On 1/20/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
You're comparing Apples and Oranges here. Drawing an image of Darth Vader and putting it in an encyclopedia is not the same as making a comic strip or cartoon of Darth Vader.
I quoted the license specifically because it mentioned "names" and "likenesses", in other words redrawing the imagery doesn't get you off the hook here, and if your excuse is that you're just doing it for use in the encyclopedia, then you've come right back to relying on the same old fair use argument.
Well, first of all, just because someone purports to give you a license to do something doesn't mean that you didn't already have the right to do it anyway. People put totally unenforcible things in license agreements all the time. In fact, sometimes they put things in a license agreement precisely *because* a court has ruled that it isn't covered by copyright law.
Anyway, not all fair use arguments are equal. All countries provide *some* exceptions to copyright law. I think the difference between ripping an image off some website and drawing your own from a description of the character are worlds apart in terms of what types of people are going to be able to redistribute the work. In the former case, even a non-profit organization selling print encyclopedias in the United States would be in a dubious legal position. In the latter, I would think anyone could use the image anywhere in the world, at least within the context of an encyclopedia.
But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe a judgement could be handed down against such an image. But if so, I don't see why a textual description of the character wouldn't likewise be utilization of the names, portrayal of characters, likenesses, etc.
IOW, if a visual depiction of the character isn't legal, then isn't the entire article, which is a textual depiction of the character, illegal?
There's just gotta be some kind of visual depiction of Darth Vader which is legal for distribution in an encyclopedia by anyone anywhere under any terms, at least with regard to copyright law (for all I know discussion of Darth Vader is banned in China or something, so I'm explicitly excepting something like that).
Don't think you can outsmart these guys so easily, they have a whole industry based on licensing of copyrighted material. In fact, the most intelligent course of action might be to contact them and just *ask* what amount of content they would like to see. If they say zero, then fine, the fair-use haters have their reason to flush it all, but my guess is that they don't want to lose the free visibility, and will give us guidelines. Of course, if they say "use as much as you want, we love Wikipedia", fair-use haters lose one of their key arguments... :-)
Stan
Hey, I agree with you here. Of course, I'd say getting rid of the fair use images would provide quite a bit of incentive for people to start asking the copyright holders to work with them. In fact, it'd also provide quite a bit of incentive for the copyright holders to work with Wikipedia.
Anthony