His response is spot-on as far as I can tell, but it is important to see what he is saying. In a charitable interpretation, he is responding correctly to Smoddy's argument that promotional materials and logos are de facto "fair use" under U.S. copyright law. This is not true and our blanket statement template should be modified (as should all of them) to explicitly justify under which conditions it can be asserted as "fair use" -- not every use would necessarily be "fair". "Fair use" does not apply in a blanket way and should be spoken of in such a way -- Smoddy's language was imprecise and did not reflect a thorough understanding of the law (probably not his fault -- most of the "fair use" templates are VERY misleading!). A proper response would be, "We think our use of this falls under the 'fair use' clause because 1. the ownership of the logo is clearly attributed and the resolution of the file provided is low, 2. we are using it for an educational purpose on a non-profit encyclopedia, and it enhances this effort significantly, 3. no uncopyrighted alternative exists. We believe that a judge would agree with us that such usage is 'fair' were it to be litigated." Our Nationalist friend has not given us any reasons for why he would think the above claims would *not* qualify as fair, so it is hard to know why he thinks that. The templates are misleading and should be changed -- they make "fair use" look like a free ticket, and they are from the standpoint of what the *content* itself is rather than its *use* (i.e., they say things like "posters are considered fair use" -- completely the wrong way to think about it). I've been working on some proposals along these lines which I'll link to on here at some point. FF On 8/3/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson <haukurth(a)hi.is> wrote:

Well, there are already many fair use templates for different purposes, and I think that is a good idea for certain blanket categories of use. I think a blank space is a bad idea -- most users do not know what kind of claims they should be making, do not care, and do not want to take the time to learn. I do not blame them for this in the slightest! My proposal is to edit the templates so that they clearly state their proper use. For example, the following would be a fair use template for use on portraits of historical individuals: {{ This is a copyrighted photographic portrait of a notable individual. It is believed that this qualifies under the fair use provision of United States copyright law (see copyrights), because the Wikipedia editor who has placed this copyright tag believes it to satisify the following criteria: 1. It is used for purely educational purposes and significantly enhances value of the encyclopedia article it is being used to illustrate and is not meant to defraud or otherwise harm the existing copyright holder. 2. Alternative photographs under a free license have not been located and seem unlikely to currently exist. 3. Its total pixel dimensions is far below any suitable print resolution. As such it is only provides a limited amount of reproducibility and in limited applications. 4. Its ultimate source and likely copyright holder is listed above if known, for those seeking to license the photograph for their own use. If it is not known, its immediate source is listed above, who may be possibly contacted for copyright information as well. 5. It is being used on the English edition of Wikipedia, which is sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, for the purpose of creating an encyclopedia and spreading general knowledge. If you are re-using Wikipedia content for another website (see our copyright policy), these fair use criteria may not apply. Please note that the posting of copyrighted material that does not have the express permission of the copyright holder may be in violation of applicable law and of our policy. Those with a history of violations may be temporarily suspended from editing pages. }} Now if I were a user and I placed that, I would hopefully read it over a bit to see if it qualified, but even if I didn't, any other user who looked at the tag could quickly and easily see if the image *didn't* meet one of the requirements. "Holy smokes, this user didn't include any information about the likely copyright holder!" and then flag it appropriately or notify the original user. That is, *the template itself* would, in the process of setting out the "fair use" claims (which would alert any copyright holder specifically what our argument about fair use is), also define what sorts of things could be labeled with it. Does your image/use not fit the template? Then it probably isn't fair use! Simple as that. I think they should all be changed along these lines. I think it would save a lot of time, be a lot "safer", and also make a lot more users unconsciously aware of the "fair use" requirements in an actionable way. It also makes the licensing information pretty clear, i.e. that future use of it could be pretty limited. FF On 8/3/05, Phroziac <phroziac(a)gmail.com> wrote: