On 12/5/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Questions of what the law says can only really be answered on a case by case basis and generealy need to be quite carefuly defined (for example a trivial answer to you question is that it would be illegal but that is because you failed to specify the legal system you were tlaking about).
Whatever legal system the rest of en Wikipedia operates under - presumably US law.
Certainly the most obvious case would be one in which the hollywood star did not own the copyright to the photo.
We're talking about publicity shots aren't we? As in, photos that are provided to the media so they can write puff pieces about them...presumably the publicist owns the copyright, and presumably it is legal for the media to use them this way. So presumably also legal for Wikipedia to use them as the lead image for relevant articles. But possibly not legal for downstream Wikipedia content reusers...
The interesting issue though is that we probably have permission to use these types of images without resorting to "fair use", but we actually prohibit ourselves from using that kind of image: we accept free images, we accept fair use...but not "permission granted for Wikipedia". It's a strange one.
The publicist is free to release a photo under a lisence we can use.
I guess "we can use" is a self-imposed limitation that doesn't have much to do with the law. These photos probably *are* released under a license we can use, but we choose not to accept them as they are not free enough. Causing us to take the weird backdoor route of "fair use".
Steve