On 12/6/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Why do we need to resort to fair use if we have permission to use the image anyway? Surely "permission for non-commercial use" images are preferable to "fair use" images...if nothing else, we can use them at full resolution.
Steve
The confusion here originates in the fact that Wikipedia uses the term fair use to refer to two different things. First is the legal concept of fair use. Second is our "fair use policy", which should properly be called our "unfree image policy" or something similar. You are correct that with permission, non-commercial, and no derivatives images have, for our immediate usage, certain advantages over images used only under (legal) fair use. They still, however, require a "fair use rationale"--that is, an explanation of why they are compliant with our standards for using unfree images, which are based not only on immediate legal requirements but also on other concerns, such as the legal concerns of reusers of our content and the goals of the project.
It would be sensible, of course, if we are going to have these two distinct concepts, to separate them out in our nomenclature, but a recent proposal to do this seems to be running into appreciable opposition from folks who support basing our unfree image policy only on immediate legal concerns.