On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Suppose that an image can be considered fair use because it is used for educational purposes, say in the article Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 where the image Image:Tianasquare.jpg
is said to be fair use under the following rationale:
The use of this historic photograph in Wikipedia is claimed to be a fair use of the image under United States copyright law for the following reasons: This photograph depicts a non-reproduceable historic event. The image is used for educational purposes only in a non-profit encyclopedia. The image is no larger and of no higher quality than is necessary for the illustration of an article. The use of the image on Wikipedia is not expected to decrease the value of the copyright.
If you put that image on a user page, easy to imagine someone doing so, the the educational purpose which is the foundation of the fair use justification, vanishes.
It may or may not vanish, depending whether or not you use the image on that user page for educational purposes.
But anyway, what about the image page itself, i.e. [[Image:Tianasquare.jpg]]? Is *that* a use for educational purposes?
Of course, bad example, since Wikipedia has explicit permission to use that image.
That said, this is a tempest in a teapot in most cases. Except for rare instances, no one is complaining and there is a lot of bad feeling as getting after the fair use images on someone's user page feels like you are getting after them personally.
Fred