On 1/23/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/21/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
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).
I think it is worth pointing out that copyright law (and trademark law) affects text and images (and other forms of media) differently. It is very easy to make a copyright-safe version of a textual account; it is very hard in most cases to make copyright-safe versions of images or visual-based media unless they are themselves based on "basic facts" (i.e. a diagram of some physical principle).
I don't know that it has to be "basic facts", but certainly when we're talking about images in an encyclopedia we're talking about communicating facts.
If a picture really is worth a thousand words, and that's probably not a bad order of magnitude for the purposes of this statement, then it'd take about as much work to make a "copyright-safe" version of the same "size" text or image, at least given the same level of communication skills in each medium. Maybe that isn't fair, though, as most people communicate more effectively with words than with pictures.
The only way I know of to make "free" versions of copyrighted things would be as knock-offs. But that not only wouldn't help our purposes at all, but it would itself skate far closer to legal action than a "fair use" claim probably would. But that's just a speculation.
FF
Doesn't a [[clean room design]] allow you to make "free" versions of copyrighted things? If a textual description of a photograph is non-infringing, and you give that textual description to a sketch artist (who's never seen the original), then isn't the sketch likewise non-infringing?
Maybe the answer is that it's just not possible to come up with a decent copyright-free textual description of a fictional character from a copyrighted work. Will that destroy the quest for a great free encyclopedia? Maybe not. How good is the Britannica article on [[Darth Vader]]? Answering my own question and two more as a bonus, no results in Britannica Online, no results in encyclopedia.com, and "No results were found for your search in Encarta." That doesn't mean Wikipedia can't include an article about Darth Vader, but is a detailed description, in text *or* image form, really necessary for an encyclopedia?
I could go either way there. I guess knowing what Darth Vader looks like helps me understand all the spoofs. But at the same time, I'd just as well thumb my nose at Lucas and not buy in to his dirty licenses. C'mon, let's all sing the Free Software Song and substitute knowledge for software.
When we have enough free [knowledge] At our call, hackers, at our call, We'll throw out those dirty licenses Ever more, hackers, ever more.
Join us now and share the [knowledge]; You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
Copyright 1993 Richard Stallman Verbatim redistribution permitted if this notice is preserved.
Heh, sorry, I'm in a weird mood tonight. But seriously, screw Lucas. If he doesn't want to give us a free photo of Darth Vader, we don't need to produce a free encyclopedia article about him (Darth Vader, that is).
Anthony