Hi, There has been some strife, meaning edit-warring and page-protection, over the use of unfree copyrighted images in userspace over the past week or so. Two specific cases are [[:Template:User democrat]] and [[:Template:User firefox]]. In both cases, a number of users are arguing that because the images involved are logos, there is no real legal concern over the copyright infringement. Following from this, the passage in [[Wikipedia:Fair use]] disallowing Fair use images in Template and Userspace has been removed.

Nor is it clear to me that the desire to decorate ones userpage with official logos should be driving precedent.

Perhaps we need a "This user is a Wikipedian" template. The banding together in groups is caused by scaling up.

On 12/29/05, Sherool <jamydlan(a)online.no> wrote: However the argument about the firefox image is because Mozilla allows you to use their image in order to promote the use of the browser. Mozilla would be happy that thier logo is being used in this way so why can't people use it?

You want to check the context of every use of the template to see if it promotes the use or not? Wikipedia is not in the business of promoting anyones products anyway; having this image is by definition not NPOV.

[...] Hopefully, however, Wikipedia can find some compromise between the copyleft fundamentalists and those like me who believe that a psychological separation between public and private space is important. Given the objections to the posting of meetup photos which have arisen at the past, I don't believe I'm alone. I think this concept of a balance between freedom and privacy is one which could use some more discussion.

Technically they are, of course, doing just that (and even worse at times -- one can often use the Wayback Machine to get free access to articles which were posted by magazines and newspapers free for a limited amount of time and then turned into paying-archival links). They even have a little bit about it on their FAQ page saying they'll happily remove things which people consider IP violations. Personally I think they are just fortunate that most people don't know about them and it takes some rooting around to get content out of them. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a wonderful service and an amazing tool. But let's not claim that there isn't a major copyright issue with keeping full-site archives of other people's content with the happy intent of making it available even if the site itself has been taken down or turned into a pay-for-content site. If its capabilities became well-known (and perhaps if its servers weren't perpetually down!) they'd be served up DMCA takedown requests every day, I reckon. FF On 12/29/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Some sites get taken down because people fail to pay their fees or simply because they break. In such cases it's good to have a independant place be a back up. Mgm On 12/30/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote: times -- which time people most content tool. keeping making a if http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~rfernand/index2.html _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

I mean, c'mon, does Rob think he was going to make any money off that page?