Back in May 2004 [[User:ChrisDJackson]], who appears to be inactive on Wikipedia at the moment, uploaded [[Image:Bushlogo.jpg]], but provided no information about its source or its use status. Assuming it came from http://www.georgewbush.com/ then it would fall under the sites copyright terms which are http://www.georgewbush.com/copyright.aspx
"All compilation and content of this site, including its assembly, design, text, illustrations, photographs, logos, etc. are the intellectual property of Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., its affiliates or its content suppliers and constitute copyrighted material, trademarks and/or trade dress. This site and its contents may be used only for personal, noncommercial use. All worldwide rights, titles and interests are reserved."
Now, Wikipedia is certainly noncommercial, but these copyright terms bring up another larger question, is Wikipedia "personal"?
Should we continue to use this image, or other images protected for "personal" use? What's the US law in this area, do laws of other nations also apply because Wikipedia is an internet site?
Putting something on a website is most certainly not "Personal" use in any legal system i know of.
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:10:16 -0400, John flockmeal@gmail.com wrote:
Back in May 2004 [[User:ChrisDJackson]], who appears to be inactive on Wikipedia at the moment, uploaded [[Image:Bushlogo.jpg]], but provided no information about its source or its use status. Assuming it came from http://www.georgewbush.com/ then it would fall under the sites copyright terms which are http://www.georgewbush.com/copyright.aspx
"All compilation and content of this site, including its assembly, design, text, illustrations, photographs, logos, etc. are the intellectual property of Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., its affiliates or its content suppliers and constitute copyrighted material, trademarks and/or trade dress. This site and its contents may be used only for personal, noncommercial use. All worldwide rights, titles and interests are reserved."
Now, Wikipedia is certainly noncommercial, but these copyright terms bring up another larger question, is Wikipedia "personal"?
Should we continue to use this image, or other images protected for "personal" use? What's the US law in this area, do laws of other nations also apply because Wikipedia is an internet site? _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
Putting something on a website is most certainly not "Personal" use in any legal system i know of.
It doesn't matter. This sort of thing goes to the very core of what the freedom of speech is all about. We have a right to comment and document on matters of a political nature, and our right to do so is very much tied up in our abiity to reproduce small snippets of content, such as this logo, to further that purpose.
There are at least two possible issues here:
1. Copyright in the logo -- this falls quite cleanly under fair use. 2. Trademark -- we are not using the logo as a trademark, but rather as illustration of an article about the Bush campaign, which is symbolized by the trademark.
And finally, it is worth taking some reasonable consideration of what the legal risk could possibly be. It would be a political disaster of such monumental proportions for the Bush/Cheney campaign to hassle the beloved Wikipedia in such a baseless manner as any complaint about this would be.
It is important not to violate copyrights or trademarks, but this is not plausibly a violation. It is important to not take legal risks that are too severe, even if there is a plausible argument that we are right, but in this case, the nature of the parties (a political party and a volunteer encyclopedia project) makes it virtually impossible that we would even get the hint of a complaint about this.
--Jimbo
One more quick thought....
There is a very common corporate tactic to give people permission on a website to do something that they could do anyway, period. Indeed, it is common to give permission for *less* than what you can do anyway.
An extreme example might be "You may quote my book at no charge, so long as you allow me to review the commentary before you pubish it."
Yes, this is a permission. But it is a tricky one, because it subtly hints that you're going to get in trouble if you quote without permission anyway.
--Jimbo