Björn Lindqvist wrote: I know you're looking for a simple "yes" or "no" answer, but unfortunately, there isn't one. Legally, the answer to whether or not we can use such materials is 'yes'. But the use does actually have to *be* fair use, which is a different legal concept from abiding by the license of the copyright owner. And whether or not a particular use of something is fair use can be a sticky matter. Ethically, I think that fair use presents something of a dilemma for us. It's implausible to think that we could get by without ANY fair use. Every quote from a copyrighted source, even a short quote, is done under the doctrine of fair use. If an article about Steinbeck's East of Eden quotes from the book for the purpose of comment, that's fair use. There's no rational reason to disallow such use. On the other hand, some uses that would be "fair" for us would likely *not* be for people who would like to relicense and repurpose our content. So we ought to be respectful of the spirit of GNU freedom and tend to refrain from using such materials when they might pose a significant barrier to re-use. Some of the same principles outlined above apply to use 'by permission'. If we get permission from someone to put a particular image on our website -- as would be the case with these folks, because our use does meet the spirit (I think) and the letter (with some stretching, since we aren't technically teachers or students, but we are arguably an educational setting) of their conditions of use -- if we get permission, we can certainly use the images on our site, but we may cause trouble for those wishing to re-use the content, those who don't *have* permission. Yes, that's a big frustration to be sure. In this particular case, I wonder if you'd be willing to contact the pics4learning.com people and ask them how hard it would be for them to go back to their photographers and ask for them to license their content under a free license such as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike? --Jimbo

Björn Lindqvist <bjrn.lindqvist(a)telia.com> writes: No. "Images in the Pics4Learning collection may be used by teachers and students in print, multimedia, and video productions." IANAL. -- Gustav Foseid

From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales(a)bomis.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 8:43 AM A minor problem I have with fair use here is there is no way for sure to know when someone invokes fair use. Unless they state where the quote comes from or acknowledge it is copied under fair use it is hard to know. This makes it difficult to redistribute anything under Wikipedia IMHO. If there were a clear fair use log linked to each page that would be a way to make contributors more compliant. I know we are asked to mention fair use, but something like a check box (like on the upload page) for that or public domain stuff (with a link to the origin if it is posted elsewherre on the net) or some other attribution info which is what the due dilligence people need. Anyone who republishes Wikipedia stuff has a heavy burden to do their due dilligence to be certain they are not violating any third party copyright. While Wikipedia volunteers try to make sure their are no copyright violations, I am not sure that such a system is foolproof. Also, in most foreign countries it is called fair dealing and it is not exactly like fair use, this makes it even more complex if someone wants to use the material outside the good ol'USA. Alex756

Bj wrote: Maybe. Again maybe. The "pics4learning" site has " ©2002 Tech4Learning, Inc. <http://www.tech4learning.com> All rights reserved" at the bottom. I translate this to mean that they claim all the rights they can, but since it's too much of a hassle to figure out which rights they have, or which apply to which image, they leave that joyous task and risk to the user. The "fair use" debate appears regularly in the mailing lists, and has been successfully controversial. Don't expect any easy answers. Insisting on a "yes or no" answer sounds too much like a lawyer who wants the witness to incriminate himself. Ec

Alex R. wrote: It is all ''caveat emptor'' pure and simple. It is next to impossible for Wikipedia to police whether any given passage is fair use or outright plagiarism. This is not like obscenities or death threats which are very much in-your-face kinds of offenses. If I were so inclined, I have many publications in my personal library that could provide an endless source of free material, much of whose usage would be a violation of copyright. It is not material from the internet, and would be difficult if not impossible to trace. This is an understatement. Few Wikipedians would have the resources available to check for any but the most obvious copyright violations. My guess is that many small contributors have no concept whatsoever of copyright law. Yes, in Canada burning music CDs for your personal use can fall within fair dealing. A levy is charged on every blank tape or CD to compensate people whose copyrights might be infringed. In view of the lawsuit that Fox has started over the use of "Fair and Balanced", maybe we should record a trademark over "NPOV". :-) Ec

Jimmy Wales wrote: No need to feel silly. It's an all too frequent mistake that any of us can make. Unfortunately, it's the kind of situation that restricts intellectual discourse through copyright paranoia. This specific example was easy to check, but others are far more difficult. The citizen who believes himself to be "law-abiding" has a bad habit of failing to give himself the benefit of the doubt, or is too willing to abide by laws that don't exist. The prosperous ones do not stand on such ceremony. I often wonder whether we are being too compliant in our copyright attitudes. I was just reading today about the NTP v. RIM case over patent infringement, and getting more irritated about these companies that accumulate IP rights of one sort or another with no intention of producing anything. Their sole purpose in life is to collect royalties from unwitting violators. I would propose that IP law have a "Use-it-or-lose-it" element. Perhaps a bit like what happens when a prospector stakes a mineral claim to a piece of land; here at least, he is required to begin developing that mineral claim within a certain time or lose it. Sorry, but copyrights are such an easy subjec for me to rant about. Ray