geni wrote:
On 1/20/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Actually I think you've just highlighted a point where Wikipedia /does/ have a claim to fair use: commentary. Parody and satire are not within the scope of an NPOV encyclopedia, but commentary probably *is*.
BTW, what is the current reason fair use images are allowed on en:?
I suspect historical ones. They were allowed to start with (since if they are truely fair use they probably are better than nothing) and I doubt you could get a consensus together to get rid of them.
Deleting fair use would take away nearly all book covers, album covers, film/tv/game/software screenshots, logos, many symbols, modern-day stamps and currency, photos of unusual or rare products, works by 20th-century artists, etc. Even if energetic Wikipedians were to get busy and stalk all the celebrities to get candid snaps, you're still going to end up with an image-less Star Wars article.
Sometimes de: is held up as a counterexample of how one doesn't really need copyrighted images, but I'll hazard a guess that many de: readers "sneak over" via interwiki to look at the forbidden pictures on en:. (I notice de: sometimes "launders" images in legally-dubious ways, such as taking a photograph of a Yoda doll, or somebody wearing a Darth Vader Halloween costume.)
So it doesn't seem reasonable to simply say "no fair use at all". I am in favor of it being heavily regulated, to where only irreplaceable images are allowed and in enumerated contexts.
Stan