[WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

[Stan Shebs]

Philip Welch wrote:

>On May 19, 2006, at 1:41 PM, maru dubshinki wrote:
>
>
>>From my own experience:
>>the Star Wars article. We only accept canon depictions- and because
>>canonicity policies say that only material authorized and licensed by
>>the copyright holders is canon, and because the copyright holders will
>>only do proprietary releases, we cannot, by definition, have free
>>images relating to Star Wars.
>>
>
>It seems like the "only accept canon depictions" is the rule to go,  
>since it seems silly and arbitrary, and in any case, far less  
>important than "only use free content". Artist depictions would be  
>appropriate in this case, just like almost any other case where we  
>only have fair use images to use.
>
Doesn't get you off the hook though, since an artist's depiction is
a derivative work. In fact, the more accurate the depiction, the more
of a copyright infringement it is. So you end up making a choice
between accuracy and freeness.

I have actually looked at de: Star Wars articles, and some play fast
and loose with freeness. For instance, [[Chewbacca]] is illustrated
with a picture of someone wearing a Chewbacca costume, but again,
such a picture would be not be possible without some use of George's
IP, so at least in that case de: is kidding themselves about
freeness of the image (it's possible that they're exploiting
Panoramafreiheit or some other German legal loophole not valid in
the US).

Stan