Anthony DiPierro wrote:
The single most important factor for a fair use
analysis is the
impact of the use on the market for the original
If you're relying on Harper & Row for this proposition, you need to
recognize that Campbell v. Acuff-Rose effectively undermines it, both on
the facts and in the language of the decision. Its analysis is much
closer to weighing the factors equally.
In
my opinion even images on user pages should be given a little bit of leeway
for this reason. An image which isn't included in any of the articles isn't
really in the encyclopedia itself, it's in a temporary workspace which we
use to create an encyclopedia.
It's in a workspace that we publish to the entire world over the
internet. And don't kid yourself about the temporary here; try removing
an inappropriate image from somebody's user page and see how temporary
they thought it should be. While I am perfectly happy to be flexible
about more restrictive licensing for user page images (no-derivatives or
Wikipedia-specific permission), I have yet to see anyone articulate a
reasonable argument as to why a copyrighted image would be fair use on a
user page.
--Michael Snow