WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
geniice@gmail.com writes:
Not really. The cover of a bio of Gandhi isn't of much significance or relivance to the article>>
If there is a book about Gandhi, and our Gandhi article has no image of Gandhi, wouldn't you say it's appropriate to have an image instead of no image?
Whether the cover image is significant or relevant, is not material to the separate issue of whether using it would be "Fair Use".
Very few illustrations add significant information to any article at all, both in and out of Wikipedia. An image of *any* person in a biographical article is only necessary to the physiognomists. People have just become accustomed to pretty pictures in books as well as in arttcles. Most of those pictures mean nothing; they only serve to break up the monotony of solid text.
The problem with the Gandhi example above, or any other author for that matter, is that it is only an example. The arguments really need to be addressed separately for each such use. Andrew's earlier example about a book cover being used to illustrate an article about cricket may indeed go beyond a general understanding of fair use. That identical image could still be fair use in the illustration for the book. The solution would be to remove the link from the cricket article, not to remove the image from the database.
Some of us very strongly support principled fair use, and would never make a fair-use claim without applying due consideration. We are also aware that we have many contributors whose definition of fair use is at best egotistic.Those who apply due consideration and effort should not be treated in the same offhand manner as the abusers. That takes due care by the deleters.
Ec