On 11/27/05, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2005/11/26, Anthony DiPierro
<wikilegal(a)inbox.org>rg>:
Is this really how it works in the German
Wikipedia (and other
non-English Wikipedias)?
Yes, the German Wikipedia does not allow fair use for pictures period.
Several other (including my own nl:) do the same. And what is more, it
is also the policy on Commons.
It's somewhat odd that the different languages have different policies
on fair use. From a legal standpoint, it really shouldn't matter what
language the article is written in. I suppose it's enough to stay
under the radar this way, though.
It'd be interesting to see if there are any cases of a US company
suing another US company in court for violating foreign law. I
believe it is legally possible (based on my extremely limited
knowledge of international copyright law), but it'd be a strange case.
Does 2 Live Crew distribute "Pretty Woman" in Germany?
I assume you
must allow some form of fair
dealing, as it's difficult to think of a photo of the real world that
doesn't contain *some* copyrighted materials incidently.
As far as I can see, the 'no fair use' policy mostly restricts itself
to the pictures themselves, and to book covers, works of art etc. that
are the main subject of the image. I have not seen protests against
objects being shown (except for the above), or against buildings,
except that on the Dutch Wikipedia pictures of the Atomium are not
allowed because someone found a news message where someone was
actually charged a few hundred Euro for having a picture of the
Atomium on his private but public website.
That makes sense, I guess. How about on the text side? I assume
there's not an outright ban on quotations, but how lenient are the
rules on that? This is another point that usually comes up when
someone suggests completely banning fair use.
Does the
German Wikipedia have many pictures of celebrities and big events?
It depends on what you call 'many'. But
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:People has quite a large
number of pictures already.
Well, this is a place where there are a lot of images on the English
Wikipedia which are fair use, and I kind of assumed they wouldn't be
there if we already had a free picture on the commons.
What about non-free pictures that are legal for Wikipedia to use?
No-derivatives images, non-commercial only images, by permission
images. Are these banned? Are there many floating around? I believe
these are banned from commons, except for some logos owned by
Wikimedia.
Do you find
that not allowing non-free images detracts significantly from
the encyclopedia (ignoring, if you can, the benefits of the images
being free)?
No, I don't see how it detracts. On the English Wikipedia there are
also plenty of articles without pictures, does that distract you?
This might be a misunderstanding of what I was saying. Not including
non-free images clearly has positives and negatives. Personally I
believe the positives outweigh the negatives, at least in the vast
majority of cases. In my opinion every article should have at least
some image in it eventually. Adding a non-free image fixes that
problem in the short term, but in the long term it lessens the chance
that a free image will come along.
Of course, if all the rest of the languages still lack the image,
maybe they'll be the ones to make the free image for us :). I'm
joking to some extent. Besides that being kind of rude there are
*some* images which are much more likely to be made by someone who
only speaks English.
Anyway, the English Wikipedia seems to be relying less on fair use
than it has in the past. I think it's good for us to look at the
other languages to see that it really wouldn't be that horrible to
drop reliance on it completely.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
Anthony