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

[Alphax]

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Justin Cormack wrote:
> 
> On 20 Oct 2005, at 21:23, Matt Brown wrote:
<snip howto on taking photos of lawnmowers>
>> 
>> The problem is worst on such generic articles, as you say. If one's
>>  writing a specific article on a specific lawnmower, say the
>> [[GrassMaster Lawn Master 2000]], then one needs a specific picture
>> of that specific model. It might have been out of production for 20
>> years and examples are  hard to find. In that case, I believe it's
>> quite acceptable to go to the GrassMaster corporate website to see
>> if they have a picture we could use under fair use, or scan an
>> image out of a period GrassMaster catalog. We're using a company's
>> own promotional image to illustrate (and thus, in a sense, promote)
>> their own product - a fairly slam-dunk fair use case, and likely 
>> counting as use with permission as well (so zero chance we'll get 
>> sued). Of course, should some fellow Wikipedian be a lawnmower
>> collector who has one, it's preferable if we get their
>> free-licensed photos to replace it.
> 
> 
> No, thats not reasonable. Just because you cant find a picture doesnt
> make it copyright free. Hardly anything has a justification that we
> cannot  ever find a free one. I have recently been tagging all cars
> as fairusereplace  as there are so few that there is no specimen
> surviving.
>

What about prototypes that were never put into production, but there are
photos on the corporate website?

>> Using such a photo on a more generic page, such as [[lawn mower]],
>> is not a good fair use. Such is a large proportion of the bogus
>> fair use claims we get.
>> 
> 
> I have found 2 pictures (in  the wole of wikipedia) that I think are
>  fair use, there are easy replacements for everything else.
> 

Including comics, TV shows, motion pictures, and computer and video games?

>> The other category is people who, wanting to illustrate the 
>> [[GrassMaster Lawn Master 2000]] article, will rummage through
>> their well-thumbed stack of "Lawnmower Monthly" until they find one
>> on the cover, scan that cover, and use the magazine cover to
>> illustrate the article. After all, "aren't magazine covers always
>> fair use"?
> 
> 
> No they arent. The bogus fair use for specific categories should go.
>  There is no fair use without justification.
> 

You are quite right.

Such images where people could try and claim "fair use" in more than one
article should probably be avoided. In that particular case, a more
generic "Lawnmower Monthly" cover should be scanned and put into
[[Lawnmower monthly]].

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