[WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

[geni]

On 12/5/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whatever legal system the rest of en Wikipedia operates under -
> presumably US law.
>

Assumeing you mean what legal system wikipedai puts the most effort
into following then yes that would be US law when it comes to
copyright.

> We're talking about publicity shots aren't we?

You didn't state that in your example.

> As in, photos that are
> provided to the media so they can write puff pieces about
> them...presumably the publicist owns the copyright, and presumably it
> is legal for the media to use them this way. So presumably also legal
> for Wikipedia to use them as the lead image for relevant articles. But
> possibly not legal for downstream Wikipedia content reusers...
>

Also may not be legal to edit the images which pesents problems. Would
need to see the exact terms of the release though.

> The interesting issue though is that we probably have permission to
> use these types of images without resorting to "fair use", but we
> actually prohibit ourselves from using that kind of image: we accept
> free images, we accept fair use...but not "permission granted for
> Wikipedia". It's a strange one.
>

Very stong fair use cases could potentialy be the equiverlent of free.

> I guess "we can use" is a self-imposed limitation that doesn't have
> much to do with the law.

It has a fair bit to do with the law since the problems verious
restictions (or strangely the lack of them) can cause are part of the
reason we try to avoid them.


-- 
geni