Non-free images are goind to be deleted because * Wikipedia as a whole can not be reused if it contains non-free images * it increases pressure to get free alternative images, where possible * Jimbo said so :-)

I entirely sympathise. Personally, I don't see why we have to run around deleting images with non-free licences from Wikipedia when we have Commons for the fully free licences. What is the reasoning behind removing all of these images? Apparently my user page image is going to be deleted because I refuse to release it under a free licence (as opposed to used with permission).

Why? This is still a complete mystery to me. If we have permission to use them, why not use them?

It is considered courteous for the uploader to be notified when an image is listed on [[WP:PUI]]. In fact, the image deletion process is normally quite long and requires the uploader to be contacted, original copyright holder to be contacted requesting permission if there is any possibility of release under a free licence, etc. Not doing so in this case seems rather rude.

I'm coming into this a bit late, but the silliest thing about this policy is that the two types images currently allowed under Wikipedia policy are one with a free license, and ones without any free license at all except our somewhat dubious pro-active claim of fair use (fair use in the U.S. can only be used in defense, it cannot be used offensively).

Now I understand the importance of having free licenses, but I think it is very silly that images licensed for non-commercial use are singled out as "non-free" while slapping "fair use" on anything seems to get by without so much as the raising of an eyebrow most of the time.

Let us say this is about content providing -- i.e., we don't provide things that others can't use. I don't see why "fair use" images would be any different in this respect -- the individual user is going to have to evaluate whether their particular use of the image is still covered by fair use, whether they want to take that gamble, etc. If non-profit Wikipedia feels comfortable using copyrighted images of Mickey Mouse and claiming fair use, great, but any future for-profit encyclopedia is going to have to answer for themselves. "Fair use" is just as conditional on context and use as any "permission for anything non-commercial" -- perhaps even worse, since pre-emptively claiming fair use is playing with legal fire as it is.

If we are only going to provide "totally free" content, we should eliminate all fair use images as well. If we are not going to do that, we should not worry so much about images which are licensed under relatively free licenses -- i.e., free for use with acknowledgement, free for use in non-commercial settings, free for use just on Wikipedia, etc.

Claiming "fair use" in general seems legally problematic to me in general but I'm not a lawyer. I could imagine a very clever Disney lawyer saying, "Well, Wikipedia gives the impression that its content is 'free', and puts our images right next to the rest of their 'free' content. If Wikipedia was just trying to make their own non-profit encyclopedia, that would be one thing, but since they are also trying to provide an open-source, re-distributable content, they are actually in the business of telling people our copyrighted work is of questionable legal status, which we must affirm to the contrary." Whether such an argument would hold or not is not something I know, but it would be a messy thing nonetheless. And rest assured Disney Corp. would be no more worried about the "legions" of nasty e-mails they might get from Wikipedians than Microsoft Corp. does from the Open-Source movement members.

What, 10,000-20,000 pieces of copyrighted content that we use in defiance of their copyright holders, paying not a cent, hiding behind the defensive, feeble, and unreliable "fair use" clause in a nation where every congressman is preaching Big Media's jeremiad about copyright infringement destroying the economy? Sounds to me like the makings of one heck of a class-action suit...

The more I think about this, the more I think that sitting on ~20,000 copyrighted images is a time-bomb waiting to go off. I see some distant future in which Wikipedia gets taken down with a cease and desist -- of course, some intrepid person would no doubt create a "totally free" mirror which would continue, but at what overall cost? Personally I think an un-illustrated article is better than one which puts us in a highly compromised legal position -- most of the articles in print AND online encyclopedias are unillustrated, we wouldn't be doing anything wrong in that respect.

On 7/7/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Of course, with 14,449 images tagged as fair use (I figured out a way to get a rough estimate using "What Links Here" and playing with the numbers in the URL*), this seems extraordinarily impractical. (To our credit, we have a whopping 46,520 pages tagged as GDFL). (Which to me says, if we are not going to purge all of them, then we should try and subcategorize them into smaller fair use categories, similar to those used for book covers and so forth, but expand to other relatively "safe" things such as "historical images" and "headshots" and "large scientific instruments" or something like that.)

This is somewhat true, but it should be remembered that we are dealing here purely with hypotheticals, that in "real life" it would come down to the discretion likely of one person (a circuit court judge, unless these are jury trials, but for some reason I don't think there are, but I might be remembering wrong).

Hmm... well, maybe. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I've heard of people claiming damages for other things which clearly had no proof of damage or obvious deficit. Additionally, it would not be hard for a company like Getty Images or Corbis to say, "We make our income licensing photographs to publications, and you're blatantly using them in yours without paying us a cent."

I still don't think it is paranoia to say that in this day and age it is not a good idea to sit willingly on 14,000 pieces of copyrighted works, each of which say on them, "We know this is probably a form of infringement, but we think we're safe by threatening a preemptive invocation of one small and relatively weak part of U.S. copyright law."

Since many of the companies we'd be infringing upon are those which make their business selling photographs to, say, news sources and encyclopedias, I don't think we're quite out of the clear in any sense. What's the old Burroughs quote -- paranoia is just knowing exactly who is out to get you? ;-)

It is my position, speaking generally, that we ought to crack down quite a bit on "fair use", not because there are any legal problems with what we are doing now, but because it makes it harder for people to reuse in jurisdictions with bad fair use provisions, and because an excessive reliance on fair use tempts us to be lazy about creating freely licensed alternatives.

But for now, I think the first campaigns for cleanup should be (1) any remaining untagged images and (2) the elimination of non-free (such as "by permission") images.

Are you at all concerned that we are systematically ignoring the law in several European countries?

There are still oodles of untagged images.

Why should eliminating by-permission images have a higher priority than cleaning up fair-use images?

I'm listening, believe me. I'm sure you'll agree these are complex issues with many delicate legal and social ramifications for the project.

That project has indeed been doing very valuable work. Lots of it. It should be noted, though, that there are now more than 5000 images carrying the "unverified" tag, those are untagged for most intents and purposes. But still, I think it would be nice if the image upload system would automatically add the unverified tag if the uploader fails to provide a tag. That should further alert new users that we need licensing information on each uploaded image. A helpful interface where the user could select from a number of tags would be even better. I've been on Wikipedia for more than two years but I still don't always remember the most appropriate PD-tag to use for each image. Regards, Haukur _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Hmmm! Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character, and his historical importance is as a cartoon character. So I would ask is a picture of someone dressed in a Mickey Mouse suit really a picture of Mickey Mouse? ;-)

I am happy to contribute a photo of Mickey Mouse which I took myself while visiting Disney World in Florida. While there might (conceivably, but doubtfully) be some complex issues related to copyright in the character, I think this is a very very "clean" fair use as compared to, for example taking a scan of a drawing directly from Disney or (worse) simply downloading an image from a Disney website.

It is my position, speaking generally, that we ought to crack down quite a bit on "fair use", not because there are any legal problems with what we are doing now, but because it makes it harder for people to reuse in jurisdictions with bad fair use provisions, and because an excessive reliance on fair use tempts us to be lazy about creating freely licensed alternatives.

But for now, I think the first campaigns for cleanup should be (1) any remaining untagged images and (2) the elimination of non-free (such as "by permission") images.

On 7/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote: You really think so? Most of those that I've seen don't even have their ultimate source listed. They say things like, "Taken from such and such website," where such and such website is usually violating copyright. They don't say things like, "If you're interested in a larger picture of this, contact Getty Images" or something like that.

But anyway. I'm not a lawyer, and certainly not a copyright lawyer. I might -- if nobody objects -- make a few informal e-mails to some academics who I do consider bonafide experts in this subject and ask them their thoughts on these questions, which I'll happily relay to the list. But I won't do that immediately, so if someone has any objections, please let me know (I should note, I will make no gestures that I represent WP in any way).

So as to cull out the unnecessary fair use images, I think we should be making passes over those, and not be shy about deleting ones that offer nothing over free versions. Ideally, every fair use image's description page will have a special justification for its existence, something that we can defend to any skeptics.

I recognise that some people are waging war on copyright but I think that this is a small minority and most misuse is unconscious.

Thank you Michael. I would have responded earlier, but it's a real pain in the ass to be NOT GETTING THE MAILING LIST MESSAGES thanks to a power-mad dictator who "tweaks" a setting such that an account looks like it's "subscribed" but gets no emails back. If this message does not reach the list soon, could you please forward it? No, I do NOT suggest throwing out the old 3RR, though its modification is necessary. I REALLY hope that per-page blocking passes and that 3RR can be modified to be a per-page block rather than a whole-Wikipedia block; too many times recently we've seen instances where someone makes a deliberately controversial edit, KNOWING that another editor who frequents the page will revert it, and then deliberately edit-wars from that point solely to goad their opponent into a 3RR violation and get them blocked from the whole of Wikipedia. MY suggestion was intended to deal with situations where there is a large-scale edit war with revert warriors calling "reinforcements" - no *single* editor breaking 3RR, but an obvious revert/edit war occurring with multiple editors chiming in, each contributing their three reverts and then letting the next person take over the reverting. Perhaps a rephrasing is in order: Page-based 3RR. If the same phrase is reverted from a page more than three times in 24 hours and three or more editors are involved in the dispute, then that PAGE shall be locked for a week and all editors involved in the reverts shall receive a 12-hour block to cool off. This policy shall not apply to the reversion of simple vandalism. The idea is as follows: (1) PREVENT Revert-warring by force of numbers. "We have more guys than you so we decide what the page says" cannot be allowed to be policy, but functionally it is right now the way 3RR stands. (2) ENCOURAGE good-faith editing and DISCOURAGE placing deliberately controversial edits for the purpose of provoking 3RR violations. It's obvious enough when such conduct is occurring, but edit warriors on sex- and religion-based articles have taken edit-warring (while avoiding 3RR violations) to a fine art. This policy would make edit-warriors who have become skilled at provoking OTHERS into 3RR violations think twice before doing so, because (as is SUPPOSED to happen in the current 3RR listings regarding users who try to game the system, but never does) there would be legitimate consequences for BOTH sides of the problem. (3) Timing: Someone mentioned (I forget who) that they consider a "base time frame" for a block or lock to be a bad thing. I'll mention that we have plenty already in place: 3RR is a 24-hour block, Vandalism is a 12-hour block, etc. As Admins always have the option to shorten this lock *should the situation be resolved on talk page sooner*, I don't see this as a downside - quite the opposite, it encourages the users to work their differences out. If one side is deliberately operating in bad faith and just trying to keep the article locked, then that's when you go to RFC or Arbitration on the matter. While I disagree with most of ArbCom's behavior recently, this is one instance where I think even the current ArbCom members would be hard-pressed to make the wrong decision. And again, IF such a situation occurs, I would hope that the remedy would be a per-page block rather than a wholesale Wikipedia block once we get per-page blocking passed. A. Nony Mouse _________________________________________________________________ Start dating right now with FREE Match.com membership! http://match.msn.ie _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

I think many of us are waging war on copyright but some of us feel that the war is better conducted within the framework of the law.

I agree, which is why I find the current policy somewhat nonsensical -- i.e. , "free use except for commercial use" requires no more or less diligence by the end-user than "fair use" licensing.

What, 10,000-20,000 pieces of copyrighted content that we use in defiance of their copyright holders, paying not a cent, hiding behind the defensive, feeble, and unreliable "fair use" clause in a nation where every congressman is preaching Big Media's jeremiad about copyright infringement destroying the economy? Sounds to me like the makings of one heck of a class-action suit...

AFAIK we have not yet received any official take-down orders. That's disturbing in its own peculiar way. Receiving a few of these gives us an idea of which way the wind is blowing. Without them we are only speculating about what might happen. Until we receive such notices it should be enough to be reasonable. Winnability should not enter into the discussion until after the notice. So far, case reports don't give a conclusive picture, but some decisions have been favorable. I'm probably more optimistic than you.

Find the number of total pages considered and extrapolate. The "A"s are probably better covered than most letters.

Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote: Not at all. Even assuming that the museum's dubious claims were upheld by British courts, the operating principle in the US would be not to give greater protection than would be available in a comparable situation in the US, i.e. of source material owned by a US museum. The US courts have already gone further in determining the non-copyrightability of such materials. Ec

AFAIK we have not yet received any official take-down orders.