[WikiEN-l] Fair use issues; we need serious help

[WikipediaEditor Durin]

On 7/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/07/07, WikipediaEditor Durin <wikidurin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > a single subject, therefore it was in essence 1 image per use, not 133.
> > I kid you not.
>
> My answer to these is "um, no" and rogue-delete if need be.
>

They've been removed, but a long debate still continues (after two
weeks) about their inclusion. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Magic:_The_Gathering_sets

> Every time someone decides there's a hitherto-invisible "I wanna"
> clause in the fair use provisions of copyright law.

Yet we have people rampantly asserting that fair use law
allows this, that, and the other thing. My normal defense has
been to point out that our fair use practices are a superset of
fair use law, and that we are a free content encyclopedia;
copyrighted works are decidedly unfree.


> I suggest an in-practice delineation. Point me at stuff needing doing.
> I'll happily put a list somewhere, e.g. my user space.

There's a list of several thousand articles containing 10 or more
fair use images at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Durin/Fair_Use_Overuse
We've been working on that list, and have been whittling it
down, but it's taking forever.

But, that's not really the problem. We need something to point
to every time these issues crop up. Something to be able to
say, "I'm sorry, but this issue has been decided already. Please
see blablabla".

We've been fighting on discographies (both in separate articles
and in band pages). We're going to be having a fight on list
of xyz characters, such as "List of Virtual Dungeon monsters"
and "List of Bountyheads in Cowboy Bebop" Why? Because people
will argue (I'll guarantee it) that since there are no sub articles
for each of those characters that it is therefore acceptable to have
a single image to depict each of those characters.

This gets to the whole "identify" vs "identify and critical commentary"
debate. This needs to be resolved. We can do the work. We can
fight the battles. We just need better tools to do it. Right now,
our ammunition (as it were) is insufficient. The battles keep
cropping up and we have little in the way of fighting it.

This is just *one* type of battle. There's unending debate on
rationales, why they are needed, what constitutes an acceptable
rationale, whether a rationale can be generic and thus templated,
or has to be specific to each use, etc...it never ends.

-Durin