I'm not an attorney, but U.S. copyright law, as spelled out in 17 USC
107, says that "fair use of a
copyrighted work...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news
reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or
research, is not an infringement of copyright." It goes on to specify
the following criteria to be used in
judging whether the use made of a work constitutes fair use:
You seem familiar with copyright law. I have considered making Wikipedia a little prettier by finding suitable pictures for some articles. If I find a photograph of, say, a koala, and I want to add it to [[Koala]], is that permissable (if I can attribute the photo)?