[Foundation-l] Fair use being badly abused on en.wikipedia

[Robert Rohde]

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 at 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_use
> .
> 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_use_war_being_lost
> 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&oldid=182482742#Unacceptable_images
> (paragraph since removed in an edit war)
>
> Thank you,
> Hammersoft
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