Philip Welch wrote:
On May 19, 2006, at 1:41 PM, maru dubshinki wrote:
From my own experience: the Star Wars article. We only accept canon depictions- and because canonicity policies say that only material authorized and licensed by the copyright holders is canon, and because the copyright holders will only do proprietary releases, we cannot, by definition, have free images relating to Star Wars.
It seems like the "only accept canon depictions" is the rule to go, since it seems silly and arbitrary, and in any case, far less important than "only use free content". Artist depictions would be appropriate in this case, just like almost any other case where we only have fair use images to use.
Doesn't get you off the hook though, since an artist's depiction is a derivative work. In fact, the more accurate the depiction, the more of a copyright infringement it is. So you end up making a choice between accuracy and freeness.
I have actually looked at de: Star Wars articles, and some play fast and loose with freeness. For instance, [[Chewbacca]] is illustrated with a picture of someone wearing a Chewbacca costume, but again, such a picture would be not be possible without some use of George's IP, so at least in that case de: is kidding themselves about freeness of the image (it's possible that they're exploiting Panoramafreiheit or some other German legal loophole not valid in the US).
Stan