[WikiEN-l] Questionable fair use claims: a case study

[uninvited at nerstrand.net]

[[:Image:Pgsafjak3.JPG]]

I offer this up as an example of some process problems we have in
dealing with invalid fair use claims.

I found this image while looking for unsourced images.  It is attributed
to a "Eddie Bauer Co., ca. 1984 (?)" which is really not a sufficient
sourcing of the image.  But the fair use discussion is more intresting
and so I'm overlooking that.  This image is a photo of a model wearing
a "safari jacket," and appears in the "safai jacket" article.  Since
the article isn't about the photograph itself, it's not fair use.  I
believe that the lack of a fair use rationale is beyond dispute in this
case which is why I believe this image makes a good case study for our
process.

I added the {{fairusedisputed}} tag on September 19 and notified the
uploader, who removed the tag without discussion.  The uploader also
left a note on my talk page criticizing my involvement.

I waited a while and listed the page on IFD on October 10 again
notifying the uploader.  The image is fuzzy, and isn't particularly
important to the project, and so I thought IFD was a better choice than
PUI (possibly unfree images).  The instructions on the PUI page don't
list fair use problems as a reason to list things on PUI, anyway,
though the exact process is unclear.

The admin who closed the IFD discussion added a "fair use" tag and some
OCILLA boilerplate to the image description page and delisted it
without deletion.  In further discussion, that admin suggested that I
relist the page in phase II of PUI.

I don't care much about this particular image, but I see this as a
bellwether for the broader issue of dealing with the thousands of
images we have where there is a doubtful fair use claim being made by
the uploader.  The process for handling such images is unclear, at
least to me, with the IFD, PUI, and CV (copyright violations) pages
having overlapping purpose and conflicting processes.  Any of these
processes are cumbersome, with notification required to the uploader
and ongoing monitoring to shepherd the image through the process.  And
all of these processes are heavily biased towards inclusion.  Decisions
to keep fair use images are being made by admins who don't understand
fair use and don't appreciate the stakes.

The addition of OCILLA boilerplate is probably unhelpful is nothing
we've agreed upon, let alone had approved by counsel, but that's
relatively unimportant by comparison.