[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

[Axel Boldt]

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> The wiki-author doesn't add a picture, he adds a reference to a
> picture.  

...with the intent and expectation that the image and the text be
combined into a whole by the user's browser. It's a technical detail
that this combining is done by the browser rather than by the server -
had we used PDF rather than HTML as our distribution medium, then the
combining would take place on the server.

> > So yes, fair use quotes are technically violations of GFDL, but
> > completely harmless.
> 
> Many copyright holders see things differently. Author Dan van der
> Vat, for example, was asked to pay 25 British pounds for quoting two 
> sentences from  
> Churchill's History of the Second World War in his book "The Atlantic
> Campaign". Sure: The legality is questionable. 

In other words: this would be laughed out of court.

> But don't kid yourself
> into believing that nobody would ever consider quotes infringing.   
> Treating fair use of quotes and images entirely differently is  
> hypocritical and wrong.

It is neither, since short textual quotes are quite different from
images in at least two respects relevant to fair use. 

1) Quotes are typically a tiny fraction of the whole work, while images
are typically 100% of the whole work. 

2) There is no functioning market for the rights in short quotes, but
there is a functioning market for the rights in images.

Now, I don't think Wikipedia is at any risk whatsoever: if somebody
complains about an image, we simply take it down. We don't have money,
so we won't get sued. The downstream users of our materials however may
not share these luxuries, and in addition may have commercial interests
which weakens their fair use defense considerably. In effect our fair
use images shut out large classes of potential users of the
encyclopedia.

Axel

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