[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use" decision

[Delirium]

Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> To me, reproductions of 2D art, 
> especially when it is the entire artwork that is reproduced even in 
> reduced resolution, essentially reproduced the entire artwork.  The only 
> legitimate "fair-use" example I have seen for this that has been 
> accepted in U.S. common law is for a thumbnail gallery, such as is done 
> on google images.  And even then it is to provide a link to content that 
> appears elsewhere that is legal to use.  Usage of this kind of content 
> in a Wikipedia article just doesn't seem to fit the same sort of 
> criteria, and requires multiple clicks to get to the "original" image 
> and information about the actual copyright owner of the photo.
>   

Reproducing artwork and other cultural artifacts for scholarly 
commentary is pretty well established, and is done literally thousands 
of times per year in academic journals.  Heck, a recent journal article 
I read [http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/montfort] even reproduced 
the entire source code of the 1977 Atari game _Combat_ as part of its 
commentary.  It's not as if this is some sort of amazing new use that 
we're the first to discover.

-Mark