[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton

[Richard Grevers]

On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 00:26:33 -0500, cprompt 
<cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:

> >I'm not an attorney, but U.S. copyright law, as spelled out in 17 USC 
> 107, says that "fair use of a > copyrighted work...for purposes such as 
> criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or
> > research, is not an infringement of copyright." It goes on to specify 
> the following criteria to be used in
> > judging whether the use made of a work constitutes fair use:
>
> You seem familiar with copyright law. I have considered making Wikipedia 
> a little prettier by finding suitable pictures for some articles. If I 
> find a photograph of, say, a koala, and I want to add it to [[Koala]], is 
> that permissable (if I can attribute the photo)?
>
That is seldom sufficient. All material on Wikipedia ought to comply with 
the GNU Free Documentation License. See 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
In general, if you are approaching someone for permission to use a photo 
they own the rights of, they need to understand that once on Wikipedia it 
is free for anyone else to use within the terms of the license.
And if you really want a photo of a Koala, I have one I took myself, which 
I amd happy to release, also kangaroos, wombats and a dingo.

-- 
Richard Grevers