I really don't want fair use to go totally away, but I agree that it should be significantly limited. The clause, "Because of our commitment to free content, this non-free media should not be used when it is reasonably possible to replace with free media that would serve the same educational purpose," in Kat Walsh's statement comes to mind. While I have expreseed concern on-wiki and on-mailing list before about unlicensed images, many which, if licensed properly, would remained unlicensed and used under fair use, I think that we should not outright ban unlicensed content used under fair use. In particular, we should allow very very limited use of non-free media when it would be practically impossible to use free media -- the media used in the European History wikibook comes to mind -- and for small textual quotations. What are everyone else's feelings?
-Iamunknown
From: Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com In particular, we should allow very very limited use of non-free media when it would be practically impossible to use free media -- the media used in the European History wikibook comes to mind -- and for small textual quotations. What are everyone else's feelings?
it would have to be very very limited, and in that case it would likely be a few exceptions to the rule as opposed to a rule in and of itself. And regardless of what we choose to do with fair use media, if the WMF mandates a position one way or the other, we have to go with that. I doubt highly that the WMF is going to say "all fair use images must be deleted now", it is more likely that they will be phased out over a period of time.
Even the fact that fair use images might be hard to replicate doesn't change the fact that the use of these images is still illegal in most countries. Books like the European history book are illegal to print and distribute in much of europe, for instance. I can think of maybe a dozen instances where fair use images might be indispensible, and in those cases we would have to create workarounds so the books could be printed without them anyway.
I think the best course of action for us is to disallow new fair use images from being uploaded, and evaluate the old fair use images, on a case-by-case basis. Most can likely be deleted (as mistagged and a copyright violation) many more will likely be duplicatable, and the remainder we can deal with later.
--Andrew Whitworth
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I totally agree that if the WMF board decides to outright ban fair use then we have no choice but to comply. I, on a certain level, hope that they do not. I think what we should focus more on, however, is asking permission from copyright holders to use their copyrighted media.
For example, Webaware recently created {{Microsoft screenshot}} out of his recent research into Microsoft policy. Microsoft screenshots are still essentially fair use: for our purposes as an educational website, we can technically use them for free, but because our goal is also to allow for downstream use in any context, it is definitely -not- free. What I wonder is if anyone has tried to contact Microsoft asking for permission to include low-resolution screenshots of their copyright software and interface in Wikibooks or in Wikimedia Foundatio projects? How would we even find that out? In particular, could we (or someone else on our behalf) access the OTRS archives?
-Iamunknown
On 2/16/07, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com In particular, we should allow very very limited use of non-free media when it would be practically impossible to use free media -- the media used in the European History wikibook comes to mind -- and for small textual quotations. What are everyone else's feelings?
it would have to be very very limited, and in that case it would likely be a few exceptions to the rule as opposed to a rule in and of itself. And regardless of what we choose to do with fair use media, if the WMF mandates a position one way or the other, we have to go with that. I doubt highly that the WMF is going to say "all fair use images must be deleted now", it is more likely that they will be phased out over a period of time.
Even the fact that fair use images might be hard to replicate doesn't change the fact that the use of these images is still illegal in most countries. Books like the European history book are illegal to print and distribute in much of europe, for instance. I can think of maybe a dozen instances where fair use images might be indispensible, and in those cases we would have to create workarounds so the books could be printed without them anyway.
I think the best course of action for us is to disallow new fair use images from being uploaded, and evaluate the old fair use images, on a case-by-case basis. Most can likely be deleted (as mistagged and a copyright violation) many more will likely be duplicatable, and the remainder we can deal with later.
--Andrew Whitworth
Microsoft has licensing agreements with multiple book publishers, and even has it's own "Microsoft Press" that makes good money selling books about Microsoft applications. To that effect, I would be highly surprised if microsoft gave us any special permission to include it's images in our books.
I think at this point, the best thing that we can do is to wait and see what exactly the WMF has to say on this matter before we do anything. I will change back the text of [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] because that is an enforced policy, but I won't change the text of [[Wikibooks:Fair use policy]] and [[Wikibooks:Image use policy]], because those are just proposals at this point.
If the WMF chooses to ban such works that are "with permission", then any efforts on our part to secure such images will have been futile. Once we know what the WMF has to say on the issue officially, we can decide if and by how much we want to differ from their standpoint (without being less restrictive).
--Andrew Whitworth
From: Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Regarding fair use Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:27:21 -0700
I totally agree that if the WMF board decides to outright ban fair use then we have no choice but to comply. I, on a certain level, hope that they do not. I think what we should focus more on, however, is asking permission from copyright holders to use their copyrighted media.
For example, Webaware recently created {{Microsoft screenshot}} out of his recent research into Microsoft policy. Microsoft screenshots are still essentially fair use: for our purposes as an educational website, we can technically use them for free, but because our goal is also to allow for downstream use in any context, it is definitely -not- free. What I wonder is if anyone has tried to contact Microsoft asking for permission to include low-resolution screenshots of their copyright software and interface in Wikibooks or in Wikimedia Foundatio projects? How would we even find that out? In particular, could we (or someone else on our behalf) access the OTRS archives?
-Iamunknown
On 2/16/07, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com In particular, we should allow very very limited use of non-free media when it would be practically impossible to use free media -- the media used in the European History wikibook comes to mind -- and for small textual quotations. What are everyone else's feelings?
it would have to be very very limited, and in that case it would likely
be a
few exceptions to the rule as opposed to a rule in and of itself. And regardless of what we choose to do with fair use media, if the WMF
mandates
a position one way or the other, we have to go with that. I doubt highly that the WMF is going to say "all fair use images must be deleted now",
it
is more likely that they will be phased out over a period of time.
Even the fact that fair use images might be hard to replicate doesn't
change
the fact that the use of these images is still illegal in most
countries.
Books like the European history book are illegal to print and distribute
in
much of europe, for instance. I can think of maybe a dozen instances
where
fair use images might be indispensible, and in those cases we would have
to
create workarounds so the books could be printed without them anyway.
I think the best course of action for us is to disallow new fair use
images
from being uploaded, and evaluate the old fair use images, on a
case-by-case
basis. Most can likely be deleted (as mistagged and a copyright
violation)
many more will likely be duplicatable, and the remainder we can deal
with
later.
--Andrew Whitworth
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