On 7/21/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
We could always go the German way and prevent all non-copyleft images.
PS. I just wanted to check I was accurate in making this statement. I decided Coca Cola would be a good article to use to check (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_Cola) as they are presumably unable to display the logo. They do show the logo in the form of photographs of the side of lorries showing the logo and practically nothing else. Surely such a photo can't be claimed to be copyleft?
This is a complex issue involving a lot of handwaving and bullshit.
In germany they have a legal concept called "right of panorama" which appears to be intended to address cases of incidental inclusion (as we'd know them in the US). The idea is that the fact that the populated world is saturated with copyrighted works shouldn't inhibit you from taking pictures in public...
However, when you turn around and use such an image as a direct replacement for the copyrighted work which you, presumably, couldn't use there is no way that you'd be able to claim incidental inclusion in the US. I'm not qualified to say what the decision would be in Germany, but I'd really be surprised if it were any different.
Legally Wikimedia is likely okay because these works would easily be considered fair use... But they aren't free content when used in the capacity... but use adds a whole extra dimension the people would rather ignore.
At least dewiki has stopped trying to call the tightly cropped logo images which were nearly indistinguishable from a normal image of the logo free images. :)