Yann Forget wrote:
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Hi,
Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a écrit :
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is something new to me. Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable? As well as pictures of the presidents of the US? We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which are "© Présidence de la République. Documentation française". cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
Thanks, Yann
As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the same in France.
Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British contributors are cautious because the international nature of the project never seems to be considered.
Caroline (User:Secretlondon)