It has been called to my attention that the concept of "fair use" may be significantly more restricted in the UK than in the US, to the point that most of what is fair use in the US may not be in the UK.
If that's true, then we need to radically reassess our policy on fair use images, likely restricting or even eliminating them entirely, even though everything we're doing on our site is totally valid for us, we need to be extremely sensitive to the needs of people who might seek to reuse our content.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
It has been called to my attention that the concept of "fair use" may be significantly more restricted in the UK than in the US, to the point that most of what is fair use in the US may not be in the UK.
Wikipedia is hosted in the United States. US copyright law applies, and US law recognizes the concept of fair use. UK third parties who want to re- use our material merely need an easy way to filter out those images, that's all. We should probably also have some procedure for determining whether an image truly is fair use, i.e. a discussion phase that every such image must undergo where arguments for and against the matter are heard.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Wikipedia is hosted in the United States. US copyright law applies, and US law recognizes the concept of fair use. UK third parties who want to re-use our material merely need an easy way to filter out those images, that's all.
Right. We wouldn't restrict content based on what distributors in China or North Korea would be allowed to promulgate ...
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Jimmy Wales wrote: | It has been called to my attention that the concept of "fair use" may | be significantly more restricted in the UK than in the US, to the | point that most of what is fair use in the US may not be in the UK. | | If that's true, then we need to radically reassess our policy on fair | use images, likely restricting or even eliminating them entirely, even | though everything we're doing on our site is totally valid for us, we | need to be extremely sensitive to the needs of people who might seek | to reuse our content. | | --Jimbo
Jimbo, to what extent do we need to respect the policies of other nations, and which other nations? No offense is meant to the many UK folks on this list, but I would not want wikipedia to have to remove all content that the Chinese or Saudi government objected to.
Nathan
Nathan Russell wrote:
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Jimmy Wales wrote: | It has been called to my attention that the concept of "fair use" may | be significantly more restricted in the UK than in the US, to the | point that most of what is fair use in the US may not be in the UK. | | If that's true, then we need to radically reassess our policy on fair | use images, likely restricting or even eliminating them entirely, even | though everything we're doing on our site is totally valid for us, we | need to be extremely sensitive to the needs of people who might seek | to reuse our content. | | --Jimbo
Jimbo, to what extent do we need to respect the policies of other nations, and which other nations? No offense is meant to the many UK folks on this list, but I would not want wikipedia to have to remove all content that the Chinese or Saudi government objected to.
Nathan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Netscape6 - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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Fair use is only US. Britain is hardly Saudi Arabia or Noth Korea.
Fair dealing is very different.
I think tagging images with precise details of usage is the way forward. One problem with only allowing public domain images is that only the US government puts its images in the public domain. So only US articles will be properly illustrated.
To be honest, I'd rather people were concentrating on unlabelled images. We can then decide whether we want to delete all the non-US images that are used with permission as that is the only way to use them. From this side of the Atlantic US fair use images are worse than ones we are legally allowed to use.
We need to go on an image tagging drive. And then have the discussion ON THE WIKI so that the other 99% of users and contributors are aware of the debate. Even most adminsitrators don't contribute to the mailing lists.
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Caroline Ford wrote:
| I think tagging images with precise details of usage is the way forward. | One problem with only allowing public domain images is that only the US | government puts its images in the public domain. So only US articles | will be properly illustrated.
| To be honest, I'd rather people were concentrating on unlabelled images. | We can then decide whether we want to delete all the non-US images that | are used with permission as that is the only way to use them. From this | side of the Atlantic US fair use images are worse than ones we are | legally allowed to use.
| We need to go on an image tagging drive. And then have the discussion ON | THE WIKI so that the other 99% of users and contributors are aware of | the debate. Even most adminsitrators don't contribute to the mailing lists.
That sounds fine to me.
Nathan
Nathan Russell wrote:
Jimbo, to what extent do we need to respect the policies of other nations, and which other nations? No offense is meant to the many UK folks on this list, but I would not want wikipedia to have to remove all content that the Chinese or Saudi government objected to.
First, it's important to differentiate between content-neutral restrictions and content-based restrictions. There may be some overlap, but I think in the vast majority of cases, the restrictions we face will be largely one or the other.
Content-based restrictions we must ignore whenever they conflict with our NPOV mission. If a government objects to our work on political grounds, that's tough for them. We are very strongly protected by the United States government in this matter.
Some Content-based restrictions we may end up obeying, not out of respect for laws which violate the freedom of expression, but as a consequence of our NPOV mission. Both France and Germany have laws restricting the freedom of speech in various ways, but we are (in my opinion) unlikely to run afoul of those anyway, because we are an encyclopedia with an NPOV policy.
For example, a British newspaper distributed in France was fined for calling Jacques Chirac a worm. That's an inexcusable violation of human rights on the part of the French government, but it doesn't seem likely to cause us any trouble since we srupulously avoid making ALL controversial claims. We would, of course, report on the flap, in a neutral manner, but French law is not (to my knowledge) an obstacle to that.
Similarly, Germany has laws against some forms of expression relating to Naziism, but again, to my knowledge, so long as we stick to our NPOV mission, we aren't going to come close to violating those laws. (And, again, if we do, then we must ignore German law.)
For content-neutral restrictions, for example extremely narrow fair use provisions, we will have to make some judgment calls, and we may have to be creative. We want to preserve maximal freedom for downstream users, while at the same time not hampering our NPOV and encyclopedic mission. For the most part, we can obey such restrictions without compromising our mission, since the restrictions are content-neutral.
Is that explanation and distinction helpful?
I think it's a mistake to think that British limitations on fair use that may be slightly (or greatly) more restrictive that U.S. law are in anything like the same category as speech restrictions in North Korea or China or Iran or Saudi Arabia, etc..
They aren't even in the same category as speech restrictions in Germany and France.
--Jimbo
I am against the use of "fair use" images and other material.
Whenever I use Wikipedia I want to be sure that I can redistribute and modify any content I find in it under the terms of GFDL.
So a ban on fair use material seems reasonable and desired to me.
Perhaps we could divide the English Wikipedia in an "American Wikipedia" and an "International Wikipedia" (or "Pure GFDL Wikipedia") where the American edition would allow fair use material and the International edition would be just a copy (done automatically by software) without fair use material (software should have a checkbox "Fair use" in the Upload function so the copy routine would just copy all content not marked as "Fair use").
--Optim
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
It has been called to my attention that the concept of "fair use" may be significantly more restricted in the UK than in the US, to the point that most of what is fair use in the US may not be in the UK.
If that's true, then we need to radically reassess our policy on fair use images, likely restricting or even eliminating them entirely, even though everything we're doing on our site is totally valid for us, we need to be extremely sensitive to the needs of people who might seek to reuse our content.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org
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Optim wrote:
I am against the use of "fair use" images and other material.
Whenever I use Wikipedia I want to be sure that I can redistribute and modify any content I find in it under the terms of GFDL.
So a ban on fair use material seems reasonable and desired to me.
Perhaps we could divide the English Wikipedia in an "American Wikipedia" and an "International Wikipedia" (or "Pure GFDL Wikipedia") where the American edition would allow fair use material and the International edition would be just a copy (done automatically by software) without fair use material (software should have a checkbox "Fair use" in the Upload function so the copy routine would just copy all content not marked as "Fair use").
I have no problem with fair use images, so for me banning them entirely would be unreasonable. There are just too many variables. Tagging strikes me as more sensible, with a wide variety of possible tags. The user could then decide on his own level of risk tolerance rather than having that decided by a handful of do-gooders who think they know the law.
Ec