Wikipedia talk:Fair use/Archive 12

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archive 12

Contents

Too literal?

It seems we have some very literal interpretations of the Fair Use Criteria floating around, causing a lot of tagging to go on.

Item 1 in the WP:FUC states, in part, "no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information." This is being interpreted far too literally to be practical.

Many, many subjects covered by a proper encyclopedia are going to have far less impact without some sort of visual aid or image. Unfortunately, it's not always possible to take a camera to the summit of Mount Everest or to the bottom of the Mariana Trench to get a free image. It's also not always possible to get a copyright holder's consent for an image, especially if it documents something they'd rather not have known.

Fair use exists for these purposes and I see no reason why there's anything wrong with us using it. I'm certainly a proponent of a completely free encyclopedia, but if we eliminate every last fair use image that "could" be replaced with a free image, we're going to be short a whole lot of pictures.

One example of this is aircraft cockpits. While someone technically *could* take a picture of the cockpit in question, it's not always practical to do so. Yet the image itself adds so much to the article that removing it would truly be a disservice to our readers.

We're going to have to use some common-sense in tagging, or worse, deleting these images. Just because it technically could be replaced by a free image doesn't mean that it's likely to occur. We should ask ourselves, "how useful is this image compared to not having one?"

Certainly, there are obvious images, such as those of common oak trees or other items many of us could simply walk out the door to take a picture of, but there are many other items that while it's technically possible to get a free image, it's difficult to actually have happen.

The spirit of the WP:FUC is to discourage the use of fair use images as much as possible, but we simply can't eliminate their use simply because a free picture "could" be taken.

-- ChadScott 20:02, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales has said unequivocally that it is better to have no image at all in an article, than to have a non-free one, if it would be possible to create a free replacement. Even if it would take ten years to create a free replacement, according to Jimbo, that's okay.
Why? Free content is one of the five pillars of Wikipedia. We are not just an encyclopedia; we are a completely free one. Most other languages of Wikipedia do not allow "fair use" images at all. The English version allows fair use images, but only under a very strict set of circumstances. This is intentional. Even if it's very difficult to create a free image of a particular subject, it's worth it. And keeping non-free images discourages free ones from being created and uploaded. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales also said that any argument that starts with "Jimbo Wales says..." is a poor argument; that it should be able to stand on its own. Even still since he has said that, we still allow fair use images here. So clearly, even though Jimbo says that no image is better than a non-free image, we still have them, meaning they are valid and there shouldn't be a rash to remove (like copyright paranoia) them just because they're non-free. I agree with the too literal stance taken by ChadScott. I believe the standard should be that if an known free image exists, then the non-free image is defined as replaceable. Until the known-free image exists, the non-free image is not replaceable since there is nothing to replace it with. --MECU≈talk 20:45, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
What you're suggesting is not a "flexible" interpretation of FUC#1 and counter-example #8 -- it's saying we should ignore FUC#1 and counter-example #8. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is suggesting that anything should be ignored. My suggestion is that we should recognize this as a guideline and use some common-sense when making decisions regarding what is "acceptable" fair use. No guideline, policy, rule, or law is going to take into account every possible situation and interpreting it like it does is going to be more detrimental than helpful. -- ChadScott 21:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
What you're suggesting ignores the logic of the policy. We want to encourage people to create new free content. The way we do that is not using unfree images where a free one could be created, thus leaving a space to be filled by a newly created or released free image. --RobthTalk 20:56, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
However, your stance also discourages the creation of free content because someone may want to write a very detailed article on a subject and use a fair use picture, only to be discouraged that their image was removed on a technicality. Just because a free picture *could* be created doesn't mean it *can* be created. We're going to have a lot of very barren articles if we continue with this very literal course. -- ChadScott 21:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur. This misreading of the policy, which, for example, allows for the use of promotional images, is negatively affecting our encyclopedia for the sole reason that some editors seem to wish to teach other editors "a lesson," when no objection has been raised to the use of such images by those marketing the particular products in question. It's not a good mode of editing. Please work to enrich Wikipedia, not deplete it, respecting along the way the hard work of other contributors. Badagnani 22:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Please assume good faith: the reason we are strict on images is because we are commited to the goal of a free-content encyclopedia, not because we have some dispute with another editor. And concerning the orignal question, FUC#1 is not being intepreted literally enough. Often times, people use a glossy copyrighted picture on an article without even bothering to check if commons has an alternative image. Borisblue 22:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
This may be true in some cases, but assuming it is true in all cases isn't fair to the people who work hard to add accurate, meaningful content to the 'pedia while respecting and leveraging fair use. "Discourage" does not mean "deletion." I think it's perfectly acceptable to *suggest* that an image should/could be replaced by a free equivalent and it's also perfectly acceptable to speedy delete *obvious* fair use images that can be easily replaced. Deleting *every* fair use image is short-sighted, though, especially if the sole criterion is a literal interpretation of WP:FUC #1. -- ChadScott 22:34, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I had a "discussion" with a user for over a week on this subject. She had a fair-use image he was using to depict a person. She swore up and down that the fact that nobody had replaced the image yet with a free image provided proof that it was impossible to do, thus the picture met the criteria for WP:FUC. Eventually the picture was deleted. Within hours, it was replaced by a public domain image. A few days later, this was replaced by a better public domain image. Leaving fair-use images in place actively discourages their replacement by free content. --Yamla 22:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
This is again generalizing all fair use images into a single group based upon one or two examples. Just because some group of people doesn't understand fair use doesn't mean we all don't or that we all don't weigh the pros and cons. It's also specious to argue that the deletion spurred the change when it may have been that it was tagged, or that someone listed it on the "images requested" page, or some other reason. You may find that if you ask for a replacement image, you might actually get one without having to delete the existing one to the detriment of the article(s) it is attached to. I won't argue that, in some cases, having an image already there may cause some to be lazy about replacing it, but I, for one, work to use free images whenever possible and, when I can't, I use a fair use equivalent and work to replace it when I can. This is the best of both worlds: the reader gets an article with the impact of a picture and the 'pedia gets a free image once one can be obtained. I'd rather have an encyclopedia that is 99% free and full of wonderful content than one that is 100% free and devoid of a large number of illustrations, visual aids, and images. -- ChadScott 23:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
It is against our policy to keep a replaceable non-free image until a free one is found. If you want to argue that we should be less strict in determining what "is available or could be created" means, then I understand your point. That's one interpretation of our policy. But if we agree that a given non-free image is replaceable, we cannot keep it until a free one is found. That is clearly against policy. This bears repeating: if we agree that a non-free image is replaceable, it is against policy to keep it until a free one is found.
Now as for loosening the interpretation, the deciding admin will always have to use his common sense. For example, I recently decided not to delete Image:A8 Coupe.JPG, even though the prototype still exists and might be photographed in the future, because it is in private hands and is not available for photography, and there is no clear indication that it will be on display again. A different admin might have decided differently. You, for instance, might think that taking a photo of the interior of a cockpit is not reasonable to expect. I strongly disagree. But I don't doubt your good faith. It's important for the deciding admin to ask him-or-herself "Is this reasonably replaceable?" But Badagnani, above, wants to keep Image:Cabrales cheese.gif and Image:Contrabass sarrusophone.jpg, simply because "not everyone has a digital camera".
I'm all for using common sense in these cases, and not deleting any images that are not reasonably replaceable at all. But I don't think we should ignore the policy: that replaceable non-free images should be deleted, whether a free replacement exists at the moment or not. – Quadell (talk) (random) 23:42, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
The images are all promotional, as I am very careful with the images I add to make sure that the use of the images will not be problematic to anyone. Many of the Spanish cheeses are exceedingly rare outside their regions and the woodwind instrument, as well as many of the Chinese and Korean liquor images that certain editors are vigorously attempting to delete are similarly esoteric and scarce. Added to this is the fact that some of the images have already been deleted, without even a hint of discussion. This mode of editing is ill-considered and will probably serve to drive away positive, productive contributors. It certainly leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth, considering, again, that no objection has been raised to the use of any of the promotional images by their sources. Badagnani 23:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
We don't need to wait for the lawsuits. The images are currently violating Wikipedia policies and are correctly being marked and then subsequently deleted as per those policies. --Yamla 23:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not that I don't think that taking a picture of a cockpit is unreasonable to expect; I think it's unlikely someone will have access to a particular aircraft in order to take a picture that can be released for "free." However, if you balance that against the *value* of a picture in showing the technologies, layout, and general environment of a cockpit, it's simply invaluable. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. Faced with the choice between no picture of a particular cockpit (especially, the G1000, which has a very notable "look appeal") in an article and a "not free" one, I'd choose the "not free" one every time. You simply can't get the same impact and information from a textual description. For instance, how many Cessna Mustangs do you have access to in order to take a snapshot of the cockpit? Me either... the only source for such a picture is going to be Cessna's promotional material, even though it might technically be possible for someone, somewhere, at some time, to take a "free" picture. We're splitting hairs to such a fine degree that we're moving into a subatomic scale... we need to keep the interests of our *readers* in mind when we makes these decisions. This isn't simply a collection of stuff that we all toy around with: it's a valuable reference, whether it contains "fair use" images or not. -- ChadScott 05:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
(please keep the thread in order)
The corollory question is—how many airshow attendees do not take a digital camera? (Is photography allowed at airshows these days?) They may not be as good as the pro photographer that Cessna hired, but we do not volunteer here to redistribute the work of professionals, however appealing or informative. Personally, I think we volunteer to create free informative content, and to collaborate with others doing the same. If that means spending hours writing a textual description, drawing an original drawing, or contacting Cessna to ask for one or two images under a free license, or working on other articles until the Citation Mustang ships to customers, then that is what this project is about. Alternatively, you can create a page on almost any other website where you can write, or mirror, an article illustrated with Cessna publicity shots, using the full range of the fair use defense, and offer it at Wikipedia as a link. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
You have an absolutely valid point if there's a one-to-one correlation between "airshow attendee that took a picture" and "placed a free image into the Wiki." Unfortunately, this isn't true, nor is it ever going to be. The onus is then placed on the community as a whole to produce this free image because we stubbornly refuse to let them use a fair use image. The point is simply this: an image adds such significant value and impact to an article it's short-sighted and silly of us to demand that every image on the 'pedia be "free" if it could, at some time on an infinite timeline, be replaced with a free image. That's much too rigid a standard and is going to deny us useful content. The standard would be far more effective and useful if it were something like, "could be readily replaced with a free image." Also remember that the WP:FUC is a guideline and shouldn't be enforced with an iron fist. A guideline is, as the word root hints, a guide and not a hard razor-sharp precision instrument with which to guillatine articles by removing their images without giving it some thought. -- ChadScott 18:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
There is some confusion in the above paragraph. WP:FUC is policy, not a guideline, and we don't approach copyright and licensing issues solely with the goal of creating a well-decorated website. Jkelly 18:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
To further clarify, WP:FU is a guideline and WP:FUC is policy. Therefore, fair use as it applies to Wikipedia is not a policy and therefore is open to interpretation. Whether the FUC is a subset of the FU (which I think it is) and therefore being a policy a subset of the guideline makes sense is another issue.--MECU≈talk 22:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
God, you people are so unbelievably patronizing with your "well-decorated website." We oughtn't to approach copyright and licensing issues solely with the goal of advancing this bizarre libertarianish "free content" obsession, either. Numerous people have noticed that the current policy bears little to no relation to actual U.S. fair use law. So don't give us this patronizing "Oh, we are so much better than these simple wikipedians who like their pretty little pictures" crap. john k 18:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

It is quite clear that many of the people here want to eliminate all fair use images from wikipedia. I know that the purpose of this is to "encourage the creation of a free-content encyclopedia," but the creation of a free content encyclopedia isn't the only thing wikipedia's about for. There are other competing goals, like producing good articles, which this very narrow interpretation of fair use policy is impeding. I'd like to highlight, in addition to the part of FUC #1 that Chad has brought to our attention, the fact that the clause about adequately conveying the same information has been more or less interpreted to mean "is a picture of the same subject." I have seen the people here seriously argue that a (hypothetically free - it later came into question whether it really was such) mugshot of Mel Gibson would be better than a publicity picture, because it was free. My contention that the two do not "convey the same information" was largely ignored. Look, if you guys want to ban fair use images, then propose a policy to ban fair use images, and let's have a vote. Alternately, get Jimbo to make a decree that there shall heretofore be no unfree images on wikipedia. Until that time, there is absolutely no consensus for the image massacres that have been occurring over the last few months. john k 18:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Our policy explicitly doesn't attempt to mirror U.S. fair use doctrine (not "law"), Wikipedia is explicitly a free content project (whether or not that is "libertarianish"), and the best way to make sure that en: can continue to make use of unfree content is to not go about it thoughtlessly, and especially to not abuse it as a lazy way around the hassle of acquiring properly licensed content. Jkelly 19:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
This is not about being "lazy," it's about real instead of hypothetical access to content. Just because one could, hypothetically, take an picture of something themselves or negotiate a free license for a particular image doesn't mean, in practical terms, that it's actually possible or that it can be done in any reasonable timeframe. However, the current interpretation some of you are pitching of WP:FUC seems to imply that any image that could, hypothetically, be recreated in a free context should be removed in the hope that someone will be spurred into replacing it because it's gone. My argument is that this is short-sighted and we'll simply end up with far less useful (to the reader) content as a result. A more useful and fair interpretation would be that if a free equivalent is readily available or acquirable, it must be used. If an equivalent is not readily available or acquirable, a fair use image is fine. We should specify our strong preference for free images while still allowing fair use in a useful way. -- ChadScott 20:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur with the above. Add to this that promotional images are just that, for the promotion of the products or individuals being promoted, and thus it is highly unlikely that the use of such promotional images in our educational forum will be objected to. If a cease and desist order is ever, by some chance, issued for our use of such an image, we will comply and take it down. Badagnani 20:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
For the zillionth time: This is not about wether or not the copyright holder would object. This is about the fact that Wikipedia is supposed to be a free licensed ensyclopedia. Free content is not defined as "something that is unlikely to get us sued when used in this particular context". It needs to allow anyone to use it for any purpose in any context, and that is not the case with promotional material. We allow fair use only when there are literaly no oter alternative (such as ilustrating actual copyrighted works (movies, comics, music albums and what not), and various non-reproducable historic events. --Sherool (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
But for all those things, Wikipedia could use its "clout" to get copyright holders to release free versions. There is not, and never has been, a consensus for such a restrictive policy. I think all of us agree that when we have a choice between a free image and a non-free one, that are comparable in every other way, we should choose the free one. I would even suspect that most of us would agree that a) a slightly lower quality free image is better than a slightly higher quality unfree one" and that "people shouldn't be lazy and use fair use images of things that could they could obviously geat a free image for very easily." But beyond that I don't think there's any consensus for such a draconian policy, and the fact that wikipedia is meant to be a "free content" encyclopedia does not have to be interpreted to demand the current policy. A simple policy of preferring free images whenever possible would satisfy that aspect of wikipedia just as well, if that's what we wanted to do. Historically, image policy has never been interpreted to be that we can only use non-free images to illustrate "actual copyrighted works" and "non-reproducible historical events," until very recently, when all of a sudden we are being told that this is policy and always has been. If people want policy to be this, there should be a well-publicized vote on what the English wikipedia's policy on non-free images should be, with as high participation as possible. As it stands, a small group of users has hijacked this policy in order to force through a view which has never been demonstrated to be the consensus of wikipedians. john k 19:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I would make the opposite argument. Using a fair use image is what is short-sighted. It's about instant gratification and easy fixes, making the article look better right now as opposed to focusing on our "long term" goal of creating a truly freely reusable resourse that anyone can use (even those that happen to live outside of the US, and as such have no fair use law to hide behind). Also people have some strange notions of what "readily available" means. For example it's not unhard off for people to rely on fair use images to ilustrate for example the article about theyr school, simply because they don't personaly own a (good) camera... --Sherool (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Nobody wants to ban all unfree images, just limit the usage of them to those that we have no other choice but to use. It's been made clear over and over again by Jimbo (even today -- see his comment in this thread here) that this is policy. howcheng {chat} 22:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
If there's ambiguity about "readily available," then you devise a simple test: is the object of or information within this image easily reproducable by an average person? I'd argue a picture of your school is pretty easy to get, but a picture of a rare flower, bird, isolated geographic formation, cloud type, etc. would pass that test and thus qualify for use. The whole guideline/policy/whatever is just terribly draconian as written and needs to be revised to meet up with reality instead of some vision of how things should be. -- ChadScott 22:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
People tend to be very poor judges of what is and is not easily replacable. Recent images I've deleted for violating FUC #1 include a photo of a fish that's found in a number of major aquariums, a photo of a person who makes regular appearances in front of crowds of tens of thousands, a map of a subway system, and a photo of a building in a major city. In all cases, the uploader argued that the image would be hard or impossible to replace. --Carnildo 07:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
And I think that's why the criteria should stay they are. Far from people taking it too literally, many are using it as an excuse with the flimsiest of reasons. You say the test should be "is the object of or information within this image easily reproducable by an average person?" But that's taking most of the burden off the writers of the article. There's no need for the photograph to be "easily reproducible" - just possible to be reproduced. It doesn't have to be done by the "average person" - merely a person who interacts with Wikipedia with the necessary equipment/access etc. The criteria are up for misinterpretation in both directions. Trebor 10:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The biggest problem I see with the far too literal interpretation is that some fair use images will never have free alternatives as there is no way to make one. Images such as screenshots, cover scans of books, DVD, CDs, etc., photos of celebrities, and so on, will never be free as the material being photographed or scanned has rights tied up in not only the creator of the image, but the owner of the original material being scanned or photographed. In the case of celebrity photos, it's been shown again and again in multiple court cases, that the subject of the photograph has rights to their likeness being reproduced, whether for profit or not. This makes it practically (if not completely) impossible to ever have a truly free image of a celebrity here. Now, I can understand coming down on people who upload photos of buildings or fish under fair use, but when it comes to things that are unlikely or impossible to get a truly free image of, I think we shoul err on the side of leniency rather than being uber-anal about it. A picture is usually worth many, many paragraphs in the amount of information it can convey, and that's why we have the ability to include fair use images in the first place: for instances where it's practically or completely impossible to obtain a free one. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

In the U.S., you can photograph a celebrity without their permission, and publish it as well. This is done all the time. I'm not familiar with Japanese law on the subject -- but if it is completely impossible, as you say, to create a free image of a celebrity in Japan, then I would argue that the image is not replaceable. You'd have to provide some sort of reference for your assertion that I can't just photograph someone and upload the pic to Wikipedia, though. (This, by the way, would fit in just fine with what you term a "too literal" and "uber-anal" interpretation: if the non-free image is replaceable, we can't use it, but if it's irreplaceable, we can use it.) – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Then I think we need to change the policy to read something like along the lines of "It is always more desirable to use a free image, and if one is available, it should be used rather than a fair use image. However, use of a fair use image until that time is acceptable as long as the appropriate licensing information is included when uploading the fair use image." That would allow articles to use fair use images when no free image could be found, and would stop all this nonsense of literalists going on deletion rampages simply because there's a tiny possibility that a free image could, maybe, possibly, by some small chance, be found. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, this is not necessarily true. If it were, there would be no such thing as model releases when you take photographs or video of people. While it's legal to take a picture of a person candidly on a public street (and even that can be challenged in some cases), the lines are much fuzzier when you take a picture of someone at a venue or in portrait form. I think it's great for you guys to believe in your pipe dream of a totally free encyclopedia, but one of these days you're going to realize that there are few photographs of stuff out there that are truly free. If Wikipedia ever becomes published in a for-profit form and produces income, all sorts of people/groups/organizations will come out of the woodwork demanding their fair share on the basis of all sorts of obscure legal precedent and it will be for stuff you guys insist is "free". However, fair use items have a well-known and highly regarded precedent already... they will likely be the ones to be challenged the least. -- ChadScott 01:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The criterion needs to be less about whether a free image is theoretically possible, and more about how realistic the possibility is. A lot of things in this world are possible in theory, but only a subset of those things are actually realistically attainable. As a result, I have to disagree that fair use images should be deleted in advance of free use images becoming available. For instance, a free use image of a rock band is realistically only possible to obtain at a concert, since that's about the only time that all members of a band are all together in a public place at once...and many concert venues specifically ban bringing cameras into the performance, which limits the opportunities even further. And for many figures who don't make a lot of regularly scheduled public appearances, a free use image would only be possible if a Wikipedian actively went out of their way to stalk the person. And it's a really bad idea for Wikipedia to be encouraging that kind of thing in the name of a theoretical possibility. A free use image of Paris Hilton? Yeah, that's pretty easy to get. A free use image of Tessa McWatt? Not so much. Bearcat 10:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Bearcat, for explaining this so well. This is exactly the point I'm trying to get across here. Your explanation is much more clear than I could have explained it. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more with what Bearcat just said. -- Ned Scott 04:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
You're assuming that the only way to get free photos of people is to take them ourselves. Why can't somebody just ask her or her publisher for a freely-licensed photo? We've gotten lots of photos that way. —Chowbok ☠ 21:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
There is very natural and obvious reasoning from both sides of the table here. The nub of the issue is effectively 'when *can* we include fair use content?' and further to that question we have a requirement to draw a line in the sand, specifying for all what constitues a fair use of fair use content. You cannot define this by simply giving example-counter example because we each have access to different resouces, and we each have different concepts of what resouces a *normal* person would have. The goal is (or should be) something along the lines of 'to use free content wherever possible upto the point where it would degrade the project to remove fair use content, but no futher' - for which the precidence is set in any single use of fair use content where it cannot be replaced. The case needs to be made for which side of this debate must take further action - does the submitter need to make the case that the content is worthwhile *before* the content is removed, or does the removing editor need to make the case that the content should be removed *before* removing. OR as is the case now, should these processes happen once the content has been removed. I personally believe that the case should be made while the content remains - if the editor takes the time to either replace the content themselves, arrange for someone else todo so, or *reasonably prove* (here we go again) that the content should be removed then let it be removed, otherwise, protect the content from irredeamable changes. I think looking at the paths of unix operating systems is useful here, BSD went the route of *absolute* free content only, and Linux the route of *compatible licence* (akin to fair use here). Linux is the far more prolific of the two - and one could reasonably put that down to having more of what the user wants now, rather than waiting for BSD style licence content to be produced. I suggest that the people touting the BSD sytle seriously consider the ramifications of Long Term Degredation Of Content, and prudently offer a comprimise between the two, that will allow both mindsets to co-exist productively. Cheers, Henry —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.31.227.203 (talk) 04:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

It is not always clear what the statement means. In some cases, like the pitch drop experiment picture, one might have to wait 10 years or more to get a comparable picture. One might also have more difficulty in securing permission to take a replacement picture than in getting permission to use the picture itself. In this case, is a replacement picture available? Well in theory, one might be. But in practice, one might have to wait a long time and hope that things will work out just perfectly to allow a replacement picture. Does this mean it is available or not? I would argue that theoretically available is not the same as practically available. In this case, I think we have satisfied the letter and spirit of the law, although of course a lawyer should be consulted to get a better idea.--Filll 14:52, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

6 years since the last drop so the next drop should have started forming. It is at a university. It is quite likely that at least one student at that university edits wikipedia.Geni 15:54, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Images of living people

Please take a few moments to look at a proposal for images of living people on Wikipedia. Would appreciate comments before I make a final draft for voting. The intention is to clear the air on this class of images. I was planning to simplify the proposal a little, while adhering closely to the principle as explained in the preamble to the proposal. Thank you.--luke 08:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks extremely silly tbh which has a hidden agenda. Matthew Fenton (talk · contribs · count · email) 09:03, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi, the reasoning is made plain in the preamble, and is outlined in more detail on the proposal talk page. You are welcome to comment there as well. Thanks--luke 09:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I can certainily seen a hidden agenda, you want to "outlaw" things such as cast photos, character images, et cetera, which are certainily not replacable
"and elsewhere in Wikipedia
Wikipedia strives to produce and distribute free content which is perpetually free for unlimited distribution, modification, and application for all users and in all mediums. This goal could best be met by completely disallowing all copyright images where a particular living person is identifiably the main subject of the image." Matthew Fenton (talk · contribs · count · email) 09:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback...I think the words 'identifiably the main subject' were intended to take care of those types of image. hmmmm, the wording could possibly be amended to 'the only significant content'. Your thoughts and counter-proposals?--luke 10:10, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, let me make sure I understand this... you want to forbid biographical pages from containing images of the person the page is about? That's just silly. -- ChadScott 20:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
This is the old tradeoff between high quality and "free". Wiki surely does not want to present for 50 years an inferior information source for millions of users just for the convenience of one unborn user in 2056. Rjensen 20:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
One of the reasons I asked for comments is concern because this particular aspect of the proposal maybe too drastic, the 'cure' being worse than the 'disease'. It's one of the reasons I was planning to simplify. ....Saw the comments on the proposal discussion page too. Thnx for the feedback--luke 04:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm probably one of the most fervent free-content "ideologues" around here, and I think this is going too far. First of all, if we have a free-content image of somebody, why not use it? And secondly, if a free-content image does not exist and is not likely to be created, why not use a fair use photo? Why is this drastic policy needed for living persons, and not, say album covers? I don't really understand the reasoning behind the subject having a "hold" on Wikipedia. Borisblue 05:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi, the proposal has been modified in the light of feedback and perhaps you can lend it your support now. As I said earlier, reasoning is made plain in the preamble and is outlined in more detail on the proposal talk page - where you can follow the discussions in detail. In brief, the root of the debate is free content, but I'm confining the guideline to nonfree images of living people for 2 reasons - this has been a particular source of contention recently and secondly for practicality. We will finalize prior to voting very shortly, but there are still 2 options and you may care to express a preference or make a counter-proposal. Thanks.--luke 04:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
The proposal wording will be finalized in a few hours...then I will add some examples of Wikipedia usage and summarize pro and anti reasons (pls comment if you wish) ..luke 18:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Why not just tag images that aren't GFDL in some way. That way everyone can get the benefit of seeing fair use images on Wikipedia, and if it's repurposed later into print or some other format you can include or exclude whatever classes of images are desired. Personally I think it's silly to avoid using perfectly good fair use images when the alternatives clearly are not as good. The logic here seems to be that someone might someday challenge the legal status of some of these images, so let's take them out before they do. While that might be a good idea in software (because of dependencies, etc), the worst case scenario is that a particular image turns out to have its fair use status disputed, and you pull it. That is much less drastic and more useful than removing thousands of images en masse. Sure, with all other things being equal, a GFDL image of equal quality to a presumed fair use image should take priority. But an out of focus camera phone picture or pencil sketch is not going to be nearly as useful to visitors as a real picture.

Semi-related

My gripe right now is semi-related to this, so I'm adding to this section: How did we come to FUC #1, exactly? Because it would appear that it seems mighty unreasonable to expect that any living person could realistically be replaceable. Obviously, we want as much free material as possible. Shouldn't the policy instead reflect that the image be replaced when one is available, rather than assuming one is capable of being created? Not a lawyer, but I can't imagine legal issues with using a fair use image in the absence of an actual free image. Is there a backstory I'm missing on this, or should we adjust the policy to a more sane, logical approach? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

FUC #1 is not based on legal issues, but on the direction we want to be going with our content. The idea behind it is that if we just ask for the image to be replaced while leaving the old in place, there is very little incentive for editors who care about the topic to go to the effort to create a new free image. If, on the other hand, we remove the image, there is a clear and immediate benefit to the creation of a new image; a number of cases have been observed where an unfree image is replaced rather quickly by a free image once it is deleted. I don't know what the conversation that led to the introduction of the criterion was (its been around since the creation of the criteria page over a year ago, but here is my explanation of how the current activity on this front came about. --RobthTalk 14:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC) didin't get the edit conflict message with Quadell for some reason--I'm honestly not this redundant usually. --RobthTalk)
As was said above, the main reason that replaceable images are not allowed is that the lack of an image encourages Wikipedians to find or create free replacements. There have been many, many cases over the last few weeks where a non-free image had been used in an article for years without a replacement uploaded, and the non-free image was taken down as a violation, and a free replacement was uploaded within days. Why would I remove a non-free promo-photo and replace it with my lower-quality but free photo, if we're allowed to use non-free promo photos? – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
So this isn't based on anything logical, but instead using policy to direct behavior. I'm not sure that's a good idea at all - we want to use free images, that seems to be enough incentive, and I'm not sure it's a net benefit that "no" image is better than a fair use replaceable one. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Crosspost from "talk:Images of living people"

I think this policy is very misguided, for reasons I posted on the other talk page:

There's only so far such a policy can go before it damages the overall quality of the project. Promotional photos designed for purposes compatible with Wikipedia's mission but not necessarily with the free licensing aspect put in mind, they shouldn't be removed.

Because, honestly, the bulk of Wikipedia's information comes from copyrighted articles which are not free by nature, but we source and credit. Why can't we do the same with photographs? All this is going to do is dilute the quality of the encyclopedia which a number of people have worked so hard to build, all for the purpose of following the mission statement just a little too closely.

I'm all for Utopian ideals to a degree, but this smacks of an unrealistic and unreachable goal that punishes many articles but benefits few. It smacks of the same sort of questionable licensing practices that keep Debian so far out of the mainstream. Wikipedia's well in the mainstream; let's not change that by following the interpretation of the mission statement so literally. - Stick Fig 09:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

As an additional note, I'm a newspaper journalist and do a lot of layout and editing, and I deal with fair use photos all the time. This policy is far stricter than anything that we do in newspapers. I really question its necessity. - Stick Fig 22:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppet Vandal / Deletion of Fair Use images

As I've mentioned above, screenshots and cover art do not necessarily need source information (ie. who scanned it), rather it should have information regarding the bodies which hold the copyright to the work. Whereas sourcing is important for press photos or publicity shots, it's not so for whoever pressed the scan button. I also noted how a user, User:Squreasdxde, had tagged a lot of album art such as Image:!!!.jpg with {{nsd}} and pending deletion. I also noted how even though many were erroneously tagged, the current lack of edits on Squreasdxde shows that admins are not looking at the content of images that they remove.

What has further alarmed me, is that there seems to be an entire bunch of users whose sole edits are to tag album art, or other non-source-important images with the "no source information" tag. These users all follow the same simple steps:

  1. Create a new username
  2. Tag 50-100 images with {{nsd}} in the space of an hour
  3. Make no further edits

This absolutely screams of sockpuppetry to me, a user is obviously disgruntled at Wikipedia's provisions for Fair Use, or Wikipedia as a whole. Their behaviour is too similar to be different users, in fact, which users first edit is {{nsd}}? Checkuser isn't useful either, as it can't be used for fishing we won't be able to find the culprit, rather just a string of single purpose accounts. I'm guessing that they don't use a single account in case of a backlash, after all, 2 weeks later, and all that's left of their contrib tree are a handful of non-deleted edits.

Here, take a look at some of the users I've identified:

What do you think? - Hahnchen 04:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I doubt he's/they're being intentionally disruptive. The first user you listed, Dyuququ, has mostly correctly tagged images. As for the others, he may be trying to avoid having to deal with the controversy of it. Either way, the only thing we can do is identify these things, leave messages on their talk pages, and undo the listings. – Quadell (talk) (random) 15:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
P.S. It looks like orphanbot has removed the images from articles. It will take a lot of work to undo all this. Anyone up to it? If not, we'll lose a lot of album and book covers. – Quadell (talk) (random) 15:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
The latter ones look very similar to Angel EOW (talk • contribs • logs), who tagged nearly 200 on November 2. I went through and reversed most of them after a user complained on WP:MCQ. ×Meegs 16:25, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
There's also Tony fusi (talk • contribs • logs), reported here. I'm not sure there are bad intentions either, but these single-use accounts are very hard to get a message to. ×Meegs 16:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
There's a user who's obviously using sockpuppetry in order to escape the consequences of their actions. I see that as being disruptive. If a user did this with CSDs then I'm sure that new page patrol would be more careful, but with image tags, Orphanbot does most of the work so the closing admin doesn't really have to think about deleting it. - Hahnchen 18:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
The closing admin really should think about it before deleting -- I always do when I close these. If it has a source, explicit or implicit, I don't delete. But there's a big backlog, so it's hard to be too critical of the admins doing the work, even if they aren't being as careful as they should. – Quadell (talk) (random) 23:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't want to be critical of the closing admin, I absolutely understand why it happens, especially when its so easy as Orphanbot's already done the legwork. I mentioned this suspicious behaviour at WP:AN and Carnildo has mentioned that Orphanbot will ignore images in certain self-sourced categories such as album covers. - Hahnchen 01:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Does this include the 200 or so album covers which Aujin66 tagged and Orphanbot removed from their respective pages? DHowell 05:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Obviously not, you can see the thread at AN here. - Hahnchen 15:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
And as I suspected, nearly all of those images got deleted by admins. Over 200 album articles had their images removed for no good reason. Can anyone really say this is to the benefit of Wikipedia? I wish I could say this is an isolated incident, but I know that it is not. A lot of collateral damage is being inflicted every day by Wikipedia's ruthless enforcement of the fair-use rules. DHowell 22:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Update I've notified the deleting admins, and they have restored these images. Unfortunately, there have been others which I had not been keeping as careful track of, and without admin powers I am unable to determine other images which may have beeen deleted under similar circumstances. This particular case only came to my attention because I noticed a greater than usual amount of images in Category:Images with unknown source for that day. DHowell 20:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

A change to FUC #1

Since I'm told above that rationale #1 is not based in any legal hedging as much as directing behavior, I propose the following change, with the changed words in bold:

No free equivalent is available or is created that would adequately give the same information...

This would continue to allow for logical fair use usage (which would include strong fair use rationales) while dismissing the need to quibble over whether a low-quality free image should replace it - it simply would happen.

The only reasons we should be restricting fair use in this context is for legal issues. This fixes that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use has a posse. And I am in the camp which believes that we should not be so restricting of fair use policy. However, I am not The Decider. He spoke, and a core contingency followed. - Hahnchen 05:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Simply to point out that Jimbo is in breach of his own statement of principles, which the proposal on images of living people is intended to address. He cannot have it both ways, so it is for wiki-users to make the decision, don't you think?--luke 05:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Why is that in breech of his statement of principles? That statement lauds the GFDL, and says we must adhere very strictly to both the letter and the spirit of it. It's hardly in the spirit of free-content if one can choose to reuse someone's non-free image, rather than create a new image licensed under the GFDL. – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
You misunderstood...my comment to Borisblue below is relevant here too. Thanks.--luke 16:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC) / p.s. you characterized Jimmy Wales's principle #5 correctly....but how does that square with his more recent statement "we ought to have almost no fair use, outside of a very narrow class of images that are of unique historical importance" - 31 July 2006. You see there is absolutely no room for ambiguity in Jimmy's October 2001 view, and it hasn't been amended on that webpage. Yet he is willing to allow fair use now, albeit confined to 'a very narrow class of images.' But then, what has happened to the principle? Because if Jimmy is prepared to allow any fair use then he has ditched the principle he so proudly proclaimed 5 years ago. If he now wishes to keep to that principle then let him say so...if not then we can draw our own conclusions. --05:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I am in strong support of this simple change. It reinforces our core values without being overly restrictive of fair use. -- ChadScott 07:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Strongly support. Not sure why there are those so passionately dedicated to the elimination of images that are designed to be used for just this purpose; if not for use in places such as Wikipedia, the lowly promophoto has no raison d'etre. Jenolen 09:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Strongly disagree. Who said the only reason we should restrict fair use is because of legal issues? There are a lot of other reasons why we want to restrict fair use. As is so often pointed out, wikipedia is supposed to be a free content encyclopaedia and fair use images are not free. The disadvantages of fair use are numerous and discussed so many times. Remember our goals here. There is probably no legal reason for quite a lot of our policies but we keep them simply because they help us achieve our goals. I would argue 1 free image is often worth 100 fair use images. Nil Einne 11:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Comment. Wikipedia is not a free chatroom. I checked the latest edits of the last voter and could not find a single one in mainspace. Since some of you are aware that other editors are building "a free content encyclopaedia" here, it is advisable that every commentator should write several new articles before posting comments on this page. Then your attitudes may change drastically. Less chatting, more writing, please. --Ghirla -трёп- 11:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Comment: Advisable maybe, but not necessary to put in one's voice. It's absurd to think that because someone (and I'm probably one you'd consider similarly) discusses policy instead of creating articles that they somehow have less to offer. I frankly find your claim to be exclusionist and elitist. Besides, how would writing articles change someone's beliefs on fair use, and if they did, is that preferable? --PsyphicsΨΦ 18:22, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Many guys who discuss policies on regular basis have little understanding of what mainspace editing is, why this project exists and how it operates. I wince at their facile dictums of what wikipedia needs. How do they know? I appreciate non-editing janitors who help prolific editors to work in the project. I don't appreciate those who use Wikipedia as a quasi-legal institution, a vehicle for personal career or chatroom. Less bull, more writing. What I see on this page is 90% bull. Regards, Ghirla -трёп- 14:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Strong support we should not shoot ourselves in the feet. If no free images are available now fair use should be used. Wikipedia is already a working resource hundreds of thousands people use, they cannot wait. Alex Bakharev 11:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Oppose, obviously. This goes against Wikipedia's third pillar. This isn't up to a vote; this is fundamentally what Wikipedia is about. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
This is untrue. Fair use isn't a copyright infringement, for one, and we don't limit fair use in other areas (like album covers) that would otherwise be allegeldy "incompatable with the GFDL." --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Since, of course, if we refused to use album covers people would come rushing forward with free use alternatives... --RobthTalk 15:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Strong oppose - all replaceable images should be replaced. I found that users find a free alternative a lot quicker if fair use is deleted. If not deleted, it just hangs around for years and years. You can argue and make exceptions for living people, but not such a general broad change. Renata 14:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
oppose with the force of a trillion suns 300K fair use images is enough.Geni 14:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. "The only reasons we should be restricting fair use in this context is for legal issues." No, actually. If by limiting fair use we can increase the amount of free content we create, then let us limit fair use. --RobthTalk 15:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
But this is exactly the type of thing we should be avoiding. We can increase the amount of free content while having a logical position on fair use. They aren't exclusive concepts. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:24, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
You are ignoring the demonstrated correlation between the removal of unfree images and the creation of replacement free images (with the removal of the unfree image being the instigating factor, not vice versa). The goal is not just to increase free content, it is to maximize it. --RobthTalk 17:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
This is true - I am ignoring it because I believe it to be a poor way/reason to advocate policy. We want free content, no one disputes that and no one's against it. To limit the amount of fair use content we should use in order to force more free content, however, seems counterproductive. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Counterproductive from some perspectives. From an eventualist perspective with the aim of producing maximal free content, it is highly productive. I believe that maximizing the amount of quality content redistributable, over the long term, to a world audience is significantly more important than providing fair use images to our much smaller immediate audience on the internet. --RobthTalk 18:31, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Eventualism has a fatal flaw: it requires an infinite timeline. As you may know, given an infinite timeline, anything is possible. Unfortunately, we live in the real world and we have to acknowledge that some fair use content is not replacable in a reasonable timeframe. In the meantime, we're denying that content to our readers for no reason other than it will get created eventually on an infinite timeline. -- ChadScott 18:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not think eventualism requires an infinite timeframe; rather, it involves placing the concerns of some point in the future over the immediate concerns of the present, where the two come into conflict. I'm not entirely sure how relevant this is, however, as I'm having trouble thinking of a subject for which:
  1. Deleting a fair use image would immediately provide an incentive which can be acted upon to produce a free image (i.e. the subject is not utterly unphotographable (for the general public) for the foreseeable future--if this is not the case then deleting the current image serves no purpose).
  2. There would not be at least a reasonable chance of replacement over a few years.
If you have an example in mind that you think meets both these criteria (and so would be deleted mistakenly under the current phrasing of the policy), that would be a good argument for fine-tuning the policy to prevent such a consequence--but not for drastically altering the policy in the way Jeff has suggested. --RobthTalk 18:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Let's see, there's rare birds, rare cloud formations, or anything that's rare yet still currently exists... cockpits of large transport aircraft that very few people have access to, large diesel engines in naval vessels, and a million others. The policy needs to take into account the availability of free content, not just that free content could be created somewhere on an infinite timeline. "Over a few years" is a lifetime on the Internet... items could born, live, and die all while waiting for a free picture of them, yet we could have informed millions of people about how something looks/looked during that time. -- ChadScott 21:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
As far as cockpits and diesels, if they are not made available to public viewing they would not be replaceable, in my opinion. For the rest, I think that a timescale of years is perfectly reasonable; time-compression on the internet is no reason not to take a long-term view. --RobthTalk 22:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
From an eventualist viewpoint, the deletion of Fair Use images should be of utmost concern. After all, they'll become public domain eventually won't they? - Hahnchen 00:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Oppose FUC #1 is already too lenient as is. Borisblue 16:17, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Then please see this discussion on a proposal which should be to your taste. Your input would be very welcome. Thanks.--luke 16:30, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Strong oppose. I have seen numerous examples of fair-use images not replaced with free content until they were deleted. This change pushes the burden of proof away from the person justifying the fair-use. There's certainly times when it is appropriate to use a fair-use image but I do not believe a sufficient rationale is just because the uploader isn't currently aware of any free replacement. --Yamla 16:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't see how it changes the burden of proof at all. It just makes the policy realistic rather than ridiculous. Just because it's possible someone, somewhere, someday will get a picture of George Michael's ass doesn't mean it's likely to happen in the lifetime of the Wikipedia. -- ChadScott 18:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Let's use examples of images that Wikipedia will actually need, as opposed to categories of images that are as unnecessary as they are irreplaceable. --RobthTalk 19:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Umm, that was an extreme (and intended to be funny) example. There have been dozens of real-world examples given with regard to this same problem and they're simply ignored. -- ChadScott 21:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. My experience has been the same as Renata and Yamla's. The criterion is necessary (as is) for us to acquire free images to match our free text, whenever possible. ×Meegs 17:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
The key words being, "whenever possible." The problem with the current wording is that some admins have interpreted it to mean "could be theoretically created" and they're pursuing it with an almost religious fanaticism that's detrimental to the community as a whole. For instance, a fair-use picture of a rare bird would be deleted because it's theoretically possible for a free equivalent to be produced at some unknown time. The policy needs to take into account the practicality of finding or producing free replacement content rather than whether or not it could be accomplished in theory. -- ChadScott 18:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I could be thinking of a different rare bird picture, but the one I am thinking of that came up for discussion in the past week was deleted because the uploader refused to license it under appropriate terms, not because it violated WP:FUC. Nevertheless, the clear intention of criteria #1 of WP:FUC is to prohibit replaceable fair-use images where it is possible to create a free image. Now, a good example is a person in hiding. It is theoretically possible that a free image could be taken of them but the fact that they are in hiding means that it is entirely unreasonable to do so. On the other hand, consider the case of a celebrity. Other users (not ChadScott) have claimed we would need to illegally stalk the celebrity to get a free image; this is clearly bogus. What about someone like, say, Michael Shermer. He's not someone you'd generally claim is a celebrity and we only had a fair-use image of him. Another user politely asked that an image be provided under a free license and this was done. What about a rare bird? This really comes down to whether anyone involved in monitoring this bird would consider taking a free image. As a general rule, the assumption is that such an image could be provided but perhaps there's some reason why this is not possible in this case. --Yamla 18:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
The rare bird example is one which certainly would be deleted under the current criterion, and I believe that this is detrimental to the project. Another example is Image:Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C.jpg which has now been re-uploaded. It is perfectly suitable, within legal fair-use guidelines, yet was listed and deleted at WP:CP. Sure, it's possible to go onto a ship which uses the world's largest diesel engine, and then to take a snapshot of it. If you're one of these eventualists, then that image there is destroying Wikipedia, because it means at some infinite time in the future we'll still have a fair use image and not a free use one. But if we don't have that fair use one, at an arbitrary finite time in the future, we won't have anything. - Hahnchen 19:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
And Jimbo has said that it is much better to have no image at all than to have a non-free image, when it would be possible to create a free replacement. [1] I know you disagree with him on this, but he's the one who founded and (largely) paid for this project. – Quadell (talk)

(random) 23:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

If Wales wants to make this opinion that he has expressed into official policy, he has the ability to do so. He has not done so, and so I don't see why we should treat this comment as any more authoritative than any other comment by any other wikipedia user - that is, it should be accepted to no greater extent than any of us finds his arguments convincing. john k 06:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Any argument that starts with, "Jimbo said," doesn't hold any merit, in my opinion. We don't work for Jimbo, we work for the greater good of the community. To me, that means giving them access to as much knowledge as we possibly can. -- ChadScott 18:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
But for "access to knowledge" we should understand full access, and not only the right to read and see. If this knowledge is not free, Wikipedia is just one more informative website, rather than a project to gather free knowledge. --Abu Badali 19:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
So, what you're saying is that Wikipedia isn't an informative website, it's a repository for free knowledge? Somehow I doubt the majority of the users of Wikipedia are more in favor of totally free content (which is impossible in the context of an encyclopedia) rather than more information being available to them. It seems those same users would much rather be able to see what an exceedingly rare animal actually looks like rather than sleep better at night knowing the entire textual description they're reading is totally 'free'. -- ChadScott 20:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I understand that you (and a lot of other editors) can't see Wikipedia as anything more than an informative website. But this project is far much more than this, fellow. Either you see it or not. Our ultimate goal is not to please current Internet surfers. Indeed, current Internet surfers don't need Wikipedia to know how a given rare bird or baseball player looks like. They can use Google for that. Wikipedia has far broader goals than simply being a reference website, intended only for "reading". --Abu Badali 20:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: Hmm, this seems to argue that Wikipedia become far less than it should be. I don't agree with this opinion. Badagnani 21:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly support. Indeed all replaceable images should be replaced. That's not the same thing as all replaceable images being deleted before they have been replaced. It seems to me that an image's replaceability is generally demonstrated by, er, replacing it. And the argument that fair use images often aren't in practice replaced until they are deleted seems totally beside the point to me. If that argument is acceptable, then there's all kinds of other things we should be deleting. john k 22:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not that they often aren't replaced otherwise, it's that they're much more frequently replaced when FUC#1 is enforced. The goal is not to get rid of information, if it were, we wouldn't care about replaceability. FUC#1 is for promoting open content, and nearly everything else on Wikipedia is open, so there isn't much else one could delete along the lines of FUC#1 (other than removing all fair use). --Interiot 23:48, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
All the worse for your argument that they are only "much more frequently replaced" when FUC#1 is enforced. The goal is not to get rid of information, but that is very frequently the result. Can anyone provide evidence that free images really replace deleted images at a higher rate than otherwise? It seems to me, beyond this, that the real question is whether deletion of images under FUC#1 causes the creation of more free images than deleted images which do not return. If the policy is mostly leading to deletion of images that are not replaced, it seems completely unjustifiable to me. john k 00:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly support. A necessary limitation on a far too expansive and unnecessary policy provision. The comments that we should not care what the law permits because we want free content are nonsensical, because the law defines the boundaries of what is free and what isn't, and copyrighted expression is implicated in Wikipedia content far more substantially than through our fair use of images. For example, removing all fair use would prevent us from describing the content of any copyrighted works of fiction. Our use of a low-res copy of a promotional photo that is given away freely to be used exactly as we're using it, and that has little to no intrinsic commercial value as a consequence, is incredibly trivial compared to our use of a story's copyrighted plot and narrative to describe that work of fiction. A better use of energy and effort than obsessing over images that easily qualify as fair use and for which no one is going to get sued would be ensuring that our articles on fictional works and subjects provide enough factual context to justify our use of the copyrighted works, and don't use any more than is necessary for the article. Postdlf 00:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Comment I strongly support this view! Jenolen 02:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: Is the above in reference to the use of the "promophoto" tag specifically? Or are some of the other tags being interpreted as "fair use" as well? There is a limit to which images may be used without the photographer's consent. Badagnani 02:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Very strong support, per the well reasoned arguments put forward above (mostly john k's and Postdlf's comments). The most important thing about Wikipedia is, to me, that it be valuable to readers and researchers using the site. IMHO, if images are being deleted prior to a suitable or reasonable replacement being found, then readers are being deprived of a complete encyclopedia. And the encyclopedia is, after all, why most people edit/read Wikipedia. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. I think the point made by Postdlf above that an any encyclopedia that discusses copyrighted material in any way inevitably relies on fair use is an important one. There is simply no way to make Wikipedia fair use-free, and any policy that aims at that is unrealistic. If Jimmy Wales' position is that we should try to get rid of all fair use from WP, then he hasn't thought through his position thoroughly, and the appropriate way to call that to his attention is by trying to change the policy. --Nareek, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    There is no way to make wikipedia fair use free? The German wikipedia uses free-content exclusively, as do several other wikipedias. The english wikipedia has one of the more liberal fair use policies. Borisblue 04:31, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
If the German Wikipedia quotes a single word from a copyrighted work, then it is not "fair use free". Nareek 04:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it needs to be stressed that there is no legal necessity for deleting things like promotional photos and album (book, DVD...) covers. Such things are virtually inherently fair use. I can assure you that at professional publications, if editors see a reason to use a promotional photo, they don't agonize over the relationship between the topic of the article and the subject of the photo--they just use the photo, because people who send out promotional photos don't turn around and sue the people who use them for copyright violation. (You could conceivably provoke a libel suit with the misuse of a promotional photo--but not a copyright suit.) There is no better rationale for deleting promotional photos than is for deleting quotations from copyrighted works of literature. Nareek 04:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This is not a legal issue primarily; Wikipedia maintains a stricter fair use policy than legally necessary to stay true to our free content ideals. Borisblue 04:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
The ideal of not showing people what albums look like doesn't strike me as something worth going to the barricades for. Nareek 04:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Quoting from Jimbo in Quadell's link above ([2]:
There's many images where we can perfectly legitimately and legally say under the doctrine of fair use, we can use this image, but we'd prefer not to. We'd prefer to instead get a free image and I think there's been a lot of resistance from people who would prefer to sort of be lazy and say this is good enough. But I think that tide has turned, and I think the people working on fair use tagging and the rules for fair use have done a really fantastic job of changing people's minds and making people realize that we should limit fair use to only some very narrow categories, categories where we think it's worth it to take a stand for fair use; fair use is a perfectly good doctrine in fair use, it basically that the rights of copyright holders are not infinite, they do not extend to every possible thing that you might want to do. At the same time though, we only want to use it in cases where it's really worthwhile doing it, and it doesn't actually hinder the growth of free content. A friend of mine loves to upload pictures of baseball players that he goes and takes himself. And you know, his pictures aren't as good as pictures that someone nicked from a website somewhere, a publicity photo. But they're free, they're under a free license, and anyone can use them anywhere in the world for any purpose. I'd rather have an image from a wikipedian that's not quite as good, than a professional image which we can only use under the very narrow doctrine of fair use. We're not fundamentally about having a really pretty encyclopedia, we're fundamentally about having a free encyclopedia, and in the end that's far more pretty, if you ask me. Borisblue 04:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Why the fuck should I care that it is Jimbo Wales that is saying this unless either a) I find his arguments convincing on their own merits, or b) he has decreed that this is official policy. He has not done the latter, and clearly many of us don't find his arguments convincing on their own merits, so what's the point of all this? john k 06:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Not only that, but Jimbo is just plain wrong, specifically about: ...his pictures aren't as good as pictures that someone nicked from a website somewhere, a publicity photo. But they're free, they're under a free license, and anyone can use them anywhere in the world for any purpose. That simply isn't the case. By way of example -- I assure you that if his friend took a picture of Barry Bonds, and I had that image put on the front and back of a T-shirt, which I then sold in front of AT&T Park, I'd be shut down and be monetarily liable, both to Barry (yikes!) and probably the San Francisco Giants (assuming Barry was wearing their logos and uniform at the time, and not breaking new ground by playing naked). The ideal of a perfectly free image of a person, at least here in California, is unattainable. It just can't exist. But the promophoto template does... and does a fine job of protecting Wikipedia from the almost immeasurably miniscule legal/moral jeopardy posed by promotional photos. Jenolen 06:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
FUC#1 already covers that generally... if it can be shown that it's not possible the create a free replacement, then a fair use image can be used. Specifically about celebrities... IANAL, but if it's a weird quirk of California law, it may not be an issue if the data is hosted in Florida, and the picture is taken of the celebrity while outside California. If California has a similar law as most other places, the image is free, but only for non-commercial use. [3] So, might that grant celebrity photos an exemption from FUC#1, since we don't allow noncommercial-only images here? --Interiot 10:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not the case, as Wales claims, that you can use a free image "anywhere in the world for any purpose." You can't use it to indicate that the subject of the photo endorses your product, and you can't use it to suggest that the subject of the photo likes to sacrifice babies to Satan. And here's the important thing: There is no significant restriction on the use of promotional images that does not also apply to free use images. If someone can point to a potential application for Wikipedia material that would be disallowed by the use of promotional fair-use material, that would be a strong argument against this change. To reject the change simply because we like the word "free" more than the word "fair" seems, well, silly. Nareek 12:31, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


  • Comment A wikipedia that isn't free content is just like a wikipedia that isn't publicly editable- building free content is one of our five pillars, and it will still be one of our most fundamental ideals no matter how determined you are to ignore this fact. But the beauty of free content is that you can fork off all of wikipedia's content for your own website, if you feel so strongly about allowing copyrighted content. , Borisblue 07:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
No original research is also part of the five pillars, but you certainly see a lot of calls here for people to create original material for Wikipedia, by retaking pictures of things/people/objects that have already been photographed (and released for wide use) once before. I'm not sure why more people aren't opposed to this continuing call for massive creation of original material exclusively for Wikipedia. (See the comment below about someone who now feels obligated to pick up his camera and take a picture for Wikipedia. This is not a picture he/she would otherwise take -- who wants to take, or see, a photo of a joystick? But under the current interpretation, he/she now feels obligated to start snapping photos.) Jenolen 10:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Thank you for the input. Specifically, which "narrow category" of tags, then, do you believe to be usable under this reasoning? I believe the "promophoto" (regarding both individuals and products) and "album cover" tags have been discussed most here. Badagnani 04:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Album covers are pretty clear-cut fair use- those will never be available as free-content. I oppose the movement to remove fair use photos from living people biography articles entirely- that's going too far. A promo photo should be used for TV/fictional characters (I don't believe that a photo of Sarah Michelle Gellar out of character will do in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer article, for instance)- and reclusive figures (such as Enya, Osama bin Ladin) but not for celebrities that make public appearances all the time. And if a free image is available, as long as it is clear enough to show how the person in question looked like, no fair use image can be used. This is my personal interpretation of policy- and I think that is using fair use reasonably.Borisblue 04:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • And promotional photographs of products, which are placed on the Internet by companies for the purpose of promoting said products? Badagnani 04:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    Again, depends on whether a free image can reasonably be created. Screenshots/box art of software are certainly permissible, as are book covers, and other intellectual property. For other stuff- if you can buy it and take a photo of it, then it probably isn't fair use. There are scores of wikipedians, from various countries, various backgrounds, various income levels surely there are a lot of people who have access to any particular product. There are exceptions (For instance, I don't mind using a promo image for a prototype car, or a video console that is yet to be released, but once it hits the market it should be taken down, IMHO)Borisblue 05:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    Just a few thoughts in response (and yes, I was primarily talking about promophotos above): 1) Stating that the only information a picture of a person provides is to "show how the person...looked" is an oversimplification, because human appearance is not stable and context-independent. We can't argue that my picture of the Chrysler Building is not just as informative as one on a postcard, and we may not care what Stephen Hawking looked like at different stages of his life. But at least where the individual is notable because of a career in visual entertainment media (actors, models), information as to how they looked at a certain time of their life or in a certain role is highly relevant to the subject, such that all photos of them cannot be considered interchangeable. Consider Bettie Page, for example—she's still alive, but how useful (or recognizeable) is an octagenarian picture of her to the article? An extreme example, perhaps, but whether an image we can obtain would provide substantially the same relevant information as a free use image we have is necessarily a case-by-case editorial judgment that requires knowledge of the subject matter rather than a regurgitation of some policy statement. That is my primary objection to an abstract and mechanical "replaceable" image policy. It's destructive, obtuse and pointless just to ask if any picture of a subject could be obtained, when what is needed is a substantive and informed consideration of how the images are being used for that particular subject.
    2) As others have pointed out, there is no such thing as a "free" image of a living person (meaning one that can be used for any purpose, I assume), as there are always going to be limits on how they may be used to avoid lawsuits for false endorsement, violation of publicity rights, invasion of privacy, etc. It's questionable how much more "freedom" is even gained with a GFDL, self-taken photo of a person over a fair use promophoto, considering these limitations. It's also possible that in some jurisdictions, the GFDL photo may even be less free if the subject didn't authorize it; by contrast, the promophoto was authorized to be taken and disseminated publicly, and is how the subject has chosen to be represented.
    3) In addition to the summary of fiction mentioned above, another often overlooked and pervasive kind of fair use on Wikipedia are "free" photographs we take of three dimensional objects. If that object is protected by copyright, our photographs are derivative works and we require a fair use rationale to depict that subject. An obvious example is a sculpture (even public ones), but many commercial products also have enough creative, non-utilitarian elements to have their form copyrighted. Buildings are excluded from this under U.S. law, btw, but not necessarily in other countries.
    4) Wikipedia is not Commons. Postdlf 17:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Oppose. This is an example of a wrong solution addressing the wrong problem. If the problem is, to use someone else's example, images of extremely rare birds being deleted because freely licenced images could potentially at some point be created, then let's have a discussion about how we can adjust the criteria to allow for fair use images in that sort of situation. Let's not act impulsively and completely change the criterion, so that all of the limits which encourage free content alternatives to be created are removed. --bainer (talk) 06:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Strong Oppose. Wikipedia is a free encylopedia. Fair use images are by definition not free, and we should minimise their usage. Changing FUC #1 resulted in a large number of free images coming out of the woodwork. A good example that I saw recently was Image:David_cameron_photo.JPG which replaced Image:DavidCameron_20060629.jpg. By forcing people to use free images, where they could be created we encourage people to create good free images. When we could use by permission images there was never the incentive for people to create the images. The recent change to the FUC #1 has actually improved the encylopedia (per one example of many) - and will continue to improve the availability of free content. As I'm sure has been noted, very few of the "other" language wikipedias can use fair use images. Megapixie 08:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Strongly oppose: this change would end efforts to replace fair-use images with free-license ones. As an example, I have a digital camera and a Logitech Dual Action gamepad sitting next to my computer. Under the proposed policy, it would be perfectly fine for me to go to the Logitech website and grab a promotional image. I would be under no obligation to pick up my camera and take a picture. --Carnildo 08:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
So what? Nobody is under any obligation to do anything. If you want to take the picture, you can take the picture either way. It would be obnoxious if you can easily take a photograph of something to instead find a fair use image, but I don't see how we can make that illegal without banning a whole lot of other things. And the proposed change certainly wouldn't end efforts to replace fair-use images with free-license ones. That's total nonsense. One can just as easily do this under the proposed change as before. That people have somewhat less incentive to do so seems well worth the increased quality of articles that would arise. john k 14:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly support — Wikipedia is supposed to be comprehensive, not censored. MatthewFenton (talk • contribs • count • email) 08:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    Censorship is the suppression of expression of ideas. Restricting the way we represent our ideas (i.e. with free content) is not censorship. ed g2s • talk 15:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose. It's a discouragement to ever create replacement free images. This basically was our policy, in practice if not in theory, until last month, and look what happened. Hundreds of thousands of fair-use images, many of them not only replaceable but easily replaceable. See for example Image:Vectra1.jpg, a photo of a mass-produced car that has been tagged with "fairusereplace" for months Anybody could easily go out and take a picture of one of these, but nobody has bothered in all that time, because there's already a fair-use photo there. This proposal would just encourage that situation. —Chowbok ☠ 19:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
    The problem with this argument is that nobody put {{Replacethisimage}} in the Opel Vectra or Holden Vectra articles, so how was a typical Wikipedia-reading Vectra owner or enthusiast to know that the image needed replacing? (Although, {{Infobox Automobile}} seems to make it extremely difficult to put a caption in there, but that's beside the point.) But why should I believe that deleting the image will encourage creation of a free alternative more than putting a notice within the article itself that we are seeking a free alternative? After all, when we see an article that violates NPOV, we don't delete the contents of the article, we tag with {{POV}} and encourage people to rewrite it. Why don't we try the same with images? Note that putting tags in the image page is not the same as putting tags in the article, because far fewer people read the image description pages than read the articles in which the images are used. DHowell 23:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Instead of the voting above, can people please discuss why Jeff's proposal is or is not a good idea? Arguments and rebuttals are more useful in a situation such as this. (Radiant) 13:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Jeff's change discourages the use and creation of free content images. The change encourages people to leave an unfree image on an article rather than making an effort to create a free alternative. Free content is as big a part of wikipedia as "publicly-editable". Borisblue 19:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't believe my change actually does that. My change merely recognizes the value of illustrative images, and represents the apparent reality that people prefer something to nothing. In practice, we know this to be true. --badlydrawnjeff

talk 19:15, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I realize that's not the intent, but it absolutely will be the effect in practice. If there's a beautiful, professional promo photo of Celebrity X on his page, people won't go and create a new picture of X because they know it won't be as pretty, and as long as they don't create it, the old one can stay. —Chowbok ☠ 18:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
This is a canard, I think. Nobody is "discouraging" creation of free content images. Many of us simply disagree with the current perverse program to "encourage" the creation of such images by deleting images that are perfectly legal. john k 16:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I like the direction of this but think it goes too far. Much as U.S. copyright law carves out a fair use exception, I think our copyleft principles, coming from the other direction, need to "carve out an unfree use exception". Hopefully, we can do ours more clearly than the U.S. Congress did.

I'd like to see us reaffirm what was, for some years, our effective (if ill-enforced) policy that certain well-defined categories of images may be used if no comparable free-use image is available. For some things (posters, album jackets) presumably this is just a straight "fair use" issue (because on free use equivalent is possible, but in other cases this requires both an exception to certain "free use" principles as well. There may be a need for several spelled-out exceptions, but above all, I think:

Where no equivalent free use image is available—not potentially available, available—we should explicitly allow the use of publicity materials, press kit materials, etc. This should not be misunderstood as authorizing the use of "anything that was grabbed off the net". This still must comply with the fair use standard of clear attribution: the image page must explicitly indicate the source of the press kit (or other similar) information and indicate that they hold copyright.

Quite possibly we would need to carve out other specific exceptions. I think each should be explicit and clear. - Jmabel | Talk 19:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I think this was very well stated and conveys the concerns I have with regard to fair use. I'm not "pro unfree content" or "pro lazy" or "pro grab whatever off the web." I'm pro content and see nothing wrong with fair use content when no free equivalent is available. Allowing fair use images when there is no available alternative doesn't make Wikipedia any less "free." -- ChadScott 09:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with ChadScott that the above proposal is excellent, and makes perfect sense. Badagnani 09:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur with Jmabel's idea, and with Chad and Badagnani's endorsement of it. I think this approach - of explicit exceptions to a general policy to use "free" images - might be the best way forward. john k 18:46, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with Jmabel's proposal, although I agree that it is well stated. This wording allows the blanket use of all fair-use images without regard to how easy it would be to create a free replacement. In my opinion, this swings the pendulum far too far to the side of allowing all fair-use content with virtually no incentive to obtain free replacements. Using a fair-use image when a free replacement is likely to be easily obtainable should either be banned or should require detailed justification. Using a fair-use image when a free replacement is possible but not necessarily easily obtainable is more debateable. --Yamla 19:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
No, Yamla, it does not say that "all fair-use content" is allowed. It says that promotional photos are allowed when no free equivalent is currently available. Beyond, that, isn't the main "incentive to obtain free replacements" that people like you are ideologically committed to free content, and will thus create such material? If the free replacement is easily obtainable, you or someone else should be able to, er, easily obtain it, and thus provide it so as to replace the promotional image. I don't understand the idea that the only way to "encourage free content" is to prevent any other way of getting images. john k 02:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

IANAL, but this wording should, at the very least, apply to photos of living persons, since the entire notion of a "free" image of a person ever being possible is rather dubious. As many have already mentioned, even a photo of a person taken by a Wikipedia user and released under a free license would still ultimately carry exactly the same restrictions as a non-free promotional photo: Just because somebody snaps a picture of Danny DeVito on the street and plasters it with Creative Commons and GFDL tags, doesn't mean that Pfizer can then freely use the image in advertisements for Viagra. While it may not technically be a copyright violation, Pfizer, Wikipedia, and the uploading user would still ultimately wind up facing lawsuits. I dare say that encouraging people to upload "free" photos of famous people may actually be even more dangerous, since those viewing the image may see the tag and mistakenly think that they would be able to use it for such commercial purposes.

Now, if you can take a picture of someone, and get them to clearly understand and agree to the idea that the picture would be available for anyone to use for any reason, even commercially, even in random advertisements, then more power to you, replace away. That said, good luck getting any sane person notable enough for a Wikipedia article to agree to that. Srecd 09:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Shallow and reductionist

Some seem to hold the assumption that all pictures that "identify" a living person or "show how they look" are interchangeable. This ignores that the appearances of human beings are not stable or context-independent, such that different pictures taken at different times will provide greatly different information which is highly relevant to individuals whose notability is established through visual media. Bettie Page is still alive. Is a current octagenarian image of Page really interchangeable with an image of her from her modelling career in the 1950s? Is a current image of Madonna really interchangeable with any image of her during her career? Even for non-entertainers, would we really consider a photo of a 95 year-old, retired scientist to provide the same relevant information as one taken during the height of his career? One-size-fits-all, mechanical policies are too thoughtlessed to apply to content in this manner. Whether an image we can obtain of a living person would provide substantially the same relevant information as a free use image we have is necessarily a case-by-case editorial judgment that requires knowledge of the subject matter, rather than a regurgitation of some policy statement. It's obtuse and pointless just to ask if any picture of a subject could be obtained, when what is needed is a substantive and informed consideration of how the images are being used for that particular subject. Postdlf 22:46, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Amen to the point about unrepresentative images. I took the opportunity of Diana Coupland's recent death to add a picture of her to the article. Since her death made all images of her unreplaceable, I was able to use fair use to justify a picture of her from the height of her career 30 years ago. Had she not been dead, I would have been told to accept a picture of her that neither she nor anyone else save the free-use Falangistas would likely have liked.
I would also like to add that a poorly taken photo, free use or not, does not IMO adequately convey the same information as a good-quality one. Does this picture of Diane Farrell, all blurry and underexposed, really convey the same impression of her as this now-banished image from her campaign website did? The former, frankly, is a free image not only in terms of licensing but in that no one at any professional media outlet in their right mind would pay anything for it. No offense to the shooter, who was trying to do their job, but the two images are just not equivalent.
If we're going to have a policy that says almost all images of almost all living people must be free-use since they're theoretically repeatable, it is irresponsible to make that change without first having detailed replaceability guidelines in place. And I think one of those should strongly consider whether or not a free image could reasonably be created that would convey the same information as to the appearance of the subject.
Perhaps I should just go ahead and write the replaceability guidelines I've been meaning to instead of just bitching about this. Daniel Case 01:43, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Representativeness needn't just be a matter of the subject's age

Consider this image of Britney Spears that's used in the infobox to identify her. I'm glad we found a free one, and that it's reasonably good quality. But how representative is it? If that were the only picture in the article, would you be able to tell what she looked like? She doesn't walk around all the time with her hair like that (well, maybe that's whay Kevin Federline left her, but anyway...), and so I wouldn't consider that image a representative one. Daniel Case 05:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Fork?

I've been thinking- and this might not be the best place for this comment- but would a fork of Wikipedia with a less harsh fair-use policy be a good idea? There is a fundamental disagreement here concerning the goals of the project: one group of editors wants to use fair use as widely as legally possible, and the other group wants to uphold wikipedia's free-content principles as firmly as is practical. Three failed attempts at achieving consensus to weaken FUC#1 in this very talk page should demonstrate this. Despite being in the "free-content" camp, I would be interested in seeing how a fair-use encouraged wikipedia fork would fare. Thoughts? Borisblue 07:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

On one hand, as long as everything is GFDL-compatible, wiki forks aren't as big of a deal as organization splits in other lines of work might be, since both projects ultimately help each other. And it's not unprecedented, the Spanish wikipedia split for issues of (IMHO) similar importance. On the other hand, we already have a range of approaches to fair use across our projects (even within just english projects), so if you want to see how the various policies end up, there's lots of things to study. And ultimately, it would be up to the potential forkers to decide if they want to go to the trouble. Does anybody know what Citizendium's stance on fair-use images will be? (for instance, Sanger has said that the concept of notability will definitely not be used on Citizendium, so it'll be interesting to see whether that's successful and whether it ends up influencing wikipedia) --Interiot 08:18, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
You are welcome to set up such a fork, of course. The trick is in getting enough money to pay the server cost for the world's tenth most popular website. A faster approach of reaching your goal might be to contact Jimbo, Brad or the Board and trying to convince them. (Radiant) 13:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
You'd be more likely to raise the money than to change Wikimedia's view on this. ed g2s • talk 15:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
What do you mean, "Wikipedia's view"? Do you actually mean, "my view"? Because it seems to me that wikipedia, as represented by the consensus of the opinion of users interested in this question, is, er, deeply divided. The fair use policy you prefer is also preferred by the founder of wikipedia. But it is not an official decree, and it is only your opinion that this policy is required by "wikipedia principles" about free content. One side of this argument seems to rely largely upon assertion and arguments from authority. This is deeply tiresome. john k 13:47, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, this isn't a dispute about layout or formatting style; you are disputing the "free" in the free Encyclopedia; that is the goals of the Wikipedia project. This is something more fundamental than policy. I'm not actually arguing that a liberal-as-possible fair use policy isn't viable, just that it goes against what wikipedia is all about. Any arguments are a waste of time, since your goals are different from the goals of the rest of us- there is simply no common ground to argue on. We quote Jimbo Wales and Wikimedia to clear up misconception on what wikipedia is and what its project goals are, rather than to argue that the changes you want are not viable. Borisblue 17:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
This is nonsense. Nobody is disputing the "free encyclopedia" business. We are merely disputing a particular interpretation of the idea, and a particular emphasis on this interpretation at the expense of other goals of the wikipedia project. john k 23:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Vaguely related issue conserning the "international" portability of fair use content.

Just figured I'd throw this in here as some people seem to believe that anyting deemed fair use can be freely used anywhere. Google recently released a Norwegian version of theyr news search. One of the features here is that thumbnail images from the news article appar next to the search results. Almost imedeately they had the "national asosiation of news corporations" (Mediebedriftenes Landsforening) on theyr back because they are using the images without first obtaining permission in violation of Norwegian law. They ran into simmilar problems in Denmark where they have been forced to aquire written permission from all Danish news sources before using any images from them in the Danish language version.

Moral of the storry? Remember that US fair use laws only apply within the US and our goal is to make content freely distributable as widely as possible. Many countries do allow limited use of copyrighted works for purposes of commentary and review of the works themselves, but nothing even close to as broad as what is allowed under fair use. So if you don't buy the "maximum free content" argument, then what about international use? Pushing US fair use law to it's limits in order to create a "better" ensyclopedia will severely hamper the ability to mirror (maybe even cache) and distribute Wikipedia material outside the US. Something to think about considering the majority of our users (readers + editors I guess) are not from the US and may at some point want to publish Wikipedia content in some form "localy"... --Sherool (talk) 12:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe anyone has said that anything deemed fair use can be freely used anywhere, whether by "anywhere" you mean "in any context" or "in any country." This appears to be a straw man. I believe such claims may have been put forward for promotional photos. john k 13:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

How is the concern over the "portability" of fair use different than the concern over the "portability" of free speech? U.S. free speech protections only apply within the U.S., so if our goal is to make content freely distributable as widely as possible... Pushing U.S. free speech law to its limits in order to create a "better" encyclopedia will severely hamper the ability mirror (maybe even cache) and distribute Wikipedia material outside the U.S. Why not?

Fair use images are a minimal problem, as those are clearly tagged and categorized as fair use, such that those can be filtered out by mirrors with relative ease. Images and text that may be forbidden outside the U.S. are not separated out, however, and so pose a much greater problem for non-U.S. re-users of Wikipedia content. Postdlf 22:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That's an odd comparison, freedom of speech is hardly something the US have monopoly on... It's also kinda moot since expressing your opinions is something Wikipedia explicitly is not about. Anyway, yes fair use images can be filtered out, but that would leave the articles using such images un-ilustrated. This is why we should be trying very hard to get free licensed images whenever possible, and only use fair use material where there are literaly no other alternatives. --Sherool (talk) 22:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
It's hardly an odd comparison, as there are clearly many jurisdictions with less speech protection than the U.S., and it's hardly moot as there are clearly many laws and government policies in all jurisdictions that restrict more than just POV "opinions" in ways that differ in degree and kind from what is restricted and what is permitted in the U.S. I'll leave you to reconsider that comparison before I address the next point. Postdlf 23:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
A few yes, but protection of free speech is hardly something that is unique to the US (nor is the US "best in class" at upholding that right), in fact most nations recognize this right. While there are various exceptions with regards to things like blasphemy, hate speech, inciting to violence, sedission and even insluting national leaders or national pride (and yes a handfull of dictatorships that don't give a crap about any human rights), Wikipedia content tend not to run afoul of these (at least not so long as it adhers to our own NPOV policy). Fair use on the other hand is pretty much uniqe to the US (and Philipino) law, and allow far more diverse and broad use of unlicensed material than any other "copyright exception" laws out there. That is one reason why I think "fair use images" in Wikipedia should be kept to an absolute minimum (the other beeing that we should focus on free content and all that). Used only as little as possible in articles where it is the only available option (logos in company artiles, album covers in album articles, screenshots in movie and game articles pluss the important "historical" photo elsewhere and such). --Sherool (talk) 18:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  • This area has been raised at least twice in earlier discussions, and has been looked at by User:Dragons flight and User:Simetrical in the document "using foreign images on Wikipedia". They followed Jimmy Wales's mail to the English List [4]--luke 07:39, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Yeah, I was not talking about issues with using non-US material under the US fair use clause though. I was talking about issues with re-publishing articles that contan "fair use images" outside the US. --Sherool (talk) 18:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Fair use is touched upon in the section entitled "Respecting foreign copyrights," but - forgive me - how is there a problem with US material used according to US law?..--luke 06:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
        • There is no legal problem. But since we hope that Wikipedia will eventually be reused and redistributed throughout the world, we want to make sure that as many of our images as possible will be available for such redistribution. --RobthTalk 06:31, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Yes, and there is no moral problem too. But if we are to be a GFDL only encyclopedia then let us propose the necessary policy change to make it happen...I have already offered to User:Borisblue to make such a proposal upon his agreement...luke 07:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
            • Where exactly did you read "GFDL only" into "maximize free content"? What I'm saying is that we aim to mazimize the absolute quantity of good free images we are producing; thus, we delete fair use images when, by doing so, we can increase the probability that a free image will be created. Where deleting would not produce such a result, there is no reason to delete. Hence, replaceability. --RobthTalk 07:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Images on Draft Articles

"9. Fair use images may be used only in the article namespace. Used outside article space, they are not covered under the fair use doctrine. They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages. They should be linked, not inlined, from talk pages when they are the topic of discussion. This is because it is the policy of the Wikimedia Foundation to allow an unfree image only if no free alternative exists and only if it significantly improves the article it is included on. All other uses, even if legal under the fair use clauses of copyright law, should be avoided to keep the use of unfree images to a minimum. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis if there is a broad consensus that doing so is necessary to the goal of creating a free encyclopedia (like the templates used as part of the Main Page)."

Those of us at WikiProject Sailor Moon have been wondering, does this mean that we can't use them in an article is still in draft as sub article on off our project Page? (please post an answer at our wikiproject or my user page in addition to here if you have the time, but don't fret over it.) Lego3400: The Sage of Time 20:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It's a technical violation, but as long as the article gets moved to the mainspace in a reasonable amount of time, nobody's going to complain. --Carnildo 21:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll on changing the name

As discussed above, I think we should rename this to "Unfree content" to more accurately reflect what it's about and avoid confusion with the legal doctrine of fair use that has different rules. There was some agreement and a handful of objectors, so I want to get a support/oppose/support something else headcount to see just how many of each there are. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Support renaming

  1. Myself, of course Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  2. howcheng {chat} 23:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  3. Not perfect as mentioned, but "Fair Use" is completely wrong. ed g2s • talk 00:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  4. Support renaming in general (see my suggestion below). Too many discussion break down into "well it's covered by fair use law". Megapixie 00:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  5. ×Meegs 00:58, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  6. Hahnchen 02:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  7. Borisblue 04:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  8. Certainly. Anything to get the word "fair" out of the name. --Carnildo 04:49, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  9. Definitely an improvement. --RobthTalk 06:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  10. Let's put an end to the endless arguments over whether this image or that is fair-use under U.S. law. Andrew Levine 09:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  11. Much better. Too many non-lawyers debate only whether we are breaking the law or not. This allows us to focus on our policy. Rossrs 09:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  12. It's more accurate and less open to misinterpretation, which can only be good. Trebor 15:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  13. I agree that it should be renamed, if only to get rid of the unfortunate abbreviation. YankeeDoodle14 16:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  14. I'm not sure if this name is ideal but its much better than "Fair Use".--Nilfanion (talk) 17:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  15. I'd suggest "non-free" rather than "unfree", but, yes, now that we are rejecting so much that would be fair use, we should change the policy name. - Jmabel | Talk 19:28, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  16. Support —Kjetil_r 04:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
  17. per above. Not sure if it's perfect, but it's better and will cause less confusion. -- Ned Scott 04:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  18. Makes sense. -- Donald Albury 12:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  19. Good idea, will clear up a lot misuse and misunderstanding based solely on the policy's name. - cohesion 19:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  20. Definitely a good idea. jaco♫plane 14:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  21. Absolutely. The opponents of this change suggest that we ought to mention fair use in the title of this page because this page deals with fair use in a Wikipedia context. The problem is that the definition of "fair use" that we persistently use is clearly and vastly different from that of ordinary copyright law. For example, under copyright law, if I use a fair use image in a userspace page where I discuss that image (depending on the context, if it's something like a logo, perhaps, it may not even be necessary to discuss it to justify fair use), I have done nothing wrong. However, Wikipedia intentionally prohibits users from doing so, because it creates unnecessary legal hassles for the Wikimedia Foundation. This page, in essence, is not about fair use as a legal doctrine. It's about how we should use unfree content on Wikipedia, and any discussion of using unfree content will naturally involve fair use in some way. But fair use is not the main subject of this policy - it is how we ought to use unfree content that is this page's subject. The name change is a good one. Johnleemk | Talk 15:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose renaming

  1. luke These quotes are from what I said earlier in this forum:-
    But just changing names to try and dodge the real issues - once again leaving the real issues fudged - is not the answer. We should try and adopt a clear policy that everyone can recognise, understand for what it means and sign up to, as was stated earlier by user:khaosworks (I quoted it above) This means we either keep to a recognisably fair use policy as has been the case up until recently, or we abandon 'fair use' completely and move to a GFDL only English Wikipedia. (08:14, 2 November 2006)
    and
    Wikipedia exists in the real world and there is no getting away from real world 'realities' such as copyright, open content, fair use, fair dealing....etc etc. Renaming doesn't change these realities within which our free encyclopedia must exist (07:39, 11 November 2006)
    Since those remarks my proposal on images of real people - a proposal to move strictly to GFDL in a very limited case - has received no backing from even the most avowedly ardent free content supporters. How come?. --luke 06:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    Because your proposal lacks any sort of nuance. Many images of living people can and should be replaced by a free image, but your policy offers no advantages over the existing FUC #1 in this regard, and, by detaching the enforcement from the logic behind the policy, eliminates the space for necessary judgement calls. --RobthTalk 07:08, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    At all stages (and still at this moment) I have asked for feedback to get the wording right, but of course staying within the parameter of GFDL because that is what the proposal is about, surely? It was supposed to be about exactly that. Of course by using the word 'nuance' what you are really saying is that we should, in fact, allow fair use even in the narrowly restricted case which the proposal addresses. On the talk page for the proposal you will see four examples of the confusion to which the current policy has given rise - surely there are many more. That is one of the reasons for the proposal. But you will see from the rationale and discussion that the main reason was an attempt to return to the principle of open content, albeit in the very limited case -- images of living people. If this is a fundamental principle then why should there be exceptions--luke 08:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    One man's confusion is another man's room for sensible discretion. As several people have pointed out, your idea of the principle of open content is substantially different than most other people's; the point is not that we refuse all nonfree content, but that we maximize our free content. Andrew Levine's proposed wording on the page of the proposal fits with the policy, and would be fine as a wording for FUC counterexample #8, but isn't necessary as a separate policy. --RobthTalk 15:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    Changing the name is a completely separate issue to whether or not you agree with FUC#1 - the renaming of the policy will not affect it's meaning at all. Please keep these discussions separate. ed g2s • talk 15:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  2. I oppose changing the name because I think it concedes too much to copyright holders. I believe I am free to use copyrighted material to comment on our criticize copyrighted works; I do not think such use is "unfree" at all. If we label it as such we seem to be relinquishing our rights, which I think is dangerous in a world where corporate copyright owners are striving to control more and more. Nareek 20:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  3. Removing the express reference to the doctrine of fair use will leave Wikipedia copyright policies without any fixed legal context for their justification, and lead to only further confusion. Very few people seem to understand how much fair use is implicated in Wikipedia article text as well as images; derivative textual works on our site are far more problematic and pervasive than copied pictures. However, the typical attempts to make Wikipedia content more "free" are often targeted at the least problematic examples of fair use, which may create the fewest benefits (if any) when removed and replaced with so-called "free" content. The goal of making Wikipedia content equally legal to use anywhere for any purpose is highly commendable, but completely unattainable, and we do more harm than good by suggesting that if we've called something "free," its re-use outside this site is equally legally permissible no matter how or where. A GFDL street photo of a person may be illegal to use in some jurisdictions if the subject has not given consent to its taking, making it less "free" than an authorized publicity shot; the same photo would also incur civil liability just about anywhere if used on a commercial product in a way that could suggest endorsement. Someone who distributes article content that merely mentions contraceptives, homosexuality, or democracy would risk prison in many countries that don't even bother enforcing copyright. It is always the responsibility of those who wish to re-use Wikipedia content to consider whether the laws to which they are subject permit them to do so based on what they want to use and how they want to use it. Sorry that this was a bit rambling, but here are the soundbytes: "free" and "unfree" simply have no meaning without reference to a specific legal context and determined use. "Fair use," by contrast, refers to a particular context that we can work within and contrast from if we choose to be more restrictive. Postdlf 22:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    To address the above two comments: for the purposes of Wikipedia, "free" means free to use and modify for any purpose (with respect to copyright and not including restrictions that may be imposed by other laws). This is the basis on which we reject or accept variously licensed media, and is what is meant by WP:5P#3. ed g2s • talk 16:41, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
    Why only with respect to copyright? Why no attention to the fact that we're actually on safer legal ground with respect to promo photos than to "free" pictures of living people. john k 18:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
    Because we're more concerned with philosophical reasons than legal ones, and because that's not a "fact". —Chowbok ☠ 19:15, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
    This is very much a fact. As much as some of you wish these things were black-and-white, they're not. While it's perfectly legal to take a picture of someone, anyone, in a public setting, you're not granted a right to redistribute that picture simply by taking it. If you were, "model releases" wouldn't exist. This area gets particularly gray when the subject of the photograph is someone who primarily makes their living from their appearance, such as a model or movie/television celebrity. In short, just because you take a photograph of someone and grant it to Wikipedia under a "free" license doesn't mean the subject of that photograph makes a similar consent. Promotional photos, however, already have the consent of the subject and they are created entirely for redistribution. In this way, "unfree" can be "more free" than "free." -- ChadScott 16:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    So you think any time you see a picture of a celebrity in a newspaper or tabloid, they signed a release? I'm sorry, but your reading of the law is just incorrect. If somebody appears in public, you have the right to take a picture of them. Just because you're famous doesn't give you the right to stop people from taking photos of what they want, or publishing them. Model releases are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion, because those are photos taken in a private setting. —Chowbok ☠ 21:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
    Our justifications are already not based on the legal context of fair use, they're based on the encouragement of the creation of free content. The whole point of the name change is to make clear how we have stepped away from the legal doctrine and avoid confusion between what is legal to do and what is policy to do, because our policy is not based on the law. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
    I'm using the word free in the same way that you're using it--I believe that people are free to "use and modify for any purpose" a promotional photo to the same extent that they can use a GFDL photo. In fact, I don't think there's much practical difference between the two--both are technically copyrighted, but in both cases the copyright holder has essentially waived their right to control what is done with the image. Can you imagine the sender of a promotional image going to court to sue someone because they had used that image for...what, exactly? The only cases that would be remotely plausible would be those where the same complaint could be made against a GFDL photo--the use is libelous, or implies a commercial endorsement, or some such. There is no practical sense in which the GFDL image is freer than the promotional image, which makes the idea of referring to the promotional image as "unfree" slightly absurd. Nareek 03:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

    I would think the first goal of Wikipedia copyright policy would be to protect the Wikimedia Foundation from legal liability for what its users upload and post. The less that policy is expressly connected to and references relevant law, the less it is likely that it will comply with the law even if you're intending to be less permissive than what the law allows. You still need an explicit and fixed context to make that comparison of "more strict."
    You're also forgetting who the main audience should be for our fair use explanations—copyright holders. An express appeal to fair use, in accordance with established and applicable law, helps to discourage legal challenges and to establish that we made use of the image in good faith of our right to do so. A statement on "Wikipedia policies on unfree content" has no legal meaning whatsoever, and would suggest exactly what you're misguidedly trying to encourage—that we just pulled our policies out of our philosophical ass. We might as well add Template:Please sue us. Postdlf 17:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    The page would continue to explicitly name fair use as the legal basis for accepting some unfree content. We're only discussing changing the page title. Andrew Levine 19:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. Any policy on the use of "unfree" content is necessarily founded upon fair use. Yes, we have constructed a set of policies that are in practice significantly more strict than the legal doctrine of fair use, but that doesn't negate the point that fair use is the underpinning principle. Moreover I consider "unfree content" to be a substantially more confusing and biased description of what these policies are about than calling them "fair use". In addition to having a negative connotation, "unfree" puts me in mind of something stating what content cannot be used on Wikipedia rather than explaining under what circumstances unlicensed content is acceptable to Wikipedia, as these pages are intended to do. I would also mirror Postdlf is pointing out that "free" is a legally ambigious term in search of a reference frame, whereas "fair use" is not. How many people not already intimately familiar with Wikipedia would expect images licensed for any noncommercial use to be "unfree"? I also find the idea of placing all discussions of our fair use freedoms under a heading of "unfree" to be an unappealing irony. I would accept "Using unlicensed content" or something like that for a name change, but if it is a choice between "fair use" and "unfree content", then I strongly prefer the former. Dragons flight 04:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. Please, people, go back and read Postdlf's comments just a few lines above this. Extraordinarily important information there, and a very, very compelling argument that has really helped draw the distinction between actual legal requirements and unbreachable philosophical differences. What's missing from the current fair use policy is a healthy dose of common sense, and this proposal does nothing to address that deficiency. Jenolen 10:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  6. Oppose per Postdlf, above. In fact I have pretty much agreed with everything Postdlf has said on this talk page. Fair use (or fair dealing in non-U.S. countries) is pretty much the only legal justification we have for using copyrighted, non-free-licensed material in Wikipedia. DHowell 01:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
    The page would continue to explicitly name fair use as the legal basis for accepting some unfree content. We're only discussing changing the page title. Andrew Levine 19:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
    It is the legal defence, but it is neither the basis nor the motivation for our policy. ed g2s • talk 14:00, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  7. Oppose, I think, although in the past I think I've suggested support. I think there ought to be some consensus over what the policy actually should be before we talk about what it should be called. It also seems a bit perverse to me that the solution to the "Wikipedia's fair use policy bears no relation to fair use law" problem is "Change the name of the policy so that it no longer mentions fair use." john k 17:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
    It's considerably less perverse than changing the meaning of our policy because it was badly named to begin with. ed g2s • talk 19:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
    I believe we should change the policy because it's a shitty policy, not because of what its name is. As for "badly named," see the posts by Postdlf and others above. john k 23:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  8. Oppose The word "unfree" is even worse in a title than "fair use". An encyclopedia is wisely given a "fair use" exception under copyright law so knowledge can not be hoarded. The word "unfree" has too many different, ambiguous and tainting emotional definitions and should not be used because it seems to be perpetuating or exacerbating confusion. zen apprentice T 04:06, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
  9. Strong oppose. Current name applies better to what it is about. It is not about copyvio, it is about specific fairuse provision of the copyright law. --Irpen 05:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  10. Oppose, per Postdlf. Badagnani 08:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  11. Oppose, fair use is a well-documented concept in English-derived law. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 19:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
    The page would continue to explicitly name fair use as the legal basis for accepting some unfree content. We're only discussing changing the page title. Andrew Levine 19:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
    Yes and the title should reflect the content of the page that is the applicability of Fair Use concept to Wikipedia copyrights policy. --Irpen 19:57, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
    This is exactly why we need to rename the page. The page is about when we can use unfree images, not just how Fair Use applies to Wikipedia, that is only part of it. ed g2s • talk 14:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  12. Oppose the specific name change proposed - I think the specific change proposed is less descriptive than "fair use" for the reasons discussed by various editors above. I wouldn't be theoretically opposed to a name change that captures the actual policy. TheronJ 14:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  13. Per all of the above reasons. Khoikhoi 02:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  14. Oppose strenuously --- loading the language doesn't strengthen the arguments. --Jgilhousen 11:32, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Support a different name

  • How about "Free content" (or similar) instead ? We aren't anti-fair use - we're pro-free content ;) Megapixie 00:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, that's the idea behind calling it unfree content -- it's rules on when we can include material that fails to meet that pillar. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
      • (But isn't it the case that all fair use fails to meet that pillar? Or maybe you want to make a distinction between text and images..) --luke 17:39, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Yep, which is why we limit it to only cases where it adds more to the encyclopedia part than it takes away from the free part. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
          • And where are the published criteria upon which these decisions of fine balance are made? For, unless there are such (and available for all to see) you are effectively endorsing a situation which is completely at variance with all notions of fairness. That is why it is so important that our decisions are judged as being 'fair' and 'just.' The notion of an encyclopedia of world standing making apparently arbitrary decisions on such matters flies in the face of common sense. Articles are being systematically stripped of their images (see eg University of East Anglia) while others, which are apparently in clear breach of our policy, (see eg Aaron T. Beck) are immune. How can this be justified...how is it 'fair?'..--luke 06:53, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
            • The published criteria are, of course, at Wikipedia:Fair use criteria. As for uneven treatment of articles, do not mistake a temporary state for the end state; it takes time to processs these images, so the transition will not be instantaneous, and their will be temporary inequities during the transition. As far as Aaron T. Beck, you are correct that the image there is replaceable, and I have tagged it as such. --RobthTalk 07:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
              • Noted that you seem to have neglected to mention the other three examples I gave to bring to attention on the policy talk page. What, for example, of Russell T. Davies. But surely this is not the way to go? --luke 07:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
                • You are welcome to tag them yourself. --RobthTalk 08:04, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
              • I have written to Dr Beck in the following terms, asking for a suitable image:- "... We would like to have a freely licensed picture to accompany your biography article if at all possible. Would you possibly be able to supply one, or alternatively confirm the license on the one being used at the moment if you think it would meet Wikipedia copyright guidelines. If you're unsure what I mean then please get back to me, but there is an introduction to copyright on wikipedia which might help to explain things at:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights Thanks for your time, and sorry to bother you. If you would like me to correct any inadvertent mistakes on the article at the moment I will be happy to do so. .." --luke 05:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Unluckily, in English "free" has two meanings, and I am guessing "unfree" has both as well. I can't think of another name as of now, but "unfree" will be much more misunderstood than "fair use". -- ReyBrujo 16:48, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe University of East Anglia should be smart enough to release their promotional photos freely as University of Ulster do: "All images are copyright of the University of Ulster, and may be used free of charge, provided all uses are credited to the University." These are not fair use, so can be used to illustrate just about any relevant article, and easily included in CD, OLPC and commercial editions, I can even put thumbnails in talk pages, so I will:

there's more where these came from

someone move them to Commons please
In any case, Wikipedians took their own UU photos as well, that in some cases fit the articles better. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 20:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to rain on your parade there, but as liberal as that license is it's still not free content. They say nothing about redistribution, modifications or commercial use beeing allowed. Maybe just sloppy writing on theyr part but we should probably write them and ask them to comfirm that they are ok with modified versions of theyr images beeing used for-profit before dump them on Commons. --Sherool (talk) 13:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
They say that they may be used free of charge, providing they are credited. They don't say they can't be used for profit, and I particularly don't see why it is our affirmative responsibility to make sure they can be used for profit, when we aren't even using them for profit. I don't see why people feel that we have the responsibility to do the mirrors' work for them - I'd just as soon see the mirrors shut down - they're horrible. john k 16:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  • "Restricted use" might work. TheronJ 15:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Low resolution imagery

Most of the fair use template state that limited use of low resolution images may fall under Fair Use. However, this seems to be flatly ignored in many cases with high resolution images used instead of thumbnails, or even worse SVGs being used for logos (like Image:Network TEN.svg); these are effectively arbitrary resolution. I'm not suggesting we should go on a deleting spree of high resolution fair use stuff, but I think it would be sensible to create a template similar in concept to {{fair use replace}} calling for a low-resolution version of the image to be provided.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Why would we ever delete anything for this reason when most of us have the software that can reduce the image's size? The effort taken to post a template, notify the uploader, and subsequently delete would be a complete waste, especially because it wouldn't guarantee that the image would be replaced with a lower res version, or even an image that qualified for fair use—just fix it. We could make a clean-up category template rather than a scheduled deletion template, so that way we can have "pointers" identifying problem images and "doers" reducing them to address the issue. Process aside, I think generally we don't have much justification for having the image any larger than it will appear in the article, which itself should not be any larger than is necessary for the relevant information to be legible. The resolution also should always be sub-commercial print quality. I think the size of copied images is one of the few real problems in our use of copyrighted images, and one of the few that could actually be addressed more mechanically, without taking much time to understand the article in which the image is being used. The smaller the image, the less it copies from the original and the less it could possibly undermine the commercial value of the original; hopefully this would go some length to ameliorate some of the more paranoid, trivial, and context-blind copyright concerns I've seen. Postdlf 23:09, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I suggest here a informational template saying "it should be uploaded as a low-res version"; which in no way says infers deletion. With some images like svg's that would require replacing with a new image, as svg's are by definition high-res; but with most uploading a low res version over the existing image should do. Actually this is a very mechanical task. It might be possible to code a bot to tag high resolution images in the fair use categories and tag them.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
      • That may not be a bad idea... At a minimum, the bot could do something like upload over images with versions that are 72 dpi, and their longest side no more than 200-300px. Images that should be even smaller can then be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I'll see if I can think of any reasons not to do it that way... Postdlf 23:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Speaking of reducing size, this seems to be a case of someone who haven't quite "gotten it". They uploaded the downsized Image:Billy Corgan - Tribune Ad reduced.jpg in order to "comply with fair use requirements", but then they proceded to link to the original Image:Billy Corgan - Tribune Ad.jpg "so people can read the text" and added a "please don't delete" notice on it, so now we have the full sized version and a thumbnail sized one... Yeah, that helps... :rolleyes: --Sherool (talk) 00:31, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Has anyone presented an argument for why it's necessary for the text to be legible? I can't even think of why the ad itself needs to be seen, as it's visually rather generic and nothing really relevant would be lost by just describing its content. I couldn't find the discussion of this on the talk pages for Billy Corgan or The Smashing Pumpkins (the two articles where it is used); could you provide a link? Postdlf 00:48, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Don't think there was any discussion, just one or two users who has been "bold" and sidestepped the image reduction done by someone else. I left a querry on the talk page of the person who added the "do not delete" tag to the high-res version after (re)tagging it as orphanded. --Sherool (talk) 01:04, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
          • The regular contributors on the relevant topics are certainly going to have more of an informed editorial judgment about the informational value of the image in those articles than the uploader singly, who may have been a "drive-by" contributor, or those of us who may never have edited those topics. Could you please leave a post on those talk pages? Postdlf 01:20, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
  • sigh* You can't generalize every fair use image into one that must be low resolution. In addition, what exactly is low resolution, anyway? It's totally subjective. -- ChadScott 09:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Low resolution is subjective to a point yes. However, as images in articles are rarely larger 200px, do we really need a 600px version (or worse a vector version) available? I agree there are cases where high res images are sensible (Image:WW2 Iwo Jima flag raising.jpg springs to mind). However, I see can't see a benefit for high res {{albumcover}}s, {{bookcover}}s or {{logo}}s for example. As "low resolution" is a standard part of the template texts, perhaps a justification for high resolution should be provided in the FU rationale?--Nilfanion (talk) 12:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

In response to ChadScott, I actually do think it's pretty safe to generalize that all FU images should be low resolution. Whether our copy of the copyrighted image can be printed at a commercial-level quality significantly determines whether it can interfere with the commercial value of the original for most, if not all categories of images. I'd reconsider that if you can come up with examples of images that need a high resolution, however. Consider also that you can always use cropped, zoomed-in detail images (as I added to Chuck Close to show his painting technique in different works), so that a complete copy of the image at a high resolution is not necessary to show that particular detail. Postdlf 05:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Promotional photographs have no real commercial value, so far as I can tell. They are distributed for free so that people can include images of what the thing or person looks like. IANAL, but it would seem that that, at least, is an instance were there's no need to demand low resolution. john k 15:47, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but 1) reducing the image size and resolution can only help our fair use argument (in which we should never be 100% confident); 2) we don't have a need for the image to be any larger than the information it provides requires (we don't need to play count-the-pores); 3) the smaller it is, the more any arguments by some Wikipedians against the usage become even more trivial. Postdlf 16:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
And an additional potential benefit: A high resolution promotional photo is likely to be better than a typical free photo. If we reduce the size of our fair use imagery, its more likely that the available free images are superior in quality. This might provide an additional incentive to replace fair use images with free images, which can only be a good thing.--Nilfanion (talk) 16:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
That's something I can definitely support, as much more considered and productive than the current fad of removing fair use images to motivate the posting of "free" images. Completely removing a fair use image 1) leaves the article without any image, at least for the time being, and 2) makes it likely that someone will fill that gap with an image that doesn't even qualify as fair use. Postdlf 16:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Why we would require all fair use images to be low-resoultion? I understand why photographs or works of art might need to be low-resoltion, because a hi-resolution image could possibly be a replacement for the original and thus impinge on its marketable value, but what about, for example, logos? The value of a logo is not in the logo itself, it is in its use to promote the company or product it represents, and so I don't see that it is impinging on its marketable value to have a high-resolution image. DHowell 23:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    • You have a point as to logos, but why would a logo need to be high-resolution if it's perfectly legible at a lower resolution and isn't going to appear in any article larger than a certain size? If nothing meaningful is lost by making it smaller, we should just make it smaller as a prophylactic measure. Postdlf 18:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    SVG image files are often smaller in filesize than their PNG or JPEG equivalents, and yet people who believe that SVGs have "infinite resolution" delete them or replace them with PNGs claiming that the the SVGs violate fair use policy. DHowell 20:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    SVG is generally superior to encode imagery like logos to raster file types, however there are a couple issues. First, they can be easily created to an arbitrary resolution (hence the "infinite resolution" stuff). Secondly the typical logo/coat of arms/whatever for which a SVG encoding is possible, will in the vast majority of cases be available as a GIF or PNG. The conversion to SVG may or may not be faithful to what the image is, so the SVG is quite possibly inferior to the PNG at a typical viewing resolution anyway; an inaccurate rendition of a logo is even less likely to be fair use.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:20, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    This would justify replacing an SVG image with a PNG, GIF, or JPEG that came directly from the company's website, but would not justify taking an SVG image, converting it to PNG and replacing the SVG with the PNG so derived (and this is what in fact has happened on a number of occasions in the name of correcting a supposed fair-use violation). If an SVG is inferior to the original logo, then certainly a PNG derived from that SVG would be even more inferior. DHowell 02:29, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I haven't read all the previous comments yet, so forgive me if someone has brought this up already. I believe the point behind a low resolution is only to discourage high quality replications, but most of these images are very simple and even a bitmapped format would be just as easy to convert (that's probably how a lot of them got converted to SVG in the first place). In other words, making them PNG or whatever doesn't actually prevent anything for a lot of these images. They both seem to be equal in this regard, and I don't really see bitmap as doing anything significant to make it more "fair use" than SVG. It's simply the nature of those images. -- Ned Scott 01:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Images!

Greetings,


I am new to Wikipedia as far as being a registered user,however I have always edited articles trying to make something more historically correct (prior to registration). However I was forced to register since those with AOL IP addresses are blocked. Besides this I want to make create a couple of pages however it seems according to the upload images rules "Do not upload images found on websites or on an image search engine. They will be deleted" one cannot upload anything. Last I recall some images are public domain.


--Margrave1206 21:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

  • That is a discouragement to people who would use any image they can find on the web. If they are public domain, freely licensed or qualify under fair use, they can be used. However, it is a warning that the vast majority of images found on the internet aren't. Trebor 21:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Hi there, and welcome to the registered users club :) If you are concerned about a particular image, bring it here and I'm sure someone will try and advise you. Good luck!--luke 06:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Most images are not public domain however many wikipedians take photos themselves.Geni 17:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Template:Fair use disputed

I've seen this template applied to book and album cover scans, where the fair use tag itself provides the same rationale that will apply to every usage in an article on the author or product itself; the only thing the uploader did not do was restate that rationale with the variables "in article X" punched in. How is it more productive for someone to apply this template than to just fix the problem themselves? Particularly since this template practically screams "please sue Wikimedia for copying this image that we don't even think we have a right to use." The fair use tags serve as our declaration to the copyright owner of our good faith rights to use the image, whether or not that declaration is restated with specific reference to the articles; we should not undercut that declaration (and thereby our good faith) needlessly.

The biggest problem I think is when this tag is just applied to the image description page and no one is told about it. Notifying the uploader is woefully insufficient. The articles in which an image is used are clearly stated at the bottom of the page; a notice should be posted on the talk pages of any such articles requesting a fair use rationale for that usage if it is actually more complicated than just plugging in the article names into a fair use rationale that is standard for that type of image. Regular article contributors are certainly in the best position to explain what informational role an image plays in that article. Postdlf 18:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Image deletion proposal: tag the articles, not just the images

It is clear to me that with hundreds and sometimes thousands of images being marked for speedy deletion every day, and a similar number of images being uploaded every day which don't conform to the letter of the image policies, and with a large number of those being deleted without a second thought (due to an often large backlog), where many are in only technical violation of the policy, and could be made in compliance relatively easily with a simple addition of a tag or text to the image description page, that Wikipedia is doing a totally inaquedate job of informing people of image policies and is also using up a large amount of time from both image uploaders and admins without a comparable benefit to the encyclopedia. The current policy of only tagging the image description page and (possibly) informing the uploader doesn't inform the people who would really care about the image being deleted. I propose that when an image is tagged and subject to speedy deletion, a notice should be put in the actual articles in which they are used. While some might see it as cluttering the article pages with non-encyclopedic content, I would say it would have the following beneficial effects:

  • It would notify the greatest number of people that an image is in danger of being deleted.
  • It would inform the greatest number of people of our image use policies.
  • It would encourage the creation of free alternatives to fair use images, in my opinion, far better than simply "quietly" deleting the images from the article.
  • It would further both the goals of making a high-quality encyclopedia and making one which is freely redistributable.

Thoughts, anyone? DHowell 01:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

This sounds very sensible to me. A notice on the article pages where images are used would be seen by many more editors than notices on the image pages alone. As DHowell suggests, this would enable more editors to either update licensing or rationales on image pages, or replace images with more free alternatives.
The notice should be fairly unobtrusive, though: perhaps a small banner where the image itself appears in an article? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree that "stealth" image tagging and removal is a problem, as I mentioned in the section directly above this one. Whenever an image is in use in an article, that article's regular contributors are going to be the ones in the best position to track down source info if that's missing, or to set forth a fair use rationale based on the information the image provides for that article, or to decide that the image is actually not worth putting in the effort. Notifying the uploader alone is insufficient. But I think the notice should be posted on the article's talk page, not on the article itself. Postdlf 01:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
While posting the notice on the article's talk page would be far superior to current policy, I think putting the notice in the article itself (e.g. unobtrusively near the image as suggested by Josiah Rowe, à la {{Replacethisimage}}) would better notify more people, and also have an added bonus in that Wikipedia's mirrors (who may not mirror the talk pages) would also be on notice that the image may not be compatible with the GFDL license. DHowell 01:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
We have {{subst:refu-c}} (wich just combine two existing templates) and {{reqphoto}} and simmilar. Personaly I try to add these whenever I tag images (and would encourage others to do the same), but I don't think making it an absolute requirement would help. We should not keep non-compliant images around just because someone neglected to post a warning about it to everyone who might be interested... --Sherool (talk) 13:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
But I don't think we be deleting thousands of images simply because they are in technical violation of policy, just because someone neglected to follow a rather complicated set of criteria to ensure the image won't be deleted. What if we enforced WP:NPOV or WP:CITE the way we enforce the image policies? How about if there was a bot which attached {{prod}} to every article with a {{POV}} tag or {{fact}} tag, and most admins deleted these articles without a second thought, what do you think most people's reaction would be? What if there were a number of people tagging {{POV}} to every article that contains the slightest hint of a point-of-view, and tagged {{fact}} to every sentence that didn't clearly cite a source, and this bot continued to run, and admins continued to delete en masse due to a significant "backlog"? How much content do you think there would be left on Wikipedia? DHowell 05:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't familiar with {{subst:refu-c}}. While I see Sherool's point about not making it an absolute requirement, is there any harm in making it a recommendation? I've witnessed many deletions of fair use images and never seen this template used on an article. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support making this a requirement. Badagnani 06:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

fair use RfC

There are a whole bunch of replaceable fair use images uploaded by Badagnani, an established editor and a good editor. Fair use disputed, the uploader is claiming pretty vociferously that the images are allowable, and is feeling poorly used. Partly to give him his day in court so to speak, and partly to make sure I'm doing the right thing, I opened an RfC on the matter, here: User talk:Herostratus/Image RfC. Herostratus 05:17, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, his arguments for keeping the images do not address the issue of replaceability. I deleted one of those images last night because it was a photo of a tea tin taken from the company's web site, and it would be easy for someone to take a photo of one. -- Donald Albury 12:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, all the images listed are replaceable and he's made no attempt to demonstrate otherwise. Really no point opening an RfC on the matter. Deleting. ed g2s • talk 13:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
How can a tea tin photo be replaced with a free image? If the tin's artist died less than 70 years ago, then a photo of the tin has to fall under fair use, doesn't it? I ask because I never tag photos that show copyright packaging artwork as rfu for this reason. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I think they mean that if you yourself shot a photo of such, and released it under a license, or if you got one with such a license from Wikimedia, or if you wrote to that company and got the company to agree to release said photo under a license, then it would not be "fair use" but would fall under the license which allows free use (keeping in mind certain conditions that the company might impose on the license such as that the photographer be credited, a link be made to the company's website, etc.). Badagnani 21:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
It can't be replaced with a "totally free" image, but it can be replaced with a "more free" image. While it is unavoidable that a photo of a copyrighted object is a derivative of that object, and so must qualify as a fair use, that doesn't mean that fair use will also apply to make use of anyone's photograph of that object. Presuming that I identified the right image in Donald Albury's deletion log, the tea is still being produced, so that anyone could potentially take a photo of the tea tin that is just as informative as the promotional shot. Postdlf 21:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that, although this particular variety of tea might be relatively readily available, many of the promotional images of products removed in recent weeks (such as the Chinese and Korean traditional liquors) represent products that are exceedingly rare, even in their nations of production. This was brought up, as was the related example of the chances of a Wikipedian ascending the summit of Mount Everest to produce a replacement photo of such a shot, yet in my opinion no editor has seriously addressed either case here. The availability or replaceability of images falls on a curve that is similar to the calculus concept of the limit of a function or parabola, with some quite replaceable while others (such as photos of particular individuals at particularly meaningful times, photos of engines that are no longer used or the cockpits of airplanes that are not accessible to the public, to use some good examples provided earlier) getting closer and closer to impossibility. Thus we see that fair use will always need to figure into our equation. These facts will need to be faced, as will the fact that "judgement calls" will always be involved in the evaluation of such images. Until now, however, over the past four weeks or so, I believe that the opinions of many productive and longtime editors has been dismissed essentially out of hand in the rush to purge fair use (namely promotional) images, which are clearly intended for such a purpose. Badagnani 21:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Make sure each image that cannot be feasibly replaced clearly states why on its description page, as it's necessarily a case-by-case judgment. Just as no one can categorically say "all images of X are replaceable," no one can categorically say "all images of X are not replaceable." In such cases, it would also help the fair use legal justification to crop and/or reduce the image in size so that it only copies as much of the original picture as it needs to in order to convey the information; consider also whether it's even necessary for it to be in color. Postdlf 23:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
No, in fact that is exactly what happened. It was stated clearly on the image pages themselves that the products in question were exceedingly rare, yet every image (well over 100, added over a period of many months, at considerable investment of time and energy) was summarily deleted without meaningful discussion. This is highly problematic as the input of productive and longtime editors has been, and continues to be dismissed out of hand in the rush to purge regardless of the validity of the justification or the fact that the images were placed on the Internet solely for this purpose (to promote said products). Badagnani 23:21, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

FORK

If FUC #1 is not improved,i would gladly jump to a eventual fork.As it reads,fair use is reduced to a joke.A picture worth a thousands worlds.--Pixel ;-) 12:37, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

{{Albumcover}}s and attribution of copyright holder

So, does the {{albumcover}} template in itself provide sufficient attribution of copyright holder? I have read the previous threads and it looks so, but then this appears to say otherwise (image in question is Teairra Mari - Second Round.JPG). Kimchi.sg 04:53, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Providing sources for Album covers, etc.

A contradiction has arisen between the requirements of this policy and advice that is being dispensed elsewhere. The tenth clause of the policy says:

The image or media description page must contain:
  • Proper attribution of the source of the material, and attribution of the copyright holder (if it is different).
  • An appropriate fair use tag indicating which Wikipedia policy provision permitting the use is claimed. A list of image tags can be found on the Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags#Fair_use page.
  • For each article for which fair use is claimed, the name of the article and a "fair use rationale" as explained in Wikipedia:Image description page. The rationale must be presented in a manner that can be clearly understood and which is relevant to the article in question.

Kimchi has provided me with the following talk page excerpts that contradict that part of the policy:

  • Template talk:No source: "There are some cases when this tag should not be used. An album cover image, correctly tagged {{Albumcover}}, already has a "built-in" source: its source is the album cover. If one were to provide a link to, for instance, an Amazon.com page that sells the album, that doesn't add any legitimate source information -- Amazon is simply a re-user of the original source, not a source in itself. Other fair use specific tags (like {{Bookcover}} and {{Tv-screenshot}}) are similar." (from January 2006)
  • WT:FU: "The rationale for sourcing is to make sure the status of the image is what the uploader says it is; since the status of the image tends to be extremely obvious in the case of album covers and the like, source is superfluous if not outright silly." (from June 2006)
  • Lastly, ANI: "[tagging album covers as {{no source}}] is (almost) pointless. The reason to identify the source is to make it possible to identify the ultimate copyright holder for purposes of investigating claims of fair use or infringement. In the case of an album cover the copyright owner is plainly obvious as the music publishing company. The intermediate source (Amazon.com or a person's scanner) is immaterial to the copyright. While you can make a techincal case that the record publisher should be cited by name (Capitol Records, etc) that seems like an overly technical point."

It seems that there is sentiment that the requirement to provide a source should not apply to items like album covers, DVD covers, book covers, etc. because it is obvious who the copyright holder is. On the other hand, if uploaders have found the image on the Web, then it is trivial for them to supply the source. If the uploader has taken the photo that is uploaded, it is also trivial for the uploader to supply that information. I think the source is important in case the image has been modified. After all, it is an important principal of Wikipedia that we can point to an external source for everthing in the encyclopedia. In any case, as this issue affects a great number of images, I've brought it here for further discussion. -- Donald Albury 11:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Shouldn't the photographer or artist responsible for the album cover (or book cover, etc.) also be credited? -- Gyrofrog (talk) 11:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Only if they hold the copyright to the image. If an image has been significantly modified from the original, then the artist or photographer who modified the image holds the copyright for the modification, and we would have to identify both the copyright holder of the original and the copyright holder of the modifications, and the more restrictive of the two copyrights would apply to the modified image. There may also be problems with the modifications violating the copyright on the original, which would prevent us from using the modified image. -- Donald Albury 14:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I think a link to the article on album/book/etc should be sufficient as identification of the source, at least if the article actually has the details on publisher and copyright holders and such. I've looked at a lot of cover images here, don't recall ever seeing one that had been modified, so doesn't seem like a burning issue. There are an amazing number of uploads that don't even remember to say what the image is *of*, so even the album link will be a step up for them. :-) Stan 15:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I have run across a couple of cover images for albums that are not due for release for months to come (in pure crystal ball articles), and I would really like to see where those cover images came from. That may not be a burning issue, as the images go away after the articles are deleted. -- Donald Albury 17:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I am for requiring a source of album/DVD covers, screenshots, posters and the like. And here is why:

  1. Verifiability. Click the link and see that everything is ok (or not).
  2. Serious external sites usually provide more info on who the copyright holder is.
  3. The 3rd party website might have it's own requirements because they own the computer data (the xyz kb of 1 and 0) imbeded in that image. Their requirements ("Terms and Conditions") might apply or might not, hard to tell.
  4. And as said before, providing sources is trivial. Crtl+C & Ctrl+V.
  5. Above all, it's the right thing to do: credit your sources.

Renata 17:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

As it's so easy to do, anyone who finds an unsourced cover scan should just find and provide the source rather than tagging it "unsourced." Postdlf 18:09, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree, tagging these as unsourced should not be a priority right now, given that there are so many unsourced public domain and GFDL images (e.g. images where a lack of sources could really be a problem). Even without a source, we can be pretty sure that an album cover can be used under fair use, while we generally need a source to verify that a pd image is really pd... --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
It is trivial for the person who uploads the image to supply the source. It is often far from trivial for someone else to find the source. -- Donald Albury 19:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Counterexample 7 rewording

I suggest rewording counterexample 7 from

An image of a magazine cover, used only to illustrate the article on the person whose photograph is on the cover. However, if that magazine issue itself is notable enough to be a topic within the article, then fair use may apply.

to

An image of a magazine or album cover, used only to illustrate the article on the person whose photograph is on the cover. However, if that magazine issue or album itself is notable enough to be a topic within the article, then fair use may apply.

Working with WikiProject Albums, I find artist where an album cover is being used in the artist infobox, and although I already point to counterexample 7, it would be nice if it covered album covers, which are misused more often than book and magazine covers. -- ReyBrujo 21:08, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I recently removed 6 album cover images from one singer's article. It is very tempting to use an album cover to illustrate an artist or group (I did so myself a while back), so we need to take extra steps in educating editors. -- Donald Albury 21:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
If six albums were separately and sufficiently discussed in that article, then six album covers would be justified. Postdlf 16:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Why not simplify and clarify the language: "A magazine or album cover used to illustrate the subject of the photograph on the cover, where the article does not discuss that specific magazine issue or album." Postdlf 16:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Example of lyrics being used under fair use claim

I found Roll on Columbia, where most (if not all) the song's lyrics has been written, along with critical commentary. Although it can be considered original research as there are no references, I am guessing it could be considered to fall under fair use because of the comments examining each sentence. Am I right? -- ReyBrujo 04:18, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

This goes beyond fair use since we're including the entire work, instead of just the parts necessary for commentary. It could easily be trimmed to straight commentary with a handful of quotations where necessary. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use of other media than screenshots, such as an audio clip, from a game

I have been trying to find any info on this but I haven't been successful. The case is the short, 6 second, "Game over Yeah!" audio clip from the game Sega Rally. This clip is discussed in the article and it is unique to the game itself and it cannot be desribed in a good way using only text. I am unsure how fair use applies to this since I have not been able to find any info on anything of the sort. Hence I thought it would be a good idea to bring this issue up.

Relevant RfC

An RfC that touches on some issues related to {{rfu}} tagging has been opened here. (I'm posting this here in the hope of ending recruitment-like notifications to individual talk pages by RfC participants). --RobthTalk 05:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

how to bring WP:FUC and WP:CR into line?

SSIA - Any suggestions? ...luke 15:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I just did. That should be all there is to it, WP:CR predates WP:FAIR, but this is where fair use policy is laid out these days, WP:CR had an old paragraph that was not up to date. I think there is little doubht wich of the two are the "more correct" policy per debates above and elsewhere, and if anyone is waiting from the "word from abve" there is this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Chowbok#Outside view by Jimbo Wales. --Sherool (talk) 16:26, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
No good to make such a significant change without allowing for discussion first. You seem to have made the change, then posted to "discussion." Please undo the edit, then we'll discuss the change here. Thanks. Badagnani 06:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
The "change" have been debated to death multiple times already (see for example archives of this talk page, mailing list archives, policy vilage pump archices , various RFC's linked above etc.), don't see why a "rematch" would be needed just to remove a inconsistency between a summary of the fair use policy on a related page and the actual fair use policy wich is detailed on this page (well technicaly at Wikipedia:Fair use criteria), and backed up by speedy deletion criterea for things that fall short of this policy. --Sherool (talk) 07:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, clearly it was a "stealth" discussion, conducted in remote areas frequented by editors concerned primarily with policy. It was not conducted nor reproduced here, the page in question. Please restore the original wording and we will discuss it here first. Thank you for respecting the community rather than making unilateral changes of such significance that are not disussed on the actual page where the change was made. Thanks. Badagnani 07:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Badagnani, the only way to effectively undo this change is to do it yourself and be prepared to defend it as it will likely be attacked. No matter that the discussion was outside the general view. You can see above that your call caused neither shame nore action. Unless you or I just do it, it will stay as it is. Actually, doing it won't be enough since it will likely be speedily reverted by the users "in the know of what is right". The problem is that many content writers do not frequent the Wikipedia space leaving the policies largely in the mersy of those who increasingly depart from editing articles. --Irpen 02:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

To kick off the discussion: ...is the so-called "incentivizing" of free content in some sense against our WP:FAITH policy? so I already talked about it a bit *here*. Thanks.--luke 18:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

On exceedingly rare birds

I've been thinking about the issue of newly discovered, or highly inaccessible species for which the only available images are copyrighted ones taken by nongovernment scientists, explorers, journalists, etc. I don't actually know how common this is a problem, but it's a frequent hypothetical raised in fair use discussions. As only the expression contained within a photograph is copyrighted, but not the information it provides about the species' appearance, I wonder if it is possible to instead create a drawn illustration of the animal that can source its information to such a photograph, but that does not constitute a derivative of it because it does not use any copyrighted expressive elements (i.e., does not use the composition and angle, etc. of the photograph). A body outline "template" (in the visual sense, not the Wikipedia sense) may be possible to create for usage whenever the species' form is of a general type, such that all that would be necessary would be the filling in of coloration or other superficial structures to show that species' particular varations from the general type. The only problem I see with this is ensuring the accuracy of the illustration, and ensuring that it is not such an extrapolation from the photographs as to constitute OR; I guess this would depend upon how informative the available photographs are. Thoughts? Postdlf 15:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC) (note: this was cross-posted to the Village pump)

Sure, that would be fine. In fact, a drawing may be better than photos, each of which may only capture one element of the species adequately. As far as I know, nobody has tried to copyright bird appearance, although if genes can be patented, surely copyright on animal appearances can't be too far behind... :-/ Stan 16:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
But does that drawing truly convey the same information as the image it is replacing? In my opinion, the drawing would have to be of equal or better representative quality to replace a clearly taken photograph, free or not. -- ChadScott 20:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
It might, I guess that's part of the question. Let's take an extremely simple hypothetical: explorers discover a blue and red striped species of Frog genus X. It looks exactly like every other known species of Frog genus X—same body shape and proportions—except for the color of its skin. All that an image would therefore need to convey that is specific to that new species is its coloration, the only relevant variable. A representative image could therefore be made that communicates all the information necessary even though it falls short of being a photorealistic illustration. But I'm really less concerned with the effect of this on "replaceable" "fair use" than I am with whether these illustrations can be successfully made without being derivatives of the copyrighted photos and without being OR. Postdlf 21:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Creating, Re-creating

I take it as given that any image - say, a picture of a building, or a soup can, or a guitarist - that can be created can, therefore, be re-created. (The exception being photographs of people taken when they are alive, which cannot be re-created when they are dead.) So when I read:

No free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information.

... I think that it is an impossible-to-meet standard. In 99% of cases, a free equivalent COULD be created. Lots of things COULD be created. How likely they are to actually be created is another issue, of course, but right off the bat, the FU guidelines get off to a bad start. Why are we setting up this impossible to meet standard? I suggest removing the phrase "or could be created" and simplifying the sentence to "No free equivalent exists that would adequately give the same information."

On the other hand, for a majority of promotional photos, I think a lot of the time, a truly "free" image can NOT be created. The subjects in the photo will always retain a variety of rights, thanks to the patchwork of personality rights laws in the U.S. That in and of itself should make fair use of an image a far more attractive alternative. But that's just me... Jenolen 19:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

#Proposal_to_change_FUC_.231. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
That proposal has nothing to do with this one.
Anyway, I too would like to see the personality rights issue clarified, particularly regarding celebrities. I'm fully in support of this proposal (minus MatthewFenton's change), but if legal people decide that any photo that Wikipedians take and release under creative commons... if those photos are still encumbered by celebrity rights [5] [6], and therefore not actually free, then FUC#1 shouldn't be applied to celebrities. Is there anyone more familiar with celebrity/personality rights who can weigh in on this, and whether it would make all photos of them un-free (just as box art can't be replaced, because even if you take a picture of it yourself, it's still copyrighted by the original company). --Interiot 23:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Tagging logos, album covers, etc as {{nrd}}

I've noticed lately an increase in tagging logos and other more or less "obvious" fair use images as not having a rationale. This really annoys me for two reasons. (1) The specific fair use tags (like {{logo}}, {{albumcover}}, {{tv-screenshot}}, etc, themselves contain a rationale. The rationale for including a corporate logo on a website about the company is obvious. The rationale for including a screenshot of a piece of software in an article about that program is obvious. (2) All adding the {{nrd}} tag does is create work for someone else. When the rationale is obvious, you could add it in the time that you can complain about its absence. Really, all you are doing is forcing someone else to go add the rationale or, worse, if an administrator actually deletes the image, someone else has to go to the trouble of re-uploading it.

In short, the bottom line is this - if an image is missing a rationale, and its rationale is painfully obvious, FIX IT rather than just asking someone else to. BigDT 01:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Strongly support the above. It's a no-brainer. We're not doing this in order to put down other editors, but to support one another's good contributions. A small mistake should be corrected rather than "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" by deleting entirely. Badagnani 01:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Why are we breaking out into polling again?     All fair-use images (including those tagged with {{logo}}, {{albumcover}}, {{tv-screenshot}}) can be abused and overused, so {{nrd}} is definitely appropriate when that might be the case. --Interiot 01:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, I wasn't looking for a vote ... just a request - if it's an obvious case, for example, [7], just fix it, rather than leaving it for someone else to do. I've noticed this a number of times in recent weeks. If the tag is really incorrect (eg, {{logo}} on something that is obviously not a logo), then by all means, tag it for a speedy. If it isn't obvious, ie, the much dreaded promophoto, by all means, use {{nrd}}. But if it is blatantly obvious, why create work for someone else? Just fix it. I would even suggest that it may be a good idea to add to the {{no license}}, {{no rationale}}, etc, templates a message saying something along the lines of, "if this you believe that this problem may easily be resolved, please consider adding the needed information rather than merely tagging the image for someone else to handle." If it's missing a source, but the source is obvious (eg, a logo that obviously came from the company's website), fix it. If it's missing an obvious rationale, fix it. If it's missing a license, but the fair use criterion is obvious, fix it. That's all I'm suggesting - that we all fix the problem rather than causing work for someone else. BigDT 02:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Wonton tagging of hundreds of images per day disregarding the merits of each case or even paying no attention can also be easily overused and abused and is being abused lately all the time. As such we need anything but an encouragement of such disruptive activity. --Irpen 02:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Makes sense, assuming the image is being used correctly. I would generally think the template text is sufficient, but if you believe there's a problem, fixing it is the best approach, not tagging it for deletion. Of course, if the image is being used incorrectly, deletion may be appropriate. JYolkowski // talk 02:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly support - I was checking my old contribs and saw that many game covers have been deleted. That's so annoying! It's not like it didn't take effort to find and upload them, you know! And it's rather dumb. For example, there's a file named "Street_Kombat_Fury_II_box.jpg", it's obviously fair use material in the article about the game "Street Kombat Fury II". - Stormwatch 03:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly supportPer noon.--Pixel ;-) 21:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

New RfC

A new RfC of relevance to the subject of Fair Use may be found Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Abu badali here]. Badagnani 03:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Good grief ... I'm all for replacing fair use images of random celebrities with free ones. But rather than just tagging the things with deletion tags and letting someone else handle them, wouldn't it be more helpful to write to the subject and ask them to release a photo under the GFDL? Some will, some won't, but it's more helpful than just just tagging them as replaceable without helping to find a replacement. (Needless to say, I have a very low opinion of the "somebody else fix this problem" tags.) BigDT 03:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
As do I. Oden has been doing a lot of this and won't listen to feedback from other users regarding this issue, using Wikipedia policy to basically nullify concerns from other users regarding images. I'm not condoning personal attacks on individual users here, but this method of burn and pillage editing seems to cause more problems than it solves. - Stick Fig 06:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


Fair Use Promophotos No More

This was interesting. I found out tonight that all {{promo}} images that are not of dead people or defunct bands are being listed for deletion, in accordance with our policies. Odd, that such an important fact would be buried here. I found that quite surprising, as I had no idea a consensus had been reached on that issue. But that's the beauty of Wikipedia -- you can learn something new every day! Glad to see we're doing away with all the promophotos! It will make things a lot more simple. (Oh, and a lot more like a bad Flikr stream, but c'est la vie...) Of course, it'll be tough to explain that policy change to the thousands of Wikipedians who uploaded, tweaked, and tagged images under the old fair use policy. It's tough to keep on top of the rolling log that is the fair use policy, but hey... Jenolen 07:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

That was a pretty straightforward case. A free image is found, so we got rid of the fair use image. What's the controversy? Borisblue 07:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Two things, actually. In this specific case, it's unfortunate that a promotional picture of the band was deleted, and replaced with a blurry, Flikr photo of, well, not-the-band. The two gentlemen in the new "improved" photo are not Henry and Sam. So, you know, that's a problem. Also, as the rights issues surrounding the new photo have not been entirely resolved (at least, in 28 of the 50 U.S. states that have personality rights laws on the books), I feel this is actually a more legally dangerous photo than the previous one.
And secondly, beyond this specific case, the assertation that ALL promotional photos are now being deleted (with the dead person/broken up band exemptions, apparently) with NO fair use permitted seems wildly out of line with the current ACTUAL policy, and more suited to the dreamy, "everything on Wikipedia should eventually be free, including the images" goal stated by many of the enthusiastic RFU taggers. As I understand it, Wikipedia HAS a fair use policy, and ALLOWS promotional images... but if this change has been settled on by the community, then so be it. I think a major education campaign, including a press release to media (which I'd be willing to write) stating that "Your promotional photos are no good here!" would certainly be called for. Also, many, many, many users will NOT understand the elimination of promotional photos. Neither will artists, nor photographers, nor publicists, nor anyone involved in the actual field of promotion or publicity. It's a mountain to climb, but it can be climbed...
Or, you know, we could just allow fair use.
Jenolen 07:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The problem is exaggerated. Fair use policy will not lead to the death of wikipedia. The German wikipedia, and most other wikipedias don't allow fair use at all, and they are thriving. This issue will have to be resolved soon, but failure to do so will NOT result in either anyone suing wikipedia or a mass exodus of wikipedians. Borisblue 07:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry man, it's just totally backwards and really works against many of the things that make Wikipedia work. It's also inconsistent; we treat sourced articles much differently from fair use photos despite the fact that their purpose is almost exactly the same. It's a policy that's going to anger users, and I feel like I have to be passionate about it and take a stand here, even if I'm a lone voice, and just say that the policy is wrong.
GPL and fair use philosophies should be compatible. They shouldn't be looked upon as incongruent things that muddy the waters of the site. I deal with these sorts of fair use issues all day as a visual journalist, whether it's picking stock photos, trying to find storytelling devices, or using freely distributed promotional photos, and I for the life of me can't figure out what the issue is with respecting copyrights. It's not like we're suggesting that we pay no respect to the copyrighted material; quite the contrary, we're looking to play by the rules.
But instead of trying to find middle ground, we have users deleting any image that is possibly copyrighted on biographical articles. It's just not fair philosophical ground to play on. We want to cover all these topics, yet we can't be expected to respect copyright or give readers what they want by telling the full story in a proper manner.
I've posted so much in these talk articles over the last day or so because I'm very passionate about this. I just find something fundamentally wrong with this. So, please. Instead of telling us to chill, help us figure out a way to compromise this policy. - Stick Fig 08:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Then how on earth are the foreign language wikipedias thriving then? Most of them don't allow fair use at all. The point of my comment is, that being 'passionate' will not get us anywhere. A lot of people seem to have the impression that deleting promo images will lead to the destruction of wikipedia- it won't. And heated, shrill denunciations and quarrels will do nothing to solve the problem. Borisblue 08:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
And no, your analogy with sourced articles is misleading. We do not allow copy-and-pasting of encyclopedia Britannica entries, for instance although some of them are clearly superior to their Wikipedia counterparts. We do redraw free-use diagrams based on copyrighted diagrams, that are different in form (and perhaps inferior in quality) but convey the same information. These are the proper analogues to sourced articles. Borisblue 09:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Interestingly, a redrawing of a diagram under copyright is a derivative work of the same and isn't permitted, right? All of those redrawn diagrams should therefore be deleted, according to the current policy. If you follow these incestuous arguments all the way to their terminus you'll find they don't scale and rapidly deteriorate into ridiculousness. -- ChadScott 23:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
What works for them doesn't necessarily work for us, and on top of that, our priorities may be different. My priority is to provide solid information, and if a fair-use image is the best way to provide it, I'm going to use it. If a free image can do it, I'll use that. What I won't do is compromise an article's integrity and quality because the only option I have is a fair use image. It's counterintuitive.
It's only a problem because we (not we as in you or me, the collective "we") are making it one.
Also, my sourced article comment is not misleading. If I quote a piece of an article and fully credit it, it's still owned by the person who originally wrote it. If I take a 300dpi photo from FoxFlash and size it down for the Web, then credit Fox for the image of Wentworth Miller, it's much the same philosophy. We're giving readers just enough of the message to make it useful but still giving full credit for the original content. And honestly, that's all I'm asking to be able to continue doing.
On an unrelated side note, please be careful with regards to editing your posts so heavily; I've run into multiple edit conflicts with you. Just think, some evil mastermind out there is probably scheming to use it as a Wikipedia version of a DOS attack. :) - Stick Fig 09:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it just comes as a shock to many of us the way this situation is being approached. Not so much the individual images as the overall effect that this has. I think the best way to do it would be to make free images PREFERABLE, but still allow fair use images for biographical personalities. There's just so much wrong with this philosophy that it's not even funny. - Stick Fig 07:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The problem is, given that a completely libre encyclopedia (ie no fair use at all) is possible (just check out German, Danish wikipedias etc)- wouldn't building one be a worthy goal? Frankly, one solution I see is a fork of wikipedia. Then, we would have one encyclopedia with emphasis on comprehensiveness rather than "free-ness" and another with a strict free-license philosophy. Both projects would, in my opinion be an immense benefit and a valuable resource in their own way. The reason there is no impetus for a compromise is that the fair use image dispute is, at is core is not a policy dispute- it's a dispute about the goals and nature of the project itself. Is wikipedia's primary goal to be comprehensive? If so, we must include as much encyclopedic fair use as legally possible. Is wikipedia's primary goal to be a freely available, free-content resource? If so, tight restrictions on copyright material are necessary. Borisblue 09:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm critical of Debian for reasons similar to your latter example. So that's where I end up on the fence. I respect Richard Stallman's many philosophical contributions to the software industry, but I think there's a limit to its usefulness. I just don't feel that GNU is a mainstream philosophy when extended to its full potential. So, I guess I'm on a different side of the battle lines than you are. We can agree to disagree, or we can find a way to compromise. Let's choose one. - Stick Fig 09:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
But wouldn't it make more sense to create a new version of wikipedia for people who share your goals? A similar thing happened with wikinfo, which is basically wikipedia without Wikipedia:NPOV. Thus if someone wants to contribute to an encyclopedia which strives towards neutrality, they can go to WP, but if they want to contribute to an encyclopedia that portrays several different views at the same time, they can go to Wikinfo. Seems like an ideal compromise to me. Creating a 'fair-use' fork will satisfy both people who see comprehensiveness as their primary goal and people who see free-content as their primary goal. Borisblue 09:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I note your concerns with the GNU licence, and I sympathize, although I disagree about your assessment its viability. The thing is, the GNU philosophy is central to wikipedia- it's non-negotiable, and thus no compromise can be reached.
I'll quote from User:Jimbo Wales: I should point out that these are my principles, such that I am the final judge of them. This does not mean that I will not listen to you, but it does mean that at some ultimate, fundamental level, this is how Wikipedia will be run... #5:The GNU FDL license, the openness and viral nature of it, are fundamental to the long-term success of the site. Anyone who wants to use our content in a closed, proprietary manner must be challenged. We must adhere very strictly to both the letter and spirit of the license.Borisblue 09:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not a bad idea, but I guess my feeling is that mainstream users probably would identify more with these fair use arguments than totally free content. But seeing as you have brought the point up, maybe we should see if other people would be interested in this idea. With that said... - Stick Fig 10:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Would there be interest in a "FairWiki"?

One of the things that came out of the above argument was a suggestion for a Wikipedia fork designed specifically to emphasize fair use and comprehensiveness over the desire for free content. While this idea strives to be in the spirit of the GFDL, it also understands that the GFDL has ideological limits that are not entirely compatible with the tenets of fair use.

I personally feel that Wikipedia should be perhaps more accommodating to the needs and desires of copyrights with relation to the encyclopedia, as it creates content which is more desirable to most audiences. This philosophy seems to have lots of, but not universal, support. Much as Linux has many different flavors, each with their own comfort zone with copyrighted content, Wikipedia seems to necessitate similar approaches.

So with that said, would anyone have an interest in creating a fork of Wikipedia based not on being strictly free but comprehensive? Post comments below. - Stick Fig 10:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I actually agree with you that FairWiki might be more popular than FreeWiki. And that is an excellent analogy with the linux distributions. I believe that both projects would find their own niche, and we could end up with the best of both worlds- a comprehensive, free-of-charge encyclopedia that makes full use of the fair use clause of copyright, and another encyclopedia that serves as a catalyst for the creation and use of free content. Borisblue 10:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Why not call it CopyrightViolationWiki? The problem is that there are two extremes. A lot of users, mostly well-meaning, find an image on the internet that they want to use. They figure, "there must be a way for me to use it here" so they go one of two routes. They either say, "I freely downloaded it therefore it must be free" or they realize that it is not free and decide, "if it's on someone's website, it must be a promo photo and therefore fair use." That extreme needs to be dealt with and those images obviously 100% need to be deleted. But the other extreme is to call anything with a living person "replaceable" and blow it away without regard to whether it is actually practical to replace it. Both of those extremes are problems, IMO, but a "Fair use wiki" isn't the solution either. The policies are fine on Wikipedia - the implementation is not. BigDT 13:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there anyone who has actually articulately defended a very loose understanding of what constitutes a promo photo? Obviously people upload photos and call them promo photos, but does anybody actually defend this as a policy? It seems to me that actual promo photos present no problems whatsoever, and so long as we are utterly clear that an image actually is a promo photo, there is absolutely no reason to delete promo photos, which are, for all practical purposes, already as free as GFDL pictures. john k 18:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly encourage such a fork. A fork is never going to overtake Wikipedia in popularity, but it might draw away users who don't share our free-content philosophy. Unfortunately I doubt anyone actually has the resources to host such a site. You all seem to be blissfully unaware of the millions of dollars that have been spent on Wikipedia hardware so far. ed g2s • talk 14:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, I don't see any reason to abandon wikipedia to the "free content" ideologues. One can have a sane fair use policy and promote the creation of free images at the same time. The comments by ed and Boris above seem to be based on the premise that the creation of free content is somehow the principle purpose of wikipedia. I don't think that most editors would agree with this. This is a purpose of wikipedia, but the primary purpose is to create a comprehensive encyclopedia. Where these two goals come into conflict, we should try to devise a workable solution that will maximize our success in reaching both goals, not simply decree that the (secondary) goal is unnegotiable and that the (primary) goal should bend before it. john k 19:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

A lot of users do see free content as the primary purpose of wikipedia. Why do you think people are opposing your attempts to change the unfree content policy? Your unwillingness to even consider that there is a valid alternative point of view is what is resulting in a stalemate here. A fork will completely satisfy the goals of both camps, I don't see why this approach isn't given more consideration. Borisblue 19:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The ideological divide is great here, and I don't get the feeling that we'll reach consensus or compromise, at least not today. I do wish that more people were interested in supporting a FairWiki, however. It seems like a feasible alternative to complaining to death about this. - Stick Fig 20:08, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Surely by any reasonable standard writing an encyclopedia is the primary purpose. Free content is a means to that end. Also, pot, meet kettle. john k 00:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
You insist that your opinion is the only valid one. I am at least acknowledging your view exists, and I have come up with a compromise proposal. The sum of your contributions to the discussion are vitriol and sarcasm. Borisblue 04:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
A fork is a compromise proposal? That's completely ridiculous. Unless you are proposing a fork hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, which you obviously have no right to propose, a fork would clearly be a victory for you. I have never insisted that my view is the only valid one. I simply think that my view is right, and that yours is wrong. Your view is perfectly valid, I just disagree with it, and think that Wikipedia would be better served by rejecting it. As to acknowledging the validity of my view, all I've seen is people telling me that I don't believe in Wikipedia's basic principles, and people proposing that I leave wikipedia and contribute to a fork if I don't like your interpretation of policy. My point has always been that FUC#1 can be interpreted in multiple ways, and that the currently dominant way is a bad one to do so. Your claim is that there is only one way to interpret it. I genuinely cannot understand how you can possibly feel that you are being any more open-minded about this than I am. john k 15:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
John k, that "secondary goal" is non-negotiable. That's why we tell all editors that "you agree to license your contributions under the GFDL". The sentence doesn't go on to say that editors have the option of not licensing their edits, and WP will just fall back on a fair use argument in those cases. I don't think the fair-use images are so important that they're worth forking over, and a fork will weaken WP's ability to encourage copyright holders to make some free versions available, which I hope you'll agree is a much better outcome than the eternal legal minefield of dependency on fair use. (Think of what happened to Napster - they were once pretty confident that nothing bad could happen to them.) Stan 20:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
That eternal legal minefield won't change because of Wikipedia. To think it will is pure idealism. - Stick Fig 21:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
What I meant was that WP wants to stay out of the legal minefield as much as possible. Even a small-time newspaper has more budget for legal counsel than WP does, and every other organization big enough to be managing hundreds of thousands of fair-use images inhouse has a whole battery of lawyers on staff. So at WP we're taking risks that regular journalists don't usually have to think about. Stan 23:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Are you really suggesting that there is any actual legal problem with using promo photos? john k 00:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, no one is really proposing that Wikipedia completely avoid fair use. Every quote in WP from a copyrighted work is here because of fair use--no one is going around tagging or deleting quotes from The Lord of the Rings because their inclusion here violates some ideal of free content. People are tagging and deleting images whose inclusion in WP is more legally unquestionable than the Tolkien quotes are--I can only think that the double standard is because people don't understand that the same copyright rules apply to images and text. Nareek 21:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

What is this fair use that you talk of? doesn't exist for rather a lot of wikipedia users.Geni 21:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's what bothers me about this comment. You guys want us to play by the rules, you won't bend, you won't budge, you won't treat alternate solutions with the respect they ask for, and in the end everyone ends up angry. And it's frustrating. I haven't been a bit rude or disrespectful in any of my posts here, but just understand that debate is debate and we're going to disagree. But then there are flippant comments like this that seem to come from a very untrustworthy perspective of most Wikipedia users. A lot of Wikipedians are probably wondering why a lot of biographical pages are missing images; I know that's what I was wondering until I saw a page with the fair use policy staring me in the face.
There's a reason why this topic is causing so much drama. It's going too far for some of us. So, instead of treating our concerns so flippantly and thinking that we don't understand the importance of copyright, help us figure out a way to make Wikipedia better. Because this solution is uncomfortably in the middle of a fault line that's put a clear divide between different groups of users. - Stick Fig 22:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Take pics. Get your friends to take pics. Dig through the faimily album. see if the person has every had dealings with the US federal goverment and it's agencies.Geni 23:40, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, because I'm sure the best photo of Nick Nolte is that infamous mugshot of his that was shot by the government. - Stick Fig 00:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Does that mean we should be going on a campaign of deleting all quotes and excerpts of copyrighted text, because there are some countries in which they might be a copyright violation? DHowell 23:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm worried about a FairWiki, mainly since instead of finding out what the main problem is and people fixing it, people just want to fork. I do not like the idea of spliting up the community in this way, especially now. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 23:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any country where such quotes would be considered a copyright violation.Geni 23:40, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Stick Fig, part of the reason you're seeing truculence is that when we've tried to write more relaxed rules for fair use, literally thousands of uploaders exploited them to commit the most blatant copyright violations, and took the relaxed attitude as an excuse to edit out free images even when they were of good quality. There's just a lot of unfortunate history, much of which probably predates your arrival. You could try processing a couple hundred images in Category:Fair use images (a category which needs to be emptied) to get more of a feel for the chaos we're faced with. Stan 23:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Let's figure out a better system, then, instead of throwing in the towel. We shouldn't throw in the towel regarding fair use images because of the fact that it's difficult to deal with. - Stick Fig 00:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Not throwing in the towel. I suspect recent event impact less than 10% of "fair use" image on wikipedia (that is around 30K images images)Geni 01:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
30,000 images is still a lot of images. Would it be acceptable to delete 30,000 articles without a clear consensus to do so, even though this only represents about 2% of the total number of articles? DHowell 22:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's "throwing in the towel" to defend justified application of fair use content while attacking unjustified fair use material (or at least material of sufficiently dubious nature that could plausibly lead to a legal problem - the WMF can't afford to have a day in court, even if it wins, because of its limited legal budget). It certainly is, however, throwing in the towel to form a new wiki over the issue of fair use. Yes, there are some overzealous people crusading against uses of uncopylefted material that are actually justified (although I don't exactly run into such people very often - this is a problem that's a molehill made out to be a mountain), but this is much preferable to people arguing for loosening our policy on uncopylefted content without thinking through the consequences. Johnleemk | Talk 09:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The idea that "free content is non-negotiable" that Stan expresses above seems highly problematic to me. The particular problem is that, as Nareek says, it is impossible to completely avoid fair use. Any quotation from, or even paraphrase of, a copyrighted work can only be justified under fair use. For many things, the only way to get a decent image is to claim fair use. The argument for doing this with promotional images is particularly strong, because using them is not legally questionable at all - it is legal, full stop. Others have argued, and have not been rebutted, that promotional photos provide just as much freedom as GFDL licensed pictures do. Even if that's not true, it's not obvious why allowing clearly legal fair use images, in the absence of decent, and readily available, replacements, should be banned, and why such a policy encourages the creation of free content. john k 00:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

"it is legal, full stop" evidences?Geni 01:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Promotional or publicity photos are created for the purpose of being distributed and used by sources like wikipedia. I have yet to see anybody make the argument that wikipedia's usage of such images might be illegal. Are you prepared to make such an argument? john k 03:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
That is to say - we've been arguing about this for weeks, and nobody on your side of the debate has yet made the claim that usage of publicity photos might be illegal. Generally, they have admitted that they are legal, but gone on to talk about wikipedia's "free content" philosophy, or whatever other gobbledygook, as justifying deletion. john k 03:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
depending on the exact terms under which they are released I can think of a number of ways they could be pertentialy unlawful.Geni 04:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
One reason that people want to retain ownership of promo photos is to be able to revoke "permission" at will, for instance if they don't like some bit of content in their bios. Organizations such as sport leagues have also started to exercise control over all their imagery, and it wouldn't surprise me to see them making trouble if they don't think our articles about them are sufficiently hagiographic, or when one of their PR flacks' puffery-edits is repeatedly reverted, as has started happening in the past year. Every fair-use image, promophoto or not, is open to claims of copyright violation, and the copyright holders are within their rights to demand monetary recompense from the Foundation. After all, if ownership of promophotos doesn't matter, then why doesn't everybody put them under free licenses? So it's not just a matter of principle, we are in fact legally exposed. Stan 06:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
You may have noticed that commercial newspapers use promotional photos all the time next to the most critical stories and scathing reviews. Why? Because the lawyers of these publications assure them there is no chance a court will ever agree that the use of a promotional photo to illustrate a story (virtually any story) is anything other than fair use. Why don't people release promotional photos under a free license? There are some conceivable uses of a promo photo that would not be fair use--for example, if you put it on a t-shirt and sold it, that would probably be considered an illegal exploitation of someone else's image. The same thing would be true with a "free" image as well, however. Nareek 06:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The point of WP is to create a encyclopaedia that can be redistributed freely - and this includes derivative works. Making derivative works out of uncopylefted material is extremely difficult (to say the least). This is why licences (such as the Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives licence) which do not allow this are prohibited outright on WP (such images are speediable). This is why for our purposes, free works are superior to promo photos.
Another issue is that real promo photos - as in those released to promote the subject of the WP article in question - are hard to locate, and their status difficult to determine. Many images labeled as promos are taken from webpages made by fans or other such amateur sites, which do not properly attribute the original photographer/copyright-holder (thus invalidating the fair use claim), and which may mislabel images. The best sources for promos are professional websites such as iMDB, or better yet, the official website of the subject in question. Photos taken by the press should be avoided as much as possible, however, as their status is dubious - we could be unknowingly infringing on the profit of the coypright-holder. Johnleemk | Talk 09:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with all of this. But that isn't an argument against allowing use of actual publicity photos. john k 15:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Um, I am arguing for the use of "actual publicity photos" while arguing against tolerance for usage of ostensible publicity photos whose copyright status is dubious. Hopefully the nuances of my ideas don't fly over the heads of partisans on either side. Johnleemk | Talk 17:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, yes, then we agree entirely. My apologies. john k 20:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Once again, I will quote from User:Jimbo Wales: I should point out that these are my principles, such that I am the final judge of them. This does not mean that I will not listen to you, but it does mean that at some ultimate, fundamental level, this is how Wikipedia will be run... #5:The GNU FDL license, the openness and viral nature of it, are fundamental to the long-term success of the site. Anyone who wants to use our content in a closed, proprietary manner must be challenged. We must adhere very strictly to both the letter and spirit of the license. Borisblue 09:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like official dictat to me. I'm not saying that an online encycopedia that uses fair use as widely as legally possible is not a viable project, just that this is not what wikipedia is designed to be. Borisblue 04:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I completely, 100 percent agree that the "openness and viral nature" of WIkipedia needs to be protected and preserved. I fully concur that "Anyone who wants to use our content in a closed, proprietary manner must be challenged." What does not make sense, to me and to a lot of people, is to eliminate images not because they threaten any of the valid and worthwhile goals of the GFDL, but because we just prefer aesthetically the notion of "free content". That is to say, if there is no discernable practical benefit in terms of potential uses in using a blurry concert snapshot instead of a more informative promotional photo, then why on earth should we replace the one with the other?
And why aren't we tagging and deleting quotations from copyrighted material? Where is the consistency here? Nareek 05:34, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The practical benefit is that we can make derivative works from the copylefted content, and that we can distribute them without fear of the copyright status changing. Once something is copylefted, it remains copylefted - there is no risk that the copyright holder will suddenly turn around and demand payment for its usage in a particular context, unlike with commercial licences.
Furthermore, most of our quotations are valid under fair use, because their legal status is very much defensible. When you quote from a work, you do not take pages of it - you may take perhaps 0.01% of the original content. A photograph, however, even if reduced in resolution, would be, say, 25% of the original material. The more of the original content that we use, the stronger and more watertight our usage must be. Unless we are taking and republishing whole pages of books or newspaper articles, our usage of quotations is, for all intents and purposes, legally watertight. Johnleemk | Talk 09:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
For God's sake could somebody please present any evidence that use of publicity photos is not equally "legally watertight"? These are used by mainstream publications that have actual copyright lawyers on staff. john k 15:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
For our purposes (that is, to create an encyclopaedia which can be reused and distributed freely, inclusive of derivative works), fair use images are far from legally watertight. Mainstream publications don't have to worry about ensuring that their material can be reused freely in the future. Johnleemk | Talk 17:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not talking about fair use images generally, but about the specific category of "publicity photos."
That's not why we don't use them. ed g2s • talk 17:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
WP is not a mainstream publication, nor do we have actual copyright lawyers on staff, so we need to not be exploring the boundaries of fair use the way Napster did. Why not recruit a copyright lawyer to study the situation and write up a set of practical rules? That would carry far more weight than incessant arguing here. Stan 20:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Are you offering to pay for this service? In any case a copyright lawer would be extreamly unlikely to produce an answer other than "it depends" for anything other than a specific.Geni 20:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Stan: I was not suggesting "exploring the boundaries of fair use." I'm talking about publicity photos, which as far as I can tell are quite clearly covered by fair use, and not on the boundaries at all. I strongly agree, though, that the opinion of an actual lawyer would be helpful. Geni: the specific legal question would, I should think, be something along the lines of, "under what circumstances could wikipedia or reusers of wikipedia content get into trouble for using publicity photos released to the public for the purpose of promoting an individual or product." This seems specific enough to be able to get reasonably clear guidelines. john k 20:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Any answer to that question would contian so many cavats that it might as well be shortened to "it depends" or would millions and be several thousand pages long (next time try not to ask questions that a require knowlage of over 200 legal systems and are so open ended). I mean technicaly the answer would have to include islamic restrictions on pictures of women in skimpy clothing.Geni 21:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

So the answer to why it's OK to quote copyrighted text and not use promotional images is that it's somehow safer legally to use text than images. Which isn't true, but at least we're getting past the idea that fair use is somehow in conflict with WP's sacred principles. Nareek 21:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It is true if you stop being so americano centric (brazillian law includes a right to quote). an no we are not moveing away from wikipedia is meant to produce free content.Geni 21:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
And under Brazilian law you can be sued for using a promotional image without permission? I sincerely doubt that.
Regardless, you can't have it both ways--either the WP ideal can withstand large amounts of fair use (at least in the form of text), or we should start deleting quotations pronto. Nareek 21:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
No. A quote is a small amount of a larger text. This is why fair use law allows brief quotes from larger texts. An image is an entire work, and copying an entire image is equivalent to copying an entire book, not a quote from a book. – Quadell (talk) (random) 22:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
What about a screenshot? A TV screenshot is 1/30th (or 1/25th) of a second and thus generally represents less than .003% of the entire work. And if an image is contained in a book, why would copying such an image any different than copying a quote from the same book? DHowell 22:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It most places the image would be considered a seperate work and would be covered under a slightly different set of copyright laws.Geni 23:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
And also explain The Red Wheelbarrow, which indeed copies the entire work. DHowell 22:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Could be PD. Probably isn't. Has been removed.Geni 23:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Replacability of band photos

There's currently a discussion about the replacability of fair use promotional photos of bands at Image talk:Wheatus 2005.jpg, and we (Quadell and myself) would like to get some more opinions on the issue, since this is a dispute that might concern a huge number of promotional images. --Fritz S. (Talk) 15:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the lunacy that is FUC #1. You're, of course, spot on regarding this. A 6 piece like this cannot readily give the same information, and these should be handled on a case-by-case basis until we fix the problem with the criteria. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
We are handling this on a case-by-case basic. That's what we're asking about. – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
No we're not. Right now, we're handling this on a "if the subject can have a free picture taken, we shouldn't have any fair use images." Technically speaking, the Wheatus situation is being handled like all fair use images should be handled. Instead, it's the exception rather than the rule. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • A photo that you take of band members performing on stage is absolutely, 100%, NOT a free image. It is a derivative work of their copyrighted performance. The owner of a copyright of a work has sole discretion to authorize derivative works. That copyrighted work could be a piece of literature, a news photo, an album, or a stage performance. Taking a photo of a band performing is a derivative work of their performance just as taking a photo of a movie is a derivative work of that movie. Thus, there is no free image that could be created that would be the equivalent of thie image and thus neither this image, nor any other band photo violates FUC #1 - it is patently impossible to create a free equivalent. BigDT 15:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This article doesn't say anything about that. Badagnani 15:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
While that's a very interesting article, he's talking about privacy laws - not copyright laws. I can take a photo of a stage performance and publish it without violating anyone's privacy. It's a public place. They are willingly putting themselves before hundreds of people. Privacy is not an issue. Copyright, however, is and this columnist does not discuss copyright laws. If I go to a concert and take photos and stick them on my blog or email them to my friends, nobody would question that I have every right, under the fair use doctrine, to do that. But that doesn't change the fact that they are unauthorized derivative works of a copyrighted work. BigDT 15:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
A photo can't copy an audio performance, and that is what is copyrighted, not the particular motions or poses the band makes while engaging in that performance. See my further comments on this issue on the image talk page. Postdlf 16:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
A derivative work doesn't have to copy the entire original work to be a CV. If I take a photo of a sculpture, that's a derivative work, even though the photo obviously doesn't copy the whole thing. If I write a novel about James T Kirk and Mr. Spock, that's a derivative of Star Trek, even though I may have my own plot. If there is anything creative in the photo you take (which, unless they were recording in a studio, there almost certainly would be), then it is a CV and can only be used as fair use. BigDT 16:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The point is that a photograph of a musical performance is simply not copying anything that is copyrighted or copyrightable. A photograph of a sculpture uses the form of that sculpture. A novel about copyrighted characters uses those characters. That is why those are derivatives of the original. But a photograph of a musician playing a song does not use the song. Please continue this on the image talk page; I don't want to repeat this in two duplicate threads. Postdlf 16:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I keep getting the sense that Wikipedia's rules about Fair Use and "free" images are not based on legal reality, but rather on non-lawyers' imaginings of what copyright means combined with a sentimental attraction to the word "free". The truth is that Wikipedia may be on much firmer legal ground using a promotional photo than using a "free" photo taken by a WP editor. Nareek 16:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Your sense is largely correct. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not based entirely on U.S. law; there are many images which would be legal to include, but which violate our policy. Our fair use policy is not that "if it's legal, go ahead and do it". We purposefully restrict the (legal) use of non-free images, in order to promote free content. And that isn't a sentimental attachment to the word "free"; it's a commitment to the principle of free content, and it's one of Wikipedia's core values. – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
And it doesn't improve the encyclopedia as a result, sadly. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

IANAL but I don't think live proformances are copyrightable. A work needs to be fixed in a tangable format to be entiteled to copyright. --Sherool (talk) 17:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

They are, they are fixated into time. Presently time is forever, you can not change it and hence that alone makes the performance tangible.thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree that time is a tangable format... --Sherool (talk) 17:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
"1. a. Discernible by the touch; palpable: a tangible roughness of the skin. b. Possible to touch. c. Possible to be treated as fact; real or concrete: tangible evidence. 2. Possible to understand or realize: the tangible benefits of the plan."
You touch time just by being in existence, 1a/b = pass. Time equates to fact and time is real, 1c = pass. You understand time so I'd say it passes def. #2 as well. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
How is this line of thought going to get us any closer to improving the encyclopedia? It seems built upon things that no average user would really think about when looking up an article by The Fray. But I will say this much; does this mean we have to take down that free image of Britney Spears because it was snapped during a concert?
Hypothetical situations are not a good way to build policy. There is an end to this means, and that end is going to find us in a position where we're taking down even the free content because we've painted ourselves into a corner so much. Instead of doing that, let's actually make some reasonably elastic policy decisions here. - Stick Fig 17:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Re: "time" as a "tangible medium," we're not writing poetry, we're discussing an established legal standard, so please don't try to just absurdly play with words if you don't actually understand the concept. The requirement under U.S. copyright law that a work be "fixed in a tangible medium" means that it must be embodied in a reasonably permanent physical form. This derives from the requirement in the U.S. Constitution that expression be in the form of a "writing" in order to be copyrightable. Simply "existing in time" is not enough, because that would render the requirement completely meaningless. Bodily movements are transitory and not fixed; written dance choreography is fixed. Human speech is not fixed; a written speech or a recording of human speech is fixed. Words you trace in the air with your finger are not fixed; words you trace in the sand with your finger are fixed. P.S., IAAL. Postdlf 18:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I think the point is that we are being ridiculously draconian about use of promo photos, which couldn't ever get us into any trouble whatsoever, while ignoring any potential copyright problems with supposedly "free" images. This in spite of the fact that the promo photos are almost always of higher quality than the "free" images that "adequately replace" them. john k 18:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
You won't see me disagreeing. As I've said before, I work in newspapers and deal with fair use issues basically every day. And what gets me about this argument is that free seems to have taken over every other concern regarding fair use, including useful, highest quality, promotional and so forth. I know Wikipedia goes by different rules than my newspaper does, but seriously, this interpretation of the rules seems to be tightly wound around a single thing that somehow makes a camera phone photo exactly the same as a promotional photo shot by a 20-year veteran that was released explicitly for use in newspapers, in magazines, on TV, and most importantly, on sites like Wikipedia. - Stick Fig 18:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
But not released for use, for instance, in cheap commercially produced textbooks, or in many of the other media in which we hope that Wikipedia content will eventually be reused. --RobthTalk 23:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Really? If Entertainment Weekly, or the All Music Guide, or whoever, can use the image, why couldn't a commercial textbook? john k 00:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This is just plain bonkers. I had a fair use image deleted despite it being tagged {{Replacable fair use disputed}}. It was marked by Chowbok then deleted in violation of correct procedure by Betacommand. It was then undeleted (don't know by who) after I complained but has now been deleted again! So I'm stuck with a blurry photo (taken by me with a camera phone) which does not, in my opinion, act as a valid replacement for an official promotional photo provided as a press kit image or serve the purpose of identifying band members by name in a clear image. Why are some folks going about scrubbing every promophoto in site while discussion is clearly still active? Obviously if I, or someone else, can source a completely free image which "reasonably" replaces a professional promotional photo then I will use it. But why batter editors over the head with something which doesn't appear to be the most burning issue facing Wikipedia?Citizensmith 17:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Aye. They wanted to replace an image of Kristen Bell with Image:Kristen Bell.jpg as a replacement in her article for a former promophoto. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Beeing tagged as disputed does not imply that an image can not be deleted. It's just to alert the admin that you have made a claim that the image can not be replaced. If as you say a free licensed photo of the person actualy does exist I think I may have a theory as to why your claim of "irreplacability" was found wanting (even if the current image is too crappy to use it does prove that such an image could be created, preferably using better equipment)... --Sherool (talk) 18:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
But the tag was never checked before the delete (Betacommand has admitted they made a mistake) and you are not giving enough weight to the word "reasonably" in relation to a creation of a free "suitable" image. Plus my supposedly "free" image is possibly in violation of my terms of access to the concert. Thanks a bunch. Yeh, lets' encourage people to violate their ticket terms and/or stalk bands. Wonderful!Citizensmith 18:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Betacommand's deletion was overturned as you say, I was refering to the second deletion where I asume the admin did check the talk page first. An explicit photo ban on private property should naturaly be respected, but taking photos of things or people in public view or in public places is almost never a problem (see this guide for example). So in most cases I'd say it's "reasonable" to asume that photos of most public figures can in fact be created (which is where the bar is set) without breaking any laws. If a particular image is found to be unsuitable no one is forcing us to use it. It just doesn't automaticaly follow that we should then use a fair use image instead (I'm talking in general terms here since people almost never give concrete examples of things that are supposedy wrongfully deleted, or what the argument for keeping it was. Most of the disputes I've seen so far boil down to people disagreeing with the policy rater than the fact that the image is replacable as such). --Sherool (talk) 19:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Another consideration with "free" photos of people

Tattoos can be protected by copyright as graphical works. Discuss.  : ) Postdlf 18:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, and Image:Times Square (Tall).jpg contains copyrighted images. But that's a side issue. If you take a photograph of me, you hold the copyright to that photograph, even if it contains my copyrighted tattoo within it. You may be restricted from publishing your own photo if the use of the tattoo is not fair use -- but it would be in this case. Anyway, you would hold the copyright to the photo, not the tattoo artist. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Would you say that the Times Square photo could not be uploaded to Commons, because its a derivative of the copyrighted billboards? Postdlf 21:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
No, it can be uploaded to the Commons, and many similar images exist on the Commons, because the copyright to the image is held by User:NoClip, and NoClip has released it under the GFDL. The image is a free image. It is also a derivative image of several non-free ads, but that doesn't change the copyright of the image. Only non-free images are restricted from uploading to the Commons, not free images that contain incidental non-free material. To put it another way, NoClip has to make his own fair use claim, to himself, in order to publish his image. Wikimedia does not. – Quadell (talk) (random) 21:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
So you'd distinguish it from, say, a photograph of a copyrighted sculpture, which is undoubtedly a derivative work (and therefore can't be uploaded to Commons), because while the sculpture would be the image's subject in that photograph, in the Times Square photograph the billboards are only incidentally copied? Postdlf 23:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
pretty much. If you were to crop the image so only one billboard was displayed it could no longer be cosidered free in any way shape or form.Geni 23:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm still uncertain over whether that incidental use is permissible because it qualifies as fair use, in which case it's a derivative work; or because that incidental use is de minimis—i.e., too insubstantial a copy of the original to be legally significant. Is there a third legal alternative? Postdlf 23:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
depends on the country you are in. I only know of those two in the US but I haven't cheacked. Some countries have their freedom of panorama which can simplify matters but I'm pretty sure the US isn't one of them.Geni 00:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The U.S. Copyright Act excludes photographs of buildings from being considered derivatives, but that's the only relevat categorical exception. Postdlf 02:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

What about a photograph of a photograph? john k 00:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

A photograph of a photograph is not creative and thus the license (or lack thereof) would be the same as the source photograph. BigDT 00:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
A photograph of a photograph can be creative. It depends on the specific photograph of the photograph. What about a photograph of a painting? john k 03:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
No. I'm sorry that I didn't notice your question until just now, but if you take a photograph of a 2-d painting, photograph, etc, no rights are conferred. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. and the {{PD-art}} tag. If someone in the US takes a photo of an old painting (and there isn't something else in the photo), you are perfectly free to use their photo. BigDT 17:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Replaceable as binary vs considering difficulty

It seems a lot of the debate all over this issue is really two viewpoints arguing past one another. One view sees the word replaceable and thinks this is a binary state attribute of the image, either it is replaceable or it's not. Another sees that word and takes it as a description of the image in relation to all sorts of external issues. These are similar, but not exactly the same. The first view sees the actual existence of alternative images as irrelevant, the image does not conform to fair use criteria, a free use version could be created, so that is the end of the discussion. The other view is a much less binary one. Their debate seems predicated on the question of whether the image actually can be replaced. For this view, the concept of how difficult the image would be to replace is extremely important, while in the first view it is largely irrelevant.

I think this is the central issue that is causing the arguments about this policy now. The term "replaceable" is being interpreted in two different ways. One interpretation sees difficulty in replacement as central to the debate, the other sees it as irrelevant. I admit, I usually fall into the binary-replaceability view, but until the issue of what level of importance to place on the actual difficulty of replacement is in some way codified I don't think we will see an end to this debate. - cohesion 19:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the biggest problem is that we are involved in pseudo-legalistic argument about what the policy is at the expensive of a larger debate about what the policy should be. In terms of the latter, it seems to me that the basic issue is that some people seem to feel that making wikipedia "free content" is a goal which is more important than that of trying to create a comprehensive encyclopedia, and thus that there are no costs and benefits to be weighed, that we should simply delete any image which might theoretically be replaced, on the theory that the absence of an image will make it more likely for a free image to appear. This seems to me to be fundamentally misguided, on a number of levels. Among other things, encouraging the creation of free equivalents is problematic, because we can never be sure that a user is actually uploading an image that they have the rights to. With promotional photos, we can actually check and make sure that they are promotional, and once we have done that, we are in no potential legal trouble at all. Beyond this, I simply don't see what advantage accrues to wikipedia from deleting clearly legal promotional photos and replacing them either with a) nothing; or b) clearly inadequate "free" images. Basically, my feeling is that there should be no particular preference for "free" images over promotional photos, which are created precisely for the purpose of their use by things like wikipedia (and also by for-profit enterprises like magazines and newspapers, so don't give me the "wikipedia mirrors have to be careful" excuse). We should treat other instances of fair use more carefully, but the "binary" interpretation of this issue seems like a solution in search of a problem. We are deleting promotional photos that are completely legal, and just about as "free" as any image of a living person can be, on the basis of some misguided ideological dogmatism. john k 19:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, what he said. :) - Stick Fig 19:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I double the kudos to you John. Well stated. Unfortunately, the "binaries" don't seem to want to address this issue. How do us "non-binaries" best help influence a change? It just seems so strange to me that so many people are arguing that these pictures should be deleted wholesale, without understanding the benefits that they provide to the articles and the fact that promo photos do not cause a legal problem. This "rule" is being applied without the use of common sense. Personally, I feel that an encyclopedia (free, not free, whatever) is a repository of information, and, as humans, we generally recognize who people are (or even rare birds for that matter) by their appearance. Removing these images from Wikipedia does us all a disservice and devalues the project. Promo photos should be allowed, image captures from tv shows and movies should not. This seems like such an easy one to me. Jmdustin 21:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
My big question is, why does anyone here even have the desire to look at content from a binary perspective? It's clearly not how content (especially the content usually affected by fair use issues) is consumed or created. If it were, Shakespeare would read like a technical manual with no nuance or grace.
A lot of the free photos don't have nuance or grace, and going from it from the other angle, from my perspective as a journalist, it seems like we'd want the best possible photo that we have a legal right to. I mean, I'm all for grandstanding when it makes sense, but here it simply doesn't. - Stick Fig 19:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Too many people seem to think a photo of subject X is replaceable with any other photo of subject X; there always needs to be an individualized determination of what informational content the photo is providing and what information a replacement can provide. Postdlf 20:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I think for starters, "Wikipedia:Encourage free image content" policies need to be split off from this page so they're no longer confusingly intermingled, and so the "EFIC" policies can coherently be addressed on their own merits. What legally qualifies as fair use is a distinct issue from what fails to comply with Wikipedia policies and it needs to be made distinct. Postdlf 19:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Use of a copyrighted image from Thai Wikipedia

I found this image through an interwiki link. All the text is in Thai, but it appears it has been marked as a fair-use copyrighted image. Language barrier notwithstanding, does it appear the copyright tag on Thai Wikipedia is correct? Although I would like to use this image to illustrate Asian arowana, I believe this is not allowed under fair use (although it is used that way on Thai Wikipedia). --Ginkgo100 talk 20:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

while I can think of ways it might legitimate end up in the article the use you describe is somewaht unlikely to be considered fair use.Geni 22:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
To expand on what Geni said, a general rule of thumb is that you can use person A's work for commentary on the the work itself or on person A him/herself, but you cannot use A's work to comment on B. If you were writing an article about that stamp (if the stamp itself were iconic) or perhaps about the Thai postal system, it would be a legitimate example of fair use. But it is not an example of fair use to take their picture of a fish to talk about fish in general. BigDT 22:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
One of these days I'm going to write more about all the ways that stamp designers alter images to look "prettier". Even if it were legally OK, stamps are almost never good illustrations for an encyclopedia that aspires to scientific accuracy. Stan 00:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Your two comments together gives me another thought: The reason I wanted to use the image was not to illustrate the animal itself (there are already several photographs with free licenses), but to demonstrate that it has an importance to local cultures. Would that be appropriate fair use rationale? I believe it would be because I would be talking about the stamp in the context of an article about the fish. --Ginkgo100 talk 00:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
might be okey but then the question is do you really need the pic or can you make your point without it?Geni 00:58, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Theoretically yes, but 99% of modern stamps worldwide are produced to sell to stamp collectors, and the topics are chosen to appeal to collectors interested in particular topics, such as fish, sports, cats, dinosaurs, etc. Unless it's a definitive stamp, regular people in Thailand will probably never even see it. Stan 06:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use after x date?

You know how permission pics uploaded after x date are not allowed, but we keep permission pics from before then... why not do that now, with promopics, etc.? Thus the problem of fair use reliance won't expand, but the quality of existing content won't be hurt. -- Zanimum 15:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

because that would make it near imposible top kill the copyvios that were uploaded before that date.Geni 22:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
There is still IFD. "By permission" and "non-commercial-only" images that were uploaded before a certain date have to go through IFD to be deleted. The point, in both cases, is to do things the right way going forward, but to not create a gigantic disruption by suddenly deleting a large number of the images currently in use. BigDT 22:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Part of the difference is the number of images. With-permission pics are fairly rare, so someone looking around at the images we have does not get the impression that this is an accepted type of image, and the overall freeness of the encyclopedia is not significantly impeded. Certain types of outside-policy fair use images, on the other hand, are ubiquitous, and someone judging from experience what types of images were allowed would conclude that they are tolerated.
The other issue is how one defines the "quality of existing content". Part of Wikipedia's quality as a resource is that it is freely reusable. If, by holding on to old non-reusable images, we slow the process of replacing them with freely reusable ones, we are impeding the quality of Wikipedia. --RobthTalk 23:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Or, we could allow promo pics. john k 00:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
We do just as long as it can be shown that they are under a free lisence or in the public domain.Geni 00:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Which is obviously not what I meant. john k 03:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
This whole issue, of course, is at the root of the problem. I mean, I worked hard with admins to make sure all the images I uploaded followed Wikipedia policies... at the time they were uploaded. I think it's fair to say that a different interpretation is going on now, and what used to be okay is considered, by some, to no longer be okay. This is the gasoline fueling the engine of frustration -- editors worked and tweaked, and changed images, and followed templates, and consulted admins, and finally, finally got everything just right... and then, as I've put it elsewhere, the "log rolled," and suddenly, there was a whole new set of rules people wanted to apply RETROACTIVELY to Wikipedia content that was COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE at the time it was uploaded. Ex post facto = muy frustrato! Jenolen 08:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
In point of fact, fair use criterion #1 has existed as is since before you (or I) began contributing to Wikipedia. This is not a brand new set of rules, it is a set of rules that has existed for quite some time which has not been adequately enforced. --RobthTalk 08:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
In other point of fact, this rule was apparently so misunderstood/underused for the past two years, it was never, ever discussed by an administrator whom I had dealings with SPECIFICALLY TO ADDRESS RIGHTS ISSUES and make my images comply with current Wikipedia standards. Admins -- not editors -- apparently ignored or didn't apply this rule. Which makes me think - if a rule is so poorly understood, or a policy so internally twisted - that administrators, the Wikipedians who are supposed to know more about this stuff than anyone else, didn't bother to apply or enforce it, there may be a problem with the guideline, not the administrators. Jenolen 08:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It was a disservice that we failed to enforce this for so long. If we had it to do over again, I'm sure we would have made it abundantly clear from the start that "fair use" images are not allowed (unless there's no way a free image could be created to provide the same info). That would have saved a lot of heartache. – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The issue is at least as much the way that FUC#1 is currently being interpreted as the criterion itself. This isn't simply an issue of "enforcement" - it is also an issue of how we interpret a rather vaguely worded directive. What does it mean to "adequately convey the same information." One could easily interpret this in a way that would allow many fair use images to remain on wikipedia even when there are "free" images of the same subject. john k 15:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
There are differences of interpretation -- is a 90-year-old actor in ill health really available for photographs? -- but most of the debate hasn't been about these borderline cases. Most of the debate has been along the lines of "Well, I suppose this image could be replaced, but that would be hard, and besides, I really like this image." – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
THERE IS VALUE in the quality of a photo that is often hard to replicate and that's one of the reasons I'm so ticked off about all this. It's like we're looking at images as a single variable "a = b," when in reality it needs to be "a + b + c + d + e + f (and so on..) = a + b + c + d + e + f (and so on..)." There's so many variables that aren't repeatable in a photo, and in my personal opinion, quality is one of those things that MUST be accounted for if we're going to replace an image. If the image we replace it with is much worse, it'd be like taking a long quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. and replacing it with only a slightly irrelevant part of the phrase.
Like I have said before, I make value judgments like these all day at work, and none of these criteria are even being considered by some of the people removing all these fair use photos. It's like they tripped over the "reasonably" part, forgot it even existed, and went straight for the part that allows for the most bloodshed.
I want to work with you guys, but you've got to work with us. - Stick Fig 19:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
You make some good points. But remember please, first of all, that most "fair users" aren't trying to create a free work that can be reused by others, like we are. So we have stricter rules that apply for us. And remember, secondly, that a free replacement image would have to "contain the same information" (in the context of the article) as the non-free one. Showing what a person looked like at a particular stage of life is "information", but showing them in a good light or with high-quality photography techniques is a property of a photo that is not really "information" about the subject. So I would agree that if it's important for a given article to have a picture of a person in their twenties (at the height of their career, perhaps), and if they are now in their sixties, that a free replacement could not be created. But that doesn't mean we can use a promotional photo just because it looks nicer than any free photo you think we could create. – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, there's a lot of cases between "nicer lighting" (obviously not a very good cause to use a fair use image over a free one) and "shows what the person looked like 40 years ago (obviously a good reason to use a fair use image over a newly created free one). What about free images that are entirely out of focus? Mugshots? Fan-created paintings of famous people? Taken from very far away? Taken of the person in a very awkward pose? Pictures where the face is obscured? It seems to me that a good publicity photo is clearly superior to any of these. Beyond that, I really don't understand why we should ever be deleting publicity photos when there is not an image ready to replace it. To know whether a free image "adequately conveys the same information," we have to actually see it. When images are deleted before replacements appear, all we are doing is removing (perfectly legal, so far as I can tell) information without any guarantee that there will ever be a competent replacement. If an actual free image is available to compare, we can make an intelligent judgment as to whether it "adequately conveys the same information." As it stands, images are being deleted because one can conceive of the possibility that somebody might take a free picture of the subject. This practice basically makes the whole "adequately conveys the same information" concern entirely pointless, since, unless we are dealing with an actual picture, it is impossible to tell this. john k 19:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Your list of questions is important, and shows that there's a lot of gray area. However, when you say "I really don't understand why we should ever be deleting publicity photos when there is not an image ready to replace it", that's been answered many times before. Our policy explicitly forbids non-free replaceable images, whether a replacement has been found or not. One reason for this is that it encourages people to find or create free images. (Why should I upload my pretty-good free photo of Mel Gibson, when there's already a great-looking promo photo we're using?) – Quadell (talk) (random) 21:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
A) in some cases it's very difficult to tell whether or not an image is "replaceable" until a replacement has actually been found. B) You should upload your pretty-good free photo of Mel Gibson because Wikipedia encourages free content over fair use content. Clearly there's a lot of people who feel strongly about this, and will want to upload free images anyway. If other people don't, well, then they don't. john k 05:31, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
This is the same retarded logic that argues that Mel Gibson's mugshot is better than a publicity photo since it's (perceived to be) freer. It's from the same stage of his life, so it conveys the same information, right? Give me a break, guys... the quality of the photo is directly related to the quality of the information presented. -- ChadScott 20:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Uhh...hate to turn this discussion sideways, but was it determined that the mugshot photo is free? From what I found out, it isn't free (according to the LASD website). User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 02:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
That depends on your definition of quality. For many, free is quality. An unfree image creates numerous complications not just for use but for anyone downstream who wants to use our stuff. Let's publish wikipedia for poor Africans. Ooops we've just been sued because Mel Gibson didn't like our article on his anti-semitism and successfully argued that he the conditions attached to the photo didn't allow it to be used in this manner and country X doesn't have fair use and they rigirously enforce copyright violations because they get lots of aid from the US. Oh well, nevermind the millions in donations we collected for our noble project is just going to go to Mel Gibson but who cares about Africans right? Nil Einne 09:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I've only been an editor for over a year. But I understood the intention of criteria 1 quite early on. Yes it's probably fair to say we weren't following it much. But I think I still understood it Nil Einne 09:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
user:Quadell repeats it like mantra: "Our policy explicitly forbids non-free replaceable images, whether a replacement has been found or not." Note, however, that this is not was being debated and vy citing and reciting policy, you sideline the real discussion. The issue here how we interprete a "replacement". Is a mug shot an adequate replacement to a publicity pic for an actor's article in terms of conveying adequate information? (Note that the word "adequate" is in the policy as well). Second, does "encourage to create free images" apply to anything that hipothetically be created or that can reasonably be created? You can ask an alpinist to climb the Everest just that you can go with him (after years of training) and take a free image? Is it reasonable to expect that this will ever take place? Please, let's stick to the issues at hand. Most people here know what the policy says. --Irpen 02:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

{{AutoReplaceable fair use}}???

Did anyone notice the new {{AutoReplaceable fair use}} template that was recently snuck into the Special:Upload page? Apparently in order to "trap" users who unwittingly upload an image of a living person and haven't bothered to read WP:FU and the umpteen archived discussions about how it is currently being enforced, this tag is now automatically added to any image which a user selects "Fair use image of a living person" from the menu. Can anyone explain how what is currently happening with the fair use image policies is NOT a blatant example of WP:CREEP? DHowell 02:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is listed under "invalid fair use"... --Interiot 02:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
There are no categorically replaceable images. The only fair use images of living people that are in fact replaceable are those that "adequately provide the same information" that could reasonably be provided by a free alternative. This can't be determined without a consideration of the image content in relation to the use in the article. Postdlf 05:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Furthermore, if someone is living but is extremely reclusive, or their location is unknown, then the image isn't really replaceable. There probably aren't that many people like that, but as you said, there are no categorically replaceable images. FUC#1 currently says "if the subject of the photograph still exists", then the image is replaceable... can someone tweak that to allow for the cases described here? --Interiot 05:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, good suggestion. Postdlf 05:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
But I'm not quite sure how to change it; as it is written, it's not specifically talking about people. It's really kind of a non sequitor where it's located in the paragraph. The main problem I think with the current one is that the "subject currently exists" sentence is written as an apparent disconnect from the "provides the same information" requirement. Maybe this:
"No free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information. If unfree material can be transformed into free material, it should be done instead of using a "fair use" defense. For example, the information in a newspaper article can easily be used as a basis of an original article and then cited as a reference. Maps and diagrams can often be redrawn from original sources, though simply "tracing" copyrighted material does not make it free. Neither photographs nor sound clips, however, can usually be "transformed" in this way. A photograph of a subject that still exists can typically be replaced with a freely-licensed photograph that adequately provides the same information. However, be sure to consider whether the subject is reasonably accessible to the public (an extremely reclusive or unlocateable person would not be), in which case a free alternative is effectively not available or creatable; or whether the subject has significantly changed over time, in which case a free alternative would not provide the same relevant information as an older photograph."
Could use some copyediting, but does it say everything it needs to? Postdlf 05:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggested modification:

  1. "... that would adequately give the same information in the context of the specific article".
  2. "can typically be replaced" by "can often be replaced". Typically is too strong here as how adeqaute the replacement is depends on the specific case.

The case of the college professor, writer or politician is different from the professional entetainer's especially in cases when the subject's looks played important role in making them what they are: pop-stars, actors, models, etc. For the latter cases a requirement on the quality of the image to convey the higly essencial info is much higher of course. Also, such subjects are less likely to release their images under free license. Attempts to obtain such images should be enocuraged of course. --Irpen 06:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Those are good suggested changes. I also agree that the appearance of entertainers who work in visual media is of much more informative value than academics, such that differences between images taken at different times and in different contexts will be much more important. Has anyone seen Boy George recently on VH1? I think some drippy-headed alien killed the real Boy George and took his place. But no one is convinced. Talk about a current free photo not providing "the same information" as a publicity photo... Postdlf 06:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Low and behold, someone inexplicably tagged the Boy George image from 1983 as "replaceable." Postdlf 17:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

What did you expect? Also note that the tagger, as usually for most taggers, did not bother to explain at the talk page how exactly the rationale and policy compliance are disputed. Unexplained challenge tags do not have to be addressed and may be removed, similarly to NPOV tags attached to articles without an explanation at a talk page.

But let's address the proposed by Postdlf policy rewrite. It is more important that a whole bunch these accidents by themselves. --Irpen 20:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

image gallery?

The article on Electric Light Orchestra has a subsection on studio albums which consists of a gallery of fair-use images and the album titles. I have stated my belief that this is not fair-use of the images as they are not being used for critical commentary and only display purposes (Talk:Electric_Light_Orchestra#.7B.7Bcleanup.7D.7D). Am I correct in my understanding of fair-use in this situation? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 12:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Correct, among other places, see Wikipedia talk:Logos and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Kelly Martin2. In that RFC, the notion that galleries of fair use images constituted a CV was agreed to by just about everyone. BigDT 12:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
album covers are a slight complication since no one has every really got around to figureing out exactly how the law stands with regards to them.Geni 13:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't the law apply to album covers in the exact same way it applies to other works? – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Probably but that doesn't really help much. The thing is while I would tend to argue that the use isn't fair use other disagree and we have more pressing problems.Geni 15:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, in neither of those pages do I see a consensus for the idea that all "galleries of fair use images constitute a copyright violation". In Wikipedia talk:Logos, I see a number of people disagreeing with this. And in Kelly Martin's RFC, I see mostly people saying that Kelly Martin wasn't acting unreasonable in her enforcement of what she perceived as policy in that particular case, i.e. team sports logo galleries in articles not about the individual teams represented. A few people went as far as to say they believe all image galleries are CV, but certainly not "just about everyone".
Now in this particular instance, the album cover image gallery in the ELO page is probably not far from the sports team case, in that there are indiviual articles about each album and thus the fair use case for using an album cover image is better made on those pages, and so a case could be made for deletion of the gallery (though I still disagree it is necessary to delete it). But what about a gallery of historical company logos in an article about the company itself? Why would this not be fair use? DHowell 21:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It would depend on how old the logos were (they might be pd you never know) and how much the article talked about them.Geni 22:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Images published in the U.S. before 1978 or 1989 without copyright notice

U.S. law is pretty clear that any works created and published in the U.S. before 1978 without a copyright notice are in the public domain, and that any works published in the U.S. before March 1, 1989, without a copyright notice are in the public domain if they haven't been registered with the Copyright Office within 5 years of publication? How many "fair use" images that are being wontonly deleted might fall within this criteria and actually be in the public domain? DHowell 22:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Limited. Experence suggests that most of our "fair use" images are of people of recent note.Geni 22:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Hard to tell. You need evidence to support a PD claim, and given the quality of source information many of these images have there is just no way to tell when they where first published, let alone wether or not all the copyright paperwork was in order at the time. For "bigger" works such as movies and books from that period it's usualy a bit easier since there are sites out there to keep track of such things, but for individual "loose" photos it's near impossible to say unless you have first hand knowlege or a heck of a lot of time on your hands (and I think you need to pay for access to the copyright offices archives as well). --Sherool (talk) 13:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
It is very difficult to determine whether the copyright was renewed for such a work. When documentary film-makers, for instance, want to include a clip made before 1978, they have to hire a specialist lawyer to dig through the records, a process which takes many hours (charging by the hour). There is just no way a layperson can confidently assess whether the copyright was renewed or not, unless you're lucky enough to have a statement by the original copyright-holder saying whether it was renewed or not. – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Withpermission template

What's the benefit of the {{withpermission}} template? It seems like it mostly just confuses people. I realize it was part of the move away from using {{permissionandfairuse}}, but why not go all the way? Redirect {{permissionandfairuse}} to {{Restricted use}}, and go through removing the "with permission" templates (It's not transcluded much anyway). If these images are valid fair use then whether we additionally got permission isn't relevant. It could be mentioned on the description page, but I don't see any reason to have a whole extra set of tags for classification of an attribute that doesn't matter. - cohesion 23:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it might help to make a fair use claim, for borderline cases, if we also have permission. It's really just informational though; it doesn't affect the copyright status. – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Right, I'm not saying we shouldn't mention if we also have permission, but that it isn't so important as to warrant another tag scheme. Also, if you make people write out their permission in text rather than a tag I think you would end up with more accurate permission statements, since right now after looking at a random sampling many that say {{withpermission}} don't have any obvious actual permission anyway. (not that it matters a whole lot since hopefully they have a fair use rationale). Anyway, I'll let this sit for a few more days and if there are no objections move it over to WP:TFD etc. - cohesion 19:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea to me. – Quadell (talk) (random) 21:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I will do this in a bit :) - cohesion 19:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)