On 0, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> scribbled:
Gwern Branwen wrote:
On 0, George Herbert
<george.herbert(a)gmail.com> scribbled:
On 7/12/07, Zoney <zoney.ie(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Of course, the simple option would simply be not
to use images on en
Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. That rationale (excusing the publisher
from copyright/licence violation) is not valid everywhere, nor are the
parameters the same.
If Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopaedia, freely usable not just
in the USA and other places with similar fair use rationale, why complicate
matters with fair use images? Sure they can be stripped out prior to
publishing elsewhere in another medium, but the problem is that with fair
use images being allowed, plenty of article content will depend on such
images.
We have the dichotomy between the goal of building the best
encyclopedia possible, and building all-free content.
If these two goals did not collide, we would have no problem.
Unfortunately, they do, and in doing so cause untold misery.
Some things, such as album covers, screen caps for games, frames from
movies/anime... these have no possibility of replacable content. The
content we seek to illustrate is by nature copyrighted. Either we, as
a project, chose to do without such illustration, or we must accept
some copyrighted content under fair use justifications.
So far, policy is that we do so minimally. The fuzzy grey line around
"minimally" is becoming a war zone.
--
-george william herbert
I think you're understating the case here. It's not just a few things like album
covers or video game screen captures that requires fair use. It's basically anything
to do with commercial popular culture since 1923, just for starters and in the realm of
images.
WRONG! US material that was published before 1989 required a copyright
notice. Pre 1989 publicity shots that did not have a copyright notce
are in the public domain. Anything published in the US before 1964
whose copyright was not renewed is in the public domain.
From [[United States copyright law]]:
"Copyrightable works created before 1978 that had not entered the public domain in
1978 received protection for the § 302 term above with the exception that those copyrights
would not expire before 2003. Prior to 1978, works had to be published or registered to
receive copyright protection. Upon the effective date of the 1976 Act (1 January, 1978)
this requirement was removed and these works received protection despite having not been
published or registered. However, Congress intended to provide an incentive for these
authors to publish their unpublished works. To provide that incentive these works, if
published before 2003, will not have their protection expire until 2048."
As for the pre-1964 stuff: precisely what notable material wasn't renewed?
And even if we
manage to solve images, the real lurking issue here is of *text*. How much fair use text
do we have in Wikipedia? I can go to 10 random articles, find 2 or 3 fair use images - but
find a multiple of that of quotes and paraphrases. And it's worse than with images,
because at least with images we know images of pre-1923 matters to be public domain,
regardless of whether they were taken in the English-speaking world or no. But how many of
our quotes of, say, Sappho or the Dead Sea Scrolls, are *not* fair use (even though the
original long predates the first glimmerings of copyright)?
Obviously fair use doesn't apply to Sappho and the Dead Sea Scrolls
because they are in the public domain. Translations, however, may still
be copyright. Where are you trying to go with these claims?
Ec
It's not particularly useful for the *English Wikipedia* if those are copyrighted.
Perhaps professors of ancient Greek and Aramaic don't care about the copyright
restrictions on Sappho's fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the rest of us should
care.
--
gwern
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