wikipedia losing over 8000 images a week due to nosource/nolicense alone based on the old data. Don't let the scale fool you.. In the first 14 days of 2007, 37,576 images were uploaded to enwiki alone. --Gmaxwell 04:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, and 18,347 were deleted in the same timespan.. pretty much in line with my numbers. --Gmaxwell 04:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
That's in line with my experience, too. I've got a list of 2446 images I've been tracking (the uploads from July 31), and 1032 of them have been deleted, almost all of them in the first two weeks. --Carnildo 04:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Keep in mind it is not a measure of how many images were deleted over the last 10 weeks. It is a measure of the fraction of images appearing in articles on a specifc day that were subsequently deleted. For scale, there were 630,000 images on Wikipedia (not counting commons) at that time. Sure a lot of bad material is uploaded, but much of it appears in articles for almost no time at all. I, for one, am rather surprised by the suggestion that on any given day, ~6% of the images shown in our articles are sufficiently bad that they warrant deletion. I'd like to think that it is because deletion guidelines have been evolving and not because we are generally so ineffectual at policing images that 1 in 20 images presented to the public is a copyvio. Dragons flight 04:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
You must be new here. :-) If only 1 in 20 images is a copyvio, that's pretty great and I can unclench my sphincter. :-) Most people *have* *no* *idea* of the firehose that spews at us all day long every day - they get mad over one image in one article, not realizing that 10,000 more are uploaded while the one is being debated. Any proposed image policy that doesn't scale to thousands of uploads per day is simply not going to be taken seriously. Stan 04:48, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Very often, what happens is someone uploads an image either without source or without a license tag, sticks the image in the article, and then moves on before OrphanBot can remind them. This is especially common with images on recent subjects such as pop culture. The image sticks around for four days before OrphanBot removes it from the article.
The other common pattern is that someone uploads an image either without source or without a license tag, then can't figure out how to stick the image in an article, and forgets about it. --Carnildo 05:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I guess we can compare the Wiki image usage records from November with the one from January, or check the Data for various events (deletions, uploads, etc), although I am not sure if the last one has information about image deletions. -- ReyBrujo 04:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Imagelinks table currently shows 2,596,382 inline images inside the main NS, so I don't see how 5000 going away translates into 6%. But I guess I don't follow exactly what is being claimed. --Gmaxwell 04:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

5000 of my semi-random sample of 85000. Dragons flight 04:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
How are you measuring this? If we assume that every deleted image is in an article, we should only see about 3.2% of the total deleted in ten weeks (and of course, an overall expansion over that time of about 3.45%, commons is almost twice our upload rate now too btw). Are you managing to count things moved to commons as deleted? --Gmaxwell 05:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm comparing a list of image names generated from November to a more recent derivation of the set of images that exist on Wikipedia and Commons. And no, as long as the image has the same name, moving it to commons would not be counted as deletion in my analysis. Dragons flight 05:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Based on what? Image table? if so, how do you know if the images were in use? --Gmaxwell 05:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually I selected for a set of articles and then compiled a list of images based on everything they used. Dragons flight 05:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Could you email me your list of articles so I could repeat this test and figure out what created the offset in your numbers, because they are not consistent with the global population of articles. --Gmaxwell 05:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

List of episodes

Apparently removing screenshots from a list (Talk:List of Heroes episodes#Images), where the critical commentary present amounts to less than one line of text, is a violation of the American people's constitutional right to freedom of speech [12]. ed g2s • talk 10:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

"fair use is a right which belongs to individuals; it arises from the constitutional right of freedom of speech, which includes the right to talk about things one is interested in" <- I see nothing inherently wrong with that statement. It's true that copyright law without some form of fair use would infringe somewhat on freedom of speech. Still, Wikimedia Foundation has no obligation to provide a venue for people to speak freely, and I have no obligation to listen (no matter what the Dixie Chix thinx). --GunnarRene 12:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The criterion for uploading images, as written, is not consistent with law, with Wikipedia's basic function, or with the consensus of the community. In law, fair use (in the United States, laws on fair dealing in other countries use very similar language on this specific point) permit the use of material not only on the basis of "critical commentary" but also for educational and research purposes. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia used for research. It is not a forum for "critical commentary" which, by definition, would be POV. Much of Wikipedia's functionality is designed around making it easy for users to find the information they want. Using small graphic images as a visual aid to an index page is a legitimate research use. The consensus of the community again and again favors this usage. Some editors are attempting to interpret policy in a way which would remove all images from all episode lists. When that specific suggestion is made, the community consistently rejects it. Until such time as an official guideline of this publication states that fair use images are not permitted for research purposes, many editors will continue to interpret fair use as it is defined in law. As I stated in the other discussion, fair use is a right which belongs to individuals, which is why people will speak up for it. Clearly Wikipedia functions in an organizational context and so it has to be circumspect about the amount of material which is referenced, but also, clearly, the amount permitted by fair use is greater than zero, and an audiovisual work cannot always be adequately referenced by any amount of text. Avt tor 16:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Since the fair use criteria on Wikipedia include compliance with US fair use law, they are indeed consistent with the law. Since Wikipedia is supposed to be free, the additional restrictions on fair use material are consistent with Wikipedia’s ‘basic function’. As for similar language in other countries and individuals’ rights, you had better be specific; I’m fairly sure I do not have the right to use dozens of images from a TV show just so that others who have seen all the episodes don’t need to read the episode names. Finally, ‘critical commentary’ actually means ‘commentary in the form of a critique’, not ‘criticism’, and can usually be done without violating WP:NPOV. —xyzzyn 16:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
It makes no legal or common sense to state that Wikipedia content is not intended for research. And every law I've seen on "fair dealing" does specifically include research. Semantically your statement is illogical; a critique is a piece of criticism. It is by nature subjective. The text in Wikipedia is generally NPOV because it generally sticks to description, not critiques. Avt tor 18:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, ‘free’ in ‘The Free Encyclopedia’ means ‘free to read, copy, distribute, sell or modify for any purpose’. ‘Free only for research’ is not free in this sense. ‘Fair use under US law’ is not free in this sense either. I still don’t know to which other laws you are referring, though I do know the American stance on this issue is not representative of much of the rest of the world. As for ‘critique’ versus ‘criticism’, a critique is a work that examines the artistic aspects of another work. This may include criticism (statements negating the value of the examined work). In either case, as long as the critique uses only verifiable facts and does not give undue weight to any one fact or opinion, it will most likely comply with WP:NPOV. For an example, see Mona Lisa#Aesthetics. —xyzzyn 18:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Not arguing the meaning of "free". If it's Wikipedia policy to remove all fair use images, so be it. I'm merely suggesting that fair use should accurately describe fair use. Avt tor 19:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, well, around here, ‘fair use’ is best understood as a Wikipedia jargon term with a meaning that strongly depends on the context. —xyzzyn 19:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Um UK law? Fair dealing allows for private research (well study) only. Not publishing information that could then in theory be used for research.Geni 19:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
UK has some quantitative guidelines for interpreting fair dealing that would not cause any problems. Also UK is a signatory to the Berne convention, if it's legal to publish a work in the United States, it's legal to sell/distribute that work in other signatory countries. Avt tor 19:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
um the Berne convention really really doesn't work like that. Your claim that UK fair dealing law works the way you claim it does needs to be backed up by some pretty impressive evidence.Geni 19:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Back to the original issue, I do not believe the first amendment applies to Wikipedia. While based in the United States, I was told on numerous occasions that Wikipedia only offers two rights: the right to vanish and the right to fork. But, I still do not think preventing the use of photos violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, really. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 06:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
WP:CENSOR anyone? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Matthew, first read the article on censorship so you know what it means - I'm sure I've told you this before. That Wikipedia is not a free speech forum does not mean it is censored. ed g2s • talk 11:33, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Identification

Here's something that I've been meaning to post here about, and now I've got a real life example:

On the article Sonic Youth, an editor removed an image of the band as portrayed on The Simpsons, saying that such images were only allowed for purposes of "identification and critical commentary". When I restored the image, pointing out that it certainly did serve the purpose of identification, the editor replied on my talk page that the language said and and not or, and therefore the fair use claim was invalid.

Now, there's a certain illogic here--if an image is used for critical commentary but does not identify, is it not fair use? if it's impossible to critically comment without identifying, why mention identification at all?--but it brings up an important point about fair use that I think is widely misunderstood in Wikipedia, and that is that fair use is always about balance. In essence, the courts weigh the copyright holders' economic interests against the usefulness of the non-copyright holders' use.

And in that scale, identification is a relatively weak use compared to critical commentary--you would not be allowed to use a freelance photographer's picture of a celebrity because you want to show what the celebrity looks like, because the photographers is taking pictures so that people will pay to see the celebrity. The use directly attacks the economic motive of the copyrighted work, and is therefore not fair use. (If you were illustrating, say, the problems of paparazi abuse, then you would have a much stronger claim to use that image.)

However, there are several classes of image where any encyclopedic use will have little or no impact on the economic value of the copyrighted work. This includes promotional photos, cover images--and screenshots. In none of these cases would encyclopedias or similar works be considered a potential source of revenue for the copyright holder, so there's no economic loss. In these cases, you don't have to have a use that's so crucial that it overrides the copyright holders' rights--in these cases, since the loss is minimal, you just need to show that the use has some beneficial public purpose--and identifying something for the purpose of educating the public will certainly qualify. This is why courts have upheld the use of thumbnails for identification purposes.

Getting back to the Sonic Youth image, removing it is certainly not going to encourage its replacement by a "free" image--no such image is possible. Removing it for the sake of having less fair in WP makes sense only if you want to remove the description of the episode as well, because that is also copyrighted and also appears in WP with an implicit fair use claim. The only sensible reason to remove the image is because it puts WP in legal jeopardy--and by a clear understanding of fair use law, it in no way does. Nareek 13:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Another reason to remove it is if it's not of huge importance to the article. The picture is used to ilustrate once sentence in the trivia section that says that they where guest stars on the Simpsons. Does the image of the cartoon version of the band eating a slice of watermelon rely contribute all that much to the article? It sure is not critical comentary and it's not ilustrating the subject of the article either, just a minor trivia note. By the way image galleries rely should not be used in discograpy sections. Aside from the fact that it violets the fair use policy (unnessesary use of unfree material), manual of style (I think) and the WikiProject Music's quality standards it also means that if a downstream user filter out all fair use images to comply with local laws the entire discography section would be wiped out entierly since it's all in image captions. Remember we are a free content ensyclopedia, unfree material should be kept to a minimum per the rules of this project, the fact that some images post no actual legal risks are not relevant in that regard (and commercial value is just one of many factors in determining fair use), if it's not free licensed we treat them all the same, it doesn't matter if we have explicit written permission to use it on Wikipedia or pilfered it from some commercial stock image site. Both are subject to the same rules. --Sherool (talk) 14:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
"Minimum" is relative. — Omegatron 14:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Compliance with copyright law, even if this is indeed the case, is not sufficient.
Some copyrighted images may be used on Wikipedia, providing they meet both the legal criteria for fair use, AND Wikipedia's own fair use guidelines. (WP:FUC)
Thus, the uploader must demonstrate that the image meets Wikipedia's fair use guidelines.
An image taken of a copyrighted cartoon does nothing to significantly improve the article about this music group. Indeed, the image's inclusion in the article's "Trivia" section is and of itself considerable evidence that the image lack significance to the article. Yet significance is a policy requirement. To wit:
…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. (WP:FUC)
It is Wikipedia's own policies I'm following when choosing to remove the image in question, and these policies appear quite clear in the case. Nareek's focus on the law unfortunately omits this most important consideration. Rklawton 15:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Whenever an image would be legally permissible, however, we should always examine exactly what benefit Wikipedia gains from not permitting its use. If a particular application or interpretation of a policy does not achieve anything constructive, then obviously we need to reevaluate our thinking on that. What exactly is the practical benefit here? Postdlf 15:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Have you not read our policy? It basically says that Fair Use should always be avoided where possible. It's inclusion on the project is a compromise when we have no alternative. You may think along the lines of "why not leave it in?" but you wouldn't be reading from the same page as the rest of us. ed g2s • talk 16:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Ed, as I've said before, please don't respond to my comments if you're not actually going to respond to my comments. I don't appreciate your repeated attempts to steamroll over valid questions and opinions by generic, authoritarian appeals to policy. It's completely nonconstructive and I'm done trying to deal with you. Could someone else answer my question about practical benefits? Postdlf 16:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that your frustration with Ed is, in the end, all that avoidable. If you assume that rulings on United States fair use are entirely predictable, and that the United States is the only jurisidiction that we should be interested in, hold that the only legitimate reuse of Wikimedia projects would be for noncommercial educational use in the United States, and you are either uninterested in the free culture movement or believe that claiming fair use as liberally as we can get away with doesn't impact the creation of free content, none of licensing or copyright policies and guidelines are going to make any sense to you. Look, I'm not sure that it can be said much better than User:BradPatrick did here. If you disagree with what he's writing there, it may well be time to say to yourself, "These people are all crazy about this free content thing" and move on. Jkelly 18:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree.
  1. This is about a fair use image illustrating a "trivia" section within an article that is only tangentially related to the copyrighted material, The Simpsons.
  2. We're trying to build a "free" encyclopedia.
  3. Fair use images work against this effort.
What is the practical benefit of removing a non-free image? We'll, we're building a free encyclopedia. It may sound like an authoritarian appeal to policy, but it's also Wikipedia pillar #3. Rklawton 18:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
(In response to Ed's comment about "reading from the same page as the rest of us") I have to say, if your views represented the "rest of us", the discussion would be much simpler and shorter. Avt tor 18:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't really care about this particular screenshot, nor have I passed judgment on its legality, but have a broader question, presuming that the legality of our use of a particular non-free image is solid, and the particular use has no potential to supplant free content. Specifically, how then does its inclusion concretely hinder any goal of Wikipedia, whether to have freely licensed content or otherwise? What would prevent downstream users (and which downstream users) from easily removing the identified, tagged, and categorized FU images from the otherwise freely licensed articles? It's a perfectly valid question that I just want to have a concrete answer for rather than an unapplied abstraction, which just suggests to me that they haven't thought it through or don't care to. Who or what is or could be harmed, and how exactly? If I'm beating a dead horse, then surely someone has answered this question at some point and you can just link to that. Postdlf 18:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
2006 Wikipedia CD Selection.Geni 19:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
You're going to have to explain; I don't see anything in that article about how those particular downstream users dealt with or were affected by FU content. Postdlf 19:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
What is the harm? Here’s two: First, Wikipedia can be harmed. What constitutes fair use is up to legal interpretation. A spate of lawsuits could demolish the foundation, even if you think those suits are without merit. Policies that go beyond the law and good faith efforts such as the one illustrated in this thread will go a long way toward helping Wikipedia ward off such suits. Second, one of the five foundations upon which Wikipedia has been built is "free." We must not take changing these foundations lightly. For one, these pillars have built a phenomenally successful encyclopedia. Next, if we pause frequently to challenge these pillars, then we're sending a message that we may not be consistent; we might be something different next week or next month. With such uncertainty, we'll find it more difficult to recruit volunteers and solicit funding. Just what exactly would our volunteers and donors be contributing to if Wikipedia's core values change frequently? Lastly, forcing our content users to identify and strip out non-free images requires from them additional effort (or risk), thereby reducing Wikipedia's value. Wikipedia's' general counsel has reiterated that point (linked earlier in this thread). If you insist on questioning one of Wikipedia's Five Pillars, this talk page probably isn't the place to do it. Rklawton 19:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm seeing a draconian and socially impractical solution, and a technically practical solution. The draconian solution is to ban all fair-use images from Wikipedia. The technical solution is to create an environment variable that allows the individual user to decide whether or not they can view fair-use images. A template interprets the variable and shows a different view depending on the if statement. Table-based templates will make it easy for editors to paste in image filenames. Any CD/DVD export version of Wikipedia simply sets the variable to not see fair use images. This is 2007, it's a standard practice of web developers to allow users to customize their experience of a web site.
I submit that in the absence of a very clear statement like "no fair use images anywhere", editors are going to keep uploading and using images, prolonging this sterile and avoidable debate. Avt tor 19:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I wanted to set aside the question of stricter policy as a legal prophylactic for the moment to isolate the other issues, and I'm not "questioning one of Wikipedia's Five Pillars," merely trying to tease out an explanation of why, in practical terms, it should be applied in a particular way. Your comments have finally been responsive to that, which I appreciate.
So now I'm unclear on what additional effort is really needed by content reusers, or how this would increase their risk. If they are dumping or mirroring the content through some automated means, it would be trivial to filter out the non-freely licensed images, which they should do anyway to avoid ones that are completely lacking in licensing info. If they are manually going article-by-article, the images are not part of the article code and so would have to be individually examined anyway. Postdlf 19:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
What's the point? The argument is won on prophylactic grounds alone. As far as programming and risk goes: programming is rarely trivial - it costs time and money, and failing to do it correctly results in the risk of a lawsuit. Rklawton 19:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Whenever systems people tell me that programming something is hard, my counter argument is "I could do it". An argument isn't "won" if the community doesn't agree (or if they don't even acknowledge the debate). If you think having a handful of people wandering around with an ambiguous rulebook saying "stop doing that!" is a better solution than the alternatives, I submit that your argument is not merely illogical, it's irrelevant. Basic application design is to design user input forms in a way to ensure users enter valid input, and then design application outputs in a way that is useful to different classes of users. Can't blame users for using an application in a way that generates output they find useful. Avt tor 20:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Following that line of reasoning, it would seem that we shouldn't bother fixing vandalism or other policy violations – after all it's the application programmer's fault for permitting the content in the first place. Next, an "ambiguous rulebook" pretty accurately describes fair use copyright laws. Like it or not, we're stuck with it. Lastly, it's not policy but a pillar that this encyclopedia provides free content. There is no programming solution to work around that. Fair use images are not free content, and we are instructed to minimize their use. Remember, we're trying to provide free content and we're trying not to get the foundation's britches sued off. The image in question, found in an article's trivia section, fails to provide significant value (unless we want to establish the concept of "significant trivia"). Does this mean that editors are going to be running around all over the place debating ambiguity wherever they see it? Yes, it does. No doubt you've noticed that's pretty much the Wikipedia environment in all matters across all namespaces. A programming solution that helps downloaders avoid fair-use copyright issues is a great idea, and we should implement it, but it doesn't address the main issue that this encyclopedia's purpose is to provide free content. The use of this image in this article goes against this principle – it's decorative and entirely unnecessary. Rklawton 20:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to reiterate this point:

Removing it for the sake of having less fair in WP makes sense only if you want to remove the description of the episode as well, because that is also copyrighted and also appears in WP with an implicit fair use claim.

The same fair use law that allows us to include a screenshot allows us to summarize episodes in text. If the value in removing the screenshot is eliminating a fair use claim, why aren't we trying to eliminate descriptions of episodes--and all quotes from copyrighted materials? There's this unstated assumption that images are somehow different, when legally they're not. It's one of the hardest things I find to understand about the anti-fair use movement on WP. Nareek 21:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem with images instead of text is that the reproduction of an image often appears to represent the entirety of the object or photo that is being reproduced. This would be in essence like trying to quote the entire text of a book or publishing the full script to a television program. That would be a copyright violation in any of these instances, and some copyrighted textual items can be rather short. The "I Have a Dream" speech from Dr. Martin Luther King isn't all that long. In fact, the Wikipedia article is perhaps longer than the speech itself and is very borderline on crossing the fair-use textual threshold.
In addition, the various courts around the world seem to view copyright issues regarding the duplication of photos and even more so digital images with a much more restricted viewpoint. In addition, because it is harder to "re-create" images that have the same emotional meaning in other terms, they are also much more prone to blatant copyright abuse, and judges want to send a clear message that copyright infringement is illegal.
You are on much safer ground with an image if you can claim it is a "quote" of the original photo, but even then you have to try and avoid the appearance of being a "derivitive work". Grabbing a single "frame" from a TV program or movie is much closer to an example of a quote, or perhaps a screen shot of a computer program. Even then, TV programs and software publishers have asserted copyright (even formally registered copyright) for individual frames and user interfaces. --Robert Horning 21:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
But see, now you're making a legal argument again that images are more dangerous than text quotes. When we try to argue that a particular fair use image is safe as milk, the response we get is that it's not a legal matter, it's a question of WP's principles. On the level of principle, why are images so much more problematic than quotes from copyrighted text? Nareek 22:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
At the level of principle, the two are equivalent. To take the purists at the FSF as an example, they would never ever ever allow the equivalent of a quote from nonfree software into GNU. It's an interesting question as to whether that level of purity is actually achievable for WP - the FSF did it mostly because of ideology, but also they're hitting the bottom lines of powerful interests that would like nothing better than an excuse to vaporize them. WP doesn't actually have enemies of that sort, so non-ideological arguments for or against unfree content are somewhat hypothetical, whether it's "no one would ever sue" or "one misstep and we're sued out of existence". Stan 23:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia has no enemies? --Kim Bruning 12:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
By "that sort" I meant people with large amounts of money that see themselves as losing if WP is successful. EB, Orlowski, and the lamers at Wikipedia Review may hate WP, but none of them has the resources to act on it. :-) Stan 21:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
What about Bill Gates? While I doubt he is too worried about damage encarta corbis is another matter. Getty are another threat. Britanica less so. even if they did knock us out there is still encarta. Other groups that might be threatened by our sucess include the Association of American Publishers.Geni 23:18, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, Nareek, it is typical that "more free" is given as an objection to "it's legal." So, Rklawton, that's the point of having this discussion about the practical benefit of excluding fair use content without simply stopping at legal issues. If nothing else, an exploration of the concrete consequences to downstream users will keep rabblerousers like me who aren't satisfied with dogmatic responses from having to raise the same questions again.
I'm confused by Robert Horning's assertion that it's bad for a use to appear as a "derivative." If you've created a derivative, legally this means that you've copied another's work but that you've transformed or added to it in such a way that you've gained a new copyright in whatever changes you have made. If you haven't created a derivative, then you've merely copied, and I can't see why that would be a superior position. That a use transforms the original work only helps the "purpose of the use" element in the fair use analysis (though it will not always be sufficient). And I would think that illustrated Wikipedia articles constitute derivatives. So I think something else was meant other than "derivative," but I'm not sure what. Postdlf 00:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
The argument with respect to including derivatives rather than a largely unaltered initial non-free work is mostly related to the fact that if you're including a mangled up (and therefor) inaccurate rendition of a non-free image in an article, you are invalidating our fundamental argument that our usage for commentary/criticism/review/education is socially beneficial and even necessary in a free society. As far as the article itself goes, the Wikipedia collective mind would be wise to argue that the combination is a mere aggregation rather than a derivative, since creating such a derivative would violate the license which we received the initial unillustrated text under. --Gmaxwell 02:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Re: derivatives, how you explained it certainly makes sense, but it's simply the wrong word. We need to say exactly what we mean—"altered" or "inaccurate." Not all derivatives communicate inaccurate information (for example, photographs of sculptures are derivatives—see Template:Statue), and not all inaccuracies or alterations rise to the level of establishing a derivative copyright. Postdlf 07:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Regarding derivative documents: Here is a clear-cut case regarding derivative copyright and a clear copyright violation of textual material if used improperly. If you make an abriged version of a book or other document, the abriged (shortened) version is still subject to the original copyright and the copyright of the person who has made the abridged version. This is not a mixed up or skewed text, but rather it represents the entirety of the original document. BTW, I view this sort of textual activity to be analogous to producing a low-resolution version of an iconic photograph that is also copyrighted. The copyright is held by the original "author" or "creator".

Translations are another very clear example of a derivitive work, where you can't translate a document to another language unless you have permission of the original author... even though the translated work also has a copyright assertion of the translator as well.

The whole point I made regarding derivitive works is that they are explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Copyright Code itself as being protected works and a clear violation of copyright if used without permission. You can't claim you are using derivitive works and simultaneously claim fair use. If it is a derivitive work, it is subject directly to copyright and you must honor any restrictions that the creator of that content has put onto its original use. On the other hand, if you are making a derivitive work of a FLOSS licensed work (especially the GFDL), any such derivitive is perfectly legal... and even encouraged under such licenses. When you cross the line of something becoming a derivitive work, it no longer is fair use. --Robert Horning 18:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Half of what you have said is obvious; the other half is incorrect. Everyone understands that abridgements or deriatives of copyrighted works are subject to the copyrights of the originals. And yes, the right of the copyright holder to make derivatives is explicitly mentioned in the Copyright Act. But so is the right to make and distribute copies, and so is fair use, which is an exception to all of the rights of the copyright holder, including the right to make derivatives. Your claim to the contrary, that derivative works cannot qualify for fair use, is simply wrong and easily contradicted. See, for example, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., in which the Supreme Court ruled that a commercial parody of a song could qualify as a fair use of that song. If you think you have a source that supports your claim, please share it so we can understand why you think what you do; otherwise, please stop making baseless legal statements. Postdlf 21:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
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