Thomas Dalton writes:
That said, even what is permitted by law seems to be more restrictive than what is currently occurring on the English Wikipedia.
Really? If that's the case, then Mike needs to step in and tell us. If our use of images is actually illegal (or, could reasonably be considered illegal - I don't think fair use is sufficiently well defined to be sure until a judge makes a decision), then all our debate is meaningless and we just have to do what the law requires.
One of the hard things about dealing with copyright law is that people who want to work within the law want clear answers, stated as blanket rules, and the law itself doesn't lend itself either to particularly clear answers or to easily applied general rules.
RIAA, for example, has a very narrow notion of fair use. YouTube has a very broad one. The nice thing for YouTube is that they're backed by Google, so can afford to very aggressive in urging for an expansive understanding of fair use, either by simply allowing lots of unlicensed uses of content or by defending its use aggressively in court or both.
The Foundation is not well-positioned to do the latter, so it seems prudent not to do the former either. That said, I wouldn't want us to avoid Being Bold altogether. But I think we have to ask ourselves, every time we use content that has not been freely licensed, is this something we're ready to *pay* to go court over?
This is a different question from asking whether we'd win any given case. I assume without much uncertainty that we'd win a fair number of them -- in theory. But we're not in the position of going to court to win even the cherrypicked, obviously winnable cases.
Maybe someday we will be -- either because we have a better revenue stream or because we're doing so in coalition with other like-minded projects (the first is likelier than the second, in my view, because coalitions tend to work defensively better than offensively). But in the meantime, anyone who's adding "fair use" content needs to ask himself or herself the hard questions about willingness to go to court (or willingness to make the Foundation go to court for them).
There's plenty of other pressing legal work that needs to be done on the Foundation's behalf that I can't say I would love to spend my days in court defending a "fair use" on anything but the solidest legal ground, and without a whole lot of money in the Foundation's pockets to spend on getting the case right. So ... it's reasonable to conclude that a conservative policy is best for now. (I liked Nathan's one-paragraph summary of it a little while ago.)
--Mike
Message: 8 Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 19:06:49 +0100 From: "Gerard Meijssen" gerard.meijssen@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fair use being badly abused on en.wikipedia To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 41a006820801071006y2e6d30f3tfa8e5444f25a4279@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hoi, Your aim is different from the stated aim of producing a product that is freely licensed and everything to its content is permitted as per the license. Both the GFDL and the CC-by-sa explicitly allow for the commercial application of our products. This is stated policy and when fair use is incompatible with this purpose, fair use is not defendable. Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 7, 2008 6:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
Some people, myself included, want to create the best possible no- cost encyclopedia. From that point of view, copyleft and free content is a means to that end.
Other people (including much of the WMF Board apparently) feel creating free content is an end in itself that justifies sacrificing some encyclopedic coverage and limiting our exercise of fair use rights to a much narrower set of circumstances than allowed by law.
I can understand that point of view, even though I don't agree with it.
However, I do think we need a different set of language here. Despite the title of this thread, there is a NOT an abuse of fair use here. The situation being described is exactly the kind of situation for which fair use rights were created, e.g. identifying subjects of academic discussion in a non-commercial, non-competitve setting.
It is, arguably, an abuse of non-free content under Wikipedia/ Wikimedia policy, but abusing non-free content with respect to Wikipedia is very different than abusing fair use.
That said, policy is the creation of Wikipedians/Wikimedians. It evolves with time and often has fuzzy edges. It's limits are, more or less, whatever it is that we agree to enforce. Appeals to absolutes like "if you truly care about free content, we must limit fair use usage" is not very helpful, since we already do limit fair use quite substantially, both in policy and in practice.
-Robert A. Rohde
On Jan 7, 2008 8:01 AM, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
The mission of Wikimedia is to generate "neutral educational content
under
a free content license". The Foundation's resolution from March 2007
states
that EDP use must be minimal, within narrow limits.
Subsequent to the resolution being passed, a number of efforts were undertaken to limit fair use usage on en.wikipedia. This affected discographies, episode lists, and character lists. A *huge* number of debates erupted over these removals. One such debate was covered at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Fair_us...
. The disputes have never ended. For discographies and episode lists, the debate has simmered down for the most part, with occasional flare ups.
For
character lists, the debate is still raging.
What has been the rule of thumb in removing the images is that an image
of
the character being used for depiction of that character only is
allowable
on that character's particular article, but not on articles collecting multiple characters into a single article. The rationale here is that if
a
character is notable enough for an article, they're notable enough for
an
image, and vice versa. Allowances have been made for "cast" type images showing multiple characters in a single image from the copyright holder (not montages made by editors).
Nevertheless, the debate has raged endlessly, and has recently exploded. It stands now on a precipice, and it is highly likely that fair use inclusionists will 'win' in that per-character images are going to be permitted on character articles (for example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogwarts_students ).
Some discussion exists currently at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Fair_us...
and scattered through a variety of sections of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content
If Wikipedia is truly a free content encyclopedia, if you truly care
about
free content, we must limit fair use usage per the Foundation's resolution. As it stands now, this debate is lost in favor of people who are more focused on whether something is suitable as a guide than focused on
being
a free content resource.
A strong voice from the Foundation would be appreciated, most especially in favor of a new section added to clarify the local EDP at the second paragraph of this version of the guideline:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Non-free_content&old...
(paragraph since removed in an edit war)
Thank you, Hammersoft _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l
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Message: 9 Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 13:48:20 +0100 From: "Milos Rancic" millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Meta-arbcom (was: the foundations of...) To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 846221520801070448q1b05bce1r98f4eeeb86171c4e@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On 1/5/08, FloNight sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking of a combination of stewards and members from elected ArbComs.
Maybe someone else mentioned it before. I am at the first fifth of the thread...
(As a steward) I don't think that stewards should have any connections with judicial functions. Stewards are executors (let's say, like FBI) and giving them possibility to make decisions over disputes clearly makes SuperWikimedian group of people.
Also, while I really think that a lot of stewards are able to make good decisions over disputes, in choosing the main factor is not a quality of such decisions, but a quality in imposing the rules.
Another problem is the process of electing stewards and removing their rights. While it is completely acceptable that stewards don't need reelection, but only confirmation -- Meta ArbCom members has to be reelected. Life-long (or practically life-long) position of a judge may be acceptable only in a well developed societies and WM society is not well developed; as well as it needs a process of education in law.
By giving to stewards a new role, we would make a retroactive rule: all people who are chosen for one role are getting another another, qualitatively different role.
The point is that this is a really bad idea. There are many of structural problems made by giving to stewards judicial role.
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End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 46, Issue 46
But I think we have to ask ourselves, every time we use content that has not been freely licensed, is this something we're ready to *pay* to go court over?
This is a different question from asking whether we'd win any given case. I assume without much uncertainty that we'd win a fair number of them -- in theory. But we're not in the position of going to court to win even the cherrypicked, obviously winnable cases.
When assessing risk, you need to consider not only the cost of something going wrong (in this case, clearly quite high), but also the chance of it happening. How far would a policy of complying with all but the most outrageous cease and desist notices go towards reducing that chance? In other words, would be a good idea to not worry about the borderline fair use cases until someone complains? What's the chance of us ending up in court even after removing the image in question?
On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
When assessing risk, you need to consider not only the cost of something going wrong (in this case, clearly quite high), but also the chance of it happening. How far would a policy of complying with all but the most outrageous cease and desist notices go towards reducing that chance? In other words, would be a good idea to not worry about the borderline fair use cases until someone complains? What's the chance of us ending up in court even after removing the image in question?
"They would never sue!" is a very poor position to take.
Hammersoft
On 07/01/2008, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
When assessing risk, you need to consider not only the cost of something going wrong (in this case, clearly quite high), but also the chance of it happening. How far would a policy of complying with all but the most outrageous cease and desist notices go towards reducing that chance? In other words, would be a good idea to not worry about the borderline fair use cases until someone complains? What's the chance of us ending up in court even after removing the image in question?
"They would never sue!" is a very poor position to take.
That's why I'm not taking that position. I'm taking the position that "They would almost never sue!", there is a big difference. Even then, that's not my main point. My main point is that even if they do sue (or, at least, complain), then we can always just remove the image at that point. I don't know if that would be enough, which I why I'm asking Mike (who, hopefully, will know).
On Jan 7, 2008 3:17 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That's why I'm not taking that position. I'm taking the position that "They would almost never sue!", there is a big difference. Even then, that's not my main point. My main point is that even if they do sue (or, at least, complain), then we can always just remove the image at that point. I don't know if that would be enough, which I why I'm asking Mike (who, hopefully, will know).
Fine position to take except you'll eventually be wrong, and they might not be so kind as to ask politely first, but instead drag us into court first. Would you be willing to front the costs for the Foundation when (not if...we have too many fair use images for that to be an if) it happens?
Hammersoft
On Jan 7, 2008 12:53 PM, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 3:17 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That's why I'm not taking that position. I'm taking the position that "They would almost never sue!", there is a big difference. Even then, that's not my main point. My main point is that even if they do sue (or, at least, complain), then we can always just remove the image at that point. I don't know if that would be enough, which I why I'm asking Mike (who, hopefully, will know).
Fine position to take except you'll eventually be wrong, and they might not be so kind as to ask politely first, but instead drag us into court first. Would you be willing to front the costs for the Foundation when (not if...we have too many fair use images for that to be an if) it happens?
There is almost nothing more depressing than this argument.
The Wikimedia Foundation has nothing to fear from image lawsuits in the US - we have DMCA takedown contacts and will vigorously deal with any such requests, and per the DMCA the WMF is only hosting not actually producing the content, so we're covered.
That is not to say that nobody will sue... AOL, Google, ISPs all over get sued over copyright issues.
But the law and decisions say that we're' in a position where we are protected.
Totally free content advocates can make that case on its merits. Fearmongering is not helpful.
On Jan 7, 2008 3:53 PM, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 3:17 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That's why I'm not taking that position. I'm taking the position that "They would almost never sue!", there is a big difference. Even then, that's not my main point. My main point is that even if they do sue (or, at least, complain), then we can always just remove the image at that point. I don't know if that would be enough, which I why I'm asking Mike (who, hopefully, will know).
Fine position to take except you'll eventually be wrong, and they might not be so kind as to ask politely first, but instead drag us into court first. Would you be willing to front the costs for the Foundation when (not if...we have too many fair use images for that to be an if) it happens?
Hammersoft
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More to the point, we ''cannot'' avoid being sued. Even if we used not by public domain images, people still can (and will) sue. Companies (especially libraries and museums) and individuals routinely assert copyright where they don't have any basis to it. The end result is more like "We cannot know when people will sue, all we can do is stay well within what's stone-cold legal". This we do, and accept that we'll still get sued even if we do nothing wrong.
Cheers WilyD
I'm less concerned with the Foundation being sued (because we are protected in most cases, both by our ability to respond to takedown notices and our educational purpose) and more concerned by the vulnerability of content reusers to suit. Our policy on free content is not to protect *us* - if that were the case, we could just request permission to use whole troves of content and be done. The policy protects those who, through our license, reuse our content for their own purposes. They are potentially much more liable to suit and this liability for them violates our goal to assemble a completely reusable base of knowledge.
The best way to protect those who wish to utilize our content under its license is to ensure that we adhere to it - or change it. The best way to ensure our compliance is by guarding the insertion of non-free content - not laboriously deleting it once its eventually noticed.
Nathan
Hoi, This whole issue is moot when we only use material that is compatible with our license. Fair use is not. When someone "erred" it is enough reason to take it down anyway. NB there is material where there just is no appropriate license. A seperate licence for logos is something i have argued about before :) Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 7, 2008 10:12 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'm less concerned with the Foundation being sued (because we are protected in most cases, both by our ability to respond to takedown notices and our educational purpose) and more concerned by the vulnerability of content reusers to suit. Our policy on free content is not to protect *us* - if that were the case, we could just request permission to use whole troves of content and be done. The policy protects those who, through our license, reuse our content for their own purposes. They are potentially much more liable to suit and this liability for them violates our goal to assemble a completely reusable base of knowledge.
The best way to protect those who wish to utilize our content under its license is to ensure that we adhere to it - or change it. The best way to ensure our compliance is by guarding the insertion of non-free content - not laboriously deleting it once its eventually noticed.
Nathan
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On Jan 7, 2008 4:12 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'm less concerned with the Foundation being sued (because we are protected in most cases, both by our ability to respond to takedown notices and our educational purpose) and more concerned by the vulnerability of content reusers to suit. Our policy on free content is not to protect *us* - if that were the case, we could just request permission to use whole troves of content and be done. The policy protects those who, through our license, reuse our content for their own purposes. They are potentially much more liable to suit and this liability for them violates our goal to assemble a completely reusable base of knowledge.
The best way to protect those who wish to utilize our content under its license is to ensure that we adhere to it - or change it. The best way to ensure our compliance is by guarding the insertion of non-free content - not laboriously deleting it once its eventually noticed.
Nathan
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Indeed, reusers are the biggest reason fair use stuff has to be tagged as such is for downstream users to remove it if they so desire (either for ideological reasons, legal reasons or practical ones, or some combination of all of the above - note we at Veropedia filter all such stuff upon reuse for a combination of all three, for instance.)
That said, anyone who reprints Wikipedia without any editorial control is exposing themselves to soo much more liability than copyright infringement. My guess is that requiring unfree content to be pre-vetted would only increase the problem of incorrectly licensed images (which you see a lot of by uploaders after their correctly labelled stuff gets deleted) which'd increase the risk for downstream users. As it stands it's comparitively easy to remove fair use stuff automagically if you don't want it there (although you'll necessarily inheret a lot of copyright stuff that's mislabelled anyhow.
Cheers WilyD
This is very true. I too am not as concerned about the legal repercussions for the Foundation as I am the downstream users who potentially could face a lawsuit from a company asserting their copyright.
However, there is an even bigger issue I don't think this thread is touching yet, and that is our goal as an encyclopedia. We are (supposedly) here to help produce a free encyclopedia. We are the freely licensed encyclopedia, not the freely licensed encyclopedia with copyrighted images. At least we shouldn't be. This is the major crux of the issue in my opinion. Personally, I advocate /no/ fair use except in situations otherwise completely unavoidable (and not having a picture of BoyBandXYZ is not such a situation). I'm referring to situations such as major media events of which there are no free photos and things of that nature. Maybe a few hundred or thousand for the entire English Wikipedia, total. Not having a picture of every CD cover from every album will not make us a less-complete encyclopedia. Sometimes when it comes to free alternatives, there are none. Not having an image doesn't necessarily make an article less informative. And only having 1 free image on an article instead of 10 fair use ones isn't bad either.
I know the larger community disagrees with me, and fair use is pretty much here to stay on en.wiki (unless a Board resolution mandates it). I just hope the community can at least enforce the current standards, if not improve them. I've always found this quote by Erik himself on fair use in the encyclopedia to be rather accurate in how we should view this as a community:
Well, perhaps you do not understand that Wikipedia is an open content project and intends to stay that way. The more non-free images we include, the harder it will become to distribute and re-use Wikipedia articles. Building an encyclopedia is only half of our mission -- our encyclopedia needs to be freely usable by everyone.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-April/009975.html
Always, Chad H.
On Jan 7, 2008 4:12 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'm less concerned with the Foundation being sued (because we are protected in most cases, both by our ability to respond to takedown notices and our educational purpose) and more concerned by the vulnerability of content reusers to suit. Our policy on free content is not to protect *us* - if that were the case, we could just request permission to use whole troves of content and be done. The policy protects those who, through our license, reuse our content for their own purposes. They are potentially much more liable to suit and this liability for them violates our goal to assemble a completely reusable base of knowledge.
The best way to protect those who wish to utilize our content under its license is to ensure that we adhere to it - or change it. The best way to ensure our compliance is by guarding the insertion of non-free content - not laboriously deleting it once its eventually noticed.
Nathan
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On Jan 7, 2008 12:08 PM, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
When assessing risk, you need to consider not only the cost of something going wrong (in this case, clearly quite high), but also the chance of it happening. How far would a policy of complying with all but the most outrageous cease and desist notices go towards reducing that chance? In other words, would be a good idea to not worry about the borderline fair use cases until someone complains? What's the chance of us ending up in court even after removing the image in question?
"They would never sue!" is a very poor position to take.
Though fair use (for all users) is embedded in statute (in the US), the way it's done is that it's an affirmative defense, rather than an inherent right.
In other words, they can *always* sue, but under some circumstances their case is (rebuttably) inherently rather weak.
Note that mere publication of an image under a free license may not prevent lawsuits either. Who here really knows that an image was taken by the person who claims credit? An artist / copyright holder / creator can always discover that someone else claimed credit or tried to put something out under unapproved licenses or so forth. That results in lawsuits, too.
And we have this problem with text as well, given that we do find clear copyvio text cut/paste into Wikipedia at regular intervals.
Trying to live your life in a way that nobody can ever sue you is impractical and a poor life choice. Living your life in a way that you respect others' rights,and intellectual property freedoms in a balance and being educational and generally open will minimize risks.
On 07/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Though fair use (for all users) is embedded in statute (in the US), the way it's done is that it's an affirmative defense, rather than an inherent right. In other words, they can *always* sue, but under some circumstances their case is (rebuttably) inherently rather weak.
Note, by the way, they can not only lose, but lose and be spanked. e.g. some suits brought by the Church of Scientology, where they had attorney's fees awarded against them and were reprimanded by the judge. After a few active years, the CoS has been spanked so hard so often it hasn't brought a copyright suit in several years.
- d.
On 07/01/2008, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 07/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Though fair use (for all users) is embedded in statute (in the US), the way it's done is that it's an affirmative defense, rather than an inherent right. In other words, they can *always* sue, but under some circumstances their case is (rebuttably) inherently rather weak.
Note, by the way, they can not only lose, but lose and be spanked. e.g. some suits brought by the Church of Scientology, where they had attorney's fees awarded against them and were reprimanded by the judge. After a few active years, the CoS has been spanked so hard so often it hasn't brought a copyright suit in several years.
If we could be confident that our legal fees would be paid for in the event we were incorrectly sued, Mike's comments wouldn't apply. He was explicitly talking about cases where we win but still have to pay large amount of money. In the UK (where I live), I believe that's fairly unusual, but as I understand it, it's quite common in the US. Probably one of the main reasons people sue each other so much there...
On Jan 7, 2008 10:51 AM, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
But I think we have to ask ourselves,
every time we use content that has not been freely licensed, is this something we're ready to *pay* to go court over?
<snip>
In blunt terms: Yes, it should be.
There are a variety of legal ambiguities that swirl around the Foundation and its activities. Not least of which are the reach of the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA that we often argue WMF is entitled to. Legal precedents have value and help deter future suits. If we truly believe that the WMF is in the right, then we should be prepared to defend that for the sake of establishing those precedents. We don't want to be an organization that earns a reputation for cowering whenever a law suit is threatened. That would merely given undue power to our opponents. And pre-emptively cowering by systematically removing legitimate works that might draw bogus lawsuits, is even worse.
Obviously, we don't want to press law suits when we are in the wrong, but we also shouldn't be shying away from legally permissible fair use simply because we are afraid that every so often there will be a fight over it. I am oft-reminded that man has only those freedoms that he is prepared defend. Well, fair use is one of those freedoms, and in such circumstances that invoking fair use is a necessary and justified means of improving Wikipedia/Wikimedia, we should be willing to defend that right.
As for being financially positioned to fight such suits, I don't think that's even an issue. Fighting abusive legal threats when you believe you are in the right (which I assume are the only form that we'd fight aggressively for) make for good public relations and is a cause that I would donate to, and I have to assume many others would to. Should it come to that, I think the "Wikipedia Legal Defense Fund" is much more effective fundraising tool than any of the gimmicks we've tried lately.
-Robert A. Rohde
Your comment seems to ignore some of the previous posts, Robert. While I disagree that the WMF should be willing to pay through the nose in order to attempt to set DMCA and fair use precedents the argument misses the important point. The issue is not "Fair use threatens Wikimedia" it is "Fair use violates our license and threatens our mission by making it difficult for our content to be reused freely."
Nathan
On Jan 7, 2008 6:33 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Your comment seems to ignore some of the previous posts, Robert. While I disagree that the WMF should be willing to pay through the nose in order to attempt to set DMCA and fair use precedents the argument misses the important point. The issue is not "Fair use threatens Wikimedia" it is "Fair use violates our license and threatens our mission by making it difficult for our content to be reused freely."
Nathan
If fair use really violates the license (and I can understand how the point could be argued) then we should be done with it and remove all fair use. However, Wikimedia currently operates on an assumption that the two are not intrinsically incompatible. Resolving the legal ambiguity is exactly one of the areas where establishing a legal precedent would be useful.
To the other part, I'd say removing fair use threatens our mission by handing power back to the copyright holders and unnecessarily limiting our ability to fully discuss some topics.
It's not that I am ignoring previous points, but rather that I have a fundementally different opinion of the role of fair use within the scope of WMF's mission than many of the people here. I believe there should be no greater goal for WMF than to distribute high quality, free-of-cost knowledge throughout the world. The "fair use" system of the US and the similar but different "fair dealing" systems of other countries provide mechanisms for disseminating images and knowledge we would never be able to access otherwise, and we should embrace that opportunity rather than shy away from it. Excersing those rights to otherwise inaccessible content compliment our mission rather than detract from it.
-Robert A. Rohde
Hoi, It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that does. The board of the WMF has been explicit in its choice of the license and has voiced it wish to do away with fair use. This has been roundly rejected by enough en.wikipedians, I can understand how this point be argued, and consequently putting a brave face on it, the board has allowed for a policy whereby it can be phrased under what conditions exception can be made.
The way the policy is phrased is that for *every *project there has to be such a policy. This means that the assertion that Fair Use helps in disseminating knowledge is wrong; it only helps when a project has such a policy in place. Several Wikipedias have not and cannot. This means that Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.
Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 8, 2008 3:56 AM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 6:33 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Your comment seems to ignore some of the previous posts, Robert. While I disagree that the WMF should be willing to pay through the nose in order to attempt to set DMCA and fair use precedents the argument misses the important point. The issue is not "Fair use threatens Wikimedia" it is "Fair use violates our license and threatens our mission by making it difficult for our content to be reused freely."
Nathan
If fair use really violates the license (and I can understand how the point could be argued) then we should be done with it and remove all fair use. However, Wikimedia currently operates on an assumption that the two are not intrinsically incompatible. Resolving the legal ambiguity is exactly one of the areas where establishing a legal precedent would be useful.
To the other part, I'd say removing fair use threatens our mission by handing power back to the copyright holders and unnecessarily limiting our ability to fully discuss some topics.
It's not that I am ignoring previous points, but rather that I have a fundementally different opinion of the role of fair use within the scope of WMF's mission than many of the people here. I believe there should be no greater goal for WMF than to distribute high quality, free-of-cost knowledge throughout the world. The "fair use" system of the US and the similar but different "fair dealing" systems of other countries provide mechanisms for disseminating images and knowledge we would never be able to access otherwise, and we should embrace that opportunity rather than shy away from it. Excersing those rights to otherwise inaccessible content compliment our mission rather than detract from it.
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Hi,
On 08/01/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that does. […] This means that Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.
I believe you are mixing use of fair use images (and EDP) with fair use as a much broader concept. Fair use is (AFAICT, IANAL) an instance of "fair practice" mentioned even in the Berne Convention. Without fair use, you couldn't even include textual quotations. And an encyclopedia that does not cite anyone is hardly a valuable encyclopedia, IMHO.
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]
Hoi, I do not think so. Please read what this thread is about. thanks, GerardM
On Jan 8, 2008 2:44 PM, Petr Kadlec petr.kadlec@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
On 08/01/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that
Fair
use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia
that
does. […] This means that Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of
Fair
Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.
I believe you are mixing use of fair use images (and EDP) with fair use as a much broader concept. Fair use is (AFAICT, IANAL) an instance of "fair practice" mentioned even in the Berne Convention. Without fair use, you couldn't even include textual quotations. And an encyclopedia that does not cite anyone is hardly a valuable encyclopedia, IMHO.
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]
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Hoi,
On 08/01/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
I do not think so. Please read what this thread is about.
Please read what you have been replying to:
On 08/01/2008, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that does. […] On Jan 8, 2008 3:56 AM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote: […]
If fair use really violates the license (and I can understand how the point could be argued) then we should be done with it and remove all fair use. However, Wikimedia currently operates on an assumption that the two are not intrinsically incompatible.
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]
On Jan 8, 2008 12:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that does. The board of the WMF has been explicit in its choice of the license and has voiced it wish to do away with fair use. This has been roundly rejected by enough en.wikipedians, I can understand how this point be argued, and consequently putting a brave face on it, the board has allowed for a policy whereby it can be phrased under what conditions exception can be made.
The way the policy is phrased is that for *every *project there has to be such a policy. This means that the assertion that Fair Use helps in disseminating knowledge is wrong; it only helps when a project has such a policy in place. Several Wikipedias have not and cannot. This means that Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.
Gerard, I have discussed this with two of the board members directly in person, and I believe that you are misrepresenting what they feel and the policy that was enacted.
Those two were speaking for themselves and not the board as a policy whole, and the rest could have other opinions, but it's a fairly significant data point.
I do not believe that the board policy was intended to hand a complete moral victory to the anti-fair-use crowd. I believe that the board stated a moral goal (more free content, as much as practically possible) and practical rules for now (fair use ok under the reasonable policy rules and legal protections for the Foundation) that pretty much is where en.wikipedia community consensus was anyways, though that consensus includes polar disagreements among factions.
If everyone who got into this argument went out and took a free picture a day to replace fair use ones we use now, we'd have replaced a lot of the ones we can actually practically replace. Apparently it is easier to come argue here about it over and over again rather than actually solve it?
On 08/01/2008, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
If everyone who got into this argument went out and took a free picture a day to replace fair use ones we use now, we'd have replaced a lot of the ones we can actually practically replace. Apparently it is easier to come argue here about it over and over again rather than actually solve it?
The vast majority of the remaining fair use images are not possible to replace with free images.
On Jan 8, 2008 5:03 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The vast majority of the remaining fair use images are not possible to replace with free images.
All episode screenshots are non-replaceable too. All album covers are not replaceable too. All book covers are not replaceable too (well, except the old ones).
If that's an argument to retain fair use images, then we need to liberalize fair use across the entire project. The criteria isn't just whether something is replaceable or not. If that was the sole criteria, we'd have millions upon millions of fair use images.
Hammersoft
On 09/01/2008, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 8, 2008 5:03 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The vast majority of the remaining fair use images are not possible to replace with free images.
All episode screenshots are non-replaceable too. All album covers are not replaceable too. All book covers are not replaceable too (well, except the old ones).
And we are generaly pretty relaxed about album covers, book covers and screenshots where they are being used for more than decoration.
If that's an argument to retain fair use images, then we need to liberalize fair use across the entire project. The criteria isn't just whether something is replaceable or not.
You appear to be attacking a strawman.
If that was the sole criteria, we'd have millions upon millions of fair use images.
About 700K would probably be closer.
On Jan 9, 2008 12:35 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/01/2008, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
If that's an argument to retain fair use images, then we need to liberalize fair use across the entire project. The criteria isn't just whether something is replaceable or not.
You appear to be attacking a strawman.
You said, 'The vast majority of the remaining fair use images are not possible to replace with free images." I'm saying that simply because something is not replaceable does not make it something we should keep. We have to go much further than that. Fair use is the exception, not the base case.
On 08/01/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
If everyone who got into this argument went out and took a free picture a day to replace fair use ones we use now, we'd have replaced a lot of the ones we can actually practically replace. Apparently it is easier to come argue here about it over and over again rather than actually solve it?
The vast majority of the remaining fair use images are not possible to replace with free images.
And how many of them are replaceable with text, or replaceable by not having the pretty picture in the first place?
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
On Jan 10, 2008 7:37 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
On en.wikibooks, the biggest hurdle we have is in the software guidebooks for proprietart software packages. For instance, it's difficult to teach Adobe Photoshop without including some screenshots of the interface. (we have a book on GIMP too, before anybody complains). Fair use should be invoked when the image is essential to the book or article. If it is not essential, then it is mere decoration, and fair use seems like a bit of a gamble to employ on decorations.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Jan 10, 2008 7:35 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:37 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
On en.wikibooks, the biggest hurdle we have is in the software guidebooks for proprietart software packages. For instance, it's difficult to teach Adobe Photoshop without including some screenshots of the interface. (we have a book on GIMP too, before anybody complains). Fair use should be invoked when the image is essential to the book or article. If it is not essential, then it is mere decoration, and fair use seems like a bit of a gamble to employ on decorations.
--Andrew Whitworth
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That's a point I've tried to make myself, and hope to figure out how to effectively state. -One- possible instance of "replaceable" is "a free image could be taken or created", but this is not by any means the only one. "The article would be alright without the image whatsoever" is another very common instance. Text is free content. If text can adequately make the point, the image is replaceable. If the (logo/CD or book cover/film screenshot) is not iconic and in and of itself the subject of substantial commentary, it's decoration and the article would be fine with it gone.
So long as we continue to allow nonfree content, especially in the massive amounts it's currently allowed in (at least on en.wp, mileage may vary elsewhere), we really should remove "free" from "the free encyclopedia", or at least make clear that this refers to "gratis" rather than "libre". Genuine libre projects have a certain percentage of nonfree material they allow to still be considered libre. That percentage is zero.
On Jan 11, 2008 12:17 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:35 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:37 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
On en.wikibooks, the biggest hurdle we have is in the software guidebooks for proprietart software packages. For instance, it's difficult to teach Adobe Photoshop without including some screenshots of the interface. (we have a book on GIMP too, before anybody complains). Fair use should be invoked when the image is essential to the book or article. If it is not essential, then it is mere decoration, and fair use seems like a bit of a gamble to employ on decorations.
--Andrew Whitworth
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
That's a point I've tried to make myself, and hope to figure out how to effectively state. -One- possible instance of "replaceable" is "a free image could be taken or created", but this is not by any means the only one. "The article would be alright without the image whatsoever" is another very common instance. Text is free content. If text can adequately make the point, the image is replaceable. If the (logo/CD or book cover/film screenshot) is not iconic and in and of itself the subject of substantial commentary, it's decoration and the article would be fine with it gone.
So long as we continue to allow nonfree content, especially in the massive amounts it's currently allowed in (at least on en.wp, mileage may vary elsewhere), we really should remove "free" from "the free encyclopedia", or at least make clear that this refers to "gratis" rather than "libre". Genuine libre projects have a certain percentage of nonfree material they allow to still be considered libre. That percentage is zero.
I've said this before, and appear to have to say it again.
This encyclopedia's value lies not in our creation effort or the Foundation's existence - we're a service, and we're providing that service to normal people out in the world who want to look information up.
Normal people overwhelmingly positively react much better to visual information and visual / text pairings rather than bland text. In magazines and newspapers, articles with pictures are read and comprehended much more than pure text articles. Images in other encyclopedias are a major "selling point".
Images are not just fluff or decoration. They are an integral part of making the encyclopedia something that our Customers like to read and will remember and value.
I believe in the power of text - I've written loads of pictureless prose over the years in many venues. But I also know what people respond to, when you're talking about "general public", both from my own ancedotal encounters and from reading studies on learning comprehension (I used to work for a computer training company whose founder had a doctorate in education psychology...). Images work.
The last few arguments in this thread fall into a false dichotomy - you're trying to ignore or depreciate the value of images in making educational content reader-friendly and reader-attractive, in order to bolster your arguments in the "how free is free?" debate. This is a horrible oversight and renders your stated position untenable.
You all are fine with and encourage the use of open content images. For the same reasons that those image content are valuable to the readers, fair use image content is also valuable to the readers.
The issue of "how free is free?" is a legitimate one. I feel for our downstream mirrors - they are clearly much more exposed to liability than we are, though I suspect that US fair use would still largely apply to them as it would to any other educational / reference content focused site. And we ourselves are potentially exposed to liability for true violations of the image policies that stand now, which we all know do happen regularly and sometimes are not spotted and corrected for some time (if at all, to date, in some cases). I am all for the proliferation of true free content (GFDL, CC, public domain, whatever) and I've spent a moderate fraction of my total Wikipedia time on creating various free content illustrations and a handful of photos.
But this is not and can not be a debate about whether images belong on Wikipedia and are valuable here. That is and should remain a closed case, with a strong affirmative "yes" answer. It is not to me an acceptable debating tactic in the fair use policy discussions.
On Jan 11, 2008 4:02 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I've said this before, and appear to have to say it again.
This encyclopedia's value lies not in our creation effort or the Foundation's existence - we're a service, and we're providing that service to normal people out in the world who want to look information up.
Yes, normal people out in this world, not "normal american people" or "normal people from a select few commonwealth states". Fair use is not a ubiquitous international right, and in many cases, there are people who can't reuse our content because they are not permitted to use fair use materials.
Wikimedia also specifically allows commercial use. We've gone out of our way to make this clear, and the board has passed resolutions to make this point unambiguous. The problem, again, is that fair use is tricky to employ when talking about commercial use.
The final effect is that the more fair use we have, the less of our material can be used properly. Our core service (and I'm hesitant to even believe that we are a service) is providing free information to people. Our service is not the distribution of copyrighted materials, nor the presentation of "pretty" information.
Normal people overwhelmingly positively react much better to visual information and visual / text pairings rather than bland text. In magazines and newspapers, articles with pictures are read and comprehended much more than pure text articles. Images in other encyclopedias are a major "selling point".
You're ignoring the line between free and unfree images. Commons has millions of free images, and none of these pose a problem. We can put literally millions of images in our articles, and that puts us above any beyond any other encyclopedia. You're saying that we need to use copyrighted images, without explicit permission, because people prefer the aesthetics of images. To follow the ideal of freedom of information, i'm prepared to sacrifice a little bit on the presentation.
The last few arguments in this thread fall into a false dichotomy - you're trying to ignore or depreciate the value of images in making educational content reader-friendly and reader-attractive, in order to bolster your arguments in the "how free is free?" debate. This is a horrible oversight and renders your stated position untenable.
There are some fair use images which are necessary and valuable. The kinds of fair use images that people bring up when arguing in favor of fair use are not the "average" type of fair use image that we have. Raising the flag at Iwo Jima is a valuable image and makes our encyclopedia better. Cover images of obscure books and CDs do not. Pictures of fictional characters from old or obscure television shows do not. There is a difference between images which are necessary, and images which are used purely for decoration. The decoration images should be removed.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Friday 11 January 2008 22:55, Andrew Whitworth wrote:
"normal people from a select few commonwealth states". Fair use is not a ubiquitous international right, and in many cases, there are people who can't reuse our content because they are not permitted to use fair use materials.
Someone who lives in a jurisdiction that does not allow fair use and wants to use images could simply and easily ignore fair use images. By the same argument you could argue for removing all quotes from Wikipedia because they are fair use too.
Pictures of fictional characters from old or obscure television shows do not. There is a difference between images which are necessary, and images which are used purely for decoration. The decoration images should be removed.
I see a bias here against old and obscure TV shows. Why should fictional characters from new and famous TV shows be illustrated with images, and fictional characters from old and obscure TV shows not be?
Seriously, fictional characters are a good case for fair use. You can't really convey meaningful information about them if you don't show how they look.
On Jan 11, 2008 4:02 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 11, 2008 12:17 PM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:35 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:37 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
On en.wikibooks, the biggest hurdle we have is in the software guidebooks for proprietart software packages. For instance, it's difficult to teach Adobe Photoshop without including some screenshots of the interface. (we have a book on GIMP too, before anybody complains). Fair use should be invoked when the image is essential to the book or article. If it is not essential, then it is mere decoration, and fair use seems like a bit of a gamble to employ on decorations.
--Andrew Whitworth
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
That's a point I've tried to make myself, and hope to figure out how to effectively state. -One- possible instance of "replaceable" is "a free image could be taken or created", but this is not by any means the only one. "The article would be alright without the image whatsoever" is another very common instance. Text is free content. If text can adequately make the point, the image is replaceable. If the (logo/CD or book cover/film screenshot) is not iconic and in and of itself the subject of substantial commentary, it's decoration and the article would be fine with it gone.
So long as we continue to allow nonfree content, especially in the massive amounts it's currently allowed in (at least on en.wp, mileage may vary elsewhere), we really should remove "free" from "the free encyclopedia", or at least make clear that this refers to "gratis" rather than "libre". Genuine libre projects have a certain percentage of nonfree material they allow to still be considered libre. That percentage is zero.
I've said this before, and appear to have to say it again.
This encyclopedia's value lies not in our creation effort or the Foundation's existence - we're a service, and we're providing that service to normal people out in the world who want to look information up.
Normal people overwhelmingly positively react much better to visual information and visual / text pairings rather than bland text. In magazines and newspapers, articles with pictures are read and comprehended much more than pure text articles. Images in other encyclopedias are a major "selling point".
Images are not just fluff or decoration. They are an integral part of making the encyclopedia something that our Customers like to read and will remember and value.
I believe in the power of text - I've written loads of pictureless prose over the years in many venues. But I also know what people respond to, when you're talking about "general public", both from my own ancedotal encounters and from reading studies on learning comprehension (I used to work for a computer training company whose founder had a doctorate in education psychology...). Images work.
The last few arguments in this thread fall into a false dichotomy - you're trying to ignore or depreciate the value of images in making educational content reader-friendly and reader-attractive, in order to bolster your arguments in the "how free is free?" debate. This is a horrible oversight and renders your stated position untenable.
You all are fine with and encourage the use of open content images. For the same reasons that those image content are valuable to the readers, fair use image content is also valuable to the readers.
The issue of "how free is free?" is a legitimate one. I feel for our downstream mirrors - they are clearly much more exposed to liability than we are, though I suspect that US fair use would still largely apply to them as it would to any other educational / reference content focused site. And we ourselves are potentially exposed to liability for true violations of the image policies that stand now, which we all know do happen regularly and sometimes are not spotted and corrected for some time (if at all, to date, in some cases). I am all for the proliferation of true free content (GFDL, CC, public domain, whatever) and I've spent a moderate fraction of my total Wikipedia time on creating various free content illustrations and a handful of photos.
But this is not and can not be a debate about whether images belong on Wikipedia and are valuable here. That is and should remain a closed case, with a strong affirmative "yes" answer. It is not to me an acceptable debating tactic in the fair use policy discussions.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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And yet nothing we can do will make our content such that it's completely free. Authors retain moral rights - and derivative uses encounter problems like libel, hate-speech and so forth. Anyone who does anything other than a straight copy is going to have to be responsible, and is not going to have complete freedom. Legally impossible - you can't release your moral rights, and we can't make people who modify and reprint immune from libel laws.
Realistically, what percentage of downstream reusers legal liability comes from invalid fair use? Is it even 1%? I'd be surprised if it wasn't almost entirely a) libel, and b) copyright violations in text, in that order.
But it remains, that we cannot grant downstream reusers infinite freedom to modify and reuse as they wish, no matter what we do.
WilyD
Realistically, today, what's percentage of a downstream reusers
On Friday 11 January 2008 04:35, Andrew Whitworth wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:37 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
I find cover image of a book a part of essential information about this book that I want to see if I want to know about the book. At least for me, as a reader, it is important. The same for CD/DVD covers, movie posters and whatnot.
On Jan 12, 2008 1:41 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Friday 11 January 2008 04:35, Andrew Whitworth wrote:
On Jan 10, 2008 7:37 PM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There is an awful lot of material we use and justify by saying "well, we couldn't use anything else" - we should be very wary of believing this to be a justification that we *need* it.
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
I find cover image of a book a part of essential information about this book that I want to see if I want to know about the book. At least for me, as a reader, it is important. The same for CD/DVD covers, movie posters and whatnot.
"I find it useful " is not likely to fly in a court
On Saturday 12 January 2008 09:03, Pedro Sanchez wrote:
On Jan 12, 2008 1:41 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Friday 11 January 2008 04:35, Andrew Whitworth wrote:
I agree with this sentiment entirely. Just because an image is irreplacable does not mean it has intrinsic value. For instance, the cover image of a book or CD or DVD is hardly "important". That is, unless there is something special and unique about that particular cover that makes it worthy of pointing out especially.
I find cover image of a book a part of essential information about this book that I want to see if I want to know about the book. At least for me, as a reader, it is important. The same for CD/DVD covers, movie posters and whatnot.
"I find it useful " is not likely to fly in a court
So what?
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
On Saturday 12 January 2008 09:03, Pedro Sanchez wrote:
"I find it useful " is not likely to fly in a court
So what?
Wikinews had this fight. I unilaterally amended the copyright message at the foot of every page and had no dispute. It now reads: "All text created after September 25, 2005 is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. Copyright terms on images may vary, please check individual image pages prior to duplication."
There is a warning that we use fair use, and for a news source this is *very* important. I've had fights with people from Commons who are 'more zealous' about application of Fair Use, and realistically nobody has answered my fundamental question which is the time issue.
If we write an article on Hilary Clinton and can only get a fair use image in the 12-36 hours the story is current, is it appropriate to replace that image in 10 years with a current image? Remember, this would be on an article dated January 12, 2008 with the potential replacement being in 2018.
I have very little to say on how this impacts other projects such as the English Wikipedia. I've uploaded album covers there myself, I think they belong there.
Brian McNeil
On 12/01/2008, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
If we write an article on Hilary Clinton and can only get a fair use image in the 12-36 hours the story is current, is it appropriate to replace that image in 10 years with a current image? Remember, this would be on an article dated January 12, 2008 with the potential replacement being in 2018.
The problem is that under those conditions any claim of fair use would be pretty weak since you are likely to be using the pictures for the exact use they were originally created for.
On Jan 12, 2008 3:36 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
On Saturday 12 January 2008 09:03, Pedro Sanchez wrote:
"I find it useful " is not likely to fly in a court
So what?
Wikinews had this fight. I unilaterally amended the copyright message at the foot of every page and had no dispute. It now reads: "All text created after September 25, 2005 is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. Copyright terms on images may vary, please check individual image pages prior to duplication."
There is a warning that we use fair use, and for a news source this is *very* important. I've had fights with people from Commons who are 'more zealous' about application of Fair Use, and realistically nobody has answered my fundamental question which is the time issue.
If we write an article on Hilary Clinton and can only get a fair use image in the 12-36 hours the story is current, is it appropriate to replace that image in 10 years with a current image? Remember, this would be on an article dated January 12, 2008 with the potential replacement being in 2018.
I have very little to say on how this impacts other projects such as the English Wikipedia. I've uploaded album covers there myself, I think they belong there.
Brian McNeil
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
If you can't find a free image, why not go no image? I'd imagine the Foundation's resolution applies just the same to Wikinews, and it's pretty clear on replaceable nonfree images (i.e., don't use them). An image of a living person who probably has thousands of federal government images taken of her (all in the public domain) is about the very definition of "replaceable".
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that does. The board of the WMF has been explicit in its choice of the license and has voiced it wish to do away with fair use. This has been roundly rejected by enough en.wikipedians, I can understand how this point be argued, and consequently putting a brave face on it, the board has allowed for a policy whereby it can be phrased under what conditions exception can be made.
The way the policy is phrased is that for *every *project there has to be such a policy. This means that the assertion that Fair Use helps in disseminating knowledge is wrong; it only helps when a project has such a policy in place. Several Wikipedias have not and cannot. This means that Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.
I don't dispute that the pro-fair use arguments are primarily from the English language projects, but as much as anything else that reflects traditions of English common law. The idea that "Fair Use helps in disseminating knowledge" did not originate with WMF policy; it's a philosophical underpining which did not just begin with the US Constitution Eighteenth-century books from the continent depended more often on the approbation of the king, something which was not a requirement in the English speaking world.
Ec
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org