[WikiEN-l] Fair use image galleries in articles

[Ilmari Karonen]

Justin Cormack wrote:
> On 22 Apr 2006, at 21:40, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> 
>>Without seeing any particular examples, my opinion would be that a
>>gallery of past logos used to document the evolution of the visual
>>identity of the company in question generally ought to be acceptable
>>fair use.
> 
> *If* you are talking about the evolution of the company logo.
> *Not* if you are just talking about the company.
> 
> Do we have articles about the history of individual company logos?
> Not in these cases (yet). So not fair use. Just pretty copyvio pics.

An article about the historical logos used by a company would probably 
be a candidate for merging with the main article about the company. 
Such a merger does not generally affect the validity of fair use claims 
for images included in the merged content.

More generally, "pretty copyvio pics" sounds like a straw man argument 
to me.  Who in their right mind would consider a company logo pretty? 
The sole reason for inclusing old logos in an article is that such logos 
*add information to the article*.

Of course, the article does need to discuss the logos to some extent, 
for the images to be relevant to the article.  Like, say, noting the 
time period during which each logo was in use.  If we have additional 
information on the logos, like for example who designed them, so much 
the better.

The reason I'm taking the time to argue this point is that I find this 
drive to eliminate eminently justifiable fair use content frankly absurd 
and also detrimental to the encyclopedia.  If I read about the history 
of a company, I may very much like to know what their logo used to look 
like in the 50's, for example.  The only reasonable way to convey this 
information is by including a picture of the logo.

Fundamentally, this is about what fair use really means.  The law leaves 
its definition deliberately vague, relaying instead on the common sense 
notion that a use is "fair" if it serves a useful purpose and does not 
unduly harm the copyright holder.  In this case, we're using these logos 
for the purpose of improving the coverage of a free encyclopedia, and 
we're not taking anything away from anyone by doing so.

Mind you, if anyone actually were to complain about us including their 
logos, we should immediately take them down.  But until and unless it 
happens, it seems reasonable to me to assume that our use of company 
logos in an encyclopedic context, with proper attribution, is doing no 
actual or perceived harm to the copyright holders.

-- 
Ilmari Karonen