teun spaans wrote:
I still havent read any good argument for allowing fair use, except that the english wiki is using it en masse. Which sounds like a very strange argument, it is like saying: it is forbidden to spit, but as everyone spits, we allow it. If everyone would be indulging in PAs on the english wiki, would we allow them too
I fail to see what the problem is with very narrow categories of image types that may not be strictly available under a FLOSS license. I would count among those types of images that are reasonable applications of fair use would include:
* Official government seals and symbols, including flags * Official government documents such as passports, stamps, currency, banknotes, etc. * Corporate Logos and trademarks, where their usage is directly tied to content specifically about that organization
All of these sorts of images are routinely used by major publishers under fair-use provisions, where formal permission is not usually granted by the various corporations and government entities. All of these sorts of images, however, have been banned on Commons. I'm not here to change commons policies, but these sorts of images can make or break some Wikibooks or Wikipedia articles, and I have seen all of these used in commercial encyclopedias as well. Imagine what a book about stamps would be like if you couldn't show the actual stamp.
It should be noted that all of these kind of images do fall under some sort of perpetual protections where copyright as it is usually defined doesn't normally apply. And unless the company goes bankrupt or the government of the country whose symbols you are showing ceases to exist due to warfare or cataclismic disaster, they will never ever be free in the FLOSS sense of the term. Perhaps a *very* enlightened group might grant logos under the GFDL or something similar, but look even to the WMF to see how likely that would be. The only "free" logo I know of is the GNU Gnu of the FSF and I'm not even sure about that.
Another very legitimate application of fair use is to quote text verbatium, provided you distinguish it somehow (such as put it in block quote area or use quotation marks) and cite the source as a bibliographic reference. This is indeed fair use rationale in nearly every case where it is used, and one of the reasons explicitly why the fair-use doctrine was codified into the United States Code. There are extreme cases of textual quotation that does go over the top as well, but generally it is obvious enough when that happens that most people can come to a concensus and say "let's chop this quote down" or rework the lengthy quotation.
The problem is that happens with photographs and rendered graphical images is that the rationale for fair use is very, very weak, and unfortunately the current internet user culture is such that most people think that once you have "obtained" an image, that you own it and have unlimited reproduction privileges on it. We all know this (at least on this list) to be a completely incorrect viewpoint, but the academic standards for including images just havn't been pushed into our heads to the same degree that similar duplication of textual material would have, even if we have a strong respect of copyright as a general philosophy. Modern textbooks, magazines, and newspapers hardly help either when it seems as though large portions of the content are displayed in photo, charts, and other graphical images. Some children's textbooks in America have so many photos that you start to wonder where the actual content of the textbook itself might be found. It is no wonder that a Wikipedian upon looking at a well developed article that would otherwise be a feature article candidate looks empty and missing something when there are no images to be used with the text. Most of the project users have grown up with the multi-media barrage in daily life and simply expect it to be there.
I support severe limitation on the use of fair-use material within Wikimedia projects, but I think that a complete and total ban is simply too much. There are legitimate applications of fair use, and the question that really confronts us is to define just how tight we want to draw that line. Unfortunately, with the diversity of people participating in these projects (especially Wikipedia), it seems very unlikely that you are going to come to a general agreement about where that line ought to be drawn even by those who might want to put some strong limitations on fair use content.