Nobody would ever claim that it means "whatever is useful to us." But I think the "nature of the use" aspect of the "fair use" clause would come into play here: the nature of the use is, simply, to help make sure that our use of the images in the articles (which is clearly their primary use) is properly done, and it allows us to take inventory of all such images. The effect upon any copyright holder of such tiny images being arranged in such a way would be marginal. You might as well argue that the use separate "Image:" pages for images is a fair use violation, since on those pages the actual image file is not being used under narrow "fair use" provisions.
I think any judge would buy the argument that the real "fair use" question is how they are used in the primary content of the encyclopedia.
In any event, "fair use" is legally rather ambiguous -- I think though that this is a fairly "low risk" version of "fair use", that is, it is unlikely to make anybody think that they would have a very good case for suing us. Categorization helps us find, avoid, and change "high risk" and "medium risk" cases (for example, in retagging all images with a {{poster}} tag to new use- and content-based poster tags, a large effort which was recently completed), which are the ones to worry more about. In my non-lawyerly opinion.
FF
On 9/27/05, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/26/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
I have just discovered the school of thought that believes that including an image in a category contravenes the "Fair Use" principle because displaying the image on the category page amounts to using the image in an unfair way!
Is it me, or is this just plain silly? A category is simply an organisational tool, not an article. Surely a case can be made that the proper categorisation of images within an encyclopedia is essential to using those images correctly.
As I understand it, if the image is not being used for the purpose of education, satire, or review, we have no fair use claim to it. This is not the same as saying it is not a "fair" use of the image, which is a subjective judgment anyway. Put another way, "fair use" does not mean "whatever is useful to us". We may only use it in a few specific contexts. Using them as organizational tools for meta pages about the encyclopedia doesn't qualify; therefore, such use would constitute copyright violation.
- Ryan
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