On 1/23/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
I wonder at what point an image is so downgraded by thumbnailing as to be exempt from any challenge to fair use. In the absence of primary images we can use with PD or GFDL tags, then there should be some way that we can use low-quality images to illustrate an article so that whoever owns the high-quality copyright image does not feel that their potential market has been targeted. An external link pointing to the original copyright source would give readers access to a higher-quality image.
But if quoting some percentage of a published text work for the purpose of commentary or reference is acceptable, then surely we can find some percentage of an image quality that would be generally acceptable. Is a 100 by 100 pixel thumbnail of a 1000 by 1000 pixel copyright image acceptable? That's only 1% of the original!
I ask because there are some articles that would be well served by even a low-quality image, but it is all but impossible to find an image that we can use. An example would be in the case of an air disaster, where photographs would almost certainly be the property of news agencies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tenerife_Disaster_Collision_aftermath_27_ March_1977.png is one example, where the image is scanned in at low resolution.
Peter (Skyring)
I really don't see what encyclopedic knowledge a photo of a burning wing adds to the [[Tenerife disaster]] article. The computer generated image of the impact, on the other hand, that's somewhat informational.
Of course, the computer generated image was apparently ripped off some website, even though it's perfectly possible for a Wikipedia to generate it herself.
"It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of works of art for critical commentary on the work in question, the artistic genre or technique of the work of art or the school to which the artist belongs on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement."
Which of those three uses is [[Image:Tenerife collision.jpg]] being used under?
Anthony