James Hansen, NASA's chief global warming scientist, has recently come
under press and blog criticism for supposedly warning about global
cooling in a 1971 Washington Post article. Yesterday I uploaded a
scan of the article
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hansen_Wash_Post.pdf) so the
actual facts could be discussed on the article talk page. (I believe
the recent coverage misrepresented Hansen's role as explained in the
article.) Even though I uploaded it with a Fair Use rationale, the
image police tagged it for deletion as a copyright violation.
I think this use of a copyrighted source, to inform discussion of the
topic on the article talk page, is closer to the spirit and intent of
the fair use doctrine than decorating articles with screenshots and
album covers. One purpose of the Fair Use exemption is to allow the
free exchange of ideas and information in scholarly discussion, and to
insist, in this case, that each editor interested in this article must
individually pay the Post for a copy, or find a library with the right
back issue, in order to participate, seems harmful to the project.
(When the Washington Times has a current article saying one thing,
the only way to show what the original article said is to either post
it or transcribe it, which is the same thing for copyright purposes.)
I have done this several times before, to allow informed discussion
of a disputed source on the talk page or on an AfD discussion.
However, there is no mention of this form of Fair Use on
[[Wikipedia:Non-free content]]. I'm curious about your reaction to
this, and whether some discussion of acceptable use of non-free
content on talk pages should be included.
Thatcher131