On 11/07/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
:
[[Image:Carrie_Buck.jpg]] is used in two articles: [[Carrie Buck]] and
[[Buck v. Bell]]. I think it is fair use in both contexts, though they
have separate purpose (in one it illustrates the main subject of a
biographical article, in another it is illustrating a plaintiff in a
court case. Such dual-fair use should be made explicit; it would not
be necessarily fair use on any other page. Under my proposal, it would
contain two separate fair use notices, one for each page it was used
on.
Here's another I've just run across.
[[Image:Teutonic_order_charge.jpg]] is a (cropped, I believe) version
of the front of a box of miniatures. It's been tagged {{Gamecover}},
which is a bit flaky but I can live with.
But it's got a fair-use claim on it now - "it's fair use since it came
from a game box" - and so has been used in two different articles,
[[Teutonic Knights]] and [[Battle of Grunwald]]. Some poking around
finds that the artist himself is still selling prints of the image.
I'm fairly sure this claim wouldn't hold up - we're not using the
image to illustrate anything about the material it was used with,
there's no critical reason to use this not another image, &c &c.
Yet {{gamecover}} (and {{bookcover}}) are pretty much poster-boy
examples of fair use claims. How many images do we have filed away
that are like this, *sections* of a book cover, used irrelevantly to
the book, but tagged fair use?
It's a good exception, and I'm pleased we're making use of it for all
the many images we'd otherwise have to neglect, but it hides a
multitude of reasonable-sounding but logically problematic usages.
Perhaps the use of "this image is fair use due to being of type X"
templates is a possible problem here? It's safe to say that using a
book cover when discussing the book is fair use; it's certainly not
safe to say that an image on a book cover is thereby inherently fair
use.
Your proposal to start auditing through them has a lot of merit, I
think. We have maybe 200-250ish {{book cover}}s, and pushing a
thousand {{gamecover}}; a lot of work, there.
Any more thoughts since you last posted on it?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk