On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 11:44 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/03/2008, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Which we should refuse, since the whole purpose of a rationale is to address why a specific use of a specific image in a specific article is justifiable. We should never accept nonfree images by category, only by individual case. It is unfortunate that in some cases we do de facto have categoric acceptance (CD covers, logos, etc.), but that will change in time, and requiring individualized rationales will help with that.
That statement makes little sense, because the rationale is in fact pretty much identical for pretty much all CD and book covers. (I'm sure Geni will dive in right now with a string of exceptions, but I maintain it's still the case in general.) You really could put identical text on almost all and it would be a fair-use justification.
- d.
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What you describe is the problem, though, not the solution. For some instances (Nike, Coca-Cola, the Intel Inside campaign, the Beatles' White Album), an album (or other media) cover or corporate logo is an integral part of the article's subject, there is a significant quantity of discussion of -the image itself-, and we can make an appropriate rationale for putting it in the article. In most cases, though (Advanced Micro Devices, Band X's latest release), the logo or cover is unnecessary and decorative since the article does not (and should not) discuss it, since it's just decoration for the company/book/album in and of itself and is not discussed by sources. It is not, in most cases, a necessary part of an article on the (corporation|album|book|movie|video game|what have you). We should only provide exceptions for nonfree images where they're -needed-, and part of the requirement should be that the image itself should be the subject of significant commentary and discussion, rendering its actual presence necessary for the reader to see the image that's -actually being discussed in the article-. A nonfree rationale should include a rationale for why the image is needed because it is actually going to be discussed and why it is not just a pretty for the infobox.
I realize that most of these images are not replaceable by free images, but irreplaceable is just one of many requirements for when a nonfree image may be used. In many of these cases, the image could be taken out and not replaced, and since it is not discussed in the article, the article would not suffer for its removal. In such cases, an image is decorative. That disqualifies a nonfree image too. We should be writing detailed rationales for every nonfree image justifying the use of that particular image in one particular article, -including the presence of sourced commentary on the image-.
And yes, that would drastically reduce the number of nonfree images we use. Good! In case anyone has forgotten, we're a free content project, and that is and should be one of our aims. Exceptions to that goal should, above all, be made on an -individual- basis, not categorically. A detailed and individualized rationale is a good step toward that goal. Accepting boilerplate rationales would be a tremendous step backward.