Greetings...
On en.wikipedia, fair use images are allowed so long as they comply with the fair use criteria as stipulated at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NFCC.
Recently, and especially subsequent to the Foundation's resolution on licensing, significant efforts have been made to bring en.wikipedia in compliance. A large number of users have engaged in activities intended to bring images in compliance with our policies or be deleted. There's been several key debates/events in this process: * Images/screenshots in episode lists have been removed. This was reported in Signpost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Fair_us...) * User:Betacommand created a bot (BetacommandBot) to tag images missing fair use rationales (a requirement under the fair use criteria) as missing them, placing them for deletion. This was debated in a number of places, most notably at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/FURG * Images in music discographies are being removed * Based on dumps from May, a list of articles where fair use images were used in large numbers was created and is now being worked on by several users. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durin/Fair_Use_Overuse These are not the only efforts underway, but should serve to demonstrate what is happening.
Some of the problems that are happening, using a broad paintbrush: * Some users are insisting that if the Foundation hasn't taken a position specifically against fair use images being used in say discographies, that it is therefore acceptable use. * Some users have insisted that the bot tagging images missing fair use rationales be permanently blocked. Further, that the deletion policy for such images (WP:CSD I6) be suspended. * Some users have been debating, at great length, that boiler plate fair use rationales can be used to bring these images in compliance. This is in large part due to the idea that fair use criteria is sufficiently met if the fair use image serves to __identify__ the thing in question. Under this argument, it is not necessary to have any critical commentary regarding the product being displayed, or the cover art/logo being displayed. * Debates that have previously occurred, even recently, are being disputed as not achieving consensus. Yet, those attempting to act to bring our fair use images in compliance are acting under policy and the Foundation's resolution. It is frequently noted that consensus does not always trump policy, or indeed our very mission to develop free content. These debates are becoming endless, with no way to seemingly satisfy all parties.
I am summarizing in short as much as I can. Please understand that these debates have been heavily rancorous at times, almost always long winded, repetitive, and unending. Just about every negative word you could think of a debate would apply to the sum of all that has happened on this overarching debate in the last three months since the Foundation's resolution.
I am not looking for people from this mailing list to jump into the debates and speak their minds in support of one camp or another. That will do nothing to end this terrible situation.
--- What I think needs to be done --- A clearer stance from the Foundation needs to be made with specific regard to fair use on the English language Wikipedia. In particular, this stance needs to clearly indicate one of several possible stances: 1) Fair use may be liberally used wherever it is legal within the confines of fair use law in the United States. - This is a stance that one side of this issue insists is acceptable.
2) Fair use may be used if it serves to identify a given thing, such as an album, book, person, etc. No critical commentary on the image in question is needed; just that it serves to identify. - This is one interpretation of the current policy. Many people feel this interpretation is correct. Many people feel it is not.
3) Fair use may be used only if it discussed within the context of critical commentary inline with the article, thus the image is necessary to the text of the article itself. - This would greatly diminish fair use usage as it would remove logos, book covers, album covers, and quite a number of other possible types of images. It would retain images that are significant to the text of an article, including unusual book covers, album covers, logos, etc. where critical commentary on the design was present. - Note there is a further division of this stance as there will be some that will argue that if you are discussing a book, displaying the book under this stance would be ok. Which is it? Commentary on the contents of the book or the cover of the book?
4) Fair use works may not be used at all. - This would bring en.wikipedia in line with other language Wikipedias, but has the drawback of eliminating highly significant photographs relevant to articles about the things depicted in those photographs. It could be modified to have an exclusion for historically significant images, but this reduces the bright line effect of this stance.
I know that Jimbo has stated a personal stance of limiting fair use to highly historical photos. Stance (3) above supports that, but is more broad. Stance (4), if modified, could support that. Stances (1) and (2) can not.
Our current situation is very murky. The debates are endless and are getting nowhere. People are acting to support perceived policy and resolution, but are being called vandals often enough and reverted numerous times. There is no clear line, and nothing in policy that provides us with a clear delineation of what is acceptable and what is not.
While fair use law is deliberately vague and does not provide a bright line, I feel we must provide one in policy for en.wikipedia if we are to have any chance of achieving the targets laid out in the Foundation's licensing policy (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy).
Personally, I have been attempting to support our fair use policies for a year and a half now. I have been attacked for it more times than I care to account. I've been called an extremist, disruptive, fair use nazi, revisionist, and all manner of assorted attacks. I am growing tired of endlessly trying to explain to users that we are a free content project, and our fair use policy is a superset of law. I'm about ready to throw in the fair use towel because of my perception that at a fundamental level, this issue doesn't matter enough to the Foundation for the real power of this project to step in and clearly support our mission. The licensing resolution helps, but has suffered multiple interpretations locally.
On en.wikipedia, there are approximately 200 thousand fair use, copyrighted images of ~750 thousand images total. This is a major, major undertaking to bring ourselves into compliance. Yet, in three months we've barely made a dent affecting only a few thousand images, and fixing a similar number of articles. At the rate we are progressing, the nearest date we could come into compliance would be ~5 years from now. Further, we'd have a huge amount of effort wasted in the process debating endlessly over this subject.
Please help us.
Respectfully, -Durin
the wording I prefer for 2/ .. if it serves to identify and characterize a given thing, such as an album, book, person, etc. No critical commentary on the image in question is needed; just that it serves to identify. (we're not a guide to identifying albums, but the image makes it clear --often clearer than the text-- what the nature of the work is. This is the rationale for magazine covers, among other things. )
On 7/10/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings...
On en.wikipedia, fair use images are allowed so long as they comply with the fair use criteria as stipulated at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NFCC.
Recently, and especially subsequent to the Foundation's resolution on licensing, significant efforts have been made to bring en.wikipedia in compliance. A large number of users have engaged in activities intended to bring images in compliance with our policies or be deleted. There's been several key debates/events in this process:
- Images/screenshots in episode lists have been removed. This was reported in Signpost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Fair_us...)
- User:Betacommand created a bot (BetacommandBot) to tag images missing fair use rationales (a requirement under the fair use criteria) as
missing them, placing them for deletion. This was debated in a number of places, most notably at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/FURG
- Images in music discographies are being removed
- Based on dumps from May, a list of articles where fair use images were used in large numbers was created and is now being worked on by several users. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durin/Fair_Use_Overuse
These are not the only efforts underway, but should serve to demonstrate what is happening.
Some of the problems that are happening, using a broad paintbrush:
- Some users are insisting that if the Foundation hasn't taken a position specifically against fair use images being used in say discographies, that it is therefore acceptable use.
- Some users have insisted that the bot tagging images missing fair use rationales be permanently blocked. Further, that the deletion policy for such images (WP:CSD I6) be suspended.
- Some users have been debating, at great length, that boiler plate fair use rationales can be used to bring these images in compliance. This is in large part due to the idea that fair use criteria is sufficiently met if the fair use image serves to __identify__ the thing in question. Under this argument, it is not necessary to have any critical commentary regarding the product being displayed, or the cover art/logo being displayed.
- Debates that have previously occurred, even recently, are being disputed as not achieving consensus. Yet, those attempting to act to bring our fair use images in compliance are acting under policy and the Foundation's resolution. It is frequently noted that consensus does not always trump policy, or indeed our very mission to develop free content. These debates are becoming endless, with no way to seemingly satisfy all parties.
I am summarizing in short as much as I can. Please understand that these debates have been heavily rancorous at times, almost always long winded, repetitive, and unending. Just about every negative word you could think of a debate would apply to the sum of all that has happened on this overarching debate in the last three months since the Foundation's resolution.
I am not looking for people from this mailing list to jump into the debates and speak their minds in support of one camp or another. That will do nothing to end this terrible situation.
--- What I think needs to be done --- A clearer stance from the Foundation needs to be made with specific regard to fair use on the English language Wikipedia. In particular, this stance needs to clearly indicate one of several possible stances:
Fair use may be liberally used wherever it is legal within the confines of fair use law in the United States.
- This is a stance that one side of this issue insists is acceptable.
Fair use may be used if it serves to identify a given thing, such as
an album, book, person, etc. No critical commentary on the image in question is needed; just that it serves to identify.
- This is one interpretation of the current policy. Many people feel
this interpretation is correct. Many people feel it is not.
- Fair use may be used only if it discussed within the context of
critical commentary inline with the article, thus the image is necessary to the text of the article itself.
- This would greatly diminish fair use usage as it would remove logos,
book covers, album covers, and quite a number of other possible types of images. It would retain images that are significant to the text of an article, including unusual book covers, album covers, logos, etc. where critical commentary on the design was present.
- Note there is a further division of this stance as there will be some
that will argue that if you are discussing a book, displaying the book under this stance would be ok. Which is it? Commentary on the contents of the book or the cover of the book?
- Fair use works may not be used at all.
- This would bring en.wikipedia in line with other language Wikipedias,
but has the drawback of eliminating highly significant photographs relevant to articles about the things depicted in those photographs. It could be modified to have an exclusion for historically significant images, but this reduces the bright line effect of this stance.
I know that Jimbo has stated a personal stance of limiting fair use to highly historical photos. Stance (3) above supports that, but is more broad. Stance (4), if modified, could support that. Stances (1) and (2) can not.
Our current situation is very murky. The debates are endless and are getting nowhere. People are acting to support perceived policy and resolution, but are being called vandals often enough and reverted numerous times. There is no clear line, and nothing in policy that provides us with a clear delineation of what is acceptable and what is not.
While fair use law is deliberately vague and does not provide a bright line, I feel we must provide one in policy for en.wikipedia if we are to have any chance of achieving the targets laid out in the Foundation's licensing policy (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy).
Personally, I have been attempting to support our fair use policies for a year and a half now. I have been attacked for it more times than I care to account. I've been called an extremist, disruptive, fair use nazi, revisionist, and all manner of assorted attacks. I am growing tired of endlessly trying to explain to users that we are a free content project, and our fair use policy is a superset of law. I'm about ready to throw in the fair use towel because of my perception that at a fundamental level, this issue doesn't matter enough to the Foundation for the real power of this project to step in and clearly support our mission. The licensing resolution helps, but has suffered multiple interpretations locally.
On en.wikipedia, there are approximately 200 thousand fair use, copyrighted images of ~750 thousand images total. This is a major, major undertaking to bring ourselves into compliance. Yet, in three months we've barely made a dent affecting only a few thousand images, and fixing a similar number of articles. At the rate we are progressing, the nearest date we could come into compliance would be ~5 years from now. Further, we'd have a huge amount of effort wasted in the process debating endlessly over this subject.
Please help us.
Respectfully, -Durin
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On 7/10/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
<snip/> Please help us.
Respectfully, -Durin
Consider that you may have put yourself (and the project) in a "helpless" position toward fair use abuse when you resigned as an admin. I'd love to help in that area too but I doubt I could "gain the community's trust" as they say.
—C.W.
On 7/12/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/10/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
<snip/> Please help us.
Respectfully, -Durin
Consider that you may have put yourself (and the project) in a "helpless" position toward fair use abuse when you resigned as an admin. I'd love to help in that area too but I doubt I could "gain the community's trust" as they say.
Whether I am an administrator or not has absolutely no bearing on this. One (one) of the reasons I resigned as an administrator was the constant, unending threats leveled against me to have my adminship removed. I wanted to remove that tool from the people who continually fight against attempting to bring the project into compliance with our fair use policies.
Bottom line here; the Foundation has mandated that we come into compliance by Spring of '08. I'm telling you this is flat our impossible under the current situation where little in the way of clear demarcation has been given.
To give an example, in the Foundation resolution, it clearly shows that replaceable fair use images of living people should be deleted (item #3 on the resolution). We've got people who fight against this anyway, but at least with the resolution we have a bright line defense that we can cite; the person is alive, thus it's replaceable. Point to the resolution, end of debate. This very thing is happening with a user right now on Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mosquera). With the resolution, there's no question this fellow is in the wrong.
With broad ranges of other images, we are left almost defenseless against unending debate about why x,y,z image should be allowed. As an example, observe the featured article request for Steven Colbert. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Stephen_C...) The article has a number of fair use images which contributed little or nothing more than illustrating a given show that Steven Colbert was on. Compare against the "Truthiness" image located near the bottom of the article, which does directly contribute to the inline text. The images in use here are very much decorative. Despite this, we have people arguing against their removal or modification of the text such that the text needs the image to complete itself. Observe in the FA request that 17Drew says "Since when does a copyrighted image have to illustrate a specific scene?" I.e., decorative is ok. This is not an inexperienced user; he's been here a year, with thousands upon thousand of edits, 10k in the mainspace alone, and an administrator.
The point here is there is virtually nothing to definitively point to among policy and resolutions to say that decorative use or use to merely identify something is wrong. Our *general* attitude on en.wikipedia is that we tolerate fair use when that image is specifically of the thing the article is the subject of, for example a book cover is acceptable for an article on that book. But, every time..and I mean every time... we discuss usage beyond this context, we run into endless debates.
We've got people endlessly arguing over the meaning of "minimal" in item #3 of the resolution. In one debate, we had people actively arguing that the use of 133 fair use images on the article constituted minimal use, because in each case one image was used to identify a single subject, therefore it was in essence 1 image per use, not 133. I kid you not.
We've got people endlessly arguing over the term "significance" from our non-free content criteria item #8, with a very broad range of interpretations on what that means. There's plenty of people that feel pure identification is "significant".
How many times do we have to debate these issues? How much energy do we have to exert? How often do we have to end up in RfCs, mediations and RfRs (all of these have happened, some of them multiple times) over this issue?
This has to stop. We need a bright line defense, a clear line of delineation to end this nightmare. If the Foundation expects en.wikipedia to come into compliance by Spring of '08 it must take action to give us the tools necessary to accomplish this. We're working on 200,000 images used in tens of thousands of ways. We have virtually no direction, no bright line to point people to and say "This is policy. This is resolution. Period."
We need a considerably clearer delineation and we need it now.
-Durin
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
Bottom line here; the Foundation has mandated that we come into compliance by Spring of '08.
... with an EDP developed by en: people. The en: EDP could easily say "anything remotely like USian fair use is OK", and you're done. Any deadline panic is of your own making, it's not coming from the Foundation.
How many times do we have to debate these issues? How much energy do we have to exert? How often do we have to end up in RfCs, mediations and RfRs (all of these have happened, some of them multiple times) over this issue?
You could learn to pick your battles a little better. When a militant uses a bot to flag one of my old uploads for deletion in seven days, because my fair use rationale isn't at least 3,000 words long and written in grammatically elegant Latin or whatever the goalpost happens to be that day, I lose interest in helping out. I've fixed up thousands of fair-use images in the past, I don't need to be lectured about the concept by some noob.
Stan
On 7/12/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
You could learn to pick your battles a little better. When a militant uses a bot to flag one of my old uploads for deletion in seven days, because my fair use rationale isn't at least 3,000 words long and written in grammatically elegant Latin or whatever the goalpost happens to be that day, I lose interest in helping out. I've fixed up thousands of fair-use images in the past, I don't need to be lectured about the concept by some noob.
This is a good example of what I speak.
The bot (BetacommandBot) was approved for the actions it is taking. The policy it is operating under stipulates that a fair use rationale must be supplied for each use. BetacommandBot doesn't determine how good a rationale is, it just looks for *any* rationale. A bot can not be described as a "noob", nor can Betacommand himself be described as such. Yet, in the above post we see him/the bot come under attack. This attack serves no purpose.
This sort of behavior is all too common in working on fair use images, regardless of who is doing the work, regardless of whether it is a bot or not. I don't mind the unending personal insults. I do mind not having adequate Foundation support to correct our serious fair use situation.
-Durin
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/12/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
You could learn to pick your battles a little better. When a militant uses a bot to flag one of my old uploads for deletion in seven days, because my fair use rationale isn't at least 3,000 words long and written in grammatically elegant Latin or whatever the goalpost happens to be that day, I lose interest in helping out. I've fixed up thousands of fair-use images in the past, I don't need to be lectured about the concept by some noob.
This is a good example of what I speak.
The bot (BetacommandBot) was approved for the actions it is taking. The policy it is operating under stipulates that a fair use rationale must be supplied for each use. BetacommandBot doesn't determine how good a rationale is, it just looks for *any* rationale. A bot can not be described as a "noob", nor can Betacommand himself be described as such. Yet, in the above post we see him/the bot come under attack. This attack serves no purpose.
You're the one asking for help, not the other way around. If you want volunteers, it works a lot better to butter them up, listen patiently to their grumbles, etc, than to disparage them.
Stan
On 7/12/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
You're the one asking for help, not the other way around. If you want volunteers, it works a lot better to butter them up, listen patiently to their grumbles, etc, than to disparage them.
Your point might be valid if I had disparaged some one. Instead, you call BetacommandBot a noob. Sigh.
-Durin
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/12/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
You're the one asking for help, not the other way around. If you want volunteers, it works a lot better to butter them up, listen patiently to their grumbles, etc, than to disparage them.
Your point might be valid if I had disparaged some one. Instead, you call BetacommandBot a noob. Sigh.
Actually, I didn't mention any user names, not least because I was commenting on a general attitude, and also because the specific users and bots could easily change between the time I send the message and the time anybody reads it. It's your own (incorrect) assumption that I was thinking of Betacommand.
Stan
On 7/12/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
You could learn to pick your battles a little better. When a militant uses a bot to flag one of my old uploads for deletion in seven days, because my fair use rationale isn't at least 3,000 words long and written in grammatically elegant Latin or whatever the goalpost happens to be that day, I lose interest in helping out. I've fixed up thousands of fair-use images in the past, I don't need to be lectured about the concept by some noob.
This is so true. I agree with virtually everything Durin has said, and I've wasted a lot of my life arguing with people who just don't get our non-free content policies, but the Taylorised hordes (albeit small ones compared to the hordes of crazed editors who insist images which only identify something are perfectly fine) of taggers who insist that your rationale is insufficient are particularly annoying.
My understanding of rationales has always been that they are meant to show that the editor in question has understood our policies concerning non-free content and is capable of applying them. Rationales are now used more for the sake of themselves than anything else, though - I understand a lot of editors see them as just another hoop to jump through. If you ask me, as Kirill said, a fair use rationale is quite ridiculously irrelevant to the free encyclopaedia. It's an admirable attempt to get our policies enforced, but if you ask me, it's not working.
Johnleemk
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Bottom line here; the Foundation has mandated that we come into compliance by Spring of '08. I'm telling you this is flat our impossible under the current situation where little in the way of clear demarcation has been given.
The obvious strategy would be to start with the most obvious violations. But even for those, our only means (as non-admins) of dealing with such images, even the ones whose "fair use" wouldn't be defensible in a million years (after which copyright will have hopefully expired, mind you) -- even for a copyrighted picture of a common household object -- is to put the little red and white dated tags on there and hope it actually stays there for seven consecutive days (or whatever the common-law requirement is, which has no basis in policy).
It could be argued that we need a swifter formal deletion process, one that isn't functionally identical to WP:PROD, or it could be argued that people who actually have a working knowledge of image use policy should be both technically able and morally empowered to delete obvious violations on sight.
—C.W.
On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
We've got people endlessly arguing over the meaning of "minimal" in item #3 of the resolution. In one debate, we had people actively arguing that the use of 133 fair use images on the article constituted minimal use, because in each case one image was used to identify a single subject, therefore it was in essence 1 image per use, not 133. I kid you not.
My answer to these is "um, no" and rogue-delete if need be.
How many times do we have to debate these issues? How much energy do we have to exert? How often do we have to end up in RfCs, mediations and RfRs (all of these have happened, some of them multiple times) over this issue?
Every time someone decides there's a hitherto-invisible "I wanna" clause in the fair use provisions of copyright law.
This has to stop. We need a bright line defense, a clear line of delineation to end this nightmare. If the Foundation expects en.wikipedia to come into compliance by Spring of '08 it must take action to give us the tools necessary to accomplish this. We're working on 200,000 images used in tens of thousands of ways. We have virtually no direction, no bright line to point people to and say "This is policy. This is resolution. Period." We need a considerably clearer delineation and we need it now.
I suggest an in-practice delineation. Point me at stuff needing doing. I'll happily put a list somewhere, e.g. my user space.
- d.
On 7/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
a single subject, therefore it was in essence 1 image per use, not 133. I kid you not.
My answer to these is "um, no" and rogue-delete if need be.
They've been removed, but a long debate still continues (after two weeks) about their inclusion. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Magic:_The_Gathering_sets
Every time someone decides there's a hitherto-invisible "I wanna" clause in the fair use provisions of copyright law.
Yet we have people rampantly asserting that fair use law allows this, that, and the other thing. My normal defense has been to point out that our fair use practices are a superset of fair use law, and that we are a free content encyclopedia; copyrighted works are decidedly unfree.
I suggest an in-practice delineation. Point me at stuff needing doing. I'll happily put a list somewhere, e.g. my user space.
There's a list of several thousand articles containing 10 or more fair use images at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durin/Fair_Use_Overuse We've been working on that list, and have been whittling it down, but it's taking forever.
But, that's not really the problem. We need something to point to every time these issues crop up. Something to be able to say, "I'm sorry, but this issue has been decided already. Please see blablabla".
We've been fighting on discographies (both in separate articles and in band pages). We're going to be having a fight on list of xyz characters, such as "List of Virtual Dungeon monsters" and "List of Bountyheads in Cowboy Bebop" Why? Because people will argue (I'll guarantee it) that since there are no sub articles for each of those characters that it is therefore acceptable to have a single image to depict each of those characters.
This gets to the whole "identify" vs "identify and critical commentary" debate. This needs to be resolved. We can do the work. We can fight the battles. We just need better tools to do it. Right now, our ammunition (as it were) is insufficient. The battles keep cropping up and we have little in the way of fighting it.
This is just *one* type of battle. There's unending debate on rationales, why they are needed, what constitutes an acceptable rationale, whether a rationale can be generic and thus templated, or has to be specific to each use, etc...it never ends.
-Durin
I'm currently going after fair abuse images with an axe. However, I am seeking a script or similar to help clean up the red links left behind in articles. I do the deletions themselves by hand in Firefox (because secondly, bot deletions are considered bad, but firstly, I can go a lot faster than most bots are allowed to), but it is considered bad to leave red image links behind in the articles. Does anyone have anything suitable to hand for the second part?
- d.
On 7/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'm currently going after fair abuse images with an axe. However, I am seeking a script or similar to help clean up the red links left behind in articles. I do the deletions themselves by hand in Firefox (because secondly, bot deletions are considered bad, but firstly, I can go a lot faster than most bots are allowed to), but it is considered bad to leave red image links behind in the articles. Does anyone have anything suitable to hand for the second part?
I"m working on a bot to deal with this. It looks like the file links for deleted images are reliable enough now to remove images after deletion.
On 7/12/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
I"m working on a bot to deal with this. It looks like the file links for deleted images are reliable enough now to remove images after deletion.
I should read before replying :) This is the best news ever! :D
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 7/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'm currently going after fair abuse images with an axe. However, I am seeking a script or similar to help clean up the red links left behind in articles. I do the deletions themselves by hand in Firefox (because secondly, bot deletions are considered bad, but firstly, I can go a lot faster than most bots are allowed to), but it is considered bad to leave red image links behind in the articles. Does anyone have anything suitable to hand for the second part?
This was the intention with orphanbot, but there are a lot of categories that aren't being patrolled by it. Added to that there are a lot of weird template infobox inclusions that are difficult for orphanbot to parse.
If you find a tool for this please let me know! :D :D
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
We're working on 200,000 images used in tens of thousands of ways.
The (sort of) good news is that according to my likely-error prone calculations, there are 54826 images in the articles mentioned on your Fair Use Overuse page, so once that's finished up, there will be significantly less fair use images whose use hasn't been reviewed by someone who helps clear out massive amounts of fair use on WP (and likely significantly less fair use images at all).
Rory
On 10/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
- Some users have been debating, at great length, that boiler plate fair use rationales can be used to bring these images in compliance. This is in large part due to the idea that fair use criteria is sufficiently met if the fair use image serves to __identify__ the thing in question. Under this argument, it is not necessary to have any critical commentary regarding the product being displayed, or the cover art/logo being displayed.
Without essaying an opinion on this - as Durin has commented, the discussion on this topic is cyclical and nigh-upon endless - I agree that help is urgently needed. The situation as it stands is causing massive amounts of donkey-work, taking editor time away from where it could be spent usefully. Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Image:Down_in...
An album cover is tagged with needing a rationale. The uploader is notified. Unfortunately, he's not around, and a few days later the image gets deleted as "no rationale" because nobody saw the notice.
Five days later, another well-meaning user goes to the effort of scanning the album cover himself and uploading it himself, tagging it with {{Non-free album cover}}: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DownInTheTubestationFront.jpg
No doubt this in turn will be tagged as "no rationale" and we can go around the merry-go-round again.
On 7/10/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
--- What I think needs to be done --- A clearer stance from the Foundation needs to be made with specific regard to fair use on the English language Wikipedia.
As co-author of the Foundation's licensing policy, it was my intention to ensure that WMF projects have the freedom and flexibility to draft a fair use policy or similar "exemption doctrine policy" in line with established practices and beliefs of a given community. For example, I have no problem with fair use pictures being used to identify contemporary works where a free content image is not available. But I think the decision needs to be made by the community as a whole.
If no consensus can be found, rather than asking the WMF Board to make a final decision, how about organizing a community poll on the different options?
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
As co-author of the Foundation's licensing policy, it was my intention to ensure that WMF projects have the freedom and flexibility to draft a fair use policy or similar "exemption doctrine policy" in line with established practices and beliefs of a given community. For example, I have no problem with fair use pictures being used to identify contemporary works where a free content image is not available. But I think the decision needs to be made by the community as a whole.
If no consensus can be found, rather than asking the WMF Board to make a final decision, how about organizing a community poll on the different options?
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve. There has been massive contention on virtually every aspect of fair use issues on en.wikipedia. In no way can the enormity of the debates be overstated.
If you expect en.wikipedia to come into compliance with the resolution on licensing policy, more will be needed.
I fully recognize that the role of the foundation is not to get to the level of granularity of individual projects. Nevertheless, I am asking for help. We need clearer direction, with a considerably clearer bright line on what is and what is not acceptable use.
-Durin
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve.
Probably not. But a lack of consensus should not paralyze a project. If a supermajority favors particular policies, that may be an acceptable outcome.
Really, if these issues cannot be resolved, that is more symptomatic for the lack of maturity of decision making processes in the English Wikipedia than it is for a need for a more specific policy.
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve.
Probably not. But a lack of consensus should not paralyze a project. If a supermajority favors particular policies, that may be an acceptable outcome.
Really, if these issues cannot be resolved, that is more symptomatic for the lack of maturity of decision making processes in the English Wikipedia than it is for a need for a more specific policy.
Removing other people's work, or in the least tagging it for deletion has created droves of people who are quite opposed to the principles on which we are founded. They are not interested in free content. They are focused on adding fair use content, and trying to make it stick...usually by making strenuous arguments that it is legal under fair use law.
Is the option of opening a consensus targetting forum for these issues open and not yet tried? Yes. But, maybe pessimistic, I doubt it will achieve the effect we want; using fair use minimally. I frankly a bit scared of the possibility that consensus may evolve to liberally allow fair use.
A number of us have stated before that consensus to liberally allow fair use can not and will not trump Foundation resolutions. We just need more clarification.
-Durin
As an example of the kinds of problems we face, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea_Girl.jpg
Note the fair use rationale on this image. The uploader of this image believes this is sufficient. He's also among a camp of people who believe that people attempting to correct this sort of error are stalkers, lacking consensus, and generally harassing of others.
-Durin
On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
As an example of the kinds of problems we face, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea_Girl.jpg
Note the fair use rationale on this image. The uploader of this image believes this is sufficient.
Evidently, so did the person who created the template {{Non-free album cover}}... and everyone who hasn't since deleted it...
On 7/12/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
Evidently, so did the person who created the template {{Non-free album cover}}... and everyone who hasn't since deleted it...
{{Non-free album cover}} is not a fair use rational. It is simply a clasification of the image type. Album covers can be fair use in some cases.
James Farrar wrote:
On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
As an example of the kinds of problems we face, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea_Girl.jpg
Note the fair use rationale on this image. The uploader of this image believes this is sufficient.
Evidently, so did the person who created the template {{Non-free album cover}}... and everyone who hasn't since deleted it...
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Boilerplate template != fair-use rationale.
On 7/13/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
James Farrar wrote:
On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
As an example of the kinds of problems we face, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea_Girl.jpg
Note the fair use rationale on this image. The uploader of this image believes this is sufficient.
Evidently, so did the person who created the template {{Non-free album cover}}... and everyone who hasn't since deleted it...
Boilerplate template != fair-use rationale.
The point is that the average uploader is not aware of the problem. As the upload form allows the user to proceed with only "{{Non-free album cover}}", it seems the fair-use crew are fighting a loosing battle.
Any effort to address fair use images needs to work with the average uploader to ensure that a fair use is provided soon after the point of upload. Hand-holding is definitely required; I have thrown my hands up in disgust trying to find the correct fair-use rationale template and how to use it successfully, so I feel sorry for Wikipedians who are not armed with a computing background to combat the dreaded fair-use bots.
Are there any "new image patrol" tools? [[Wikipedia:Job_Center]] mentions it but I cant find more details.
Is there a maintained list of recently uploaded images that need a rationale added? If so, humans could tackle the cause of the problem rather than bots trying to fix it six months later.
Is there a way to generate a list of all images that a user has uploaded? I expect that most people are begrudgingly fixing an image as the bot picks them out; it would be more efficient to give users a way to find and fix them all.
Another approach could be to use something like SuggestBot to hand a dozen cases to each human that has chosen to work on the problem.
-- John
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any "new image patrol" tools? [[Wikipedia:Job_Center]] mentions it but I cant find more details.
[[Special:Log/upload]] and [[Special:Newimages]] are it.
Is there a maintained list of recently uploaded images that need a rationale added? If so, humans could tackle the cause of the problem rather than bots trying to fix it six months later.
[[Category:Images with no fair use rationale]]. I expect it to get a *lot* more images in the near future, when I modify OrphanBot to start flagging images with any fair-use template, instead of just {{fair use}} and {{fair use in}}.
Is there a way to generate a list of all images that a user has uploaded? I expect that most people are begrudgingly fixing an image as the bot picks them out; it would be more efficient to give users a way to find and fix them all.
[[Special:Log/upload]] can be filtered by user.
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any "new image patrol" tools? [[Wikipedia:Job_Center]] mentions it but I cant find more details.
[[Special:Log/upload]] and [[Special:Newimages]] are it.
Is there a maintained list of recently uploaded images that need a rationale added? If so, humans could tackle the cause of the problem rather than bots trying to fix it six months later.
[[Category:Images with no fair use rationale]]. I expect it to get a *lot* more images in the near future, when I modify OrphanBot to start flagging images with any fair-use template, instead of just {{fair use}} and {{fair use in}}.
Is there a way to generate a list of all images that a user has uploaded? I expect that most people are begrudgingly fixing an image as the bot picks them out; it would be more efficient to give users a way to find and fix them all.
[[Special:Log/upload]] can be filtered by user.
Oh joy; now that I look at my upload log, I see that [[Image:Arellano University Logo.gif]] has been removed, yet I am pretty sure I tried to address this when Aksibot notified me on May 28. The deletion log tells me it was deleted by Misza13 on June 4 because it was unused:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Image:Arellan...
yet it appears to have been in use on Arellano University until June 26 when someone updated the article because the image had been deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arellano_University&diff=14080...
My enthusiasm to help has suddenly waned.
-- John
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any "new image patrol" tools? [[Wikipedia:Job_Center]] mentions it but I cant find more details.
[[Special:Log/upload]] and [[Special:Newimages]] are it.
Is there a maintained list of recently uploaded images that need a rationale added? If so, humans could tackle the cause of the problem rather than bots trying to fix it six months later.
[[Category:Images with no fair use rationale]]. I expect it to get a *lot* more images in the near future, when I modify OrphanBot to start flagging images with any fair-use template, instead of just {{fair use}} and {{fair use in}}.
Is there a way to generate a list of all images that a user has uploaded? I expect that most people are begrudgingly fixing an image as the bot picks them out; it would be more efficient to give users a way to find and fix them all.
[[Special:Log/upload]] can be filtered by user.
Oh joy; now that I look at my upload log, I see that [[Image:Arellano University Logo.gif]] has been removed, yet I am pretty sure I tried to address this when Aksibot notified me on May 28. The deletion log tells me it was deleted by Misza13 on June 4 because it was unused:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Image:Arellan...
yet it appears to have been in use on Arellano University until June 26 when someone updated the article because the image had been deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arellano_University&diff=14080...
My enthusiasm to help has suddenly waned.
Sometime in December of last year, the {{Infobox University}} template was changed to use "image_name" rather than "Image" to display a university-related image. Because of this, the image was no longer used in the article, and was deleted.
I've undeleted the image, and restored it to the article. Now you need to provide a fair-use rationale (should be easy; all logo rationales are alike).
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote: [[Special:Log/upload]] can be filtered by user.
Oh joy; now that I look at my upload log, I see that [[Image:Arellano University Logo.gif]] has been removed, yet I am pretty sure I tried to address this when Aksibot notified me on May 28. The deletion log tells me it was deleted by Misza13 on June 4 because it was unused:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Image:Arellan...
yet it appears to have been in use on Arellano University until June 26 when someone updated the article because the image had been deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arellano_University&diff=14080...
My enthusiasm to help has suddenly waned.
Sometime in December of last year, the {{Infobox University}} template was changed to use "image_name" rather than "Image" to display a university-related image. Because of this, the image was no longer used in the article, and was deleted.
No, that cant be the reason why the image was deleted; the current infobox code supports the "image" parameter.
I've undeleted the image, and restored it to the article. Now you need to provide a fair-use rationale (should be easy; all logo rationales are alike).
If all logo rationales are alike, why is {{Non-free logo}} insufficient? What else is needed? The reason I ask is that perhaps a few params can be added to {{Non-free logo}} to cater to the additional licencing issues.
-- John
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote: [[Special:Log/upload]] can be filtered by user.
Oh joy; now that I look at my upload log, I see that [[Image:Arellano University Logo.gif]] has been removed, yet I am pretty sure I tried to address this when Aksibot notified me on May 28. The deletion log tells me it was deleted by Misza13 on June 4 because it was unused:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Image:Arellan...
yet it appears to have been in use on Arellano University until June 26 when someone updated the article because the image had been deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arellano_University&diff=14080...
My enthusiasm to help has suddenly waned.
Sometime in December of last year, the {{Infobox University}} template was changed to use "image_name" rather than "Image" to display a university-related image. Because of this, the image was no longer used in the article, and was deleted.
No, that cant be the reason why the image was deleted; the current infobox code supports the "image" parameter.
In that case, it was a change from "Image" with an upper-case "I" to "image" with a lower-case "i". Template parameters are case-sensitive.
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote: [[Special:Log/upload]] can be filtered by user.
Oh joy; now that I look at my upload log, I see that [[Image:Arellano University Logo.gif]] has been removed, yet I am pretty sure I tried to address this when Aksibot notified me on May 28. The deletion log tells me it was deleted by Misza13 on June 4 because it was unused:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Image:Arellan...
yet it appears to have been in use on Arellano University until June 26 when someone updated the article because the image had been deleted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arellano_University&diff=14080...
My enthusiasm to help has suddenly waned.
Sometime in December of last year, the {{Infobox University}} template was changed to use "image_name" rather than "Image" to display a university-related image. Because of this, the image was no longer used in the article, and was deleted.
No, that cant be the reason why the image was deleted; the current infobox code supports the "image" parameter.
In that case, it was a change from "Image" with an upper-case "I" to "image" with a lower-case "i". Template parameters are case-sensitive.
That was it; some enterprising person decided capitals looked better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arellano_University&diff=next&...
Thanks for restoring the logo Mark.
-- John
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
If all logo rationales are alike, why is {{Non-free logo}} insufficient? What else is needed? The reason I ask is that perhaps a few params can be added to {{Non-free logo}} to cater to the additional licencing issues.
And here's another portion of the argument; can fair use rationales be boiler plated? Some say no, some say yes. We argue endlessly about this.
-Durin
And here's yet another debate about the appropriateness of album covers in discography lists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notice...
And on and on it goes.
This never ends.
-Durin
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
And here's yet another debate about the appropriateness of album covers in discography lists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notice...
And on and on it goes.
This never ends.
Methinks a few people go overboard when it comes to their desire to get rid of these album covers. A reasonable number of album covers to accompany a list enhances that article. Fair use rationale is easy to make: The use is transformative, a low resolution picture is only a small part of the whole, and it does not diminish the market for the music. It probably enhances it.
These people on a mission to remove them all should learn to relax.
Ec
On 7/14/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
If all logo rationales are alike, why is {{Non-free logo}} insufficient? What else is needed? The reason I ask is that perhaps a few params can be added to {{Non-free logo}} to cater to the additional licencing issues.
And here's another portion of the argument; can fair use rationales be boiler plated? Some say no, some say yes. We argue endlessly about this.
Hi Durin,
I have separately arrived at the conclusion that there must be some non-free images that can be "boiler plated", but I am keen to read up if you could you direct me to some argument against this, or outline the salient points here.
I am honestly trying to get my head around how we divide the problem into a few classes of images that can be dealt with in different ways, such as:
1. images without any or incorrect copyright indicators,
cohesion has pointed out that we have a few categories for this.
2. non-free images that can be readily covered by fair use, and
It seems that each of the {{non-free...}} templates provided on the upload form could fit into this group, but each type of image (logo, album, etc) would have specifics that need to be addressed.
3. non-free images that are definitely not covered.
Is there a list that describes what images are absolutely ruled out? I'm not sure such a list would be useful as it would be very long, but a shorter list of a few commonly uploaded files that are unacceptable could be useful to give to people first getting started on image patrol.
If we can better define the most simple cases, the backlog can be tackled by humans and bots in a semi-automated fashion. That would leave two messy groups to be attended to: non-free images that are questionable under fair-use, and fair-use images that are used in a way that doesnt appear to be fair use. Those two both require skilled negotiators to deal with appropriately.
Looking at logos specifically again, 99% of logos that are used on only one article are probably the logo for that topic, and a human could quickly go though and verify them all and tag them with {{logo|<existing logo cat param>|fairuseon=blah}} to indicate that the image is only fair use on that article. Does resolution even come into play with logos? if we only use the thumbnail on the article, is it acceptable for the actual image to be hi res?
Also, is "Images for deletion" working well? Could fair-use disputes (by bots) be taken to Ifd? I think it would be helpful if fair-use discussions were held in a centralised place per image, rather than on some talk page as appears to be the case currently.
-- John
On 7/14/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Also, is "Images for deletion" working well? Could fair-use disputes (by bots) be taken to Ifd? I think it would be helpful if fair-use discussions were held in a centralised place per image, rather than on some talk page as appears to be the case currently.
-- John
There is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use_review
Garion96
On 7/13/07, Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/14/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Also, is "Images for deletion" working well? Could fair-use disputes (by bots) be taken to Ifd? I think it would be helpful if fair-use discussions were held in a centralised place per image, rather than on some talk page as appears to be the case currently.
-- John
There is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use_review
This is my personal opinion, and probably not even consensus within admins who deal with images a lot. IFD and fair use review are somewhat old systems that stay in place because of inertia more than anything else. They don't scale at all to the number of images that get deleted for various reasons every day. Obviously we will always need some completely deliberative process for images that fail every other mode, and IFD probably should remain to fill that need. The more we can move the rest of the processes to a decentralized model the better though.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 7/14/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/14/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
If all logo rationales are alike, why is {{Non-free logo}} insufficient? What else is needed? The reason I ask is that perhaps a few params can be added to {{Non-free logo}} to cater to the additional licencing issues.
And here's another portion of the argument; can fair use rationales be boiler plated? Some say no, some say yes. We argue endlessly about this.
Hi Durin,
I have separately arrived at the conclusion that there must be some non-free images that can be "boiler plated", but I am keen to read up if you could you direct me to some argument against this, or outline the salient points here.
...
Looking at logos specifically again, 99% of logos that are used on only one article are probably the logo for that topic, and a human could quickly go though and verify them all and tag them with {{logo|<existing logo cat param>|fairuseon=blah}} to indicate that the image is only fair use on that article. Does resolution even come into play with logos? if we only use the thumbnail on the article, is it acceptable for the actual image to be hi res?
A boiler plate for logos has recently appeared, but it has less than 50 transclusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo_fur
Is it acceptable; can we start to depend on this template?
-- John
On 7/16/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
A boiler plate for logos has recently appeared, but it has less than 50 transclusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo_fur
Is it acceptable; can we start to depend on this template?
-- John
Transcluded...I wonder, has anyone considered a feature request to log when templates are subst'd? It would preserve the ability to save template-use 'as-is' at the time of subst'ing, yet still allow others to track how templates are used or abused.
InkSplotch
On 7/16/07, InkSplotch inkblot14@gmail.com wrote:
Transcluded...I wonder, has anyone considered a feature request to log when templates are subst'd? It would preserve the ability to save template-use 'as-is' at the time of subst'ing, yet still allow others to track how templates are used or abused.
Ah yes, but ssome users will still copy and paste the code of the template and avoid the proposed surveillance effect, either deliberately or because they don't really understand the purpose and proper use of templates.Yes, I've seen it happen with infoboxes happen a bit with infoboxes :/..
—C.W.
On 7/17/07, InkSplotch inkblot14@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/16/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
A boiler plate for logos has recently appeared, but it has less than 50 transclusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo_fur
Is it acceptable; can we start to depend on this template?
-- John
Transcluded...I wonder, has anyone considered a feature request to log when templates are subst'd? It would preserve the ability to save template-use 'as-is' at the time of subst'ing, yet still allow others to track how templates are used or abused.
A MediaWiki search in the Image namespace for text that is likely to be unique to this template turns up only 14 hits. So its use in any form is not widespread, yet.
The equivalent template for "Album cover" has been shot down, but I would like to see the logo template stick around as it isnt as contentious or problematic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Album_cover_fur
-- John
On 7/16/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
The equivalent template for "Album cover" has been shot down, but I would like to see the logo template stick around as it isnt as contentious or problematic.
It's not been shot down. It's simply contentious. Based on precedent, it's likely to remain so. It's currently in use on 255 images.
The contention on this template centers, in part, in the never ending debate (as mentioned earlier in this thread) of whether identification is enough for our purposes or if the fair use image must have critical commentary on it as well. This has never been decidedly answered one way or another, and remains a massive point of contention.
Just all part of the ongoing, never ending series of disputes over this. For another example, see http://www.motokoaoyama.com/2007/06/26/they-might-as-well-call-it-nazipedia-...
-Durin
On 7/17/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
It's not been shot down. It's simply contentious. Based on precedent, it's likely to remain so. It's currently in use on 255 images.
And now 265 today.
Usage continues. If we're going to suspend this template, it needs to be marked as such. If I do it, I'll guarantee it'll be reverted.
-Durin
On 7/12/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Are there any "new image patrol" tools? [[Wikipedia:Job_Center]] mentions it but I cant find more details.
It depends on which of the many image problems that you would like to work on. If you just want to help new uploaders, [[Category:Images needing editor assistance at upload]] are images from uploaders that have self-identified as needing help. If they don't self-identify AND they are tagged incorrectly it is exceedingly difficult to find problems manually. For those types we mainly rely on various bot checks, some people like to also brute force very problematic categories.
Is there a maintained list of recently uploaded images that need a rationale added? If so, humans could tackle the cause of the problem rather than bots trying to fix it six months later.
Well, we don't really have a way of programatically saying if something needs a rationale, so things needing a rationale are tagged by humans, not in order of upload. I'm sure you know about [[Category:Images with no fair use rationale]], which need rationales.
Is there a way to generate a list of all images that a user has uploaded? I expect that most people are begrudgingly fixing an image as the bot picks them out; it would be more efficient to give users a way to find and fix them all.
There is the upload log? The bots pick out problems at a rate of i dunno, many per minute, it's not a every once in a while type of situation. Do you mean individuals that are problem uploaders fixing their own problems? That happens sometimes I guess. If an uploader becomes an obvious problem people will look at their upload log and see other images that might also be problematic.
Another approach could be to use something like SuggestBot to hand a dozen cases to each human that has chosen to work on the problem.
We don't have a shortage of images to work on [[Category:Images with no copyright tag]] or the two other categories mentioned before could be worked on by anyone admin or not.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 7/12/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
James Farrar wrote:
On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
As an example of the kinds of problems we face, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea_Girl.jpg
Note the fair use rationale on this image. The uploader of this image believes this is sufficient.
Evidently, so did the person who created the template {{Non-free album cover}}... and everyone who hasn't since deleted it...
Boilerplate template != fair-use rationale.
It tells you what category it falls into. One can posit that for the album's article, that is necessary and sufficient rationale. We've hashed out the general policy there; it stands; the template's just a pointer to that.
On 13/07/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It tells you what category it falls into. One can posit that for the album's article, that is necessary and sufficient rationale. We've hashed out the general policy there; it stands; the template's just a pointer to that.
Actually, no - WP:NONFREE, read unforgivingly, says the actual album cover art must be discussed.
- d.
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:36:28AM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
On 13/07/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It tells you what category it falls into. One can posit that for the album's article, that is necessary and sufficient rationale. We've hashed out the general policy there; it stands; the template's just a pointer to that.
Actually, no - WP:NONFREE, read unforgivingly, says the actual album cover art must be discussed.
I asked the same question about book covers on [[en:WT:NONFREE]] [1] and the overwhelming response there was that use entirely for "identification" is acceptable, and no discussion of the cover art itself is required. I beleive there are currently efforts underway to make a template with a generic fair use rationale for such articles.
- Carl
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Book_covers
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
As an example of the kinds of problems we face, have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Korea_Girl.jpg
Note the fair use rationale on this image. The uploader of this image believes this is sufficient. He's also among a camp of people who believe that people attempting to correct this sort of error are stalkers, lacking consensus, and generally harassing of others.
If by "attempting to correct this sort of error" you mean slapping "Your rationale displeases the Great Ones! This image shall die unless you come up with a proper offering!" tags on it, then I can't say I'm particularly surprised by the reaction such efforts get.
More generally, I think this new obsession with rationales isn't helpful. The current guidelines focus on relating the rationale to legal matters -- why the image falls under "fair use" from the standpoint of U.S. law, in other words. This is both unproductive -- for many classes of images, the dreaded templatized rationale would be perfectly sufficient, and the average amateurishly written text isn't likely to be all that helpful in the case of a legal complaint anyways -- and not particularly useful.
What we really need is not a fair-use rationale, but rather a NFC exemption rationale. The question shouldn't be whether the image can be claimed as fair use, but rather what the justification for exempting it from the ban on non-free content is. This would be (a) more tailored to each specific image, as it would need to discuss replaceability, etc., (b) more useful in terms of determining which images ought to be retained, and (c) more obvious as a question to the image uploader ("Why do we need this image?" versus "Why are we legally safe with this image?").
Kirill
If by "attempting to correct this sort of error" you mean slapping "Your rationale displeases the Great Ones! This image shall die unless you come up with a proper offering!" tags on it, then I can't say I'm particularly surprised by the reaction such efforts get.
Look, this is policy directly descendant from the Foundation's resolution and prior practices. The need for a rationale has been part of the process for two years now. It's not an obsession, it's how we're supposed to be handling these images. Good grief. Enough with attacking people.
Fold. Ok, you all win.
A while back, I went to Featured Articles in an attempt to seek change in practices with regards to fair use images. I was called patronizing, authoritarian, barking at people, being paranoid, being a fair use cultist, antagonizing people, acting in bad faith, violating WP:POINT and more. You can read it all for yourself if you like at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria#Time_f...
Far better to attack the messenger than address the points, so it would seem.
I came here, what I thought was the last bastion of defense of free content where I had hoped to find people willing to support what it is we are supposed to be about. Instead, I get responses like Kirll's.
Ok, I give up.
I'll stop fighting the massive overuse of fair use all over en.wikipedia, where there are 200 thousand fair use images. Why should we care? Nobody's filed suit against us!
I guess what it will take is a lawsuit before real change happens.
-Durin
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
A while back, I went to Featured Articles in an attempt to seek change in practices with regards to fair use images. I was called patronizing, authoritarian, barking at people, being paranoid, being a fair use cultist, antagonizing people, acting in bad faith, violating WP:POINT and more. You can read it all for yourself if you like at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria#Time_f...
Far better to attack the messenger than address the points, so it would seem.
I came here, what I thought was the last bastion of defense of free content where I had hoped to find people willing to support what it is we are supposed to be about. Instead, I get responses like Kirll's.
Ok, I give up.
I'll stop fighting the massive overuse of fair use all over en.wikipedia, where there are 200 thousand fair use images. Why should we care? Nobody's filed suit against us!
I guess what it will take is a lawsuit before real change happens.
Erm, my response wasn't intended to be an attack on you in the least; I apologize if it came across that way.
The point I'm trying to make in regard to the rationales is that what you're asking for is not actually what you want, and the difference is *really* upsetting people.
We need to stop talking about "fair use" images, stop labeling things as "fair use", and stop asking people to justify "fair use". We do not, as a project, care about "fair use", except insofar as it underlies what we *do* care about: the NFCC (which are rather stricter than what's ordinarily regarded as "fair use").
You're essentially going around and asking people to explain why an image is fair use, and then deleting it anyways because it fails the stricter portions of the NFCC. I don't understand why anyone is surprised that this is causing intense resentment; the image uploaders are being sent on a wild goose chase because the widely publicized requirement for their images to be retained -- "fair use" -- is insufficient, and the *actual* requirement -- the NFCC -- is poorly written and buried under ten layers of policy.
Asking the Foundation for clearer criteria isn't the answer. We already have clear criteria. We just need to start actually publicizing *those* criteria rather than a liberal buzz-word version of them.
Kirill
Erm, my response wasn't intended to be an attack on you in the least; I apologize if it came across that way.
Maybe I'm on edge today, but it came off that way. When you come under as much onslaught as I do on a regular day-to-day basis in dealing with this stuff, it's all too easy to read stuff as an attack.
The point I'm trying to make in regard to the rationales is that what you're asking for is not actually what you want, and the difference is *really* upsetting people.
We need to stop talking about "fair use" images, stop labeling things as "fair use", and stop asking people to justify "fair use". We do not, as a project, care about "fair use", except insofar as it underlies what we *do* care about: the NFCC (which are rather stricter than what's ordinarily regarded as "fair use").
You're essentially going around and asking people to explain why an image is fair use, and then deleting it anyways because it fails the stricter portions of the NFCC. I don't understand why anyone is surprised that this is causing intense resentment; the image uploaders are being sent on a wild goose chase because the widely publicized requirement for their images to be retained -- "fair use" -- is insufficient, and the *actual* requirement -- the NFCC -- is poorly written and buried under ten layers of policy.
Asking the Foundation for clearer criteria isn't the answer. We already have clear criteria. We just need to start actually publicizing *those* criteria rather than a liberal buzz-word version of them.
I don't have the skill to fix the situation. I'm asking for help. You seem qualified. So help. :)
-Durin
On 12/07/07, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
We need to stop talking about "fair use" images, stop labeling things as "fair use", and stop asking people to justify "fair use". We do not, as a project, care about "fair use", except insofar as it underlies what we *do* care about: the NFCC (which are rather stricter than what's ordinarily regarded as "fair use").
[...]
Asking the Foundation for clearer criteria isn't the answer. We already have clear criteria. We just need to start actually publicizing *those* criteria rather than a liberal buzz-word version of them.
That's why I like to put a link to [[WP:NONFREE]] when removing fair-use galleries.
- d.
On 7/13/07, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
A while back, I went to Featured Articles in an attempt to seek change
in
practices with regards to fair use images. I was called patronizing, authoritarian, barking at people, being paranoid, being a fair use
cultist,
antagonizing people, acting in bad faith, violating WP:POINT and more. You can read it all for yourself if you like at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_criteria#Time_f...
Far better to attack the messenger than address the points, so it would seem.
I came here, what I thought was the last bastion of defense of free content where I had hoped to find people willing to support what it is we are supposed to be about. Instead, I get responses like Kirll's.
Ok, I give up.
I'll stop fighting the massive overuse of fair use all over en.wikipedia
,
where there are 200 thousand fair use images. Why should we care? Nobody's filed suit against us!
I guess what it will take is a lawsuit before real change happens.
Erm, my response wasn't intended to be an attack on you in the least; I apologize if it came across that way.
The point I'm trying to make in regard to the rationales is that what you're asking for is not actually what you want, and the difference is *really* upsetting people.
We need to stop talking about "fair use" images, stop labeling things as "fair use", and stop asking people to justify "fair use". We do not, as a project, care about "fair use", except insofar as it underlies what we *do* care about: the NFCC (which are rather stricter than what's ordinarily regarded as "fair use").
You're essentially going around and asking people to explain why an image is fair use, and then deleting it anyways because it fails the stricter portions of the NFCC. I don't understand why anyone is surprised that this is causing intense resentment; the image uploaders are being sent on a wild goose chase because the widely publicized requirement for their images to be retained -- "fair use" -- is insufficient, and the *actual* requirement -- the NFCC -- is poorly written and buried under ten layers of policy.
Asking the Foundation for clearer criteria isn't the answer. We already have clear criteria. We just need to start actually publicizing *those* criteria rather than a liberal buzz-word version of them.
This is so obvious I'm a bit embarrassed I've never truly realised it before. Yes, this is precisely what we ought to do - de-emphasise the fair use aspect and emphasise the non-free content aspect. Conflating the two is not helpful to anybody, and never will be.
Here's my proposal: rewrite our relevant policies to do just this. Ideally, they should be able to be summarised as such:
"WMF policy permits limited usage of non-free content on its projects. For legal reasons, only non-free content usable in the United States of America is permitted. Non-free content should be used only when it is crucial for a comprehensive encyclopaedia article on the subject concerned."
We can of course nitpick about the specifics of the policy later; I am just thinking of how to draw up a broad policy rewrite which should be acceptable to as large a group as possible.
Alternatively, we could just do as Stephen says - implement a totally unfree policy and wait for the WMF to smack down the "consensus". :p
Johnleemk
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve.
Probably not. But a lack of consensus should not paralyze a project. If a supermajority favors particular policies, that may be an acceptable outcome.
Really, if these issues cannot be resolved, that is more symptomatic for the lack of maturity of decision making processes in the English Wikipedia than it is for a need for a more specific policy.
Removing other people's work, or in the least tagging it for deletion has created droves of people who are quite opposed to the principles on which we are founded. They are not interested in free content. They are focused on adding fair use content, and trying to make it stick...usually by making strenuous arguments that it is legal under fair use law.
Is the option of opening a consensus targetting forum for these issues open and not yet tried? Yes. But, maybe pessimistic, I doubt it will achieve the effect we want; using fair use minimally. I frankly a bit scared of the possibility that consensus may evolve to liberally allow fair use.
A number of us have stated before that consensus to liberally allow fair use can not and will not trump Foundation resolutions. We just need more clarification.
I should think it would be obvious to anyone who has been in a few of these debates about our non-free content policies that if a consensus evolves at all, it will be definitely one that favours very liberal inclusion of non-free content, simply because legally we can. There are also some who don't see any conflict between our free nature and the inclusion of non-free content that identifies certain things without any discussion.
Johnleemk
On 7/12/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve.
Probably not. But a lack of consensus should not paralyze a project. If a supermajority favors particular policies, that may be an acceptable outcome.
Really, if these issues cannot be resolved, that is more symptomatic for the lack of maturity of decision making processes in the English Wikipedia than it is for a need for a more specific policy.
Removing other people's work, or in the least tagging it for deletion has created droves of people who are quite opposed to the principles on which we are founded. They are not interested in free content. They are focused on adding fair use content, and trying to make it stick...usually by making strenuous arguments that it is legal under fair use law.
Is the option of opening a consensus targetting forum for these issues open and not yet tried? Yes. But, maybe pessimistic, I doubt it will achieve the effect we want; using fair use minimally. I frankly a bit scared of the possibility that consensus may evolve to liberally allow fair use.
A number of us have stated before that consensus to liberally allow fair use can not and will not trump Foundation resolutions. We just need more clarification.
I should think it would be obvious to anyone who has been in a few of these debates about our non-free content policies that if a consensus evolves at all, it will be definitely one that favours very liberal inclusion of non-free content, simply because legally we can. There are also some who don't see any conflict between our free nature and the inclusion of non-free content that identifies certain things without any discussion.
Johnleemk
It would help if the people spearheading non-free image use cleanup campaigns weren't deletionists on the issue.
By that, I mean that they took a look at things, and for example where something was properly labeled an album cover when it was uploaded but didn't have a current Betacommandbot-compliant Fair Use in [[article]] section, the cleanup people added the required rationale rather than deleting the image. If there are licensing questions or issues, uploaders be actually told about it and invited to fix things first.
Just today, I've had these two issues bite me.
I have no problem with truly infringing stuff going away. Making stuff go away because you can, when it is legal under policy but isn't labeled properly yet, doesn't earn you brownie points with me.
On 7/13/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
I should think it would be obvious to anyone who has been in a few of
these
debates about our non-free content policies that if a consensus evolves
at
all, it will be definitely one that favours very liberal inclusion of non-free content, simply because legally we can. There are also some who don't see any conflict between our free nature and the inclusion of
non-free
content that identifies certain things without any discussion.
Johnleemk
It would help if the people spearheading non-free image use cleanup campaigns weren't deletionists on the issue.
By that, I mean that they took a look at things, and for example where something was properly labeled an album cover when it was uploaded but didn't have a current Betacommandbot-compliant Fair Use in [[article]] section, the cleanup people added the required rationale rather than deleting the image. If there are licensing questions or issues, uploaders be actually told about it and invited to fix things first.
Just today, I've had these two issues bite me.
I have no problem with truly infringing stuff going away. Making stuff go away because you can, when it is legal under policy but isn't labeled properly yet, doesn't earn you brownie points with me.
Yeah, that annoys the hell out of me as well. If you ask me, a lot of our efforts in areas like logos and albums are generally useless because those are the kinds of things where a boilerplate rationale will fly - they are often usable under even stringent non-free content policies anyway.
The problem is that we don't have enough efforts in the areas Durin is probably thinking of. I recall that insane argument I had with editors of a Lost article that was virtually a gallery of images from the show - most of them not illustrating anything specifically discussed by the article. These are cases where deletion is secondary to getting those images out of the article in question.
Johnleemk
On 7/12/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It would help if the people spearheading non-free image use cleanup campaigns weren't deletionists on the issue.
The other option might be to leave a big steaming mess.
This is a red herring anyway. In article space, deletionism and inclusionism are matters of personal taste, and therefore take a back seat to matters of serious business, the gravest of which being copyright policy.
Even the most extreme inclusionist will delete an page that is entirely copyvio, even if it's a topic for which we absolutely do need an article (not that I consider myself the most extreme, mind you, and not that I have the power to delete anything -- I'm just speaking in general, for anyone with any sense at all).
I don't see any difficulty in taking the same approach to images which don't meet "fair use" criteria, in particular the irreplaceability requirement. As an inclusionist I can say "yes, we do need a picture to illustrate our beautifully crufty article about _____, but we don't need *that picture*" without feeling any guilt or hypocrisy about it.
If that makes me a two-faced bitch let's just agree to disagree on it. ;)
—C.W.
On 7/12/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It would help if the people spearheading non-free image use cleanup campaigns weren't deletionists on the issue.
By that, I mean that they took a look at things, and for example where something was properly labeled an album cover when it was uploaded but didn't have a current Betacommandbot-compliant Fair Use in [[article]] section, the cleanup people added the required rationale rather than deleting the image. If there are licensing questions or issues, uploaders be actually told about it and invited to fix things first.
This complaint has come up before. The bot does inform people that the rationale is missing. Further, adding rationales can be nigh on impossible for many cases because we do not know or understand what purpose the uploader intended for the image within the article. The boiler plate answer is, "Identification". But, the people conducting deletions frequently do not see that as reasonable rationale and delete.
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It would help if the people spearheading non-free image use cleanup campaigns weren't deletionists on the issue.
By that, I mean that they took a look at things, and for example where something was properly labeled an album cover when it was uploaded but didn't have a current Betacommandbot-compliant Fair Use in [[article]] section, the cleanup people added the required rationale rather than deleting the image. If there are licensing questions or issues, uploaders be actually told about it and invited to fix things first.
This complaint has come up before. The bot does inform people that the rationale is missing. Further, adding rationales can be nigh on impossible for many cases because we do not know or understand what purpose the uploader intended for the image within the article. The boiler plate answer is, "Identification". But, the people conducting deletions frequently do not see that as reasonable rationale and delete.
The problem is that the bot may not inform someone who's still active and cares about the project.
This came up on a notable song's page, where the CD single's art was included. The guy who uploaded it is apparently long gone and ignored the warnings. I have the page watchlisted, but not the included artwork... I suppose I could go around to all the pages I watch and watchlist all the images manually, but...
For things which are album covers, and used in one place (the album, or for a notable single, the song), the deletionist excuse doesn't fly. Ten to thirty seconds of looking at it will tell you exactly what it's used for. It's not ambiguous. The use of cover art for album and single articles is unambiguously ok within the existing copyright policy, and there's no potential for confusion if that's all you're doing with it.
I don't mean to generalize from this and suggest that every deletion was improper, or every deletionist is doing a sloppy job. I have both recommended for deletion and deleted stuff which was policy violations. But... these are the types of incidents which form people's opinions on the policy, and its practical implimentation.
If the opinion is "I have to delete everything that doesn't obviously conform with policy", then I have a problem with it. No, you don't. You're going too quick, not paying enough attention, and it's going to be bad for the project.
If the opinion is "I have to check everything that doesn't obviously conform with policy, and fix it if I can, or delete it if I can't", then you have my support. Most of the time it won't take that much extra effort, and it will avoid nearly all of the confrontations (most of them except for accidents and truly corner cases).
John Lee wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve.
Probably not. But a lack of consensus should not paralyze a project. If a supermajority favors particular policies, that may be an acceptable outcome.
Really, if these issues cannot be resolved, that is more symptomatic for the lack of maturity of decision making processes in the English Wikipedia than it is for a need for a more specific policy.
Removing other people's work, or in the least tagging it for deletion has created droves of people who are quite opposed to the principles on which we are founded. They are not interested in free content. They are focused on adding fair use content, and trying to make it stick...usually by making strenuous arguments that it is legal under fair use law.
Is the option of opening a consensus targetting forum for these issues open and not yet tried? Yes. But, maybe pessimistic, I doubt it will achieve the effect we want; using fair use minimally. I frankly a bit scared of the possibility that consensus may evolve to liberally allow fair use.
A number of us have stated before that consensus to liberally allow fair use can not and will not trump Foundation resolutions. We just need more clarification.
I should think it would be obvious to anyone who has been in a few of these debates about our non-free content policies that if a consensus evolves at all, it will be definitely one that favours very liberal inclusion of non-free content, simply because legally we can. There are also some who don't see any conflict between our free nature and the inclusion of non-free content that identifies certain things without any discussion.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
A consensus to "liberally" allow fair use would mean nothing. Most things are subject to consensus, but the Foundation's been pretty clear on the matter, that fair use should be minimal if allowed at all. While that's open to some interpretation, "use liberally and wherever we legally can" is clearly in conflict with that resolution, so consensus or not it can't be done. An essential part of minimal use is that the fair-use content is irreplaceable, and also that it serve to substantially enhance the educational value of the article it's used in.
Also, who determines whether we legally can, anyway? I'm not a lawyer, are you? What constitutes fair use is a very fuzzy area of law, even experts sometimes have difficulty determining whether a given use would be fair or not. The reason for making sure we stay well away from the edge areas is because most Wikipedians don't have the legal knowledge to get close to that edge without actually crossing it, and the few who do are here to edit the encyclopedia, not provide free legal advice on thousands upon thousands of images.
On 7/13/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
I should think it would be obvious to anyone who has been in a few of
these
debates about our non-free content policies that if a consensus evolves
at
all, it will be definitely one that favours very liberal inclusion of non-free content, simply because legally we can. There are also some who don't see any conflict between our free nature and the inclusion of
non-free
content that identifies certain things without any discussion.
A consensus to "liberally" allow fair use would mean nothing. Most things are subject to consensus, but the Foundation's been pretty clear on the matter, that fair use should be minimal if allowed at all. While that's open to some interpretation, "use liberally and wherever we legally can" is clearly in conflict with that resolution, so consensus or not it can't be done. An essential part of minimal use is that the fair-use content is irreplaceable, and also that it serve to substantially enhance the educational value of the article it's used in.
Tell that to the people who insist otherwise, then. This also doesn't help with those who insist that unfree content is perfectly fine as long as it identifies something the article alludes to, not just because it's legal, but because it flies under their interpretation of WMF policy.
Also, who determines whether we legally can, anyway? I'm not a lawyer,
are you? What constitutes fair use is a very fuzzy area of law, even experts sometimes have difficulty determining whether a given use would be fair or not. The reason for making sure we stay well away from the edge areas is because most Wikipedians don't have the legal knowledge to get close to that edge without actually crossing it, and the few who do are here to edit the encyclopedia, not provide free legal advice on thousands upon thousands of images.
I'm not, and my only legal training has been in the area of English law anyway, but that doesn't matter, because there are a lot of instances where something is plainly fair use under American law (as in, there's a 99% chance a court would find it was fair use) but still plainly inadmissible under our non-free content policies and the principles behind them. Dealing with these cases is a headache as long as our anchor non-free content policy is titled [[Wikipedia:Fair use]] and conflates fair use with non-free content.
Johnleemk
A consensus to "liberally" allow fair use would mean nothing. Most things are subject to consensus, but the Foundation's been pretty clear on the matter, that fair use should be minimal if allowed at all. While that's open to some interpretation, "use liberally and wherever we legally can" is clearly in conflict with that resolution, so consensus or not it can't be done. An essential part of minimal use is that the fair-use content is irreplaceable, and also that it serve to substantially enhance the educational value of the article it's used in.
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
However, we have had several MASSIVE debates about how to interpret the words "minimal" and "significantly". Nobody agrees on the connotation of these words as it applies to our use of non-free media.
This is precisely one of the reasons I am asking for greater clarification.
-Durin
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
Hmm? Should be the other way around. Foundation resolutions cannot override community consensus.
On 8/21/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
Hmm? Should be the other way around. Foundation resolutions cannot override community consensus.
Because...?
Johnleemk
On 8/21/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/21/07, Omegatron omegatron+wikienl@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
Hmm? Should be the other way around. Foundation resolutions cannot override community consensus.
Because...?
I suspect it is because the practical method for the community to decide to not abide by a Foundation resolution is a fork, with the Foundation resolution remaining in force within the remaining project(s) under the Foundation.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Omegatron wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
Hmm? Should be the other way around. Foundation resolutions cannot override community consensus. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The Foundation pays for the servers, and owns the trademarks. If you'd like to play by different rules than theirs, you can certainly arrange your own hosting and grab a database dump, but you can't call it Wikipedia and I doubt they're going to pay your hosting bill.
Todd Allen wrote:
Omegatron wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
Hmm? Should be the other way around. Foundation resolutions cannot override community consensus.
The Foundation pays for the servers, and owns the trademarks. If you'd like to play by different rules than theirs, you can certainly arrange your own hosting and grab a database dump, but you can't call it Wikipedia and I doubt they're going to pay your hosting bill.
Sometimes I wish that people who responded to this kind of question did not take a tone suitable to crushing a rebellion.
Certain issues are belt dealt with by the Foundation, and others are best dealt with with by the separate communities. Whenever either goes too far into the other's territory problems can arise. Because there are assets and revenues involved there is a need for a corporate legal structure that can manage the budget, and establish general policies about what it will support. If it begins to micromanage the projects, if it fails to provide them with the latitude needed to manage their own affairs, if it accedes to the demands of some community members to make decisions for the communities it will destroy those communities thereby leaving itself in command of a single gigantic project without a soul.
In a sense the Foundation needs to remain a specialized internet service provider. The communities need to develop their own policies through the activities of their own members, and nothing requires any two communities to have identical policy sets. Co-ordination and co-operation between communities is nevertheless to be encouraged. If a community is overrun by rampant anality it's up to that community to pull itself out of the pile that builds up below that anus. The Foundation can adopt a policy that it will not condone any illegal activity within the communities, but it should avoid being the one that searches out such activity or unilaterally determining that an illegal activity has taken place. It must, however, act on specific complaints in compliance with the procedural requirements set forth in law in such a way as will allow both the complainer and the apparent offender their full rights.
The relationships are more complex than what can be expressed in a simplistic statement about one having the right to override the other. As anyone resident in a country with a federal system will know the relationship between a central government and the governments of its components is a rich source for conflicting opinions.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
Omegatron wrote:
On 7/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
Several people have noted on en.wikipedia that consensus on this policy can not override Foundation resolution.
Hmm? Should be the other way around. Foundation resolutions cannot override community consensus.
The Foundation pays for the servers, and owns the trademarks. If you'd like to play by different rules than theirs, you can certainly arrange your own hosting and grab a database dump, but you can't call it Wikipedia and I doubt they're going to pay your hosting bill.
Sometimes I wish that people who responded to this kind of question did not take a tone suitable to crushing a rebellion.
Certain issues are belt dealt with by the Foundation, and others are best dealt with with by the separate communities. Whenever either goes too far into the other's territory problems can arise. Because there are assets and revenues involved there is a need for a corporate legal structure that can manage the budget, and establish general policies about what it will support. If it begins to micromanage the projects, if it fails to provide them with the latitude needed to manage their own affairs, if it accedes to the demands of some community members to make decisions for the communities it will destroy those communities thereby leaving itself in command of a single gigantic project without a soul.
In a sense the Foundation needs to remain a specialized internet service provider. The communities need to develop their own policies through the activities of their own members, and nothing requires any two communities to have identical policy sets. Co-ordination and co-operation between communities is nevertheless to be encouraged. If a community is overrun by rampant anality it's up to that community to pull itself out of the pile that builds up below that anus. The Foundation can adopt a policy that it will not condone any illegal activity within the communities, but it should avoid being the one that searches out such activity or unilaterally determining that an illegal activity has taken place. It must, however, act on specific complaints in compliance with the procedural requirements set forth in law in such a way as will allow both the complainer and the apparent offender their full rights.
The relationships are more complex than what can be expressed in a simplistic statement about one having the right to override the other. As anyone resident in a country with a federal system will know the relationship between a central government and the governments of its components is a rich source for conflicting opinions.
Ec
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I didn't say that the Foundation -should- micromanage, or that it would be a good idea, and indeed I agree with you that in most cases it should not. However, it should be supportive of those individual users which do uphold those few policies which it does insist on (and realistically, there are -very few- issues considered to be Foundation issues.) The point I'm trying to get across here, however, is not that I think the Foundation -should- micromanage, but that if it wants to, it can. This is not the case of a federal system with a constitution, it's a case of "I pay the bandwidth bill, so play by my rules on my server or hit the road."
Now, granted, if enough people take that invitation and hit the road, there's a big problem. I think the current situation works very well-the Foundation leaves very nearly everything up to the respective communities, but has decided on a few non-negotiable issues, and enforces those strictly. One of those issues is that we are a free-content project. That's not negotiable, and that's also not happening if we scatter nonfree material all over the place. They can and should enforce that strictly; I'd be happy myself to see them say "The Germans got it right folks, this is the FREE encyclopedia and nonfree content has no place here." Until and unless that should happen, we must at least keep it to a minimum.
On 8/22/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
One of those issues is that we are a free-content project. That's not negotiable, and that's also not happening if we scatter nonfree material all over the place. They can and should enforce that strictly; I'd be happy myself to see them say "The Germans got it right folks, this is the FREE encyclopedia and nonfree content has no place here." Until and unless that should happen, we must at least keep it to a minimum.
We've already failed in that. There's ~300 thousand non-free images on en.wikipedia, and growing larger all the time.
We are *constantly* fighting battles over reducing fair use images. We are winning the battles in the sense that the vast majority of the few battles there are end up in favor of reducing fair use images, but we are badly losing overall in that there are far, far more battles that are never fought.
-Durin
On 8/22/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/22/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
One of those issues is that we are a free-content project. That's not negotiable, and that's also not happening if we scatter nonfree material all over the place. They can and should enforce that strictly; I'd be happy myself to see them say "The Germans got it right folks, this is the FREE encyclopedia and nonfree content has no place here." Until and unless that should happen, we must at least keep it to a minimum.
We've already failed in that. There's ~300 thousand non-free images on en.wikipedia, and growing larger all the time.
Over 300.000 non-free images? I knew it was bad, but this... So close to half of all the images on Wikipedia are non-free. Excluding Commons of course.
I know it is unfair but when you compare it to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RedWolf/Image_Statistics :)
Garion96
On 8/22/07, Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
Over 300.000 non-free images? I knew it was bad, but this... So close to half of all the images on Wikipedia are non-free. Excluding Commons of course.
I know it is unfair but when you compare it to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RedWolf/Image_Statistics :)
I'm fairly certain that it was mentioned a few weeks ago or so, when this came up, but I'll repeat it: ideally /all/ of the images on en.wiki will be non-free, because we want all of the free images to be on commons.
Look at it this way: between commons and en.wiki, there are about 2.5 million images; only about 12% of these are non-free. It doesn't sound so bad, now, does it?
Tracy Poff
On 8/22/07, Tracy Poff tracy.poff@gmail.com wrote:
I'm fairly certain that it was mentioned a few weeks ago or so, when this came up, but I'll repeat it: ideally /all/ of the images on en.wiki will be non-free, because we want all of the free images to be on commons.
Not all, since in some cases a local copy of an image moved to Commons will be kept on en.wiki. :) (just read that amusing history on AN/I today)
Look at it this way: between commons and en.wiki, there are about 2.5 million images; only about 12% of these are non-free. It doesn't sound so bad, now, does it?
Less bad, but still bad. I still think it is excessive that we have over 300.000 non-free images (anyone has the exact number?) for two million articles.
Garion96
Garion96 wrote:
On 8/22/07, Tracy Poff tracy.poff@gmail.com wrote:
I'm fairly certain that it was mentioned a few weeks ago or so, when this came up, but I'll repeat it: ideally /all/ of the images on en.wiki will be non-free, because we want all of the free images to be on commons.
Not all, since in some cases a local copy of an image moved to Commons will be kept on en.wiki. :) (just read that amusing history on AN/I today)
Look at it this way: between commons and en.wiki, there are about 2.5 million images; only about 12% of these are non-free. It doesn't sound so bad, now, does it?
Less bad, but still bad. I still think it is excessive that we have over 300.000 non-free images (anyone has the exact number?) for two million articles.
Garion96 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Yes, that sounds bad. Imagine that 12.5% of our articles were cut-and-paste copyvios. The idea here is to be making a -free content- encyclopedia, not just any old encyclopedia, and we seem to be failing at that.
Garion96 wrote: [snip]
Less bad, but still bad. I still think it is excessive that we have over 300.000 non-free images (anyone has the exact number?) for two million articles.
Until recently we could only guess but a recent massive template standardization effort, mostly undertaken by Cyde, now makes counting them trivial:
At this moment there are 323,495 non-free media on Wikipedia out of 757,395 files. This is down from a recent high of something like 450k ... due to cleaning up the backlog of unused images, and some general large scale non-free media clean up efforts. (Many of which have been a bit over-zealous in my view.. but thats another story).
On 8/22/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, that sounds bad. Imagine that 12.5% of our articles were cut-and-paste copyvios. The idea here is to be making a -free content- encyclopedia, not just any old encyclopedia, and we seem to be failing at that.
Now, I dare you to ask how many of the 1.75 million commons images are actually used in enwp articles.
I think the more useful question is not what percentage of the images are non-free, but "what percentage of the articles contain no non-free images?".
... of course, what you think would be a good or bad answer to that one depends on your feelings on a lot of different subjects including things what percentage of WP articles you feel should be about pop-culture subjects.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Garion96 wrote: [snip]
Less bad, but still bad. I still think it is excessive that we have over 300.000 non-free images (anyone has the exact number?) for two million articles.
Until recently we could only guess but a recent massive template standardization effort, mostly undertaken by Cyde, now makes counting them trivial:
At this moment there are 323,495 non-free media on Wikipedia out of 757,395 files. This is down from a recent high of something like 450k ... due to cleaning up the backlog of unused images, and some general large scale non-free media clean up efforts. (Many of which have been a bit over-zealous in my view.. but thats another story).
On 8/22/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, that sounds bad. Imagine that 12.5% of our articles were cut-and-paste copyvios. The idea here is to be making a -free content- encyclopedia, not just any old encyclopedia, and we seem to be failing at that.
Now, I dare you to ask how many of the 1.75 million commons images are actually used in enwp articles.
I think the more useful question is not what percentage of the images are non-free, but "what percentage of the articles contain no non-free images?".
... of course, what you think would be a good or bad answer to that one depends on your feelings on a lot of different subjects including things what percentage of WP articles you feel should be about pop-culture subjects.
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Well, I think we've got a lot of articles on pop-culture subjects that could be merged. There's no question we should have an article on a popular TV show, but unless some character out of it really stands out and has been analyzed by sources in an out-of-universe fashion, we don't need separate articles for characters and the like.
But what if we do? We don't need an image to illustrate every anime character that has an article, or to show the cover of every album, or a screenshot of every video game. We can have pop culture articles without nonfree images. No nonfree images is an option. So even 2 million pop culture articles wouldn't necessitate one single free image. The German Wikipedia seems to do just fine with that, I think we would too.
On 8/23/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Garion96 wrote: [snip]
Less bad, but still bad. I still think it is excessive that we have
over
300.000 non-free images (anyone has the exact number?) for two million articles.
Until recently we could only guess but a recent massive template standardization effort, mostly undertaken by Cyde, now makes counting them trivial:
At this moment there are 323,495 non-free media on Wikipedia out of 757,395 files. This is down from a recent high of something like 450k ... due to cleaning up the backlog of unused images, and some general large scale non-free media clean up efforts. (Many of which have been a bit over-zealous in my view.. but thats another story).
On 8/22/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, that sounds bad. Imagine that 12.5% of our articles were cut-and-paste copyvios. The idea here is to be making a -free content- encyclopedia, not just any old encyclopedia, and we seem to be failing at that.
Now, I dare you to ask how many of the 1.75 million commons images are actually used in enwp articles.
I think the more useful question is not what percentage of the images are non-free, but "what percentage of the articles contain no non-free images?".
... of course, what you think would be a good or bad answer to that one depends on your feelings on a lot of different subjects including things what percentage of WP articles you feel should be about pop-culture subjects.
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Well, I think we've got a lot of articles on pop-culture subjects that could be merged. There's no question we should have an article on a popular TV show, but unless some character out of it really stands out and has been analyzed by sources in an out-of-universe fashion, we don't need separate articles for characters and the like.
But what if we do? We don't need an image to illustrate every anime character that has an article, or to show the cover of every album, or a screenshot of every video game. We can have pop culture articles without nonfree images. No nonfree images is an option. So even 2 million pop culture articles wouldn't necessitate one single free image. The German Wikipedia seems to do just fine with that, I think we would too.
Try reading the German article on Seinfeld, or the Simpsons, or the Godfather, or Andy Warhol. Nonfree images are an important part of going from "fine" to "good"
WilyD
On 8/23/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
But what if we do? We don't need an image to illustrate every anime character that has an article, or to show the cover of every album, or a screenshot of every video game. We can have pop culture articles without nonfree images. No nonfree images is an option. So even 2 million pop culture articles wouldn't necessitate one single free image. The German Wikipedia seems to do just fine with that, I think we would too.
Your statement is true, but there is an obvious usefulness of being able to include an image of the thing we're talking about in the article on that subject... And for copyrighted works it's generally not possible to inclue an excerpt of the work without including some non-free media. So it's a trade-off. We could argue the merits of where to draw the line... but it still remains a compromise.
Shouldn't we, instead, worry first about all the articles about physics, mathematics, chemistry, ancient history and culture, etc where we're not writing about a copyrighted work, where that compromise doesn't really exist?
Todd Allen wrote:
But what if we do? We don't need an image to illustrate every anime character that has an article, or to show the cover of every album, or a screenshot of every video game. We can have pop culture articles without nonfree images. No nonfree images is an option. So even 2 million pop culture articles wouldn't necessitate one single free image. The German Wikipedia seems to do just fine with that, I think we would too.
I've always wondered how many Germans "sneak over" via interwiki links to look at the forbidden pictures on en: . Certainly the urge to include images of copyrighted things is plenty strong at de: , they're always using pictures of building signs, Halloween costumes, and other semi-plausible subterfuges to get copyrighted imagery into their articles.
Stan
On 8/23/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
I think the more useful question is not what percentage of the images are non-free, but "what percentage of the articles contain no non-free images?".
English Wikipedia has 1,993,145 non-redirect pages. Of those 1,453,071 are not disambigs and are over 1000 bytes long. Of those, 292,871 have one or more non-free images.
So 20% have non-free images.
Considering that a lot of pages don't have images at all.. (this isn't so easy to count since little template inserted images still count as images, but I don't think we ought to be counting them while trying to figure out how many articles are illustrated).
On 8/22/07, Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
Over 300.000 non-free images? I knew it was bad, but this... So close to half of all the images on Wikipedia are non-free. Excluding Commons of course.
Given the constant drain of images to commons holding stead at 50% means a lot of free images are being uploaded.
I know it is unfair but when you compare it to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RedWolf/Image_Statistics :)
Garion96
Untagged stuff is likely mostly under fair use today. That being the case it would appear the 50:50 ration has been stable for some time.
On 8/22/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
We've already failed in that. There's ~300 thousand non-free images on en.wikipedia, and growing larger all the time.
I'm not sure it's growing. Been steady at about 300K for quite some time.
On 8/21/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sometimes I wish that people who responded to this kind of question did not take a tone suitable to crushing a rebellion.
Certain issues are belt dealt with by the Foundation, and others are best dealt with with by the separate communities. Whenever either goes too far into the other's territory problems can arise. Because there are assets and revenues involved there is a need for a corporate legal structure that can manage the budget, and establish general policies about what it will support. If it begins to micromanage the projects, if it fails to provide them with the latitude needed to manage their own affairs, if it accedes to the demands of some community members to make decisions for the communities it will destroy those communities thereby leaving itself in command of a single gigantic project without a soul.
In a sense the Foundation needs to remain a specialized internet service provider. The communities need to develop their own policies through the activities of their own members, and nothing requires any two communities to have identical policy sets. Co-ordination and co-operation between communities is nevertheless to be encouraged. If a community is overrun by rampant anality it's up to that community to pull itself out of the pile that builds up below that anus. The Foundation can adopt a policy that it will not condone any illegal activity within the communities, but it should avoid being the one that searches out such activity or unilaterally determining that an illegal activity has taken place. It must, however, act on specific complaints in compliance with the procedural requirements set forth in law in such a way as will allow both the complainer and the apparent offender their full rights.
The relationships are more complex than what can be expressed in a simplistic statement about one having the right to override the other. As anyone resident in a country with a federal system will know the relationship between a central government and the governments of its components is a rich source for conflicting opinions.
Thank you.
-Kat
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve.
Probably not. But a lack of consensus should not paralyze a project. If a supermajority favors particular policies, that may be an acceptable outcome.
Really, if these issues cannot be resolved, that is more symptomatic for the lack of maturity of decision making processes in the English Wikipedia than it is for a need for a more specific policy.
That is so true, unfortunately. Consensus works great 80% of the time, but it fails horribly at the 20% of the time when it doesn't work.
As an aside, en's problems are probably more visible because there are editors on en who actually care about the problem. I used to sporadically edit ms, and one of the top admins there frequently uploaded images under the non-commercial Creative Commons licence.
Johnleemk
On 7/12/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
As co-author of the Foundation's licensing policy, it was my intention to ensure that WMF projects have the freedom and flexibility to draft a fair use policy or similar "exemption doctrine policy" in line with established practices and beliefs of a given community. For example, I have no problem with fair use pictures being used to identify contemporary works where a free content image is not available. But I think the decision needs to be made by the community as a whole.
If no consensus can be found, rather than asking the WMF Board to make a final decision, how about organizing a community poll on the different options?
I guarantee you that no consensus will evolve. There has been massive contention on virtually every aspect of fair use issues on en.wikipedia. In no way can the enormity of the debates be overstated.
I expect it to be worse than that. If we go with straight-up voting, the resulting EDP will read as follows:
1) Any non-free image may be used if it's related to the article it's used in.
On 7/13/07, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
I expect it to be worse than that. If we go with straight-up voting, the resulting EDP will read as follows:
- Any non-free image may be used if it's related to the article it's used in.
That would probably be the outcome, but perhaps that would be a good thing. That would be so clearly in violation of the Foundation's licensing policy resolution that they would have to do something about en's policy.
While projects can develop their own EDPs, they can only be as restrictive or more restrictive than the standard set out in the resolution, not less restrictive. Currently en's policy is far less restrictive than what is contained in the resolution, and given that the Foundation is doing nothing about this (what Durin was originally complaining about) I can only envisage them taking action if en's policy got much, much worse.
Of course, the simple option would simply be not to use images on en Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. That rationale (excusing the publisher from copyright/licence violation) is not valid everywhere, nor are the parameters the same.
If Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopaedia, freely usable not just in the USA and other places with similar fair use rationale, why complicate matters with fair use images? Sure they can be stripped out prior to publishing elsewhere in another medium, but the problem is that with fair use images being allowed, plenty of article content will depend on such images.
Zoney
On 7/12/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Of course, the simple option would simply be not to use images on en Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. That rationale (excusing the publisher from copyright/licence violation) is not valid everywhere, nor are the parameters the same.
If Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopaedia, freely usable not just in the USA and other places with similar fair use rationale, why complicate matters with fair use images? Sure they can be stripped out prior to publishing elsewhere in another medium, but the problem is that with fair use images being allowed, plenty of article content will depend on such images.
We have the dichotomy between the goal of building the best encyclopedia possible, and building all-free content.
If these two goals did not collide, we would have no problem. Unfortunately, they do, and in doing so cause untold misery.
Some things, such as album covers, screen caps for games, frames from movies/anime... these have no possibility of replacable content. The content we seek to illustrate is by nature copyrighted. Either we, as a project, chose to do without such illustration, or we must accept some copyrighted content under fair use justifications.
So far, policy is that we do so minimally. The fuzzy grey line around "minimally" is becoming a war zone.
On 0, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com scribbled:
On 7/12/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Of course, the simple option would simply be not to use images on en Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. That rationale (excusing the publisher from copyright/licence violation) is not valid everywhere, nor are the parameters the same.
If Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopaedia, freely usable not just in the USA and other places with similar fair use rationale, why complicate matters with fair use images? Sure they can be stripped out prior to publishing elsewhere in another medium, but the problem is that with fair use images being allowed, plenty of article content will depend on such images.
We have the dichotomy between the goal of building the best encyclopedia possible, and building all-free content.
If these two goals did not collide, we would have no problem. Unfortunately, they do, and in doing so cause untold misery.
Some things, such as album covers, screen caps for games, frames from movies/anime... these have no possibility of replacable content. The content we seek to illustrate is by nature copyrighted. Either we, as a project, chose to do without such illustration, or we must accept some copyrighted content under fair use justifications.
So far, policy is that we do so minimally. The fuzzy grey line around "minimally" is becoming a war zone.
-- -george william herbert
I think you're understating the case here. It's not just a few things like album covers or video game screen captures that requires fair use. It's basically anything to do with commercial popular culture since 1923, just for starters and in the realm of images.
And even if we manage to solve images, the real lurking issue here is of *text*. How much fair use text do we have in Wikipedia? I can go to 10 random articles, find 2 or 3 fair use images - but find a multiple of that of quotes and paraphrases. And it's worse than with images, because at least with images we know images of pre-1923 matters to be public domain, regardless of whether they were taken in the English-speaking world or no. But how many of our quotes of, say, Sappho or the Dead Sea Scrolls, are *not* fair use (even though the original long predates the first glimmerings of copyright)?
-- gwern SAI Information Warfare IW IS Privacy Information Terrorism Kenya Terrorism
Gwern Branwen wrote:
On 0, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com scribbled:
On 7/12/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Of course, the simple option would simply be not to use images on en Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. That rationale (excusing the publisher from copyright/licence violation) is not valid everywhere, nor are the parameters the same.
If Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopaedia, freely usable not just in the USA and other places with similar fair use rationale, why complicate matters with fair use images? Sure they can be stripped out prior to publishing elsewhere in another medium, but the problem is that with fair use images being allowed, plenty of article content will depend on such images.
We have the dichotomy between the goal of building the best encyclopedia possible, and building all-free content.
If these two goals did not collide, we would have no problem. Unfortunately, they do, and in doing so cause untold misery.
Some things, such as album covers, screen caps for games, frames from movies/anime... these have no possibility of replacable content. The content we seek to illustrate is by nature copyrighted. Either we, as a project, chose to do without such illustration, or we must accept some copyrighted content under fair use justifications.
So far, policy is that we do so minimally. The fuzzy grey line around "minimally" is becoming a war zone.
-- -george william herbert
I think you're understating the case here. It's not just a few things like album covers or video game screen captures that requires fair use. It's basically anything to do with commercial popular culture since 1923, just for starters and in the realm of images.
WRONG! US material that was published before 1989 required a copyright notice. Pre 1989 publicity shots that did not have a copyright notce are in the public domain. Anything published in the US before 1964 whose copyright was not renewed is in the public domain.
And even if we manage to solve images, the real lurking issue here is of *text*. How much fair use text do we have in Wikipedia? I can go to 10 random articles, find 2 or 3 fair use images - but find a multiple of that of quotes and paraphrases. And it's worse than with images, because at least with images we know images of pre-1923 matters to be public domain, regardless of whether they were taken in the English-speaking world or no. But how many of our quotes of, say, Sappho or the Dead Sea Scrolls, are *not* fair use (even though the original long predates the first glimmerings of copyright)?
Obviously fair use doesn't apply to Sappho and the Dead Sea Scrolls because they are in the public domain. Translations, however, may still be copyright. Where are you trying to go with these claims?
Ec
And once again, the same old arguments crop up yet again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN#Request_full_protection_for_Template:albu...
We absolutely MUST have cleared lines of demarcation on this.
-Durin
And yet another war, this time over whether fair use images can be used for identification only or must have critical commentary on the image as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Edit_war
And on and on and on and on and on and on and on. :((((
-Durin
On 0, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net scribbled:
Gwern Branwen wrote:
On 0, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com scribbled:
On 7/12/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Of course, the simple option would simply be not to use images on en Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. That rationale (excusing the publisher from copyright/licence violation) is not valid everywhere, nor are the parameters the same.
If Wikipedia is supposed to be a free encyclopaedia, freely usable not just in the USA and other places with similar fair use rationale, why complicate matters with fair use images? Sure they can be stripped out prior to publishing elsewhere in another medium, but the problem is that with fair use images being allowed, plenty of article content will depend on such images.
We have the dichotomy between the goal of building the best encyclopedia possible, and building all-free content.
If these two goals did not collide, we would have no problem. Unfortunately, they do, and in doing so cause untold misery.
Some things, such as album covers, screen caps for games, frames from movies/anime... these have no possibility of replacable content. The content we seek to illustrate is by nature copyrighted. Either we, as a project, chose to do without such illustration, or we must accept some copyrighted content under fair use justifications.
So far, policy is that we do so minimally. The fuzzy grey line around "minimally" is becoming a war zone.
-- -george william herbert
I think you're understating the case here. It's not just a few things like album covers or video game screen captures that requires fair use. It's basically anything to do with commercial popular culture since 1923, just for starters and in the realm of images.
WRONG! US material that was published before 1989 required a copyright notice. Pre 1989 publicity shots that did not have a copyright notce are in the public domain. Anything published in the US before 1964 whose copyright was not renewed is in the public domain.
From [[United States copyright law]]:
"Copyrightable works created before 1978 that had not entered the public domain in 1978 received protection for the § 302 term above with the exception that those copyrights would not expire before 2003. Prior to 1978, works had to be published or registered to receive copyright protection. Upon the effective date of the 1976 Act (1 January, 1978) this requirement was removed and these works received protection despite having not been published or registered. However, Congress intended to provide an incentive for these authors to publish their unpublished works. To provide that incentive these works, if published before 2003, will not have their protection expire until 2048."
As for the pre-1964 stuff: precisely what notable material wasn't renewed?
And even if we manage to solve images, the real lurking issue here is of *text*. How much fair use text do we have in Wikipedia? I can go to 10 random articles, find 2 or 3 fair use images - but find a multiple of that of quotes and paraphrases. And it's worse than with images, because at least with images we know images of pre-1923 matters to be public domain, regardless of whether they were taken in the English-speaking world or no. But how many of our quotes of, say, Sappho or the Dead Sea Scrolls, are *not* fair use (even though the original long predates the first glimmerings of copyright)?
Obviously fair use doesn't apply to Sappho and the Dead Sea Scrolls because they are in the public domain. Translations, however, may still be copyright. Where are you trying to go with these claims?
Ec
It's not particularly useful for the *English Wikipedia* if those are copyrighted. Perhaps professors of ancient Greek and Aramaic don't care about the copyright restrictions on Sappho's fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the rest of us should care.
-- gwern Halibut USCODE intelligence Kilderkin ISEP domestic Flintlock Thanatos Amherst 50MZ
On 8/4/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
As for the pre-1964 stuff: precisely what notable material wasn't renewed?
Large quantities of stuff was not renewed. Specialist and trade publications, brochures, catalogs, and much, much more. The lists of copyright renewals, which you can find for certain years online, are in fact rather short. You'll probably find, in fact, some quite well known works indeed were not renewed. Some movies, for instance, were not renewed and passed into the public domain; many others did not simply because the underlying book upon which they were based was renewed.
-Matt
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju...
this is making my brain hurt.
Quiddity
On 7/18/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju...
this is making my brain hurt.
That's a pretty easy call really.
Fair use should be limited as much as possible in order to maintain the encyclopedic integrity while staying focused on our mission. The Einstein article already has substantial images of the man. The image can only be fair use within our criteria if the image is of major significance to the article. Currently, the article just speaks to Einstein's ability to stick out his tongue. That's hardly sufficient.
There's claims the image is iconic (I grant it is) and culturally relevant (I grant it might be). Ok, so write about that...then the image becomes of use. Without that, the image is worthless to the article and is purely decorative.
-Durin
Quiddity
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/18/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju...
this is making my brain hurt.
That's a pretty easy call really.
Fair use should be limited as much as possible in order to maintain the encyclopedic integrity while staying focused on our mission. The Einstein article already has substantial images of the man. The image can only be fair use within our criteria if the image is of major significance to the article. Currently, the article just speaks to Einstein's ability to stick out his tongue. That's hardly sufficient.
There's claims the image is iconic (I grant it is) and culturally relevant (I grant it might be). Ok, so write about that...then the image becomes of use. Without that, the image is worthless to the article and is purely decorative.
"Fair use" seems to be the cry for anyone who can't be bothered to look more deeply into a situation. This is a 1951 photograph! Where was it first published? Who owns the copyright? Was it properly renewed? .Given that some have attached the "iconic" description, has anyone with a connection to the article ever filed a copyright action about the picture? In the absence of such a legal actions perhaps the copyright has been effectively abandoned. The answers to these questions may very well lead to a determination that the image is already in the public domain. If that's the case fair use is not relevant.
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use discussion. It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works treated as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
Ec
On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use discussion. It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works treated as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
Simply because an image is old does not mean it is free from copyright. Further, we assume something is not free until we have proof positive it is free.
-Durin
On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
"Fair use" seems to be the cry for anyone who can't be bothered to look more deeply into a situation. This is a 1951 photograph! Where was it first published? Who owns the copyright? Was it properly renewed? .Given that some have attached the "iconic" description, has anyone with a connection to the article ever filed a copyright action about the picture? In the absence of such a legal actions perhaps the copyright has been effectively abandoned. The answers to these questions may very well lead to a determination that the image is already in the public domain. If that's the case fair use is not relevant.
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use discussion. It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works treated as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
Ec
Guessing that the photograph was first published in the United States, since it was taken in the United States by a photographer working for a primarily American news syndicate. UP probably got the copyright at the time as a work for hire. I'd be quite leery of guessing about renewals, and would tend to err on the side of assuming that it was renewed, and therefore that UPI still holds the copyright.
If it were published somewhere else first, the considerations get complicated pretty fast. That's a morass I wouldn't want to venture into. Can you find a death date for Arthur Sasse? Is he even dead? Is the copyright length even based on his death, or is it on the death of the entity that hired him? How does the country treat works for hire? Corporate authorship? More importantly, how did the country treat such things, and what were the copyright durations, in 1951? I don't know much about international copyright law, but my guess is there's not much chance that the work is public domain if it was first published outside the United States (and if Sasse lived until at least 1957, almost no chance). And guesses is really about as good as it's going to get if you want Wikipedians to try to answer the question of whether the work is in the public domain or not.
As for absence of legal actions, that has nothing to do with whether the work is still under copyright or not. It may have a good deal to do with whether legal action based on Wikipedia's use of it could be expected, but copyright isn't abandoned through neglect. So, my inclination would be to say that without some reason to believe that it was not renewed, the image should be presumed to be under copyright protection.
It may well be a benefit to an encyclopedia to treat works of uncertain status as free to use, especially when it appears unlikely that such use will result in legal action. However, I would not agree that it would be a benefit to a *free* encyclopedia. Unless works are actually known (with at least a fairly good degree of certainty) to be free, they should not be used unless they fit our policies for the use of non-free works.
-- Jonel (not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc., etc.)
On 7/19/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/18/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju...
this is making my brain hurt.
That's a pretty easy call really.
Fair use should be limited as much as possible in order to maintain the encyclopedic integrity while staying focused on our mission. The Einstein article already has substantial images of the man. The image can only be fair use within our criteria if the image is of major significance to the article. Currently, the article just speaks to Einstein's ability to stick out his tongue. That's hardly sufficient.
There's claims the image is iconic (I grant it is) and culturally relevant (I grant it might be). Ok, so write about that...then the image becomes of use. Without that, the image is worthless to the article and is purely decorative.
"Fair use" seems to be the cry for anyone who can't be bothered to look more deeply into a situation. This is a 1951 photograph! Where was it first published? Who owns the copyright? Was it properly renewed? .Given that some have attached the "iconic" description, has anyone with a connection to the article ever filed a copyright action about the picture? In the absence of such a legal actions perhaps the copyright has been effectively abandoned. The answers to these questions may very well lead to a determination that the image is already in the public domain. If that's the case fair use is not relevant.
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use discussion. It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works treated as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
1. In copyright issues, we should err on the side that keeps us safest legally; 2. I see no copyright problem here - the iconic nature of the image gives us a free pass, generally, in fair use, as many publications have used this picture with less context than we provide; 3. Because we are a free encyclopaedia we hold ourselves to a higher standard than other publications and demand that non-free content's usage be justified in some way by significantly improving our coverage; 4. By having nothing more than a relevant caption, it is difficult to argue that having this non-free picture significantly improves [[Albert Einstein]]; 5. This is a perfect illustration of why we should stop quibbling about "is it fair use under American law?" and start asking "is this non-free content necessary for the encyclopaedia?"
Johnleemk
1.the safest course is not to have free use images at all, and the decision was already made not to do that. 2. agreed. 3. There is no reason why a free encyclopedia should be less free than other publications--the highest standard is to respect & honor the law by using the rights it provides. Fair use is not a favor, but a right. To the extent we are noncommercial & educational we have greater fair use rights than many other entities. 4. This is iconic as illustrating Einstein's general irreverent attitude and so a caption could be immediately written to say that 5. this is a perfect example of how we can find the best use of available content.
On 7/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/19/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/18/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_Ju...
this is making my brain hurt.
That's a pretty easy call really.
Fair use should be limited as much as possible in order to maintain the encyclopedic integrity while staying focused on our mission. The Einstein article already has substantial images of the man. The image can only be fair use within our criteria if the image is of major significance to the article. Currently, the article just speaks to Einstein's ability to stick out his tongue. That's hardly sufficient.
There's claims the image is iconic (I grant it is) and culturally relevant (I grant it might be). Ok, so write about that...then the image becomes of use. Without that, the image is worthless to the article and is purely decorative.
"Fair use" seems to be the cry for anyone who can't be bothered to look more deeply into a situation. This is a 1951 photograph! Where was it first published? Who owns the copyright? Was it properly renewed? .Given that some have attached the "iconic" description, has anyone with a connection to the article ever filed a copyright action about the picture? In the absence of such a legal actions perhaps the copyright has been effectively abandoned. The answers to these questions may very well lead to a determination that the image is already in the public domain. If that's the case fair use is not relevant.
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use discussion. It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works treated as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
- In copyright issues, we should err on the side that keeps us safest
legally; 2. I see no copyright problem here - the iconic nature of the image gives us a free pass, generally, in fair use, as many publications have used this picture with less context than we provide; 3. Because we are a free encyclopaedia we hold ourselves to a higher standard than other publications and demand that non-free content's usage be justified in some way by significantly improving our coverage; 4. By having nothing more than a relevant caption, it is difficult to argue that having this non-free picture significantly improves [[Albert Einstein]]; 5. This is a perfect illustration of why we should stop quibbling about "is it fair use under American law?" and start asking "is this non-free content necessary for the encyclopaedia?"
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 7/19/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/19/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/18/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_July_18#Image:Einstein_tongue.jpg
this is making my brain hurt.
That's a pretty easy call really.
Fair use should be limited as much as possible in order to maintain the encyclopedic integrity while staying focused on our mission. The Einstein article already has substantial images of the man. The image can only be fair use within our criteria if the image is
of
major significance to the article. Currently, the article just
speaks
to Einstein's ability to stick out his tongue. That's hardly
sufficient.
There's claims the image is iconic (I grant it is) and culturally relevant (I grant it might be). Ok, so write about that...then the image becomes of use. Without that, the image is worthless to the article and is purely decorative.
"Fair use" seems to be the cry for anyone who can't be bothered to
look
more deeply into a situation. This is a 1951 photograph! Where was
it
first published? Who owns the copyright? Was it properly renewed? .Given that some have attached the "iconic" description, has anyone
with
a connection to the article ever filed a copyright action about the picture? In the absence of such a legal actions perhaps the
copyright
has been effectively abandoned. The answers to these questions may
very
well lead to a determination that the image is already in the public domain. If that's the case fair use is not relevant.
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use
discussion.
It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works
treated
as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
- In copyright issues, we should err on the side that keeps us safest
legally; 2. I see no copyright problem here - the iconic nature of the image
gives us
a free pass, generally, in fair use, as many publications have used
this
picture with less context than we provide; 3. Because we are a free encyclopaedia we hold ourselves to a higher standard than other publications and demand that non-free content's
usage be
justified in some way by significantly improving our coverage; 4. By having nothing more than a relevant caption, it is difficult to
argue
that having this non-free picture significantly improves [[Albert Einstein]]; 5. This is a perfect illustration of why we should stop quibbling
about "is
it fair use under American law?" and start asking "is this non-free
content
necessary for the encyclopaedia?"
1.the safest course is not to have free use images at all, and the decision was already made not to do that. 2. agreed. 3. There is no reason why a free encyclopedia should be less free than other publications--the highest standard is to respect & honor the law by using the rights it provides. Fair use is not a favor, but a right. To the extent we are noncommercial & educational we have greater fair use rights than many other entities. 4. This is iconic as illustrating Einstein's general irreverent attitude and so a caption could be immediately written to say that 5. this is a perfect example of how we can find the best use of available content.
Re 1, are you suggesting that if we don't know whether an image is copyrighted or copylefted, we should assume it's copylefted, as Ray seems to have suggested?
Re 3, we are not talking about the legality of our usage. We are talking about the consistency of this usage with our status as a *free* *encyclopaedia*. We are an encyclopaedia, not a gallery or quotation database; we are supposed to be as free as possible so our work can be redistributed around the world with minimal difficulty, necessitating that we attempt to minimise the usage of content not explicitly licensed for the uses we and our downstream users might need. We do not need redundant unfree material cluttering our encyclopaedia.
Re 4, then we should do that instead of quibbling about this. The reason Durin and others probably haven't done that is because they want to discuss the broader issues of our status as a free encyclopaedia, freely reusable by anyone around the world.
Johnleemk
I disagree with this: we are here to provide information as an encyclopedia, not to serve as a source for others to copy (Commons, on the other hand, is and example of just such a source). Our purpose is to provide the best freely distributable content. Those who may wish to repurpose it have our permission, but there is no need for us to guarantee the origins of the material. A encyclopedia of that sort exists-- the de WP. They do it one way, and the en WP can do it another.
Yes, i am saying we should rethink our interpretation, and make full use of whatever material we legally can under copyright law where we operate.
DGG
On 7/19/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/19/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/19/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
On 7/18/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
(I don't know the background or details of this issue, but...)
/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion/2007_July_18#Image:Einstein_tongue.jpg
> >this is making my brain hurt. > > That's a pretty easy call really.
Fair use should be limited as much as possible in order to maintain the encyclopedic integrity while staying focused on our mission. The Einstein article already has substantial images of the man. The image can only be fair use within our criteria if the image is
of
major significance to the article. Currently, the article just
speaks
to Einstein's ability to stick out his tongue. That's hardly
sufficient.
There's claims the image is iconic (I grant it is) and culturally relevant (I grant it might be). Ok, so write about that...then the image becomes of use. Without that, the image is worthless to the article and is purely decorative.
"Fair use" seems to be the cry for anyone who can't be bothered to
look
more deeply into a situation. This is a 1951 photograph! Where was
it
first published? Who owns the copyright? Was it properly renewed? .Given that some have attached the "iconic" description, has anyone
with
a connection to the article ever filed a copyright action about the picture? In the absence of such a legal actions perhaps the
copyright
has been effectively abandoned. The answers to these questions may
very
well lead to a determination that the image is already in the public domain. If that's the case fair use is not relevant.
With older photographs especially it would be nice if people did a little homework before diverting the debate into a fair use
discussion.
It would be a far greater benefit to the encyclopedia if works
treated
as unfree by virtue of uncertainty were established as free.
- In copyright issues, we should err on the side that keeps us safest
legally; 2. I see no copyright problem here - the iconic nature of the image
gives us
a free pass, generally, in fair use, as many publications have used
this
picture with less context than we provide; 3. Because we are a free encyclopaedia we hold ourselves to a higher standard than other publications and demand that non-free content's
usage be
justified in some way by significantly improving our coverage; 4. By having nothing more than a relevant caption, it is difficult to
argue
that having this non-free picture significantly improves [[Albert Einstein]]; 5. This is a perfect illustration of why we should stop quibbling
about "is
it fair use under American law?" and start asking "is this non-free
content
necessary for the encyclopaedia?"
1.the safest course is not to have free use images at all, and the decision was already made not to do that. 2. agreed. 3. There is no reason why a free encyclopedia should be less free than other publications--the highest standard is to respect & honor the law by using the rights it provides. Fair use is not a favor, but a right. To the extent we are noncommercial & educational we have greater fair use rights than many other entities. 4. This is iconic as illustrating Einstein's general irreverent attitude and so a caption could be immediately written to say that 5. this is a perfect example of how we can find the best use of available content.
Re 1, are you suggesting that if we don't know whether an image is copyrighted or copylefted, we should assume it's copylefted, as Ray seems to have suggested?
Re 3, we are not talking about the legality of our usage. We are talking about the consistency of this usage with our status as a *free* *encyclopaedia*. We are an encyclopaedia, not a gallery or quotation database; we are supposed to be as free as possible so our work can be redistributed around the world with minimal difficulty, necessitating that we attempt to minimise the usage of content not explicitly licensed for the uses we and our downstream users might need. We do not need redundant unfree material cluttering our encyclopaedia.
Re 4, then we should do that instead of quibbling about this. The reason Durin and others probably haven't done that is because they want to discuss the broader issues of our status as a free encyclopaedia, freely reusable by anyone around the world.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 7/22/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
I disagree with this: we are here to provide information as an encyclopedia, not to serve as a source for others to copy (Commons, on the other hand, is and example of just such a source). Our purpose is to provide the best freely distributable content. Those who may wish to repurpose it have our permission, but there is no need for us to guarantee the origins of the material. A encyclopedia of that sort exists-- the de WP. They do it one way, and the en WP can do it another.
Yes, i am saying we should rethink our interpretation, and make full use of whatever material we legally can under copyright law where we operate.
DGG
Then you are free to start your own project. This is wikipedia the free encyclopedia.
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, i am saying we should rethink our interpretation, and make full use of whatever material we legally can under copyright law where we operate.
DGG
Then you are free to start your own project. This is wikipedia the free encyclopedia.
Fair use images are allowed under current policy in many situations, however. Perhaps those who wish to see it completely eliminated should start up their own project instead? It cuts both ways.
IMO "love it or leave it" is not a particularly useful argument when what's being debated is what "it" actually is.
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Fair use images are allowed under current policy in many situations, however. Perhaps those who wish to see it completely eliminated should start up their own project instead? It cuts both ways.
Fairly limited situations and I didn't say I wanted it completely eliminated I simply feel that a project that pushes on the limits of US fair use law is not compatible with the aim of producing a free encyclopedia.
IMO "love it or leave it" is not a particularly useful argument when what's being debated is what "it" actually is.
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
How much use is "overuse"?
On 7/22/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
How much use is "overuse"?
Use where a free alternative is possible Use where the media is not the subject of the article or the subject of a section of the article (section being defined as at least 2-3 sentences).
The first is required to meet our it must not be replaceable requirement and the second for the significance requirement. Meet those two and the rest of our EDP is unlikely to be an issue.
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/22/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
How much use is "overuse"?
Use where a free alternative is possible Use where the media is not the subject of the article or the subject of a section of the article (section being defined as at least 2-3 sentences).
The first is required to meet our it must not be replaceable requirement and the second for the significance requirement. Meet those two and the rest of our EDP is unlikely to be an issue.
So the answer to my question is "one use". Good luck.
James Farrar wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/22/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
How much use is "overuse"?
Use where a free alternative is possible Use where the media is not the subject of the article or the subject of a section of the article (section being defined as at least 2-3 sentences).
The first is required to meet our it must not be replaceable requirement and the second for the significance requirement. Meet those two and the rest of our EDP is unlikely to be an issue.
So the answer to my question is "one use". Good luck.
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
Getting the 2-3 sentances to be about the media in question. Most articles on albums do not talk about the album covers. Dito bookcovers. Screenshots may be slightly better but still people tend to include them without talking about them (for example the comment on [[Image:Ebay-homepage.png]] appears to be 3 words).
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
Getting the 2-3 sentances to be about the media in question. Most articles on albums do not talk about the album covers. Dito bookcovers. Screenshots may be slightly better but still people tend to include them without talking about them (for example the comment on [[Image:Ebay-homepage.png]] appears to be 3 words).
I think you may be interpreting things a little overly literally. The article is about eBay and the screenshot depicts what eBay "looks like" to the user. There's no need for the article to literally say "in the screenshot to the right, note the balanced use of color and perfectly straight lines used on the eBay homepage" in order to actually be discussing the subject of the image. The article on [[Jean-Luc Picard]] has a screen capture depicting the character but the article doesn't at any point have a section of text saying "in the screenshot at right, note how Captain Picard is bald and has a hawkish nose. The gleam of his scalp offsets the gleam of intelligence in his eye." The whole article is about the guy and that's a picture showing what he looks like.
(As an aside, I picked this example at random on the assumption that there'd be a screenshot there and when I actually visited the article to double-check that I found that the image tagged for deletion both for lacking a source and for lacking a fair use rationale. In both cases, the missing information is REALLY FREAKIN' OBVIOUS. Once again a case where it was just as easy to slap deletion tags on as it was to provide the information that would solve the problem, and yet the deletion tags were used. This is not optimal to say the least.)
On 7/23/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I think you may be interpreting things a little overly literally. The article is about eBay and the screenshot depicts what eBay "looks like" to the user. There's no need for the article to literally say "in the screenshot to the right, note the balanced use of color and perfectly straight lines used on the eBay homepage" in order to actually be discussing the subject of the image. The article on [[Jean-Luc Picard]] has a screen capture depicting the character but the article doesn't at any point have a section of text saying "in the screenshot at right, note how Captain Picard is bald and has a hawkish nose. The gleam of his scalp offsets the gleam of intelligence in his eye." The whole article is about the guy and that's a picture showing what he looks like.
(As an aside, I picked this example at random on the assumption that there'd be a screenshot there and when I actually visited the article to double-check that I found that the image tagged for deletion both for lacking a source and for lacking a fair use rationale. In both cases, the missing information is REALLY FREAKIN' OBVIOUS. Once again a case where it was just as easy to slap deletion tags on as it was to provide the information that would solve the problem, and yet the deletion tags were used. This is not optimal to say the least.)
Out of curiosity, how would you think about a case where in an article about one half of Abbott and Costello (or any random pair of performing artists who chiefly appeared together), there was a fair use image of both of them. (disregarding the real life question of whether there was a free image available, supposing there weren't)
Lets further say the other half of the duo wasn't in an article that described them at length, more than to note that they were an inextricable pair for most of their career. Would it be accurate to say there was no rationale to include that image, because one of the persons in that fair use image was not who the article was discussing?
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
I've seen actual fair use discussions which hinged on whether a photo showed only the subject of the article, or showed other people as well.
O > Out of curiosity, how would you think about a case where in an article
about one half of Abbott and Costello (or any random pair of performing artists who chiefly appeared together), there was a fair use image of both of them. (disregarding the real life question of whether there was a free image available, supposing there weren't)
Lets further say the other half of the duo wasn't in an article that described them at length, more than to note that they were an inextricable pair for most of their career. Would it be accurate to say there was no rationale to include that image, because one of the persons in that fair use image was not who the article was discussing?
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Bryan Derksen wrote:
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
Getting the 2-3 sentances to be about the media in question. Most articles on albums do not talk about the album covers. Dito bookcovers. Screenshots may be slightly better but still people tend to include them without talking about them (for example the comment on [[Image:Ebay-homepage.png]] appears to be 3 words).
I think you may be interpreting things a little overly literally. The article is about eBay and the screenshot depicts what eBay "looks like" to the user. There's no need for the article to literally say "in the screenshot to the right, note the balanced use of color and perfectly straight lines used on the eBay homepage" in order to actually be discussing the subject of the image. The article on [[Jean-Luc Picard]] has a screen capture depicting the character but the article doesn't at any point have a section of text saying "in the screenshot at right, note how Captain Picard is bald and has a hawkish nose. The gleam of his scalp offsets the gleam of intelligence in his eye." The whole article is about the guy and that's a picture showing what he looks like.
(As an aside, I picked this example at random on the assumption that there'd be a screenshot there and when I actually visited the article to double-check that I found that the image tagged for deletion both for lacking a source and for lacking a fair use rationale. In both cases, the missing information is REALLY FREAKIN' OBVIOUS. Once again a case where it was just as easy to slap deletion tags on as it was to provide the information that would solve the problem, and yet the deletion tags were used. This is not optimal to say the least.)
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Or it could be that someone besides you thinks that the fair-use is not so "freakin' obvious" at all, and genuinely believes that the image should be deleted.
But far easier to blame laziness than address a genuine difference of opinion. I'll refrain from comment on the irony there aside from pointing it out a bit...
On 7/23/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I think you may be interpreting things a little overly literally. The article is about eBay and the screenshot depicts what eBay "looks like" to the user. There's no need for the article to literally say "in the screenshot to the right, note the balanced use of color and perfectly straight lines used on the eBay homepage" in order to actually be discussing the subject of the image.
Um yes it does. Appearence of the website is only part of ebay and if it is important enough to include a "fair use" image it is important enough to talk about in the article.
The article on [[Jean-Luc Picard]] has a screen capture depicting the character but the article doesn't at any point have a section of text saying "in the screenshot at right, note how Captain Picard is bald and has a hawkish nose. The gleam of his scalp offsets the gleam of intelligence in his eye." The whole article is about the guy and that's a picture showing what he looks like.
No the article is about the character. If the character's apearence is important enough to use a "fair use" image then it is important enough to talk about in the article.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
James Farrar wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/22/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
How much use is "overuse"?
Use where a free alternative is possible Use where the media is not the subject of the article or the subject of a section of the article (section being defined as at least 2-3 sentences).
The first is required to meet our it must not be replaceable requirement and the second for the significance requirement. Meet those two and the rest of our EDP is unlikely to be an issue.
So the answer to my question is "one use". Good luck.
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
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The point of contention is, the current policy is highly problematic in terms of being "the -free- encyclopedia." That doesn't just mean "free of charge", it means "free as in freedom"-as in, if I see an image used on Wikipedia, there should be a very good chance I can, if I comply with the GFDL, copy, reuse, or modify it as I see fit.
Right now, that's not the case. There are a tremendous number of unfree images in use on the "free" encyclopedia. In a few cases, unfree images may be so necessary, critical, and irreplaceable that we should use them. But many of us, including me, don't believe "a few cases" is equivalent to "all album, book, movie, or corporation articles". Most of those can be written perfectly adequately with solely free content (in this case, text) and the use of the image is decorative. If people want to use free images for marginal, decorative, replaceable purposes, I don't care that much. But we shouldn't use unfree images to do that, and right now, we are.
Replaceable? How are album covers and corporate logos replaceable, you ask? Easy! We discuss the album/corporation/etc. using text only (which is free). Remember, the free replacement need not be as good as the unfree image to qualify the unfree image as replaceable. It need only be adequate. For logos, covers, and the like, in almost all cases, text is an -adequate- replacement.
Todd Allen wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
The point of contention is, the current policy is highly problematic in terms of being "the -free- encyclopedia." That doesn't just mean "free of charge", it means "free as in freedom"-as in, if I see an image used on Wikipedia, there should be a very good chance I can, if I comply with the GFDL, copy, reuse, or modify it as I see fit.
Yes, I am well aware of the dual meanings of "free." By this point in the discussion we shouldn't need to go over such elementary issues. What you seem to be overlooking here is that "free" and "nonfree" are not black and white binary values with no grey area in between. That's a false dichotomy and a bit of a red herring to boot. We're not debating whether to allow "non-free" images at all, since we've already decided that some non-free images are allowed. What we're debating is what specific _degree_ of "freeness" is required, and in what situations.
Images that are not licensed but that are compatible with fair use are not as "free" as GFDLed images, but the are _more_ free than a non-fair-use-compatible image would be. A person who wants to take Wikipedia's database and set up another encyclopedia site doing the same things that Wikipedia does _is_ free to do so, even with the fair use material, since the fair use exemption is not Wikipedia-specific but rather _use_-specific. If we can do it, they can do it.
If they want to do other things, such as sell DVDs or print it on toilet paper or what have you, then maybe some of the content's conditions are no longer compatible with that use. That applies both to fair use images _and_ to the diverse mish-mash of "free" image licenses we use. There are things one could do where only the PD images would be allowed and the GFDLed images would have to be removed.
Right now, that's not the case. There are a tremendous number of unfree images in use on the "free" encyclopedia. In a few cases, unfree images may be so necessary, critical, and irreplaceable that we should use them. But many of us, including me, don't believe "a few cases" is equivalent to "all album, book, movie, or corporation articles". Most of those can be written perfectly adequately with solely free content (in this case, text) and the use of the image is decorative.
This is where matters of opinion come in. A lot of people are arguing that what you're calling merely "decorative" is in fact more useful than that. Frilly borders or a shaded background are just "decorative", a picture of the thing that the article is about is more than that.
Replaceable? How are album covers and corporate logos replaceable, you ask? Easy! We discuss the album/corporation/etc. using text only (which is free).
Not really, IMO. An infobox on [[Nike]] with a cell at the top that read "An asymmetric upward-opening crescent with the points skewed toward the right" would be silly, and would not be nearly as useful for recognizing the brand as an actual picture of the Nike swoosh logo would be.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
A person who wants to take Wikipedia's database and set up another encyclopedia site doing the same things that Wikipedia does _is_ free to do so, even with the fair use material, since the fair use exemption is not Wikipedia-specific but rather _use_-specific. If we can do it, they can do it.
Furthermore (and I suspect this point has probably been made already, but it's worth making again) if they have a problem with fair-use images, they can trivially strip them out of the database, since we bend over backwards to tag them as such.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
The point of contention is, the current policy is highly problematic in terms of being "the -free- encyclopedia." That doesn't just mean "free of charge", it means "free as in freedom"-as in, if I see an image used on Wikipedia, there should be a very good chance I can, if I comply with the GFDL, copy, reuse, or modify it as I see fit.
Yes, I am well aware of the dual meanings of "free." By this point in the discussion we shouldn't need to go over such elementary issues. What you seem to be overlooking here is that "free" and "nonfree" are not black and white binary values with no grey area in between. That's a false dichotomy and a bit of a red herring to boot. We're not debating whether to allow "non-free" images at all, since we've already decided that some non-free images are allowed. What we're debating is what specific _degree_ of "freeness" is required, and in what situations.
Images that are not licensed but that are compatible with fair use are not as "free" as GFDLed images, but the are _more_ free than a non-fair-use-compatible image would be. A person who wants to take Wikipedia's database and set up another encyclopedia site doing the same things that Wikipedia does _is_ free to do so, even with the fair use material, since the fair use exemption is not Wikipedia-specific but rather _use_-specific. If we can do it, they can do it.
If they want to do other things, such as sell DVDs or print it on toilet paper or what have you, then maybe some of the content's conditions are no longer compatible with that use. That applies both to fair use images _and_ to the diverse mish-mash of "free" image licenses we use. There are things one could do where only the PD images would be allowed and the GFDLed images would have to be removed.
Right now, that's not the case. There are a tremendous number of unfree images in use on the "free" encyclopedia. In a few cases, unfree images may be so necessary, critical, and irreplaceable that we should use them. But many of us, including me, don't believe "a few cases" is equivalent to "all album, book, movie, or corporation articles". Most of those can be written perfectly adequately with solely free content (in this case, text) and the use of the image is decorative.
This is where matters of opinion come in. A lot of people are arguing that what you're calling merely "decorative" is in fact more useful than that. Frilly borders or a shaded background are just "decorative", a picture of the thing that the article is about is more than that.
Replaceable? How are album covers and corporate logos replaceable, you ask? Easy! We discuss the album/corporation/etc. using text only (which is free).
Not really, IMO. An infobox on [[Nike]] with a cell at the top that read "An asymmetric upward-opening crescent with the points skewed toward the right" would be silly, and would not be nearly as useful for recognizing the brand as an actual picture of the Nike swoosh logo would be.
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You'll note that I stated earlier in this very discussion that Nike would be a likely exception we could make, since its logo has been essential to its marketing strategy and is iconic. But it would not be hard at all to provide a discussion of the Nike logo in the article on Nike, tons of source material exists regarding just that logo. "Exception", however, is the operative word here-that couldn't be said of the vast majority of logos. The idea of providing narrow exceptions is so that in a case such as Nike, we can use the logo-not so that in every article about any corporation we can use the logo!
As to text replacing the fair use, I wasn't meaning to describe the logo by using text ("upward opening crescent" or the like). In most articles, the (logo/cover/what have you) isn't discussed at all, nor really could it be-no one's covered or commented upon it, we'd have no source material to draw from. In that case, it's not essential to know what it looks like to understand...what? The lack of discussion on it? Discussion or coverage of the image itself should be a -minimum- standard for any claim of fair use in an article, and as of now I'd venture a guess it happens in less than 1% of cases in articles utilizing "fair use" images.
Todd Allen wrote:
You'll note that I stated earlier in this very discussion that Nike would be a likely exception we could make, since its logo has been essential to its marketing strategy and is iconic... "Exception", however, is the operative word here-that couldn't be said of the vast majority of logos. The idea of providing narrow exceptions is so that in a case such as Nike, we can use the logo-not so that in every article about any corporation we can use the logo!
I think you've got it exactly backwards. *Every* trademark logo is at least intended to be iconic, and a great many of them are. As long as you use them properly (i.e. identify them as trademarks), and as long as the company in question hasn't tried to also copyright them, you absolutely don't need permission to use them to refer to the companies or products they identify. In fact, as long as you're not trying to defame the company (and, again, as long as you identify the trademark correctly) I believe companies love for you to use their trademark logos; it's one way they want to be recognized. If there are exceptions, it's the few companies who are for some perverse reason jealous of their logos and actively try to stop people from using them. For most trademarked logos (and again, for identification purposes, or "Nominative use"), it's pretty much open season.
If the nightly news does a story about XYZ Corp., they probably put XYZ Corp.'s logo on the screen behind the talking heads, and they probably don't get XYZ Corp.'s permission. Ditto for newspaper and newsmagazine stories. If you go to the bank to order some new customized checks, if you look through the books they have of all the cute icons you can put next to your name on your checks, you'll also find pages of corporate logos, which the check printers have all ready for you in case you're a representative of the company. If you're in advertising or marketing, and you design ads or flyers or distributor's catalogs, you have books on your shelf full of stock logos for all the companies whose goods you might ever advertise or sell, and I doubt the publishers of those books got permission from each of the thousands of companies whose logos they list. (But I could be wrong on some of this.)
It's correct for us to be worried about reproducing copyrighted images without permission. But the situation is very different for trademarks, and I believe we absolutely shouldn't try to artificially impose copyright rules onto trademarks. (Though they're regulated in the U.S. by the same office, Copyright and Trademark are almost completely different concepts.)
Todd Allen wrote:
"Exception", however, is the operative word here-that couldn't be said of the vast majority of logos. The idea of providing narrow exceptions is so that in a case such as Nike, we can use the logo-not so that in every article about any corporation we can use the logo!
I replied:
I think you've got it exactly backwards. *Every* trademark logo is at least intended to be iconic, and a great many of them are.
Bottom line: if you read our articles on [[Fair use (US trademark law)]], [[Lanham Act]], and [[Nominative use]], I think you'll find that we're on 100% solid ground in using any company's trademarked logo in our encyclopedia article on that company.
Steve Summit wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
You'll note that I stated earlier in this very discussion that Nike would be a likely exception we could make, since its logo has been essential to its marketing strategy and is iconic... "Exception", however, is the operative word here-that couldn't be said of the vast majority of logos. The idea of providing narrow exceptions is so that in a case such as Nike, we can use the logo-not so that in every article about any corporation we can use the logo!
I think you've got it exactly backwards. *Every* trademark logo is at least intended to be iconic, and a great many of them are. As long as you use them properly (i.e. identify them as trademarks), and as long as the company in question hasn't tried to also copyright them, you absolutely don't need permission to use them to refer to the companies or products they identify. In fact, as long as you're not trying to defame the company (and, again, as long as you identify the trademark correctly) I believe companies love for you to use their trademark logos; it's one way they want to be recognized. If there are exceptions, it's the few companies who are for some perverse reason jealous of their logos and actively try to stop people from using them. For most trademarked logos (and again, for identification purposes, or "Nominative use"), it's pretty much open season.
If the nightly news does a story about XYZ Corp., they probably put XYZ Corp.'s logo on the screen behind the talking heads, and they probably don't get XYZ Corp.'s permission. Ditto for newspaper and newsmagazine stories. If you go to the bank to order some new customized checks, if you look through the books they have of all the cute icons you can put next to your name on your checks, you'll also find pages of corporate logos, which the check printers have all ready for you in case you're a representative of the company. If you're in advertising or marketing, and you design ads or flyers or distributor's catalogs, you have books on your shelf full of stock logos for all the companies whose goods you might ever advertise or sell, and I doubt the publishers of those books got permission from each of the thousands of companies whose logos they list. (But I could be wrong on some of this.)
It's correct for us to be worried about reproducing copyrighted images without permission. But the situation is very different for trademarks, and I believe we absolutely shouldn't try to artificially impose copyright rules onto trademarks. (Though they're regulated in the U.S. by the same office, Copyright and Trademark are almost completely different concepts.)
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However, the trademark requirements still do lead to restrictions (both de facto and de jure ones) which make them nonfree. For example, trademarks obviously cannot be used for very many commercial purposes (aside from your example of the evening news). It would generally be forbidden to modify them at will, especially if the modified copies were then redistributed. And so on and so on. The point isn't -only- "Will someone sue Wikipedia over this?" or even "Will someone sue a commercial mirror over this if they inadvertently use it too?" It's "Unless we absolutely -must, must- have nonfree content, we should keep nonfree content off the -free- encyclopedia." If corporations just loooooove to be identified by that logo, and would love for us to use it, they're always welcome to license it freely! Same if a band would love nothing more than for its beautiful album cover to be shown in the article about the album (hell, if one were free-licensed we could throw it on the band discography page too, why not?) But by using nonfree images, we're in fact -discouraging- such things. Granted, not too likely that a corporation would GFDL its logo, but I could certainly see some bands agreeing to GFDL their album covers in exchange for having a nicer-looking article than their competitors who refuse to do so.
Todd Allen wrote:
The point isn't -only- "Will someone sue Wikipedia over this?" or even "Will someone sue a commercial mirror over this if they inadvertently use it too?" It's "Unless we absolutely -must, must- have nonfree content, we should keep nonfree content off the -free- encyclopedia."
Bearing in mind that not everybody agrees with this last principle.
Steve Summit wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
The point isn't -only- "Will someone sue Wikipedia over this?" or even "Will someone sue a commercial mirror over this if they inadvertently use it too?" It's "Unless we absolutely -must, must- have nonfree content, we should keep nonfree content off the -free- encyclopedia."
Bearing in mind that not everybody agrees with this last principle.
And also where the "must have" line gets drawn. A lot of people feel that articles about music albums must have a cover scan in order to be "complete", and IMO a valid case can be made for that.
Amazon is way more commercial than most of our mirrors and they seem to consider cover scans both important and safe to use.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Steve Summit wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
The point isn't -only- "Will someone sue Wikipedia over this?" or even "Will someone sue a commercial mirror over this if they inadvertently use it too?" It's "Unless we absolutely -must, must- have nonfree content, we should keep nonfree content off the -free- encyclopedia."
Bearing in mind that not everybody agrees with this last principle.
And also where the "must have" line gets drawn. A lot of people feel that articles about music albums must have a cover scan in order to be "complete", and IMO a valid case can be made for that.
Amazon is way more commercial than most of our mirrors and they seem to consider cover scans both important and safe to use.
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Oh I'd agree we're legally on very safe ground there. I can't imagine us getting sued over an album cover, nor can I imagine anyone winning in the unlikely event they were to try. It's certainly nothing like putting up mp3s of the songs on the CD.
However, our criteria are -deliberately- far more narrow than "Can we legally use this image?" They're fully intended to be so, else we would use permission for Wikipedia only, noncommercial use only, and publicity releases everywhere we could. The idea here is to build a free content encyclopedia, and every use of nonfree content harms that mission. We must look carefully in each individual case to determine whether that harm is in that case outweighed by the educational benefit the image provides. I don't think the answer is always "no, we should never use nonfree content under any circumstances" (as some do, and as de seems to do alright with), and I don't think the answer is always "yes, if we can legally get away with it", or always "yes, if it's an article about a..." (as some do). It's something that should be evaluated case by case, image by image, article by article, not with broad strokes.
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Steve Summit wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
The point isn't -only- "Will someone sue Wikipedia over this?" or even "Will someone sue a commercial mirror over this if they inadvertently use it too?" It's "Unless we absolutely -must, must- have nonfree content, we should keep nonfree content off the -free- encyclopedia."
Bearing in mind that not everybody agrees with this last principle.
And also where the "must have" line gets drawn. A lot of people feel that articles about music albums must have a cover scan in order to be "complete", and IMO a valid case can be made for that.
Amazon is way more commercial than most of our mirrors and they seem to consider cover scans both important and safe to use.
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Oh I'd agree we're legally on very safe ground there. I can't imagine us getting sued over an album cover, nor can I imagine anyone winning in the unlikely event they were to try. It's certainly nothing like putting up mp3s of the songs on the CD.
However, our criteria are -deliberately- far more narrow than "Can we legally use this image?" They're fully intended to be so, else we would use permission for Wikipedia only, noncommercial use only, and publicity releases everywhere we could. The idea here is to build a free content encyclopedia, and every use of nonfree content harms that mission. We must look carefully in each individual case to determine whether that harm is in that case outweighed by the educational benefit the image provides. I don't think the answer is always "no, we should never use nonfree content under any circumstances" (as some do, and as de seems to do alright with), and I don't think the answer is always "yes, if we can legally get away with it", or always "yes, if it's an article about a..." (as some do). It's something that should be evaluated case by case, image by image, article by article, not with broad strokes.
No, that's silly. We can easily make a determination that broad classes of stuff are either just always ok, or never ok. Every time we're able to do so, we reduce what people will end up arguing over on-wiki. If we have a blanket "Company Logos are OK", then the next round of missing fair-use justification deletes can just skip logos, etc.
I also object to claiming that we have to only host truly free content in order to protect free content's sake.
We need to ensure that content we host is safely usable by Wikipedia. By safe, I mean "in compliance with generally accepted principles, commonly used by other media and references, as far as we can tell in compliance with the laws that are relevant, and unlikely to be controversial with copyright or trademark holders". (check, for logos, and for album covers)
We should ensure that our noncommercial (check) and commercial (check) mirrors can use the content safely.
We should ensure that foreign users can also redistribute it under normal usage abroad (check), barring particularly odious local copyright rules (and keep in mind, that FREE CONTENT isn't compatible with some of the local copyright rules..).
The reality is, that things like logos and album covers are to some degree "free content" already. They have a copyright owner, and trademark status in the case of logos, but they're there and used and intended to be used to identify the company or album etc. "They haven't released all rights under free licenses..." is generally true, but for these classes of items, they don't have to. The usage that we, or another reference source, could make of them is standard expected usage in the legal environment.
George Herbert wrote:
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen wrote:
The idea here is to build a free content encyclopedia, and every use of nonfree content harms that mission.
I also object to claiming that we have to only host truly free content in order to protect free content's sake.
We need to ensure that content we host is safely usable by Wikipedia. By safe, I mean "in compliance with generally accepted principles, commonly used by other media and references, as far as we can tell in compliance with the laws that are relevant, and unlikely to be controversial with copyright or trademark holders". (check, for logos, and for album covers)
This is more realistic. Contrary to Todd I believe that encouraging certain classes of non-free content actually helps the mission. There is a vast amount of material about which the status is uncertain. There is an enormous amount of material where we could not easily find out who owns the copyright, and the owners probably don't know that they have it. To me it's the free result that matters, not some arbitrary predetermination about the status of the material. When the US had copyright renewals the percentage of renewed copyrights was very low. Strategies that can help '''make''' material free are clearly in the interest of free content.
The history of copyright over the last three centuries has been in one direstion only. Vested interests could pursue their monopolistic protections, because the only people that could object had to be in a financial position to put together a competing product in the first place. Thee was very little push-back. The absence of resistance allows monopolies to grow. If you are too willingly compliant they'll do just that.
Ec
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Oh I'd agree we're legally on very safe ground there. I can't imagine us getting sued over an album cover, nor can I imagine anyone winning in the unlikely event they were to try. It's certainly nothing like putting up mp3s of the songs on the CD.
The RIAA would appear to differ:
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3608.cfm
On 7/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The RIAA would appear to differ:
Different case. A site that exists only to offer up hi-res CD cover art, and mostly for the sake of piracy in my experience (people want to print covers for burned disks). There's no good fair use argument there, and there is for us.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The RIAA would appear to differ:
Different case. A site that exists only to offer up hi-res CD cover art, and mostly for the sake of piracy in my experience (people want to print covers for burned disks). There's no good fair use argument there, and there is for us.
-Matt
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I think the hi-res vs. low-res would be the critical argument there, the vast majority of our CD cover images would not make a decent printed cover, and our purposes are clearly educational and nonprofit, which cannot be said for afterdawn. Still, the RIAA loves high-profile lawsuits, and it's not wise to taunt a dangerous lunatic. Let's at least leave them much less reason to care, by using them only where the actual art is discussed in reliable sources and in the article, so that the educational purposes argument is strong and the temptation to turn the lawyers in our direction less.
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Still, the RIAA loves high-profile lawsuits, and it's not wise to taunt a dangerous lunatic.
They're not quite that crazy. Suing us over CD covers would be crazier than I believe the RIAA is capable of, and they would lose. They would lose because this is one of the safest forms of fair use that we make, because it's obvious that we do not hurt their commercial interests by doing this, and because there's a lot of precedent on our side. Wikipedia would be supported by many others if such a lawsuit were to be brought, because it would be a bad decision for a lot of people who have a lot more money to lose than we do.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Still, the RIAA loves high-profile lawsuits, and it's not wise to taunt a dangerous lunatic.
They're not quite that crazy. Suing us over CD covers would be crazier than I believe the RIAA is capable of, and they would lose. They would lose because this is one of the safest forms of fair use that we make, because it's obvious that we do not hurt their commercial interests by doing this, and because there's a lot of precedent on our side. Wikipedia would be supported by many others if such a lawsuit were to be brought, because it would be a bad decision for a lot of people who have a lot more money to lose than we do.
-Matt
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I imagine there's also a good deal of precedent against winning lawsuits against dead people, but they tried that one anyway.
Realistically, in the event they did decide to try it, could we afford to fight it, even if it were a sure win?
On 7/26/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I imagine there's also a good deal of precedent against winning lawsuits against dead people, but they tried that one anyway.
Realistically, in the event they did decide to try it, could we afford to fight it, even if it were a sure win?
The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best left to the EFF.
On 7/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best left to the EFF.
I'd personally say that that level of lawsuit paranoia needs to be left elsewhere as well. Their lawsuit wouldn't get far without a takedown notice first.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best left to the EFF.
I'd personally say that that level of lawsuit paranoia needs to be left elsewhere as well. Their lawsuit wouldn't get far without a takedown notice first.
-Matt
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Be that as it may, I'd oppose the use of most album-cover images even if we got a letter tomorrow from every music label saying "You've got permission to use any album cover you like on Wikipedia," removing any fear of a lawsuit. Same old problem with Wikipedia-only or noncommercial only content, same old reason we don't generally allow it. -It's not free-. On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers, especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
On 26/07/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers, especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
We're also not meant to be "the encyclopedia *of* free content". Giving different levels of coverage to different people based on whether or not they like our ideals is not the best road to go down...
On 7/26/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/07/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers, especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
We're also not meant to be "the encyclopedia *of* free content". Giving different levels of coverage to different people based on whether or not they like our ideals is not the best road to go down...
Well, last time I checked it was official policy on en to give more coverage to living people who we have free photos of than to living people whose only publicly available photos are press kit stuff. (Personally, I think that policy went too far, but I seem to be part of a tiny minority, and when you consider that I think our present policies for non-free content are generally inadequate and too permissive, I'm probably not even a minority - I'm a statistical blip lying on the far side of the distribution.)
Johnleemk
On 7/26/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, last time I checked it was official policy on en to give more coverage to living people who we have free photos of than to living people whose only publicly available photos are press kit stuff. (Personally, I think that policy went too far, but I seem to be part of a tiny minority, and when you consider that I think our present policies for non-free content are generally inadequate and too permissive, I'm probably not even a minority
I'm a statistical blip lying on the far side of the distribution.)
Johnleemk _______________________________________________
Official policy? Where? That does seem kind of nonsense. One should look at the article/topic to decide to delete the article or not. Not deciding on the basis that it has pretty picture attached to it. The reverse is also true of course, pointless to delete an article on the basis it has no image.
Garion96
On 7/27/07, Garion96 garion96@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/26/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Well, last time I checked it was official policy on en to give more coverage to living people who we have free photos of than to living people whose only publicly available photos are press kit stuff. (Personally, I think that policy went too far, but I seem to be part of a tiny minority, and when you consider that I think our present policies for non-free content are generally inadequate and too permissive, I'm probably not even a
minority
I'm a statistical blip lying on the far side of the distribution.)
Johnleemk _______________________________________________
Official policy? Where? That does seem kind of nonsense. One should look at the article/topic to decide to delete the article or not. Not deciding on the basis that it has pretty picture attached to it. The reverse is also true of course, pointless to delete an article on the basis it has no image.
I was referring to the policy of refusing to accept non-free images of living people solely for the purpose of illustrating their physical appearance.
Johnleemk
On 7/28/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
I was referring to the policy of refusing to accept non-free images of living people solely for the purpose of illustrating their physical appearance.
Johnleemk
Ah, ok. In that case I totally agree with the policy.
Garion96
On 7/26/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best left to the EFF.
I'd personally say that that level of lawsuit paranoia needs to be left elsewhere as well. Their lawsuit wouldn't get far without a takedown notice first.
-Matt
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Be that as it may, I'd oppose the use of most album-cover images even if we got a letter tomorrow from every music label saying "You've got permission to use any album cover you like on Wikipedia," removing any fear of a lawsuit. Same old problem with Wikipedia-only or noncommercial only content, same old reason we don't generally allow it. -It's not free-. On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers, especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
Fair use is free, too.
On 7/26/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
Fair use is free, too.
That's a novel interpretation of free content, and at odds with the Foundation's mission statement[1] and [[Wikipedia:Non-free content]]. Fair use is *not* free. It's legal (if truly fair use), an important right, and there are certainly occasions where Wikipedia can and should make use of fair use. However, any material used under fair use remains copyrighted. It is not in the public domain, nor is it freely licensed (or else we wouldn't have to use fair use doctrine).
Fair use is non-free. We may want to use non-free material at times because the benefit to "encyclopedia" outweighs the cost to "free", but we do need to recognize that there is some cost there.
-- Jonel
George Herbert wrote:
On 7/26/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best left to the EFF.
I'd personally say that that level of lawsuit paranoia needs to be left elsewhere as well. Their lawsuit wouldn't get far without a takedown notice first.
-Matt
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Be that as it may, I'd oppose the use of most album-cover images even if we got a letter tomorrow from every music label saying "You've got permission to use any album cover you like on Wikipedia," removing any fear of a lawsuit. Same old problem with Wikipedia-only or noncommercial only content, same old reason we don't generally allow it. -It's not free-. On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers, especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
Fair use is free, too.
That is absolutely -not- the policy nor the case, else we'd use "Wikipedia only", "educational uses only" or "noncommercial only" anywhere we liked, since for us such use is perfectly legal. The policy is knowingly and deliberately more restrictive than the law, and always has been. Any image we must use under fair-use is by definition nonfree, so your statement in effect says "Nonfree is free".
On 7/26/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
On 7/26/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best left to the EFF.
I'd personally say that that level of lawsuit paranoia needs to be left elsewhere as well. Their lawsuit wouldn't get far without a takedown notice first.
-Matt
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Be that as it may, I'd oppose the use of most album-cover images even if we got a letter tomorrow from every music label saying "You've got permission to use any album cover you like on Wikipedia," removing any fear of a lawsuit. Same old problem with Wikipedia-only or noncommercial only content, same old reason we don't generally allow it. -It's not free-. On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers, especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
Fair use is free, too.
That is absolutely -not- the policy nor the case, else we'd use "Wikipedia only", "educational uses only" or "noncommercial only" anywhere we liked, since for us such use is perfectly legal. The policy is knowingly and deliberately more restrictive than the law, and always has been. Any image we must use under fair-use is by definition nonfree, so your statement in effect says "Nonfree is free".
Ah, but it is. The law specifically says so, as do court cases.
Copyrights have exceptions, and always have.
Wikipedia has two good reasons to be more restrictive than "take everything we can get away with under Fair Use" -
A. We have downstream mirrors that, while they're also an encyclopedia, are commercially oriented in some sense, and are likely disadvantaged in making Fair Use claims compared to Wikipedia.
B. While Fair Use is nice, we all do (honest) want to encourage more free content in the world.
However, and I can't stress this enough, Fair Use is not just something we invented, it's a fundamental part of US copyright law, and many other nations. Fair Use means that "the people" get to have exceptions to the exclusivity that Copyrights and Trademarks bring. This has been an important part of Copyright law since its modern inception.
"Free content" is not just about getting everyone to CC or GFDL their art and writings. It's also about letting people have and use those exceptions that the law grants for Copyrights and Trademarks. Those uses are also important. To most end-users, they're of more practical importance than GFDL/CC content will be. People's fair use rights, and the restrictions on how exclusive and total Copyrights are, are key parts of the entire Public Intellectual Property debate and policy question.
Fair Use is Freedom. It's not as free as Public Domain, or as (differently) free as GFDL or CC-SA or other Copyleft. But it's Freedom.
Narrowminded interpretation of public intellectual property interests to exclude Fair Use is folly. It's there. It's real. It's important.
If you run screaming from Fair Use, you're the enemy, even though you claim to be on our side.
Fair Use is Free, Too.
Wikipedia has to be a little careful about how we exercise our Fair Use, given A and B above, but that doesn't change the fundamental point.
I would go on, but I have to go back to accident reconstruction ( [[Scaled Composites#Rocket Test Accident]] ) and waiting to hear when the memorial service is. Pardon me if I sound grumpy today; three fatalities in a 250-person industry hurts.
George Herbert wrote:
Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
Fair use is free, too.
That is absolutely -not- the policy nor the case, else we'd use "Wikipedia only", "educational uses only" or "noncommercial only" anywhere we liked, since for us such use is perfectly legal. The policy is knowingly and deliberately more restrictive than the law, and always has been. Any image we must use under fair-use is by definition nonfree, so your statement in effect says "Nonfree is free".
Ah, but it is. The law specifically says so, as do court cases.
Copyrights have exceptions, and always have.
Wikipedia has two good reasons to be more restrictive than "take everything we can get away with under Fair Use" -
A. We have downstream mirrors that, while they're also an encyclopedia, are commercially oriented in some sense, and are likely disadvantaged in making Fair Use claims compared to Wikipedia.
B. While Fair Use is nice, we all do (honest) want to encourage more free content in the world.
However, and I can't stress this enough, Fair Use is not just something we invented, it's a fundamental part of US copyright law, and many other nations. Fair Use means that "the people" get to have exceptions to the exclusivity that Copyrights and Trademarks bring. This has been an important part of Copyright law since its modern inception.
"Free content" is not just about getting everyone to CC or GFDL their art and writings. It's also about letting people have and use those exceptions that the law grants for Copyrights and Trademarks. Those uses are also important. To most end-users, they're of more practical importance than GFDL/CC content will be. People's fair use rights, and the restrictions on how exclusive and total Copyrights are, are key parts of the entire Public Intellectual Property debate and policy question.
Fair Use is Freedom. It's not as free as Public Domain, or as (differently) free as GFDL or CC-SA or other Copyleft. But it's Freedom.
Narrowminded interpretation of public intellectual property interests to exclude Fair Use is folly. It's there. It's real. It's important.
If you run screaming from Fair Use, you're the enemy, even though you claim to be on our side.
Fair Use is Free, Too.
Wikipedia has to be a little careful about how we exercise our Fair Use, given A and B above, but that doesn't change the fundamental point.
I would go on, but I have to go back to accident reconstruction ( [[Scaled Composites#Rocket Test Accident]] ) and waiting to hear when the memorial service is. Pardon me if I sound grumpy today; three fatalities in a 250-person industry hurts.
To your reasons, I would add:
C. Most Wikipedians are not copyright attorneys, and even in law the exact boundaries of fair use are often fuzzy and vaguely defined. Pushing too close to the limits presents a very real risk of inadvertently stepping over them.
I think you also may be making a common error (but still an error) of conflating "free as in free beer" with "free as in free speech". Unfortunately, the English word, as with many English words, is used to represent both concepts. Spanish draws a clearer distinction, with "gratis" indicating the first and "libre" indicating the second, so I like to use those instead.
We are entitled to use many images gratis (without payment to the copyright holder), either under fair use, under permission for Wikipedia only, or under various licenses which permit noncommercial use, educational use, or copying but not modification. However, those images are not libre images.
Here's the difference. If someone wants to modify the image and copy it to their website, which makes ad revenue, that may not be legal. If a textbook publisher wants to print it in their next edition, that may not be legal. Same for a newspaper or commercial mirror, or even someone who just wants to put a copy on their own website. On the other hand, for libre images, all of those things are -guaranteed to be- perfectly legal (perhaps subject to a requirement for attribution to the author, unless the image is public domain).
"We're legally free to use it" is not the same as "it's free content." Libre content means that -anyone- is free to use it. By generally refusing nonfree content, we also place ourselves in a better position to say "Ah, you want your band's article to feature covers of all your albums? You want the article on your book to feature a nice picture of the cover? You'd like us to put that movie poster in the article on your movie? You'd like a picture of your pretty face in the article about you? Sure, we can do that. Did you want to release under GFDL, CC-BY-SA, or public domain? Nope, sorry, we can't accept permission for just us to use it, we use only free content in almost all cases, and there's simply not an overriding enough reason for us to use it if you won't make that happen."
Indeed, since we've stopped accepting nonfree images of living people, the number of free images of living people has skyrocketed. If we do the same in other areas, and make people actually go to the trouble of requesting a free-license release instead of just slapping some canned rationale when they upload an image, the same will happen there. So, the question is, then, do you want to increase the amount of free content out there, as you said? The best way to do that is by refusing nonfree alternatives. We have the pull to do that, and get an image released under a free license, in a lot of cases.
(As to the rest, didn't know you worked there, but sorry to hear about it! I hope the ones that were injured recover alright.)
On 7/27/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
(As to the rest, didn't know you worked there, but sorry to hear about it! I hope the ones that were injured recover alright.)
I appear to have given a slightly wrong impression and should clarify; I don't work for Scaled. I am in the same industry, and it's sort of small... There are only about 250 people in the world doing the alternative space access / personal spaceflight / space tourism thing professionally right now. We mostly all know each other, though I'm not close aquaintences with any of the 3 fatalities from this accident.
When I heard about the explosion, the first thing I thought was that it was [[Masten Space Systems]] who have been out hot-fire testing their vehicle over the last couple of weeks, and everyone in MSS are friends of mine. That was an anxious half hour.
Even though it's not my company, I and everyone else I know at all the other companies are all trying to figure out what happened, and I seem to be the failure analysis guy.
Anyways, enough...
Todd Allen wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Still, the RIAA loves high-profile lawsuits, and it's not wise to taunt a dangerous lunatic.
They're not quite that crazy. Suing us over CD covers would be crazier than I believe the RIAA is capable of, and they would lose. They would lose because this is one of the safest forms of fair use that we make, because it's obvious that we do not hurt their commercial interests by doing this, and because there's a lot of precedent on our side. Wikipedia would be supported by many others if such a lawsuit were to be brought, because it would be a bad decision for a lot of people who have a lot more money to lose than we do.
I imagine there's also a good deal of precedent against winning lawsuits against dead people, but they tried that one anyway.
Realistically, in the event they did decide to try it, could we afford to fight it, even if it were a sure win?
The problem with that kind of argument is that it cuts off the possibility of winning, even winning easily. The value of take-down orders is that it lets you know that somebody cares about the way we use the album cover. When such an order is received there is an opportunity to remove the image without further costs. We obviously can decide then to tale the matter further, but that decision does not need to be taken any earlier.
Ec
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think the answer is always "no, we should never use nonfree content under any circumstances" (as some do, and as de seems to do alright with)
Actually, from this outsider's perspective, de seems to have people frequently attempting to bend the rules by including e.g. photos of toys, fan art, and other ways to have a user-created image that unfortunately still is a derived work of something copyrighted. I know these tend to get deleted sooner or later, but it does show that it's not without problems.
-Matt
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Fair use images are allowed under current policy in many situations, however. Perhaps those who wish to see it completely eliminated should start up their own project instead? It cuts both ways.
Fairly limited situations and I didn't say I wanted it completely eliminated I simply feel that a project that pushes on the limits of US fair use law is not compatible with the aim of producing a free encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's fair use policies are more conservative than what the laws themselves allow, we don't "push on the limits".
IMO "love it or leave it" is not a particularly useful argument when what's being debated is what "it" actually is.
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
But the meaning of "overuse" is exactly the issue of contention. We're trying to build a good-quality encyclopedia, not just a free one, and the inclusion of some fair use material improves its quality greatly. In some cases it's necessary in order for us to have a decent article on certain subjects (quotations of copyrighted text are fair use too, after all).
So we get into a situation where "free" and "encyclopedia" are in direct conflict and a compromise needs to be hammered out. Telling one side or the other to just take a hike is unhelpful.
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Fair use images are allowed under current policy in many situations, however. Perhaps those who wish to see it completely eliminated should start up their own project instead? It cuts both ways.
Fairly limited situations and I didn't say I wanted it completely eliminated I simply feel that a project that pushes on the limits of US fair use law is not compatible with the aim of producing a free encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's fair use policies are more conservative than what the laws themselves allow, we don't "push on the limits".
I was originaly responding to David Goodman who suggested we should.
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
geni wrote:
On 7/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Fair use images are allowed under current policy in many situations, however. Perhaps those who wish to see it completely eliminated should start up their own project instead? It cuts both ways.
Fairly limited situations and I didn't say I wanted it completely eliminated I simply feel that a project that pushes on the limits of US fair use law is not compatible with the aim of producing a free encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's fair use policies are more conservative than what the laws themselves allow, we don't "push on the limits".
I was originaly responding to David Goodman who suggested we should.
In general, there is nothing wrong with pushing limits. Without that there would be no innovation.. Pushing the envelope does not mean acting foolishly; it is more often a matter of taking calculated risks. A lot of that comes down to personal risk aversion, and most people are very conservative when it comes to a matter of taking risks.
Our fair use policies are indeed very conservative, and it is sad to see that there asre some of us who would want them to be even more conservative. Pushing the limits of the law is perfectly compatible with developing a free encyclopedia, because that kind of discrete push is what will make more material free. It's what will take stuff out of the legalistic limbo where so much of the material already finds itself.
Ec
On 7/23/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
In general, there is nothing wrong with pushing limits. Without that there would be no innovation.. Pushing the envelope does not mean acting foolishly; it is more often a matter of taking calculated risks. A lot of that comes down to personal risk aversion, and most people are very conservative when it comes to a matter of taking risks.
Or living under US legal systems.
Our fair use policies are indeed very conservative, and it is sad to see that there asre some of us who would want them to be even more conservative. Pushing the limits of the law is perfectly compatible with developing a free encyclopedia, because that kind of discrete push is what will make more material free. It's what will take stuff out of the legalistic limbo where so much of the material already finds itself.
Only if you are ready to fight a bunch of court cases. I doubt you could afford any significant clarification.
geni wrote:
On 7/23/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
In general, there is nothing wrong with pushing limits. Without that there would be no innovation.. Pushing the envelope does not mean acting foolishly; it is more often a matter of taking calculated risks. A lot of that comes down to personal risk aversion, and most people are very conservative when it comes to a matter of taking risks.
Or living under US legal systems.
That has nothing to do with the legal system. Risk aversion is a far more general phenomenon.
Our fair use policies are indeed very conservative, and it is sad to see that there asre some of us who would want them to be even more conservative. Pushing the limits of the law is perfectly compatible with developing a free encyclopedia, because that kind of discrete push is what will make more material free. It's what will take stuff out of the legalistic limbo where so much of the material already finds itself.
Only if you are ready to fight a bunch of court cases. I doubt you could afford any significant clarification.
There is a big gap between where we are now and the circumstances when anything gets to court, and a lot of opportunities to withdraw before things get costly. In many situations we don't even know if the apparent other side cares about the issue. In orphan copyright cases there is not even anyone there to care. There is far more to these legal situations than a literal reading of statutes.
Ec
On 7/23/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
On 7/23/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
In general, there is nothing wrong with pushing limits. Without that there would be no innovation.. Pushing the envelope does not mean acting foolishly; it is more often a matter of taking calculated risks. A lot of that comes down to personal risk aversion, and most people are very conservative when it comes to a matter of taking risks.
Or living under US legal systems.
That has nothing to do with the legal system. Risk aversion is a far more general phenomenon.
Our fair use policies are indeed very conservative, and it is sad to see that there asre some of us who would want them to be even more conservative. Pushing the limits of the law is perfectly compatible with developing a free encyclopedia, because that kind of discrete push is what will make more material free. It's what will take stuff out of the legalistic limbo where so much of the material already finds itself.
Only if you are ready to fight a bunch of court cases. I doubt you could afford any significant clarification.
There is a big gap between where we are now and the circumstances when anything gets to court, and a lot of opportunities to withdraw before things get costly. In many situations we don't even know if the apparent other side cares about the issue. In orphan copyright cases there is not even anyone there to care. There is far more to these legal situations than a literal reading of statutes.
Ec
Did someone post this already about the Virgin Airlines ad campaign with flicker photos? Excuse me if I repost, as I have a lot of unopened mail that has been in my spam folder, but it's a blog from its blogger, sent to Commons.
http://thoughtsfordeletion.blogspot.com/2007/07/free-culture-clash.html
KP
On 7/23/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Did someone post this already about the Virgin Airlines ad campaign with flicker photos? Excuse me if I repost, as I have a lot of unopened mail that has been in my spam folder, but it's a blog from its blogger, sent to Commons.
I saw the Commons post & saw it earlier on Flickr. Not really the same issue, because this is to do with CC licenses and that they do not necessarily include a model release, and thus there may still be restrictions.
AFAIR, this wasn't Virgin Airlines but their Australian cellphone company - correct me if I am wrong. Definitely Australia though.
-Matt
On 7/23/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/23/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Did someone post this already about the Virgin Airlines ad campaign with flicker photos? Excuse me if I repost, as I have a lot of unopened mail that has been in my spam folder, but it's a blog from its blogger, sent to Commons.
I saw the Commons post & saw it earlier on Flickr. Not really the same issue, because this is to do with CC licenses and that they do not necessarily include a model release, and thus there may still be restrictions.
AFAIR, this wasn't Virgin Airlines but their Australian cellphone company - correct me if I am wrong. Definitely Australia though.
-Matt
Oh, do they have a completely different license that isn't an option on Wikipedia?
KP
On 7/23/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/23/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
AFAIR, this wasn't Virgin Airlines but their Australian cellphone company - correct me if I am wrong. Definitely Australia though.
Oh, do they have a completely different license that isn't an option on Wikipedia?
From what I've read, the question of legal jurisdiction makes it a lot
harder to sue, since all the cases I've known have involved photos taken outside Australia of non-Australians, and it's hard under Australian law, apparently, to sue there when neither photographer nor subject has a connection to Australia. Some people have suggested that Virgin or their ad agency deliberately chose non-Australian photos to reduce the chance of legal action; I'm not sure there's any credence to that, since US users are a large proportion of Flickr users in any case.
If it were a copyright matter, bringing suit would be easier thanks to widely-adopted copyright treaties, I believe, but rights of publicity and image are not standardized in this way and vary wildly from nation to nation. There is no right to privacy in Australian law, so that is not grounds for a suit there.
-Matt