[WikiEN-l] Legal advice

Firstly, legal questions should be posted to wikilegal-l (or resolved on wikipedia, of course). I'm cross-posting this one. Some claim that we only release Wikipedia text under the GFDL, (see [[meta:permission grant extent]]). As far as I know, Jimbo has not explicitly clarified this. However, this claim is not sustainable when the images are embedded within the article using "inline links". In this case, the image and the text form a single document. My reasoning is based on the various cases where people created HTML pages that embedded content from another server - there are a bunch of examples at http://www.linksandlaw.com/linkingcases-framing.htm. In these cases, it was argued that inline linking creates a derivative work. Note that the GFDL only gives permission to create a derivative work if the resulting work is also released under the GFDL. If the fair use image (or, indeed, quote) would probably also be fair use for all (reasonable) downstream users, and its copyright status is explicitly marked, then we're probably ok, but we do typically ask the image uploader to add as much detail as they can on the image description page, so sub-licensees can decide whether to take the risk. However, if the fair use claim relies heavily, on, for example, Wikipedia's non-profit status, then we should remove it, and may be in danger of infringing our contributors copyright. If an image is vital, note that normal linking (not "inline linking") does NOT create a derivative work. -- Martin "IANAL" Harper