This is a problem I've been thinking about fairly specifically as of recent. Specific fair use tags serve a number of useful functions -- they help categorize an overly large category, they help specify specific criteria for "fair use" images in that category (at least, in the rewritten ones), and they may at some point be able to be linked to specific fair use rationale pages (specific to that type of media).
The downside is that people read them (especially the old, non-rewritten ones) as being unlimited "get out of jail free cards". Which is dangerous and bad and promotes sloppy thinking.
One way to get around this is to of course modified the captions to say that they MUST be used in actual *articles* (i.e., in the article namespace). I might do that soon.
One of the big things which is a problem at the moment is that there are two or three different places to list CV/Fair use disputed images for deletion (WP:CP, WP:PUI, WP:IFD). This promotes confusion, lack of standardization, and long nasty debates with people who are sad that their favorite image of some supermodel is nominated for deletion (and they hastily try to insert it into articles to make it seem "used" and for "analysis", etc.). It doesn't make it easy to nominated copyrighted images for deletion, it makes it very hard in practice. Add the fact that there are a lot of people who are relatively clueless about copyrights, or have drastically divergent opinions about what is "fair" or not, and we get nothing but logjam.
In a project of this sort, it should be *easy* to delete copyrighted material. The difficulty should be in defending them from deletion. The burden of proof should be heavily on the person to convince that it is *not* copyright infringement. All use of non-free images should be considered copyright infringement *by default*, and only considered otherwise after convincing reasoning. It's a place where "assume good faith" is a bad idea (I've had people criticize me for not "assuming good faith" when people just label images as PD without providing any explanation and I ask for some reasoning) because there's more at stake here than a user's desire to help the project (i.e. a user's understanding of the copyright categories they are dealing with).
I don't have the slightest idea how to change this though, at least not from my level of things (I have absolutely no authority, either on Wikipedia or by means of claiming to be a lawyer or expert, neither of which I am). But I think it's a general problem at the moment, one which hinders intelligent reform quite a bit. Someone with some sort of authority (on Wikipedia or in a legal/expertise sense) could probably do a big favor by trying to work this out in an intelligent way. I don't think it's something which lends itself to collective discussion and decision, because of the ambiguity of the legal issues.
(Of course, in the absence of said Voice-on-High, I'm happy to mull about as usual. Something is better than nothing. I think we're doing some good work at WP:WPFU, getting a much better understanding of the salient issues at the very least, and are being forced to confront a lot of assumptions and find good ways to talk about them. Much better than nothing.)
I'm *almost* inclined to suggest that we just NOT accept "fair use" images at all. Not because our use of them is likely "unfair", or even dangerous, but because this is a legal problem beyond the knowledge base of most of our users, and we leave most of the impetus on *them* to figure out what's legal or not. Almost inclined... but not completely. It would simplify things, but we'd be poorer for it, as an encyclopedia, and we'd also look like we were copyright paranoid or cowed, neither of which is a good reputation to have. But it's a thought.
FF
On 9/22/05, Puddl Duk puddlduk@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/20/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
I've just removed two references to [[Image:Mac Internet Explorer.png]] and two to [[Image:XPlogo.png]] from user pages. While both of these images have a good argument for fair use on the appropriate articles about their related products, there is no fair use argument for placing these on user pages or in cutesy little "product endorsement" boxes (see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]) for people to put on their user pages. Wikipedia doesn't need to carry advertisements for anybody, especially not using copyrighted logos.
I see this fundemental lack of understanding all the time. And it seems to be exacerbated with specific fair use tags.
One example I recently ran across was a user uploading a lot of porn and nude screenshots from various movies. I listed these on the copyright problems page. Instead of the images being deleted, the person processing the copyvios added a {{screenshot}} tag to a bunch of them. These were orphans. They had zero fair-use rationale. But what the hell, there was a {{screenshot}} tag to use.
I just ran across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JilKelly-BonitaSaint-DevenDavis-Perfect_P... morning and am wondering if it is even worth the effort to list on WP:CP. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l