Jimmy Wales wrote:

Nicolas Weeger wrote:

...

What about for instance book covers? They are definitely not something you can usually have under a free licence. But fair use probably applies (since the cover isn't the book itself).

What would the "fair use" status of a book cover be in Great Britian? In Australia?

I'm asking because I don't know, but I think it's relevant to the decision here.

May I suggest that we ask ourselves a different kind of question. All the countries in question are parties to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, including the US. It has much wider acceptance, and only a few countries have not signed on. No issues with a US-centric fair use doctrine.

Article 10 of the Berne Convention states, "It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose...." This can be a basis for any of us, even outside the US, to quote text when necessary. Perhaps we could also consider images in this context. For example, many artists and photographers have collected works published. Can we say that selecting one picture from such a book, to illustrate the article on that artist, is a quotation? Can we "quote" a brief sound file from a CD? Does anyone know if Amazon.com is relying on this kind of approach, or do they secure permission from every artist to offer 30-second samples of five songs, as a condition for listing the merchandise?

Fair use is an important doctrine, and one that we should defend and push for as a natural right. If fair use is legitimate, and would be legitimate for virtually every conceivable re-user (i.e. barring some silly hypothetical) we should feel comfortable relying on it if it's valuable and, as in this case, there is no conceivable alternative.

I agree that fair use is helpful, and we should push for wider acceptance of it in the international arena. If that time comes, I am confident that Wikipedians will quickly take advantage of the opportunity to quickly add many images that are newly available.

--Michael Snow