On 12/5/06, geni <geniice(a)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