[Wikipedia-l] Fair use and GFDL

[The Cunctator]

On 10/31/02 11:37 AM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> Axel Boldt wrote:
>> I agree with Imran that fair use materials in a GFDL document are a
>> problem. In essence we tell our readers "we grant you the right to do
>> what you want with these materials, just follow the GFDL", but we are
>> in no position to make such an announcement: we don't own the copyright
>> to the fair use materials nor have we received permission from the
>> copyright holder. Our readers *cannot* do what they want with them.
>> 
>> Like Cunctator says, invariant sections don't provide a way out.
> 
> There must be _something_ wrong with this analysis.  If correct, then
> we can't even quote sources.  We can't quote a single line from any
> book.  That's obviously absurd, so there must be something wrong with
> it.

That is indeed the direction copyright law is going. That's the basic
concept of DRM--that all uses of copyrighted material will be monitored and
"properly" licensed.  The legal argument is that the only reason that's not
the way the current system works is because there isn't a good mechanism for
licensing any bit of copyrighted material.

It's scary, but the trend *is* toward having to license even single lines
from books.

Our only useful argument is to say that something that brief is
uncopyrightable.

As to Axel's suggestion:
>> In essence, the image then becomes a separate document from the rest of
>> the article, with a separate license. It may not be completely clean
>> and is not very pretty, but I think it's the only thing we can do.

That looks like a violation of the GFDL. It's a clearcut violation of the
spirit of the GFDL, and may also be an explicit violation.  The Document is
expected to be self-contained.