On 1/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's not my photo I was talking about, but the aerial photos used in Google Earth, which, in this particular case, were made as a work for hire of the State of New Jersey. Google obtained these aerial photos and then manipulated them *per my instructions* and sent them to me. As I'm the one who chose all the creative elements (the location, the angle, the zoom level), I'm the one who owns the copyright on the derivative work, not Google. All they did was provide me with the tools to create the image. They own the copyright no more than FUJIFILM owns the copyright to [[Image:Capemaypoint.JPG]] (which is the actual photo I took from that location). Frankly, I think this conclusion is pretty much indisputable by anyone with basic knowledge of copyright law. In fact, it follows naturally from the absurdity of the law being any other way. The Mozilla Foundation (or is it the Mozilla Corporation?) doesn't own this text simply because I used their software to create it. Cakewalk doesn't own the songs just 'cause they're created using their music production software. Corel doesn't own a painting because it was designed using Corel Paint. Likewise, Google doesn't own an image simply because you used Google Earth to create it. Discussing this issue is, in and of itself, educational. And using an image to facilitate such a discussion is fair use, which means it's not illegal and not an act of civil disobediance. Of course, that discussion was kept to the talk page. The original purpose of my creation and distribution of the image was to show how well Google Earth can create a particular real life photo. Even if that's not educational (and it is), it's use for the purposes of commentary, which in many ways is actually a stronger argument for fair use than merely educational purposes anyway. And frankly, Wikipedia should try to keep most, if not all, of its use *in the article space* to *commentary*, not simply educational purposes. When you are commenting on a work, there is no real substitute for the actual work itself. Pretty much any other use (save parody, which isn't really applicable to Wikipedia), can be theoretically substituted rather adequetely without resorting to fair use. Even if Dolly the Sheep is dead and all the images of her are copyrighted, it's still possible for an artist to look at *several* images and create an original work which accurately depicts what the sheep looks like. Someone else mentioned how fair use images aren't treated like fair use text. Well, that's essentially how fair use text is treated. If you're commenting on the quote itself, then you use the quote itself. If, instead, you're using the information contained in the quote, then you read up on a bunch of different sources and paraphrase it, copying the facts but not the expression. The only real difference is that there are a lot more Wikipedians who are skilled at writing but not nearly as much at drawing. Anyway, I've turned this into a rant about something completely different. Sorry.

On 1/20/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: I suspect historical ones. They were allowed to start with (since if they are truely fair use they probably are better than nothing) and I doubt you could get a consensus together to get rid of them.

What does a book cover add to an article on War and Peace?

Most uses are just decoration, and they are stopping free images being used to replace them. You can be quite lateral with illustration.

Yes, but these few real uses are swamped by the rubbish ones.

We dont have to illustrate everything. You can take photos of the stars at film openings, or prints on the walk of fame, there are lots of free photos out there.

99.99% of the images labelled as fair use are not. 99.99% of the fair use text is. A few errors either way are not important to the goal of making a free encyclopaedia. The lies and blatent copyright violation in the images is.

I too can find a handful of fair use images. But I have yet to see something in say [[Category:Promotional images]] that is actually a promotional image (and there is really no justification for us having real promos anyway as we dont accept permission images). Its a blanket copyvio category. There are thousands of them, and more added every day.

On 1/20/06, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote: Helpdesk does. Have you any idea how hard it is to get an image deleted if it is on a wiki where you don't speak the language?

No they are unlikely to notice. Big institutions for the most part.

Justin Cormack wrote: If it's a matter of principle, then there are no "real uses" that are acceptable, no exceptions possible.

"Prints on the walk of fame"? Exactly how does that clue people in about Darth Vader's menacing appearance, or how Yoda and Obi-wan are made-up to imitate the Campbellian archetype? If pictures are just decorative, then why not just eliminate all of them? (And yes, I know there are those on the far end of the sigma curve who think that's a great idea.)

If it's a matter of principle, then no fair-use quotes are acceptable, ever. If it's a 99.99% issue, then you're saying you accept the basic principle that fair use is allowable in an otherwise-free encyclopedia, and we're just talking about doing a better job of enforcing policy. Which is it?

The real irony here is that while we're apparently getting daily complaints about the *text* of people's bios, we don't ever seem to get any complaints about the *images* in them. When WPians have sent email asking about images, the response is always "sure, use it all you like". So in the big project of tightening up fair use, I put basic sorting, policy clarification, and response time at the top, then clearing out photos copyrighted by photographers and news organizations, and only then am I going to worry about clarifying the status of celebrity headshots. Like every other big WP project, it doesn't work to declare failure because not everything can be fixed in one day.

Where are you expecting to get free images with which to illustrate Star Wars? They don't exist.

Anyway, even if you eliminate "most uses" because they are just decoration, you haven't got rid of all of them. And if the use of copyrighted material compromises WP's goal of being a free encyclopedia, that principle applies to copyrighted textual quotes as well. So unless you're prepared to delete fair-use quotes, you still haven't got a "free encyclopedia". In fact, the quotes are a more serious problem for the freeness goal, because while the images are tagged and filterable, the quotes are not easily removable. Stan

That's why I suggest moving all free-license pictures over to Commons as soon as possible. Filtering out non-local images is even easier, and everything on Common is free, at least in theory (people mistag images all the time, but there's nothing we can do about that except delete them when we find them). I would even go as far as to use different syntaxes for Commons and local images to make parsing local ones out extremely trivial. Oh, and I'd also like a simpler way to transwiki free images to Commons... grm_wnr

So request to become an admin there.

Moveing stuff over to commons weakens our defences against vandalism.

That wouldn't be a bad thing. But remember that it's not as simple as 'free' and 'non-free'. We have *a lot* of images which are in the public domain in the United States but not elsewhere. Last time I mentioned the Bridgeman images as an example. Here's another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hundingsbane.jpg This image is in the public domain in the United States but under present law the copyright will hold in Europe until 2046. Regards, Haukur

This is a photo of an Icelandic sculpture. Under Icelandic laws the copyright of the person who made the sculpture is important for how the photo can be used. This image is definitely not free in Iceland. Is it free in the US? Can anyone help me find out?

Okay. How about this photo of a sculpture created 1926-1927? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GriefEJ.jpg I would really like to know.

So how do people sell books in such countries, given that the text, illustrations, design, font and so on must all revert to the creator within X years?

Sensible, but the portion of our images which are really free to use anywhere in the world forever may be smaller than you think. Even images created by Wikipedians and released "into the public domain" might be problematic in some jurisdictions if the image creator changes her mind about the licence. The whole concept of permanently licencing away your rights to an image is badly supported in laws around the world. Sometimes there are stipulations that any licencing of your rights to another party can only last for X years. And I wouldn't fancy trying to defend the byzantine GFDL (which most Wikipedians have never read and Wikipedia itself is only barely in compliance with) in courtrooms around the world. And whatever the licence you'll always have to rely on the judges agreeing that by writing something into our edit boxes you're doing something legally binding. The line dividing 'free' and 'non-free' is a lot fuzzier than one would like. Regards, Haukur (IANAL) P.S. Here's one issue I'm wondering about, look at this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KingOfAtlantisEJ.jpg This is a photo of an Icelandic sculpture. Under Icelandic laws the copyright of the person who made the sculpture is important for how the photo can be used. This image is definitely not free in Iceland. Is it free in the US? Can anyone help me find out?

Are you absolutely sure that it is PD in the US? Only if you can be sure that it was first published/copyright registered in the US. If it was created or first published elsewhere, then the pre-1923 rule does not apply, thanks to international convention. Certainly the image description page does not answer this question, but it mentions a book first published in London, which would count against this theory if that was the first publication of this image.

If I remember correctly, another category is US government works. The US government has before asserted that just because US law requires works of the US government be freely available within the US does not mean, in their view, that the works are PD elsewhere. They have certainly, as I recall, charged non-US corporations for using such data.

On 1/22/06, Matt Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote: Umm... I'm fairly certain that that's incorrect. Do you have a citation for any of that? I seem to recall the exact opposite, though I can't find a citation myself.

Specific examples would be helpful here. Also, laying charges and being successful in those charges are two different things.

Sometimes de: is held up as a counterexample of how one doesn't really need copyrighted images, but I'll hazard a guess that many de: readers "sneak over" via interwiki to look at the forbidden pictures on en:. (I notice de: sometimes "launders" images in legally-dubious ways, such as taking a photograph of a Yoda doll, or somebody wearing a Darth Vader Halloween costume.)

On 1/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's not my photo I was talking about, but the aerial photos used in Google Earth, which, in this particular case, were made as a work for hire of the State of New Jersey. Google obtained these aerial photos and then manipulated them *per my instructions* and sent them to me. As I'm the one who chose all the creative elements (the location, the angle, the zoom level), I'm the one who owns the copyright on the derivative work, not Google. All they did was provide me with the tools to create the image. They own the copyright no more than FUJIFILM owns the copyright to [[Image:Capemaypoint.JPG]] (which is the actual photo I took from that location). Frankly, I think this conclusion is pretty much indisputable by anyone with basic knowledge of copyright law. In fact, it follows naturally from the absurdity of the law being any other way. The Mozilla Foundation (or is it the Mozilla Corporation?) doesn't own this text simply because I used their software to create it. Cakewalk doesn't own the songs just 'cause they're created using their music production software. Corel doesn't own a painting because it was designed using Corel Paint. Likewise, Google doesn't own an image simply because you used Google Earth to create it. Discussing this issue is, in and of itself, educational. And using an image to facilitate such a discussion is fair use, which means it's not illegal and not an act of civil disobediance. Of course, that discussion was kept to the talk page. The original purpose of my creation and distribution of the image was to show how well Google Earth can create a particular real life photo. Even if that's not educational (and it is), it's use for the purposes of commentary, which in many ways is actually a stronger argument for fair use than merely educational purposes anyway. And frankly, Wikipedia should try to keep most, if not all, of its use *in the article space* to *commentary*, not simply educational purposes. When you are commenting on a work, there is no real substitute for the actual work itself. Pretty much any other use (save parody, which isn't really applicable to Wikipedia), can be theoretically substituted rather adequetely without resorting to fair use. Even if Dolly the Sheep is dead and all the images of her are copyrighted, it's still possible for an artist to look at *several* images and create an original work which accurately depicts what the sheep looks like. Someone else mentioned how fair use images aren't treated like fair use text. Well, that's essentially how fair use text is treated. If you're commenting on the quote itself, then you use the quote itself. If, instead, you're using the information contained in the quote, then you read up on a bunch of different sources and paraphrase it, copying the facts but not the expression. The only real difference is that there are a lot more Wikipedians who are skilled at writing but not nearly as much at drawing. Anyway, I've turned this into a rant about something completely different. Sorry. Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l