Bryan Derksen wrote:
James Farrar wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/22/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 22/07/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
"It" is a free encyclopedia. Overuse of fair use is not part of this.
How much use is "overuse"?
Use where a free alternative is possible Use where the media is not the subject of the article or the subject of a section of the article (section being defined as at least 2-3 sentences).
The first is required to meet our it must not be replaceable requirement and the second for the significance requirement. Meet those two and the rest of our EDP is unlikely to be an issue.
So the answer to my question is "one use". Good luck.
Actually, those conditions seem pretty reasonable and in tune with existing policy to me. But it allows album covers, book covers, all manner of screenshot, exactly the sorts of things that have recently become subjects of contention. So I'm not sure where the conflict lies here.
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The point of contention is, the current policy is highly problematic in terms of being "the -free- encyclopedia." That doesn't just mean "free of charge", it means "free as in freedom"-as in, if I see an image used on Wikipedia, there should be a very good chance I can, if I comply with the GFDL, copy, reuse, or modify it as I see fit.
Right now, that's not the case. There are a tremendous number of unfree images in use on the "free" encyclopedia. In a few cases, unfree images may be so necessary, critical, and irreplaceable that we should use them. But many of us, including me, don't believe "a few cases" is equivalent to "all album, book, movie, or corporation articles". Most of those can be written perfectly adequately with solely free content (in this case, text) and the use of the image is decorative. If people want to use free images for marginal, decorative, replaceable purposes, I don't care that much. But we shouldn't use unfree images to do that, and right now, we are.
Replaceable? How are album covers and corporate logos replaceable, you ask? Easy! We discuss the album/corporation/etc. using text only (which is free). Remember, the free replacement need not be as good as the unfree image to qualify the unfree image as replaceable. It need only be adequate. For logos, covers, and the like, in almost all cases, text is an -adequate- replacement.