Great! Thanks! Let's look at article 14 in a better translation than I could make: "Article 14. It is permitted to quote from a disseminated literary work, including dramatic works, as well as disseminated cinematographic works and works of music, if this is done in the context of critical and scientific treatises, general information or some other recognized purpose, provided the quotation is correct and of reasonable length. With the same limitations it is permitted to reproduce pictures and drawings of disseminated works of art and documents mentioned in the third paragraph of Article 1. If pictures or drawings of two or more works by the same author are reproduced in the context of a text for general information, then the author is entitled to remuneration." So, that's Icelandic fair use for you. The wording sounds broad enough, what with "general information" and all. What I want to know is if all of Wikipedia would be considered one text, which would be severely limiting, or if each article would be considered on its own - which would allow one to do almost anything. At any rate this doesn't sound any less clear or more limiting than what I've been able to glean of U.S. fair use stipulations. As for the rest of Europe I don't know. One thing to remember is that Iceland is not a part of the European Union, an organization which I seem to remember recently publishing a little directive concerning this... Yes, that's actually pretty reasonable. Other such remuneration stipulations always seem to be as a percentage of money made. But I'm not a lawyer. Regards, Haukur P.S. Here's a quote from article 15: "It is permitted to reproduce in newspapers, periodicals, television programmes and in films, pictures or drawings of disseminated works of art in connection with narrative accounts of current events." This would be helpful for an Icelandic version of something like wikinews.

Ray Saintonge (saintonge(a)telus.net) [050715 13:37]: Yes, but could a mirror site? - d.

On 7/14/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: It's people having their heads in the sand is what it is. The incorporation of "fair use" images in Wikipedia ensures that the encyclopaedia as a whole cannot straightforwardly be used/redistributed outside of the US. The grand theories of a free resource for all ring hollow with so much work required to create a redistribution of the encyclopaedia, omitting the non-GFDL images, but including all the great free licence ones that are there. Zoney -- ~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...

As I keep pointing out "fair use" images aren't the only problem. Wikipedia has many photographs of old artworks. The photographs themselves are explicitly protected by copyright law in Europe but not in the United States as the Bridgeman ruling showed. So, many of the images tagged "pd-art" or with other pd-tags aren't actually in the public domain in Europe. And then there are books published before 1923 in Europe. Those are in the public domain in the United States but often not in Europe. The artwork of [[Arthur Rackham]] is a good example. A British reuser would do well to be careful in using those, their pd-tags notwithstanding. Currently few people pay attention to this as is demonstrated by the fact that one of these images was recently promoted to a featured picture. The featured pictures are the images on Wikipedia that have received the greatest scrutiny, including scrutiny of their license. And I hear there may be problems with public domain images from U.S. federal agencies outside of the United States. All in all a version of Wikipedia stripped of all images that could be problematic outside the United States would be stripped of *many* good images. I don't really think that's a good course to take. We should, however, be careful to tag everything clearly. Regards, Haukur