One way that I think would increase the value of our "fair use" tags, and prevent them from being just slapped around haphazardly, is if they contained their justifications a little more explicitly, and also explained themselves a little more specifically. Here's an example I've been playing with (obviously it could enjoy some editing, but I think my intent should be clear), for a fair use tag which could be used on photographic portraits of individuals (not promotional material, necessarily) used to illustrate articles: -- This is a copyrighted photographic portrait of a notable individual. It is believed that this qualifies under the fair use provision of United States copyright law (see copyrights), because the editor of Wikipedia who has placed this copyright tag believes it to satisify the following criteria: 1. It is used for purely educational purposes and significantly enhances value of the encyclopedia article it is being used to illustrate and is not meant to defraud or otherwise harm the existing copyright holder. 2. Alternative photographs under a free license have not been located and seem unlikely to currently exist. 3. Its total pixel dimensions is far below any suitable print resolution. As such it is only provides a limited amount of reproducibility and in limited applications. 4. Its ultimate source and likely copyright holder is listed above if known, for those seeking to license the photograph for their own use. If it is not known, its immediate source is listed above, who may be possibly contacted for copyright information as well. 5. It is being used on the English edition of Wikipedia, which is sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, for the purpose of creating an encyclopedia and spreading general knowledge. If you are re-using Wikipedia content for another website (see our copyright policy), these fair use criteria may not apply. Please note that the posting of copyrighted material that does not have the express permission of the copyright holder may be in violation of applicable law and of our policy. Those with a history of violations may be temporarily suspended from editing pages. ---- I didn't note all of the links and wikis, but suffice to say important terms (i.e. "notability") would be linked, and the links to the Foundation and Wikipedia itself would be hard-linked (URLs). The benefits I see in a (long) tag like this is: 1. Its very use defines what characteristics the picture must have. It would thus be very easy to spot whether or not it was incorrectly placed or incorrectly used, and hopefully any user applying it would understand what it meant. This is meant both to help police fair use images, and also to help users who don't have a great understanding of the requirements of the fair use clause. 2. It makes fair use look like serious business. Which it should be. 3. It clearly states that the fair use criteria may only apply to the English Wikipedia, and that other re-users of content will have to re-think whether the criteria applies to their our pages. 4. I think that if a copyright holder saw this, they'd at least understand what they'd be going up against. Current fair use tags provide no justifications for the decision (we're told it may have been discussed, but we know that's not usually true) -- this one at least has it built into it. So... thoughts? Obviously the wording should be fixed up a bit, but that can be done in the standard fashion. I'm more interested in whether or not the concept is good (and whether some of the specifics that I think are important are worthwhile -- i.e. the low print resolution, which I think makes it clear that we are not trying to encourage copyright violation). If so, this is something which could easily be done, in one way or another, for all of our fair use tags. FF