[Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

[Andre Engels]

2007/1/30, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net>:

> One of the problems with fair use for images is that they don't normally
> follow the traditions and practices of fair-use textual quotations.
> This is also why the doctrines divirge so much from one country to the
> next for these items.
>
> Still, I would like to point out that while fair-use doctrine may only
> be an American concept (largely), similar concepts do exist in virtually
> all other countries, even if to a significantly lesser extent.  There
> may be some images that are not strictly available for any purpose under
> the GFDL, but may under certain circumstances be legitimately used in
> GFDL'd content.  Trying to draw the line between what is acceptable
> content and stuff that simply needs to be deleted is where the problem
> comes in.  Erring on the side of caution and exclude fair-use content
> altogether may be one solution on some projects where fair use content
> isn't so critical.
>
> What I find amazing is the philosophy of some en.wikipedia users that
> are now pushing to allow content on Wikipedia even if it invalidates the
> GFDL when it is included in a Wikipedia article.  It is this expansion
> of the range of images being permitted that surprises me, where the only
> limit to allowed content is only what is strictly legal in the USA, and
> trying to take fair use to the ultimate limits in U.S. Common Law and
> asserting educational and non-profit justifications for its inclusion.
>
> I believe there is some middle ground that can be found between this
> free-for-all philosohpy and complete exclusion of fair use that would be
> easy to understand, work in nearly every country with significant
> numbers of Wikimedia users, and be simple enough to see a policy that is
> just a couple of paragraphs long about the topic.  Perhaps I'm overly
> optimistic here.
>

In my opinion the point of departure of such a 'middle ground' should be
that the inclusion of the fair use image should not hinder the publication
possibilities of the article as a whole, that is, downstream users should be
able to take the article including the picture, and publish it, under the
GFDL, commercially, with modifications. Perhaps I should restrict that by
adding that their modifications do not change significantly the way the
image is used - taking a Wikipedia article and dropping everything but the
picture, then publishing that under GFDL as a derived work from the
Wikipedia article is not the kind of thing that should necessarily be
possible, but taking the single paragraph to which the picture is most
connected, making some minor changes to the text and then putting it and the
image in a different GFDL document and publishing that either commercially
or non-commercially should be.

-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels