Anthony wrote:
On 8/28/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Perhaps more significant than whether anyone has
lost is whether any
such case has ever been filed. Given that they are distributed for the
specific purpose of publicity there could be an implicit permission.
If you're using the image for the purposes of promoting the person.
If, on the other hand, you're using the image to sell an encyclopedia
article which portrays the person in a way which they don't want to be
portrayed, then there probably isn't implicit permission.
I don't know if it's to "sell" an encyclopedia. Lindsay Lohan
would
need to think she's pretty special if she believes a picture of her will
make all the difference in encyclopedia sales. Is she as self-absorbed
as Paris Hilton? Our use is transformative, and it in no way adversely
affects the company's sales.. It would even be interesting to hear the
companies comment on the function of publicity shots.
Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but even here in the US
where we have some
very strong fair use and first amendment rights, I still wouldn't feel
comfortable selling an encyclopedia with the current [[Lindsay Lohan]]
article in it, without first receiving permission from the copyright
holders of the images.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lindsay_Lohan&oldid=72480012
in case it changes before this is read)
This may be a problem for the print version, and specific permissions
should probably be sought when we get that far. For the on-line
verrsion however I have no problem with an active campaign to replace
the fair use images with "free" ones. It's clear that I'm more risk
tolerant than you, but that doesn't mean there's such a wide gap between
our views.
Frankly I think that case could be probably be won by
the museum on
appeal, if they spent enough money fighting it.
Yeah, Dillinger has been dead since 1934.
Besides, there are
always going to be crazy jurisdictions (like Indiana, apparently) with
laws so out of touch with reasonableness that we just can't follow
them.
Developing policies to account for such extremes is playing to the
lleast common denominator.
As for relying on the copyright holder of the image
finding the
Wikipedia article "respectful", well, I just think that's a horrible
thing for us to even have to consider. Would Linsay Lohan (*) object
to our portrayal of her in "Media spotlight"? I don't know, and I
don't care.
There's also the question of who owns the copyright. I suspect it's the
studio who sends out fan pics to admirers.
Ec