On 12/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I've been assuming that the policy about not
applying "fair use" for
these photographs was entirely of Wikipedia's design, and is not
really related to copyright law. You're suggesting that we're actually
breaking copyright law if we do use "fair use" for promotional
photographs instead of going out and taking a new photo. Does anyone
know either way?
It depends.
Questions of what the law says can only really be answered on a case
by case basis and generealy need to be quite carefuly defined (for
example a trivial answer to you question is that it would be illegal
but that is because you failed to specify the legal system you were
tlaking about).
Can you steal a promotional image which some B grade
hollywood star
desperately wants everyone to use at any opportunity?
Certainly the most obvious case would be one in which the hollywood
star did not own the copyright to the photo.
I certainly
agree with you about people filling gaps - I've taken quite a few
"gap-filler" photos myself - but taking good photos of celebrities is
pretty hard. Here's an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jerry_Seinfeld_%281997%29.jpg
We're not even sure that this *is* a free image, and this is at the
better end of the scale of the free celebrity photos we have. And do
you think Seinfeld, his publicist, us, or anyone is really happy that
we have a crappy photo of him rather than a professionally executed
publicity shot?
The publicist is free to release a photo under a lisence we can use.
--
geni