Delirium wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy-
The moral argument is the one that matters. Should we make use of materials that are available only to us because of our special circumstances, or should we follow a purist GNU philosophy?
We should strike a reasonable balance, and that means that images which are clearly unobtainable under a free license but historically important works should be used as fair use. Copyright law is restrictive enough as it is, it would be a big mistake not to exploit the few exemptions it grants us, under the guise of being "more free". In fact, by rejecting fair use, we effectively endorse restrictive copyright doctrines.
FWIW, I vaguely agree with both Jimbo and Erik on this point. I strongly prefer Free images wherever possible, but I don't think we should entirely refrain from using fair use images.
I would, however, support us doing so very carefully, and only when necessary. Furthermore, I think we should restrict our fair use images to fairly unambiguous cases of fair use, at least informally. A very famous photograph of an event from WW2, for example, is pretty clear fair use for almost all users.
Images licensed "for Wikipedia use only" or "for non-commercial use only" are another matter, and possibly even GFDL-incompatible---and at the very least something I don't like.
So, to summarize, my position is:
- Strongly prefer GFDL or public domain images
- Allow fair use images in cases where GFDL or public domain images
are unavailable, with a strong preference towards clear-cut fair use cases that would also be fair use for most reusers of our content
- Do not accept special-permission images
-Mark
I think is debate is very important. What is our ethos?
I, naturally, prefer free images. The problem is that there are very few of them out there. The main sources of free images are public domain sources, or contributor photos.
There is a severe shortage of public domain images. Apart from the US government the only other decent source I have found is a German public domain image project.
Contributors can only take photos of things such as places, or objects. They cannot take pictures of things that no longer exist, or of famous people.
It is said (as a cliche) that an image speaks a thousand words. I think images are very important to the encyclopedia. When I've shown the site to "normal people" they were much more interested in pages with images, they were more accessible.
It is almost a debate between purity and making a better encyclopedia. The US national use of "fair use" is a peripheral debate, although one that is very important for those without access to fair use.
So what do we do? I prefer tagging of all images, so that fair use images can be removed by a non-US user. However I am strongly favour of keeping images used with permission, as these greatly improve the encylopedia's coverage of non-US topics and people. If we only used PD images of politicians we would only have US politicians, and images of national leaders shaking hands with US presidents (from the survey we did yesterday). This would appear to be a bias, and could also been seen as POV as a country's relationship with the US is often controversial.
I hope tagging, allowing separation is a compromise. The status quo is chaos.
Caroline