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I've seen many variations of this argument being used by deletion-happy editors recently: we only want to use it (fair use) as a last resort for critical commentary. A last resort? Goodness! Is this the new policy that's being discussed on back channels? And if so, may I suggest the following re-write to our main "fair use" page:
Current version: Fair use is a legal doctrine which may permit the use of copyrighted material on Wikipedia under a restricted set of criteria. It is not a blanket permission to use text, images or other copyrighted materials freely on Wikipedia.
Updated version: Fair use of copyrighted material, though permitted under U.S. law, is generally discouraged on Wikipedia as incompatible with the project's primary goal of creating free/ libre content. However, in an extraordinarily restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time, some fair use may be permitted. Photographs of living people are never allowed on Wikipedia under a fair use claim.
At least it's honest.
Just waiting for the German shoe to drop... Jenolen speak it! 12:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
The complete non sequitor statement that "photographs of living people are never allowed" doesn't reflect any reasonable policy, whether current or not-yet adopted; it just sounds like an overblown rewrite of the current replaceable policy, without allowing any consideration of why the photo would actually be used. It's also completely arbitrary to single out living people as categorically excluded subjects, when other subjects may be even more accessible to free photographers, or to single out photographs as the only affected media. Policy statements should never be collapsed into such specific applications, because it detaches them from the benefit they are intended to serve and results in both under- and over- inclusivity. It should instead read: "Whenever freely licensed images are available or could be made, Wikipedia does not permit fair use claims for images that would serve the same informational function." Postdlf 14:32, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
And again, if you find that statement so shocking then I don't know what you have to add to discussions here, other than the fact that you think we're all insane deletion happy image nazis. But I think you've told us that enough times already now? ed g2s • talk 16:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
"exceeding anything the law requires" - That you still protest that our Fair Use policy is tighter than the law shows that you really haven't taken on board much about what we do. The quality of what we produce is not simply based on how an article looks, free-ness is one of our founding principles, like it or not. If an article is full of weakly claimed Fair Use images, its reusability decreases. You may not care about downstream use, and a lot of people have difficulty with the concept that we encourage people to copy our content and even sell it. This does not mean our only priority becomes "creating the coolest website on the internet", or even the "highest quality encyclopaedia we can legally publish". If you want to do that you can exercise your right to fork, but stop telling us it's what we should be doing. Your constant complaining and sarcastic commentary is becoming quite disruptive. ed g2s • talk 19:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Is it accepted that fair use pictures of artworks would be in a section of the works by an artist, from any kind? For example, the section "Shows" in the article Andrew Lloyd Webber? Tomer T 17:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Please comment at the discussion regarding fair-use images on the main page at Wikipedia talk:Fair use exemptions. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 19:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to know if I' right? To use copyrighted material, for example in Russian Wiki, this material must meet US Laws, Wikipedia's policy, and Russian copyright laws. Is it correct?-- Vaya 16:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Talk:Pete_Townshend#Revert_war_on_photo -- Guinnog 18:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The WNYC studios have released a photo they took of David Mamet to the Creative Commons. I uploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons here and here. It's getting easier all the time to find free use images.- BillDeanCarter 19:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Upon seeing the new lead, I immediately assumed it to be satire. Checking the link to the discussion given in the edit, it seems once more to be tongue-in-cheek posting throughout, especially with the comments in the initial post such as "at least we'll be honest" and "...in an extraordinarily restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time..." but User:Badagnani seems to think it was a serious addition. Could somebody please clear this up for me? -- tjstrf talk 08:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not satire. -- Kim Bruning 13:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Jenolen wrote that to try an make a point about how absurd he thinks our policy is, however most responses were "that pretty much about sums it up" - but no one was taking at as a serious propsal to rewrite out policy. Now he seems to be trying to prove a point by actually implementing it. If we are going to change it, we need to have a proper discussion first. ed g2s • talk 13:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, as someone who wrote the majority of the current version of the intro, I think I'm well qualified to write the new version, as well. So let's take a look at this new version, line by line:
Fair use of copyrighted material, though permitted under U.S. law, is generally discouraged on Wikipedia as incompatible with the project's primary goal of creating freely redistributable libre content. Who here disagrees with this? We've all been told time and time again, (granted, by the same six editors/admins, but still...) libre is what this project is all about. I'd be interested in seeing the counter-argument to this sentence.
However, in an extraordinarily restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time, some fair use may be permitted. Again - this is emperically true. Wikipedia policy can and does change, based on a number of factors (Jimbo's mood, mysterious "directives to come from the Foundation", IRC chats, discussions between admins and board members who are dating, shifts in the planet's magnetosphere, who knows what else?)... Okay, I'm sure the magnetosphere has little to do with Wikipedia policy, but hey, the point is, things change. And they change for reasons that no new editor can reasonably be expected to know. Better to let people know straight up and ahead of time that's what's fair use TODAY may not be fair use TOMORROW. This is where a lot of the hostility toward deletionist editors comes from; I know I was especially honked that I had worked hard with tagging admins to get all of my image ducks in a row - all of my attributions and licensings set - when the ground shifted, and suddenly, a new set of admins decided all of my contributions had to go, in order to conform with a rededication to our libre philosophy. Fine. Then let's make that clear.
Photographs of living people are rarely allowed on Wikipedia under a fair use claim. Who wants to debate this? This is the current interpretation of policy, as applied by the most strict editor/admins, and therefore, is the practical standard. If one admin thinks fair use is okay for a living person photo, and another thinks it should be deleted, what happens to the photo? It's deleted. The deleting admin's standards are, therefore, the de facto standard, and we should let people know right up front - your fair use photo of an American Idol contestant or beauty queen or hockey player isn't going to survive the standards of deletionist admins.
This intro clearly and concisely explains the current orthodoxy vis-a-vis our extraordinarily restrictrive interpretation of fair use, and does that succinctly, while also adding, in a place of prominence, the fact that several admins and editors are now deleting any and all fair use photos of living people. Letting editors know that fair use claims are no longer acceptable for photos of living people -- and, in fact that this new policy will be applied retroactively (and, by nature, a little haphazardly) seems something that could help defuse the continued hostility toward those who seem to have a special enthusiasm for removing copyrighted material, fairly used or not. Jenolen speak it! 15:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
That intro isn't quite right, but it's closer to right than the old/current intro. People who are directed here when their image is deleted should be able to get a sense of why it was deleted from the first paragraph, I think. Get rid of the word "extraordinarily." The sentence should be like "However, in a restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time, some fair use may be permitted." The last sentence should be changed to something like "Images where it may be possible to find a free equivalent, such as photos of living people, are rarely allowed on Wikipedia under a fair use claim." - Peregrine Fisher 16:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that Jenolen's edit was a bad one, actually. I have often thought that we should be as clear as we can be that we have confusing, or at least non-intuitive, policies and guidelines on the use of unfree content, and even if they are followed to the letter, such content may still be deleted. It would be a kindness to people to be as clear about this as possible, so that if an editor is going to spend a lot of time uploading unfree content, they should know exactly what they are getting into. If anything, those editors who would prefer more liberal use of unfree content, but also have a thoughtful understanding of our mission, may be better at explaining this guideline than editors who assume that everyone here is equally committed to the free culture movement. Jkelly 17:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be attributable to a reliable source. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*. . (emphasis mine)
This is printed in bold right above the save page button. Clicking save means you agree. As far as I'm concerned, this is a binding contract.
It's clear, it's simple. There's a lot to be said for clear and simple, at least.
I know image uploads are a slightly different story. The wide array of options and possibilities and justifications is frankly bewildering, and leads to many mistakes. I guess what I've read previously is that lots of people would like to see that part of wikipedia tidied up too?
-- Kim Bruning 17:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Can someone explain to me (In English)why I can't put pictures on my subpages? Wikiman232 03:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Is it fair to use the synopsis from the back of a book verbatim? If it is OK, what kind of references do I need, and what about in-line references. It it isn't, why not? If it's a grey area, what's grey about it? Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher 06:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I have been reading through the above threads and some of the archives, and I can't find a direct answer to this question. Is it acceptable to have an album cover in a discography in a band's article? Assume that there is no critical commentary on the album or the cover. The reason I ask is that I've been going through the list of articles linked to Image:Nocover.png and finding and adding album covers, but I don't want to continue if the covers are going to be eventually deleted. -- Joelmills 16:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I read WP:FUC, not WP:FU. Maybe the {{Albumcover}} template should say that there needs to be critical commentary; right now it just says solely to illustrate the audio recording in question. My personal opinion is that an album stub that just gives a track listing, album cover, and release information is pretty useless, and that having a discography section with that info (minus the track listings) is a better solution. Thanks for the replies. -- Joelmills 18:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I noticed some Television station articles were using the company logo's in front of their company names of the affeliations and owners. This would be a FU violation in my eyes because they do not provide critical commentary to the article and don't discuss the company that the logo directly references. This has been judged similar on {{ Infobox Television}} over a year ago. If not, then every TV article would now have the network logo in the infobox by now I guess. Anyway. I removed them from a ton of pages, but subsequently got reverted by User:Orangemonster2k1, who is saying that "The logos are already loaded into Wikipedia and just shorted down to size. If fair-use is put into effect for use this way, it would have to be for the logos on the pages already used." [1] Before I revert again, I would like to confirm that my interpretation of WP:FUC and WP:FU is correct. opinions anyone ? -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 01:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
A user has recently objected to this image on Andrew Van De Kamp on the grounds that it of Shawn Pyfrom and not the actor and thus cannot be used on the character's page. I disagree because I think it is of Shawn as Andrew in a publicity still (as in this one of Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndham-Pryce we have on his article), as Shawn Pyfrom looks nothing like that outside of Desperate Housewives, as shown on his website. The website it was taken from the official DH site uses the image for both Shawn and Andrew's bios. I would much rather use this image than the screenshot currently up, as it was taken almost two years ago and is now somewhat inaccurate. But I'm not prepared to break policy. So, can this image be used as a fair use image of Andrew or not? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 05:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
The image was going through a replaceable fair use dispute, which have not closed yet. I, the unloader, have made have made considerable arguments to validate its fair use, and have made changes to the article that uses the image to conform to Wikipedia principles. It uses a plain fair use license tag, with elaborate rationales, provided with readily verifiable external links (not a logo, promotional, book cover, album art, screen shot or any such specific fair use tag). How did it become an image with a clearly invalid fair use tag; or it is an image that fails some part of the fair use criteria? The fair use dispute was about the first fair use criterion, not a clearly invalid fair use tag. Surely there must be mistake here. Aditya Kabir 13:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Template:Fairuse has approximately 3500 images using it, Template:Fair use has ~500 images using it, and both redirect to Template:Restricted use, which has ~3500 using it, but it's not clear to me if those ~3500 are duplicate to the ones using "Fairuse". Anyways, the tag states that "This tag should not be used" and refers to the list of fair use tags or to use Template:Non-free fair use in. Would anyone oppose to my changing the tag to look nothing like a image license tag and simply has directions to use another license tag? After the change is made (in hopes of eliminating new use of the tag(s)), go through and mark all the existing licenses as no license after the tag has been removed for at least 1 month to allow hopefully the license to be changed to a valid tag? I'd even be fine with notifying the uploader that the tag is invalid and they should put a new license tag on it and put the images into a special category. I think changing the license tag to prevent new use is critical, but what to do with the 3500-7500 images using it is not clear. Any thoughts? -- MECU≈ talk 14:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Are pictures posted on the MySpace profiles of notable musicians fair-use? For example, John Mayer has a profile here. If he were to theoretically not have a suitable free image on his article, would a picture from his MySpace page be an acceptable substitute until a free one were to be found? -- Hemlock Martinis 22:11, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Since the last amendment lost steam four months ago, i'm reinvigorating it at Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals2. There is clearly a strong desire from many people in the community to see portals given the same availability to fair use images that the main page has. I hope that we can reach something everyone can deal with. - ΖαππερΝαππερ Babel Alexandria 21:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I am a member of WikiProject Illustration involved in converting some of these images to the SVG format. I recently noticed that a large number of them are copyrighted logos or maps uploaded under fair use rationale. I'm pretty sure that these are not valid targets for conversion, and I would like it if some informed minds reviewed the statement I'm thinking about adding to the category page:
I would greatly appreciate any recommendations on phrasing (specific enough?) links (are there better sources to link to?), simple facts (conversions do constitute derivate works, right?), or anything else. Also, are there any exceptions to this rule? And does this general concept apply to all image conversion and cleanup? If so, it would probably make sense to include a similar message on several other cleanup pages. Thanks! MithrandirMage T 01:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Yet many people have argued for the deletion of SVG logos (with some success) because they're 'infinite resolution'. are we going to settle this sometime? Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 19:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC) I have added the following message to Category:Images which should be in SVG format:
However, I am still open to recommendations. Thanks! MithrandirMage T 00:33, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Err, I think I acted too hastily. I've taken the message down until I can get further support for the fact that converting fair-use images is not fair use. User:Interiot has posted on Category talk:Images which should be in SVG format an argument against my position. It certainly unseated my certainty -- could someone else read it as well? Neither of us is an expert in fair use; could a few more qualified people please chime in with some clarification here? In particular:
I hate to bring up this problem here; it seems to be discussed everywhere, yet nowhere can I find a good consensus/make sense of it. Thank you very much for your help. MithrandirMage T 03:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
The derivative work argument might have merit, but so long as the copy is exacting it's a format conversion, and not a derivative in my view. I'd argue that conversion to SVG puts us in no worse a copyright position than changing between GIF and PNG. The resolution issue is completely silly: can we not host any simple raster logo because someone could use printer with a tracing based re-sampler and print to any size they wish? Of course not. Physical size, from the perspective of the fair use legal argument, is far more oriented to the appearance in the context of the document... Furthermore the size of a copyrighted *logo* has almost nothing to do with its commercial value. While I'd rather our SVG producing resources focus on free images and I'd rather not encourage it, I don't see an issue with SVGs. We can't stop people from doing it because if someone uploads a SVG of a logo, we'll generally never know if it actually came from the copyright holder. -- Gmaxwell 19:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
The board has now passed its resolution on the media licensing policy, available now at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
This policy is intended to reflect the principles in the message posted earlier at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027547.html and to make the guidelines for acceptable media licenses clearer across all projects.
A beginning draft of an FAQ page is on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_policy_FAQ_draft -- please add your own questions and suggest answers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shojo ( talk • contribs) 05:23, March 27, 2007 (UTC).
Note that m:Foundation Issues is the foundation on which the 5 pillars are erected. Perhaps one of the changes that need to be made to that document is that we are now less restrictive? (The foundation now officially allows more than just GFDL content, though granted, we will be enforcing the rules more tightly.) -- Kim Bruning 15:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
The policy announcement is more important for the projects that have had chaotic policies for non-free material. En: already has a plenty elaborate EDP (new initialism!), WMF policy is confirming more than changing it. Having Foundation-level policy will be helpful for shutting down some of the more pointless arguments here - moves it from "nasty mean admins and ideologues" to "nasty mean WMF board". :-) Stan 15:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
moves it from "nasty mean admins and ideologues" to "nasty mean WMF board".
Besides that, the greatest benefit will be to end up the "I start counting from the 2nd Pillar"-kind of argument.
Yet another attempt to redefine "decorative" in your own terms so that you have justification for outright removing images like here. I didn't support your interpretation last time and I still don't support such an ambiguous and narrowly-focused change. Your single intention here is against screenshots (you outright admit it) which you have obviously shown your heavy bias against them in the past. Again, why I don't support this. I see absolutely NO reason why — no sense in beating around the bush — television screenshots must be singled out as you have intended here. Cburnett 15:49, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Please note— Matthew has posted an inflammatory characterization of the discussion here in a number of places likely to contain editors sympathetic to his perspective [2] [3]. As a result, his position is more likely than usual to be over-represented in this discussion. |
Please note: Inflammatory... funny... oh and my wikitables sexier! —The preceding signed comment was added by Matthew ( talk • contribs). |
I'm sorry Ed, If there was anyone else who was bringing this up again, I might be inclined to go into a discussion about it again. But like Cburnett says. You have had SOOO many runs at removing all the screenshots from television articles, i just can't believe we are gonna have to go trough this all again. Not to be blunt, but I just don't wanna hear it, not from you, regardless of wether you are wrong or right. I'm sorry, that's just how I feel. I don't feel this discussion is going anywhere unless it's carried by other people. :( -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 20:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
People seem to be suggesting that there are "too many" fair use images, what people forget though: Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is also not paper, we have very high potential for a lot of high quality articles, these are often assisted by fair use imagery. WP:NOT states, "Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopaedia in a spirit of mutual respect". Generally fair use imagery does add a lot of value to articles (if used correctly), mutual respect: Like I stated in my above comment about the two "cultures", one side taking a dislike to the usage of non-free imagery and going to great lengths to get it removed is not mutual respect. Respectfully, Matthew 16:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I think they are mandated in a "good free television encyclopedia" as well. Also, what do we mean by "free content?" Adding a telvision screenshot doesn't reduce the amount of free content, taking up room that could be filled with a free image. - Peregrine Fisher 20:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Some editors might remember that I used to defend the use of screen shots in LOEs, but I can no longer do so. Removing the screen shots does decrease the quality of these lists greatly, significantly so, however, our free content goals are a higher priority. I hate to see screen shots go in these lists, but they conflict with the goal of Wikipedia to have free content, free of copyright red tape, to be able to be reused by anyone for any reason. Even if the majority of the community has no problem with using this many fair use images, that can never override our free content goals. We feel like Wikipedia is a bit ours, and we should, but this issue is out of our hands. Identifying individual episodes in a list is a great thing in our modern media arts world, but that's not why Wikipedia is here. Our free goals actually limit us in being truly complete, but being free is that important. I hope more of you will come to this same conclusion, as I have. We don't need these pictures badly enough. -- Ned Scott 00:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
My favorite part of this? When I re-wrote the intro for WP:FU, I posted it on the talk page, waited a week for people to comment on it, then when I made the change, I had it reverted (for the second time) by an editor who said "If we are going to change it, we need to have a proper discussion first." And now, thanks to that editor's actions, I've finally figured out what he meant by "a proper discussion" -- It's one hour, twenty one minutes long, and conducted entirely with User:Gmaxwell.
Side note to GMaxwell -- Enough with the harshing on YouTube! It's starting to sound like sour grapes. I'm sure you have plenty of reasons to be pissed at YouTube, because they're like, you know, billionaires and stuff, while you and your non-cabal (because, as we all know, there is no cabal) have your popular, but, sadly, free (as in beer AND speech) playground here, but gee, give it a rest. Yes, YouTube has some copyright issues... but they're obviously doing something right. Comparing the posting of movie studio promotional stills or official state government photographs on Wikipedia to the challenges YouTube faces in protecting the rights of copyright holders is like comparing apples and ducks. Jenolen speak it! 11:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
"in accordance with United States law and the law of countries where the project content is predominantly accessed" - surely this means we have to comply with UK, Australian, Canadian (etc.) ... law, i.e. all the interpretations of fair dealing? ed g2s • talk 14:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
look at the article. theres a section which is the content of the file. The file explicitly states that u may not publicly display this file in whole or in part. But the file is being displayed on the article itself. And under the doctrine of "Fair Use" does he (the person who posted the content of the file) have the rights to do so?
Um. In Penny Arcade (webcomic)#American Greetings, we have a comic that the publishers of said comic took down because of a C&D from American Greetings. Is this a good idea? - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire | past ops) 20:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Please see this. The resolution by the board specifically says that "An EDP may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals." Does this mean that we have to change our FU policy? What about the large number of publicity photos of living people that we have here? - Aksi_great ( talk) 13:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Apropos of the screenshot discussion above, everyone should read the Foundation resolution passed last week. It states, in part, that project uses of content which is not under a free license "with limited exception, should be to illustrate historically significant events, to include identifying protected works such as logos, or to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works." I think that last clause merits some discussion.
"...to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works."' This clause should set some boundaries for discussion on this page. It clearly shows that the Foundation is not attempting to remove all fair use images from "pop culture" articles. It also shows that the Foundation does not wish fair use to be abused willy-nilly.
It's worth noting that the Foundation statement doesn't say anything about "decorative" uses. IANAL, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that U.S. fair use law doesn't either. The long-standing guideline says that material "must contribute significantly to the article (e.g. identify the subject of an article, or specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text) and must not serve a purely decorative purpose."
Both sides of the screenshot debate should recognize that the other is expressing a point of view which is consistent with Wikipedia policies, guidelines and philosophy. The central question is whether a screenshot needs specifically to illustrate a discussed directorial or cinematographic technique (as, for example, the use of Image:Citizen Kane deep focus.jpg in Citizen Kane) or whether it is "purely decorative" to have a screenshot which depicts a key plot point or element (as, for example, the use of Image:MashEpisode72.jpg in Abyssinia, Henry). It is perfectly reasonable to say that screenshots and other fair use images should not be used indiscriminately, and there should be a limit placed on their uses to prevent this. It is also perfectly reasonable to point out that in many cases (such as articles about individual television episodes) a screenshot may show a key scene from the episode's plot to aid identification and to illustrate a relevant point within the text. That is, there are circumstances in which a screenshot which depicts a plot or character aspect may not be purely decorative.
Since both sides have legitimate points, and it should be clear to everyone by now that this debate isn't actually progressing towards a consensus, shouldn't we consider a compromise? Many television articles use an unofficial "one screenshot per article" rule. What if we made that part of the fair use guideline? Obviously, there would be exceptions — but we could try to figure out what those exceptions are and make them explicit. (Intuitively, it should be possible to see why, for example, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope needs more screenshots than Surf Nazis Must Die. We should be able to articulate this distinction.)
Instead of trying to get rid of all screenshots (and other fair use images), or trying to use as many screenshots and other fair use images as we can get away with, let's work together figure out what the "narrow limits" the Foundation wants us to work within are. The conversation on this page has not been productive. Anyone for a fresh start? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 09:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
So any compromise is rejected? - Peregrine Fisher 15:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Based on the comments above, some editors still seem confused about my comment. When I said "one image per episode", I wasn't talking about lists of episodes. I was talking about individual episode articles, not lists of episodes. I don't really care whether lists of episodes have images or not. What I do care about is whether articles for individual television episodes can have screenshots at all. Some of the comments above suggest that Image:MashEpisode72.jpg should not be used in the featured article Abyssinia, Henry, because it doesn't depict a directorial or cinematographic technique. I think this is absurd. The Foundation resolution explicitly allows us to use nonfree content "to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works." Using one image which illustrates a key moment of a television episode, discussed a plot summary in the article, is obviously acceptable by U.S. fair use law. It even meets our fair use policy's requirement that the image should "specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text". The suggestion that only cinematographic or directorial techniques meet this requirement frankly does an injustice to the value of fiction in culture. When people discuss television, whether it's an academic discussion or chat around the water cooler, they generally discuss plot and character, not directorial techniques. This discussion is a vital part of "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching... scholarship, or research", and therefore there is no legitimate reason for excluding images which represent plot or character points discussed in a plot summary. — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 10:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. The recent board resolution on our licensing policy mentions that all non-free media must be "must be identified in a machine-readable format". I can say with confidence that our current practice is not machine readable. We have a constantly shifting set of dozens of templates and categories which must be detected by someone working with a wikitext dump. It's also impossible to detect by inverting the set of free images since the free images are also marked through a constantly shifting set of tags.
I think we can solve this fairly simply by deciding that "all templates which identify non-free media must have a name which begins with {{nonfree-, and that all such templates must place the media in the category Category:Nonfree media". A non-free image which does not contain {{nonfree- will be treated as an improperly licensed file no matter what any of the templates on the page expand to. (i.e. nesting a nonfree tag is not sufficient for machine readability).
I think we should avoid the words "fair use" in place of my "nonfree" in the example, because non-free is a broader classification which does not require a complicated judgment. Is it freely licensed or not? If not, it's going to have a {{nonfree- on it.
I don't care too much what the actual text or category name. This is the general approach which I think would solve the machine readability issues and would not be too hard to implement. This would require renaming all our fair use templates, but since this can easily be carried out by bot, it will not be much of an effort. I expect the harder job will be finding all of them. Objections? Thoughts on going a step further and also requiring that all such templates also transclude a universal non-free boilerplate template which says that the media is non-free?-- Gmaxwell 14:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
And perhaps we need to rework and reevaluate all the template licensing and naming conventions. In that case it might be a good idea to take a closer look at the reasoning behind all the commons conventions. Perhaps some of the ideas there can be applied here. The BIGGEST problem of course will be to process all the images and make sure they are actually complying with any new convention, because it's easier to identify what's free at the moment, then whats not. Basically, if we are gonna do this, why not take the time to evaluate almost everything about the en. images, templates and categories, since they will all need to be processed because of this. -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 18:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree that we need some form of machine readability, at least to easily generate reports about fair use usage, non-article space usage, etc. How about, for the time being, we simply create a null template, Template:Non-free media and add it to every known non-free image copyright tag? I'll go create it and provide a list, and an admin can add 'em in. Be right back. -- Iamunknown 04:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems that some userboxes have logos in them. Is that allowed? Althepal 01:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Althepal, a lot of the stuff on your user page is not allowed. - Peregrine Fisher 05:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Use of international wheelchair symbol: I believe that this would result in a change to the fair use policy, or at least a clarification that a limited number of "official symbols" like the International Symbol of Access are not replaceable and do not require specific rationales for each use. -- NE2 19:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
"I love your new standard of "adequate"! Unfortuantely, that's not Wikipedia's standard;" - You clearly haven't read FUC#1 recently, the first point of our policy. As I have stated, the ISA is not the only way to indicate disabled access - we are not trying to create a new international standard, just finding an adequate free way to abbreviate "disabled access available". "The text "disabled access" being not at all adequate for the billions of people in the world who do not read English." - This is the English Wikipedia!!! If using English isn't good enough here then we're in real trouble. ed g2s • talk 12:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
A user has placed this image of a sword at Excalibur, because the item in the picture is a "replica" of Excalibur. It's a copyrighted image of a commercial product, and there must be dozens of free images that can be used to illustrate King Arthur's weapon. Anyone care to comment?-- Cúchullain t/ c 23:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I need someone to drop by Ayumi Hamasaki discography to explain, in better words, why covers there are decorative. As you can see, there was an awful edit war between AMiB and an anonymous. -- ReyBrujo 04:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I read a post recently which said Fair use abuse is a constant presence and must be fought as hard as possible, and it got me thinking - shouldn't this person be devoting their energy to fighting copyright violations? (Fair use, of course, being a legal way to use copyrighted material...) Anyhow, I don't know where to find a list of the copyrighted material that has been found to actually (not hypothetically) have caused a fair use problem here. (I mean, there must be something in Wikipedia's history, in the past four years, that failed a legal test for fair use, right?)
So, I've created a place on my user page for just such a list. If anyone here knows of copyrighted material, uploaded to Wikipedia, and later found to be in violation of fair use laws, please stop by User:Jenolen/Fair Use Convictions and add it.
Not unrelated side note: Can we just go ahead and stop all this pussyfooting around, and go "German" already? Put a bullet through the head of silly arguments like the wheelchair thing, the state government photos thing, the "should we make an exception for the Main Page?" thing ... and just ban fair use! The most vocal, influential editors here hate it -- so why isn't it banned? It's the hypocrisy of those who claim "Free! Free! Free!" and yet won't put their quite considerable free time behind a simple, well-thought out and Jimbo supported proposal to simply ban it which I find so off-putting.
In the spirit of consensus, I'll even help with the press release: "Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, today announced a rededication to one of its core principles, deleting thousands of copyrighted images from its database, and encouraging users to replace the discarded content with material that is free of copyright concerns. As part of the plan to expand its rights-free offerings, Wikipedia also announced the elimination of "fair use" within the project, a legal doctrine which until now had permitted the limited use of copyrighted material."
Take it away! Jenolen speak it! 06:32, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
By "fair use abuse" in "Fair use abuse is a constant presence and must be fought as hard as possible", what was meant was " fair use abuse" or " Fair use" abuse?
I, for one, don't think we should "go german". That would prevent us, for instance, to use a screenshot of Darth Vadder to comment on his look. Do you understand a lot of us "absolutists" here believe there are valid reasons to use unfree material on a free encyclopedia? This "accept only 100% free"/"accept anything that's legal" dichotomy is not a creation of us? -- Abu badali ( talk) 08:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem, of course, comes when one editor accepts (random numbers used here to make a point) a 90% libre Wikipedia... while another wants a 95% libre Wikipedia ... and a third (the most strict, anti-fair use, most libre idealist) editor wants a 99% libre Wikipedia. Of these three editors - who's standards get applied? The 99%-er deletes nearly every image of copyrighted material, every promotional photo, every state government photo... everything that in his mind COULD be replaced, were we living in the libre utopia he slowly sees the real world becoming. And the policies and guildelines of Wikipedia are so confusing, contradictory, and poorly written, the 99%-er has no problem getting any image he wants deleted, citing a variety of rules, sub-rules, intents, pillars, off-list messages from Jimbo, etc.
Fun? Not really. Productive? Not at all. But it is part of the inevitable creep toward a fair-use free EN. Trust me - if you can't "save" totally harmless photos taken by state governments (and released specifically to Wikipedia to "do whatever you want" with), you don't have a prayer of saving the images of all 493 species of Pokemon. Make no mistake - within a year, that faux press release I started up above will seem positively Nostradaman. Jenolen speak it! 17:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I suggest protecting Wikipedia:Fair use-- Vaya 21:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
A discussion about how we should use the International Symbol of Access on Wikipedia is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Use of international wheelchair symbol]. — Remember the dot ( talk) 05:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Apparently the Foundation resolution wasn't clear enough for some people...
The Foundation policy explicity highlights portraits of living notable individuals as not being covered by EDPs. How much clearer does it need to be! The image will be deleted. If you still have a problem with this take it to WT:FU, WP:AN/I or anywhere else you want, but I have said all I have to say, several times over. ed g2s • talk 00:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
The image in question is Image:Mbragg1.jpg. ed g2s • talk 00:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Are you arguing the the policy allows you to use the images, or that the policy is wrong? The former would be absurd, and the latter would be somewhat fruitless. ed g2s • talk 16:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Above user has now tried to re-upload two deleted images under different filenames (objections he filed for deletion are in brackets):
Both images were caption-less at the top of the page, with no reference to either "specific subject" in the article. Disagreeing with our policy is fine, but he must abide by it. Objections to deletion must be taken to undeletion requests. ed g2s • talk 18:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I have drawn this image myself. Can I tag it {{ GFDL-self}} and use it to describe Gmail logo?-- Vaya 10:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Critical and criticism have several meanings, so "critical commentary" is vague. Unfortunately the meaning of the phrase is not explained on this page. Critical can mean to pass judgment upon the qualities of something; clearly we do not mean that here because Wikipedia has a NPOV policy. Critical also means accurate and precise; while Wikipedia encourages our commentary to be accurate and precise by following reliable sources, I don't see how this is relevant to fair use. Maybe it does mean we should be critical in the accurate and precise sense, but just so it is clear that our purpose is scholarship, one of the six fair purposes listed in the law. But if that's the case, why not just say "scholarly commentary"? (though it is not clear why we should do that, since commentary alone is one of the six examples). I gather from my dictionary that critical, especially in scientific contexts (critical mass, critical pressure), also means the point or threshold something must obtain before something can happen. In this sense, I suppose "critical commentary" means our commentary should be in-depth as opposed to superficial. For example, an album cover in the article about the album is accompanied by a sufficient amount of text, whereas an album cover in a discography article is accompanied by a superficial amount. This seems to me the intended meaning, but I can't be sure. If it means that, it should say that; if it means something else, it should say that. It shouldn't cloak what is meant using words with a cornucopia of definitions.
"Critical commentary", a phrase seemingly invented by Wikipedia, can also be confused for language used in the Fair Use law. "Critical commentary" looks like a hybrid of criticism and comment from "...for purposes such as criticism, comment..." But in that context: (1) Criticism and comment are distinct. (2) They refer to one of several purposes you can select from, and the purpose is only one of the four considerations which all must be taken into account. In contrast, you either have "critical commentary" in Wikipedia or you don't: if you do the image's inclusion might be justified, if you don't it can't be. Having Wikipedia policy that is confusable with U.S. law is a problem.
In short, "critical commentary" is a problematic phrase that should use clearer terminology and be explained more thoroughly. Punctured Bicycle 22:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
With this edit, Jimbo his own self seems to indicate that Fair Use, while (allegedly) acceptable within the pages of Wikipedia, is no longer welcome on the Main Page. Thanks for the clarifying "guidance," Jimbo! People who claim to be in the 90% and 95% categories above - Abu, Ed, etc. - the 99%'ers are gaining on you. And when they eventually take away your Darth Vader image, even if only to discuss Vader's fearsome appearance ("because text can adequately describe what he looks like!"), I don't want to hear any complaining about how you didn't see it coming... Jenolen speak it! 03:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Either it IS derivative... and is supposed to, I guess, "evoke" Scooby-Doo, or it's NOT derivative... and has no business illustrating an article about Scooby-Doo. WP:FU at its finest... Jenolen speak it! 04:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Wow, the Main Page of a free content project restricting itself to free content! Truly a sad day in our history... ed g2s • talk 11:03, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I know I've proposed this before, but I think this has more pertinence now that the foundation has explicitly advocated stricter rules regarding free content: have any of you guys who are opposed to the foundation's stance considered forking off wikipedia to a new project (say, Fairwiki)? You can pretty much copy all of Wikipedia's articles and add fair use images, audio, even video. Copying wikipedia in this way is definitely legal (an in fact, implicitly encouraged) by the GFDL license. FairWiki would focus on being "a publicly editable encyclopedia" rather than a "free encyclopedia"- I'm pretty sure you'd get sufficient support to get it off the ground.
This is an analogy with the various linux distributions- some are more strict about their interpretation of free content than others. Debian, for instance, is so strict that the developers didn't even allow firefox because they trademarked their logo- hence the creation of Iceweasel. The GFDL is designed to be dynamic, so users can create variations of the GFDL-licensed software/product to meet their own goals or needs. Those people who share Wikimedia's goals vis-a-vis free content can use wikipedia, those who want to create the highest-quality publically-editable encyclopedia legally permissible can use FairWiki. Everybody wins. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Borisblue ( talk • contribs) 12:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC).
What is the latest on property rights viz a viz fair use images? The Eiffel Tower at night is a good example. Can we still take pictures of buildings and statues and stuff from a public place, or do we have to look for the small print on the structure that tells us who owns the property rights? Carcharoth 14:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Just been thinking about this some more, and I realised my "statue erected in 1701" example was a little bit facetious. Did they have copyright back in 1701? How does copyright apply to future technologies? Before photography came along, people must have worried less about image rights. How does current copyright attempt to future proof (bah! it was predictable there would be some random music album called futureproof...) itself against future technologies? How far can it go in doing so, and how far should it go? Carcharoth 10:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I uploaded this image at Image:Navdeepbains.parl.gc.ca.jpg after finding that the article was lacking an image and had a red linked image. User:Jesse Viviano tagged it twice now as replaceable fair use, with the summary once, "This man is still living and not a prisoner nor a fugitive, so a free image could be created." I actually went and contacted the Canadian Parliament, who holds the copyright, and explained how and why Wikipedia would like to use the image, and was granted permission in response, which I posted to the image page and the image talk page. Jesse tagged it again as replaceable fair use to delete. Is this image given that I've received permission from the copyright holder (Canadian parliament) alright to use? - Denny ( talk) 15:40, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Clearly, this guideline/policy has very little acceptance among editors. The tags should be changed to clarify that this is a Foundation mandate and was not decided by consensus or general agreement. — Omegatron 21:11, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Some Idea? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alx 91 ( talk • contribs) 01:56, 7 April 2007 (UTC).
There is a discussion on the above page, which could do with some informed participation, regarding deletion of what I consider a copyvio. [5] Tyrenius 02:04, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Featured list criteria#Fair Use images about the permitted level of usage of Fair Use images in Featured Lists. Your input would be welcomed. Tompw ( talk) 23:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a new proposed guideline, Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline. It's nothing new really, just a reorganization done a while ago. It never got the guideline header, and not a huge amount of people discussed it. If you have any input add it to the talk page to see if we have consensus. This page is transcluded into Help:Image page also. - cohesion 01:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
The regular reviewers at WP:FAC and WP:FAR are increasingly dealing with nominations that have a lot of fair-use excerpts, often without sufficient justification, either educational or WRT the replaceable criterion. A current nomination at WP:FARC, Genesis (band), has no fewer than 17 fair-use excerpts. I posted the following note at Wikipedia:Featured_article_review#FARC_commentary_14:
I wonder whether we should be concerned about this issue. Is it possible to engage some of the experts in FU when we meet these problems? Tony 22:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
A point that is missing from this discussion is that WP has gone further than the strictures of the law WRT allowing fair-use content in its articles. This is because WP is meant to be freely available worldwide—copiable. This is the rationale behind using only a minimal number of tracks in each article. These tracks can be downloaded off WP, out of context, and used for whatever purpose we don't know. This is in conflict with the notion of fair use. I hold that 17 tracks, none of them nested within the surrounding text in a way that educates the reader in musical and/or lyrical matters, is legally risky and goes beyond one of the key tenets of WP (its own free reproducibility in any context). Tony 05:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Abu, Ed, GMax, anyone who has an opinion, let's figure out what a song clip needs to be on an artist page. I'm thinking about adding some audio clips to artist pages, and I would like to avoid revisiting this discussion. Give me some idea of what to look for to tell me it's OK, please. Something more specific than "If some text passages feels like incomplete information that could never be fixed with free text only." That kind of thing is a non-starter, since we have trouble agreeing. - Peregrine Fisher 07:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Just as every Flickr image uploaded to Commons must be reviewed, why don't we just force a review of every fair use image uploaded here? I remember there was a template requesting a review of an image license; we could modify the image upload interface to include it to every fair use image. Yes, huge backlog, but at least we will have a more reliable way of determining which fair use images are acceptable (if only temporarily). -- ReyBrujo 04:03, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
So, suppose a video is released under CC-NC-SA, if you take a screenshot of the video, can you claim fair use to it? I am thinking about Image:Joannecolan1.png. -- ReyBrujo 13:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Hey Guys, I'm not certain if this is the place to put it, but if its not legal to put lyrics (full song lyrics I mean, not quotes) then how are there so many sites out there that devote themselves to them, and yet are left out of the RIAAs crosshairs?
Ferdia O'Brien The Archiver And The Vandal Watchman (
Talk) 22:48, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps its not clear on the policy page, but should it not be noted here somewhere that Fair Use will be removed upon refusal to publish by copyright holder of the image? Cary Bass demandez 15:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
This seems one of our worse fallacies really, we have tens of thousands of them. Personally, I cannot see how this benefits us. A logo or book cover, in that location is being used for identification purposes and is redundant to the text of the infobox, article title and lead section. As far as I can tell removing all the images used solely in this manner would slightly reduce the decorative appeal of articles, but would not really affect the informative qualitye. However, the fact that the majority of our fair use imagery is probably used in this manner suggests a change here is probably unlikely. Can someone give me links to prior discussions on this matter; I'm certain it has come up before.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 18:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Limiting_the_use_of_WMF_logos_in_article_space.
This relates to some of the discussion further up this page, but that discussion has grown a bit stale and differs in focus from what I see as the core concern, i.e. of having incidental uses of unfree works distributed in our content dumps. Please comment at the linked page. Dragons flight 22:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
We don't have a "fair use policy"—the U.S. legal system does. We have an unfree content policy that goes beyond fair use. "The material must be used in at least one article", for example, has nothing to do with fair use; it has to do with Wikipedia's value that we shouldn't use unfree content unless we have to. Yes, this page has a section on fair use, and some of the points of our policy serve as a safety net for the legal guidelines, so having Fair use as the page title is somewhat appropriate. But it is imprecise, and imprecise wording too often leads to imprecise thinking. New users commonly conflate Wikipedia's unfree content policy with the legal doctrine of fair use; they speak about policies invented in Wikipedia as if they are written in the law books themselves. It also leads to remarks that those unfamiliar with Wikipedian lingo might find silly or incoherent, like "Fair use images should not be used here"—if they're really fair then why not? "Unfree images should not be used here" makes a lot more sense. The page briefly tries to distinguish fair use law and Wikipedia law in the intro, but in my opinion it isn't enough. The page is broader than Fair use, so naturally it should be given a broader name than Fair use.
The exact name is a trivial detail: Whether it should be "non-free content," "nonfree content," "unfree content," "unfree material," or something else can be hashed out. Punctured Bicycle 22:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Throw my support into the ring under "unlicensed content policy", because that's exactly what we're dealing with. -- Cyde Weys 00:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
This page concerns our polices when it comes to fair use. The name is appropriate. - Peregrine Fisher 00:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I've long argued against using the term "fair use" to refer to media used on Wikipedia without a (valid) license, usually using the term "unlicensed media" or sometimes "nonfree content". Any of the names suggested by Gmaxwell would be fine with me. The name "fair use" is peculiar to US law (the same concept is called "fair dealing" in Commonwealth countries, and is absent entirely from German law, for example), and also tends to confuse editors into thinking that the policy does, or should, mirror the copyright law of the United States or some other nation, which is clearly not the case. Kelly Martin ( talk) 00:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree that this should be renamed and like Gmaxwell’s suggestions, in descending order of preference. — xyzzy n 01:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I would be wholeheartedly in support of renaming this to "Exemption Doctrine Policy" on "non-free media" or something similar; I think "fair use" give a misleading impression when our policies differ somewhat. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 01:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I like Kat's idea of "Non-free media" WP:NFM, as is describes exactly what we're dealing with. "Unlicensed content" will just get us into more problems that it solves, along the lines of "but it had a license" (i.e. a non-commercial use license). Physchim62 (talk) 01:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with changing the name. Wikipedia:Fair use is not the same as fair use. This already came up a while ago, I then created Wikipedia:Non-free images. Basically the fair use criteria without naming it fair use. Non-free media sounds even better btw. Garion96 (talk) 15:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Definitely support renaming to "non-free"/"unfree" as this precisely describes what the policy covers (now our definition of "free" is fixed). EDP is confusing and "unlicensed" is incorrect. Many of these images have licenses, just not ones we accept. "Fair Use" is our legal defence and part of policy, but by no means the whole story. ed g2s • talk 23:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would mean no copyrighted material of any kind unless we have permission, including text quotes, right?I don't believe that is necessarily true in respect of the abolition of 'Fair use,' unless we are talking about the abolition of all 'non-free' material (per the adopted meaning of non-free in the current discussion). For example, in respect of the EU see: Copyright (Harmonization Information Society), Directive, 22/05/2001 Art 5, para 3(d). Also in many Commonwealth countries there are Fair dealing defenses to a copyright infringement action, which should be considered in relation to each country where EN Wikipedia is consulted. Regarding the question of copyrighted photos of historic events, this is something that Jimbo Wales has suggested be allowed as a rare exception to his own principle on copylefting. But, merely to ask, why should there be any exceptions to a core principle such as he suggested if it is indeed a core principle. Regarding your remark on the Foundation's attitude to quality v. freedom, I think Kat has already made clear in discussions elsewhere that the number one priority is freedom.-- luke 06:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
My preference is non-free content or nonfree content. Wikipedia and the Commons call the stuff they encourage users to contribute " free content". The stuff that Wikipedia allows only under limited circumstances and what Commons bans entirely, then, would naturally be called "non-free content". Punctured Bicycle 09:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
having Fair use as the page title is somewhat appropriate. But it is imprecise, and imprecise wording too often leads to imprecise thinkingThe word free has generally understood meanings (e.g. see free). If you were to tell a woman in the street that you were making an encyclopedia and it is more 'free' to ban the use of NC content etc, I suspect she would be very puzzled. And furthermore, if you tried to explain what you meant and your reasoning I doubt her puzzlement would end, although she may say that she understands perfectly. Because many people are deeply offended that the freedom to make a profit from other people's work (while those doing the work receive nothing themselves) should take precedence over the freedom to use content which is 'freely' offered on the one perfectly reasonable condition that no commercial advantage is made from its use.
Wikipedia:Non-free content sounds the best to me. "Nonfree" without the hyphen looks like yet another WP neologism. :-) Stan 14:10, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I was just going to suggest this. Wikipedia:Exemption Doctrine Policy is accurate but confusing. Wikipedia:Non-free content is better and more descriptive, and should say the phrase "Exemption Doctrine Policy" somewhere at the top with a link the Foundation mandate. — Omegatron 22:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
A screenshot of the front page of Something Awful has been up for deletion at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2007 April 4, but the rationale is one that would invalidate the inclusion of any web screenshot. Basically the argument for deletion is that it includes too much content (never mind that it's only the taglines/leadins to a handful of articles, and no full articles) and that it would be easy enough to click the link that we shouldn't include an image of the page when people could go there themselves (never mind that we try to be medium-independent). Could somebody else step in and provide a good explanation to this person of why web screenshots are legitimate? Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 08:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
is the placement of this copyrighted image (screenshot from a film) in the article consistent with fair use guidelines? WP:FU criteria stipulate the presence of critical commentary discussing the image in the article and establishing specific relevance. it's a no-brainer that this commentary must be present in the article text (and not the caption), but we've had editors arguing over it because it apparently doesn't explicitly specify critical commentary outside of the caption itself. the article currently does not discuss the film at all, nor does it establish the image's relevance to criticism directed against the Qur'an. please also see this discussion. ITAQALLAH 03:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Is material on house.gov pages fair use? Here is the page [8], I want to use the image of the district ( [9]) to fix this page Georgia Congressional Districts. Thanks. Akubhai 14:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if this is answered somewhere, but I can't find a clear Wiki policy regarding the use of scanned pages of books. For example, this sample page was scanned from a Sanskrit text that is copyrighted. [10] The page image was referenced in connection with a discussion of what the text says on an article talk page: Talk:Ashvamedha#Griffith_reprint_.28again....29 Is it ok to scan pages in this way? Can they be used in articles or on talk pages to support references? Buddhipriya 18:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
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 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | → | Archive 25 |
I've seen many variations of this argument being used by deletion-happy editors recently: we only want to use it (fair use) as a last resort for critical commentary. A last resort? Goodness! Is this the new policy that's being discussed on back channels? And if so, may I suggest the following re-write to our main "fair use" page:
Current version: Fair use is a legal doctrine which may permit the use of copyrighted material on Wikipedia under a restricted set of criteria. It is not a blanket permission to use text, images or other copyrighted materials freely on Wikipedia.
Updated version: Fair use of copyrighted material, though permitted under U.S. law, is generally discouraged on Wikipedia as incompatible with the project's primary goal of creating free/ libre content. However, in an extraordinarily restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time, some fair use may be permitted. Photographs of living people are never allowed on Wikipedia under a fair use claim.
At least it's honest.
Just waiting for the German shoe to drop... Jenolen speak it! 12:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
The complete non sequitor statement that "photographs of living people are never allowed" doesn't reflect any reasonable policy, whether current or not-yet adopted; it just sounds like an overblown rewrite of the current replaceable policy, without allowing any consideration of why the photo would actually be used. It's also completely arbitrary to single out living people as categorically excluded subjects, when other subjects may be even more accessible to free photographers, or to single out photographs as the only affected media. Policy statements should never be collapsed into such specific applications, because it detaches them from the benefit they are intended to serve and results in both under- and over- inclusivity. It should instead read: "Whenever freely licensed images are available or could be made, Wikipedia does not permit fair use claims for images that would serve the same informational function." Postdlf 14:32, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
And again, if you find that statement so shocking then I don't know what you have to add to discussions here, other than the fact that you think we're all insane deletion happy image nazis. But I think you've told us that enough times already now? ed g2s • talk 16:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
"exceeding anything the law requires" - That you still protest that our Fair Use policy is tighter than the law shows that you really haven't taken on board much about what we do. The quality of what we produce is not simply based on how an article looks, free-ness is one of our founding principles, like it or not. If an article is full of weakly claimed Fair Use images, its reusability decreases. You may not care about downstream use, and a lot of people have difficulty with the concept that we encourage people to copy our content and even sell it. This does not mean our only priority becomes "creating the coolest website on the internet", or even the "highest quality encyclopaedia we can legally publish". If you want to do that you can exercise your right to fork, but stop telling us it's what we should be doing. Your constant complaining and sarcastic commentary is becoming quite disruptive. ed g2s • talk 19:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Is it accepted that fair use pictures of artworks would be in a section of the works by an artist, from any kind? For example, the section "Shows" in the article Andrew Lloyd Webber? Tomer T 17:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Please comment at the discussion regarding fair-use images on the main page at Wikipedia talk:Fair use exemptions. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 19:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to know if I' right? To use copyrighted material, for example in Russian Wiki, this material must meet US Laws, Wikipedia's policy, and Russian copyright laws. Is it correct?-- Vaya 16:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Talk:Pete_Townshend#Revert_war_on_photo -- Guinnog 18:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The WNYC studios have released a photo they took of David Mamet to the Creative Commons. I uploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons here and here. It's getting easier all the time to find free use images.- BillDeanCarter 19:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Upon seeing the new lead, I immediately assumed it to be satire. Checking the link to the discussion given in the edit, it seems once more to be tongue-in-cheek posting throughout, especially with the comments in the initial post such as "at least we'll be honest" and "...in an extraordinarily restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time..." but User:Badagnani seems to think it was a serious addition. Could somebody please clear this up for me? -- tjstrf talk 08:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not satire. -- Kim Bruning 13:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Jenolen wrote that to try an make a point about how absurd he thinks our policy is, however most responses were "that pretty much about sums it up" - but no one was taking at as a serious propsal to rewrite out policy. Now he seems to be trying to prove a point by actually implementing it. If we are going to change it, we need to have a proper discussion first. ed g2s • talk 13:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, as someone who wrote the majority of the current version of the intro, I think I'm well qualified to write the new version, as well. So let's take a look at this new version, line by line:
Fair use of copyrighted material, though permitted under U.S. law, is generally discouraged on Wikipedia as incompatible with the project's primary goal of creating freely redistributable libre content. Who here disagrees with this? We've all been told time and time again, (granted, by the same six editors/admins, but still...) libre is what this project is all about. I'd be interested in seeing the counter-argument to this sentence.
However, in an extraordinarily restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time, some fair use may be permitted. Again - this is emperically true. Wikipedia policy can and does change, based on a number of factors (Jimbo's mood, mysterious "directives to come from the Foundation", IRC chats, discussions between admins and board members who are dating, shifts in the planet's magnetosphere, who knows what else?)... Okay, I'm sure the magnetosphere has little to do with Wikipedia policy, but hey, the point is, things change. And they change for reasons that no new editor can reasonably be expected to know. Better to let people know straight up and ahead of time that's what's fair use TODAY may not be fair use TOMORROW. This is where a lot of the hostility toward deletionist editors comes from; I know I was especially honked that I had worked hard with tagging admins to get all of my image ducks in a row - all of my attributions and licensings set - when the ground shifted, and suddenly, a new set of admins decided all of my contributions had to go, in order to conform with a rededication to our libre philosophy. Fine. Then let's make that clear.
Photographs of living people are rarely allowed on Wikipedia under a fair use claim. Who wants to debate this? This is the current interpretation of policy, as applied by the most strict editor/admins, and therefore, is the practical standard. If one admin thinks fair use is okay for a living person photo, and another thinks it should be deleted, what happens to the photo? It's deleted. The deleting admin's standards are, therefore, the de facto standard, and we should let people know right up front - your fair use photo of an American Idol contestant or beauty queen or hockey player isn't going to survive the standards of deletionist admins.
This intro clearly and concisely explains the current orthodoxy vis-a-vis our extraordinarily restrictrive interpretation of fair use, and does that succinctly, while also adding, in a place of prominence, the fact that several admins and editors are now deleting any and all fair use photos of living people. Letting editors know that fair use claims are no longer acceptable for photos of living people -- and, in fact that this new policy will be applied retroactively (and, by nature, a little haphazardly) seems something that could help defuse the continued hostility toward those who seem to have a special enthusiasm for removing copyrighted material, fairly used or not. Jenolen speak it! 15:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
That intro isn't quite right, but it's closer to right than the old/current intro. People who are directed here when their image is deleted should be able to get a sense of why it was deleted from the first paragraph, I think. Get rid of the word "extraordinarily." The sentence should be like "However, in a restricted set of circumstances, and subject to change at any time, some fair use may be permitted." The last sentence should be changed to something like "Images where it may be possible to find a free equivalent, such as photos of living people, are rarely allowed on Wikipedia under a fair use claim." - Peregrine Fisher 16:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that Jenolen's edit was a bad one, actually. I have often thought that we should be as clear as we can be that we have confusing, or at least non-intuitive, policies and guidelines on the use of unfree content, and even if they are followed to the letter, such content may still be deleted. It would be a kindness to people to be as clear about this as possible, so that if an editor is going to spend a lot of time uploading unfree content, they should know exactly what they are getting into. If anything, those editors who would prefer more liberal use of unfree content, but also have a thoughtful understanding of our mission, may be better at explaining this guideline than editors who assume that everyone here is equally committed to the free culture movement. Jkelly 17:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be attributable to a reliable source. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*. . (emphasis mine)
This is printed in bold right above the save page button. Clicking save means you agree. As far as I'm concerned, this is a binding contract.
It's clear, it's simple. There's a lot to be said for clear and simple, at least.
I know image uploads are a slightly different story. The wide array of options and possibilities and justifications is frankly bewildering, and leads to many mistakes. I guess what I've read previously is that lots of people would like to see that part of wikipedia tidied up too?
-- Kim Bruning 17:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Can someone explain to me (In English)why I can't put pictures on my subpages? Wikiman232 03:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Is it fair to use the synopsis from the back of a book verbatim? If it is OK, what kind of references do I need, and what about in-line references. It it isn't, why not? If it's a grey area, what's grey about it? Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher 06:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I have been reading through the above threads and some of the archives, and I can't find a direct answer to this question. Is it acceptable to have an album cover in a discography in a band's article? Assume that there is no critical commentary on the album or the cover. The reason I ask is that I've been going through the list of articles linked to Image:Nocover.png and finding and adding album covers, but I don't want to continue if the covers are going to be eventually deleted. -- Joelmills 16:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I read WP:FUC, not WP:FU. Maybe the {{Albumcover}} template should say that there needs to be critical commentary; right now it just says solely to illustrate the audio recording in question. My personal opinion is that an album stub that just gives a track listing, album cover, and release information is pretty useless, and that having a discography section with that info (minus the track listings) is a better solution. Thanks for the replies. -- Joelmills 18:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I noticed some Television station articles were using the company logo's in front of their company names of the affeliations and owners. This would be a FU violation in my eyes because they do not provide critical commentary to the article and don't discuss the company that the logo directly references. This has been judged similar on {{ Infobox Television}} over a year ago. If not, then every TV article would now have the network logo in the infobox by now I guess. Anyway. I removed them from a ton of pages, but subsequently got reverted by User:Orangemonster2k1, who is saying that "The logos are already loaded into Wikipedia and just shorted down to size. If fair-use is put into effect for use this way, it would have to be for the logos on the pages already used." [1] Before I revert again, I would like to confirm that my interpretation of WP:FUC and WP:FU is correct. opinions anyone ? -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 01:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
A user has recently objected to this image on Andrew Van De Kamp on the grounds that it of Shawn Pyfrom and not the actor and thus cannot be used on the character's page. I disagree because I think it is of Shawn as Andrew in a publicity still (as in this one of Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndham-Pryce we have on his article), as Shawn Pyfrom looks nothing like that outside of Desperate Housewives, as shown on his website. The website it was taken from the official DH site uses the image for both Shawn and Andrew's bios. I would much rather use this image than the screenshot currently up, as it was taken almost two years ago and is now somewhat inaccurate. But I'm not prepared to break policy. So, can this image be used as a fair use image of Andrew or not? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 05:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
The image was going through a replaceable fair use dispute, which have not closed yet. I, the unloader, have made have made considerable arguments to validate its fair use, and have made changes to the article that uses the image to conform to Wikipedia principles. It uses a plain fair use license tag, with elaborate rationales, provided with readily verifiable external links (not a logo, promotional, book cover, album art, screen shot or any such specific fair use tag). How did it become an image with a clearly invalid fair use tag; or it is an image that fails some part of the fair use criteria? The fair use dispute was about the first fair use criterion, not a clearly invalid fair use tag. Surely there must be mistake here. Aditya Kabir 13:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Template:Fairuse has approximately 3500 images using it, Template:Fair use has ~500 images using it, and both redirect to Template:Restricted use, which has ~3500 using it, but it's not clear to me if those ~3500 are duplicate to the ones using "Fairuse". Anyways, the tag states that "This tag should not be used" and refers to the list of fair use tags or to use Template:Non-free fair use in. Would anyone oppose to my changing the tag to look nothing like a image license tag and simply has directions to use another license tag? After the change is made (in hopes of eliminating new use of the tag(s)), go through and mark all the existing licenses as no license after the tag has been removed for at least 1 month to allow hopefully the license to be changed to a valid tag? I'd even be fine with notifying the uploader that the tag is invalid and they should put a new license tag on it and put the images into a special category. I think changing the license tag to prevent new use is critical, but what to do with the 3500-7500 images using it is not clear. Any thoughts? -- MECU≈ talk 14:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Are pictures posted on the MySpace profiles of notable musicians fair-use? For example, John Mayer has a profile here. If he were to theoretically not have a suitable free image on his article, would a picture from his MySpace page be an acceptable substitute until a free one were to be found? -- Hemlock Martinis 22:11, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Since the last amendment lost steam four months ago, i'm reinvigorating it at Wikipedia:Fair use/Amendment/Fair use images in portals2. There is clearly a strong desire from many people in the community to see portals given the same availability to fair use images that the main page has. I hope that we can reach something everyone can deal with. - ΖαππερΝαππερ Babel Alexandria 21:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I am a member of WikiProject Illustration involved in converting some of these images to the SVG format. I recently noticed that a large number of them are copyrighted logos or maps uploaded under fair use rationale. I'm pretty sure that these are not valid targets for conversion, and I would like it if some informed minds reviewed the statement I'm thinking about adding to the category page:
I would greatly appreciate any recommendations on phrasing (specific enough?) links (are there better sources to link to?), simple facts (conversions do constitute derivate works, right?), or anything else. Also, are there any exceptions to this rule? And does this general concept apply to all image conversion and cleanup? If so, it would probably make sense to include a similar message on several other cleanup pages. Thanks! MithrandirMage T 01:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Yet many people have argued for the deletion of SVG logos (with some success) because they're 'infinite resolution'. are we going to settle this sometime? Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 19:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC) I have added the following message to Category:Images which should be in SVG format:
However, I am still open to recommendations. Thanks! MithrandirMage T 00:33, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Err, I think I acted too hastily. I've taken the message down until I can get further support for the fact that converting fair-use images is not fair use. User:Interiot has posted on Category talk:Images which should be in SVG format an argument against my position. It certainly unseated my certainty -- could someone else read it as well? Neither of us is an expert in fair use; could a few more qualified people please chime in with some clarification here? In particular:
I hate to bring up this problem here; it seems to be discussed everywhere, yet nowhere can I find a good consensus/make sense of it. Thank you very much for your help. MithrandirMage T 03:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
The derivative work argument might have merit, but so long as the copy is exacting it's a format conversion, and not a derivative in my view. I'd argue that conversion to SVG puts us in no worse a copyright position than changing between GIF and PNG. The resolution issue is completely silly: can we not host any simple raster logo because someone could use printer with a tracing based re-sampler and print to any size they wish? Of course not. Physical size, from the perspective of the fair use legal argument, is far more oriented to the appearance in the context of the document... Furthermore the size of a copyrighted *logo* has almost nothing to do with its commercial value. While I'd rather our SVG producing resources focus on free images and I'd rather not encourage it, I don't see an issue with SVGs. We can't stop people from doing it because if someone uploads a SVG of a logo, we'll generally never know if it actually came from the copyright holder. -- Gmaxwell 19:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
The board has now passed its resolution on the media licensing policy, available now at: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
This policy is intended to reflect the principles in the message posted earlier at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027547.html and to make the guidelines for acceptable media licenses clearer across all projects.
A beginning draft of an FAQ page is on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_policy_FAQ_draft -- please add your own questions and suggest answers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shojo ( talk • contribs) 05:23, March 27, 2007 (UTC).
Note that m:Foundation Issues is the foundation on which the 5 pillars are erected. Perhaps one of the changes that need to be made to that document is that we are now less restrictive? (The foundation now officially allows more than just GFDL content, though granted, we will be enforcing the rules more tightly.) -- Kim Bruning 15:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
The policy announcement is more important for the projects that have had chaotic policies for non-free material. En: already has a plenty elaborate EDP (new initialism!), WMF policy is confirming more than changing it. Having Foundation-level policy will be helpful for shutting down some of the more pointless arguments here - moves it from "nasty mean admins and ideologues" to "nasty mean WMF board". :-) Stan 15:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
moves it from "nasty mean admins and ideologues" to "nasty mean WMF board".
Besides that, the greatest benefit will be to end up the "I start counting from the 2nd Pillar"-kind of argument.
Yet another attempt to redefine "decorative" in your own terms so that you have justification for outright removing images like here. I didn't support your interpretation last time and I still don't support such an ambiguous and narrowly-focused change. Your single intention here is against screenshots (you outright admit it) which you have obviously shown your heavy bias against them in the past. Again, why I don't support this. I see absolutely NO reason why — no sense in beating around the bush — television screenshots must be singled out as you have intended here. Cburnett 15:49, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Please note— Matthew has posted an inflammatory characterization of the discussion here in a number of places likely to contain editors sympathetic to his perspective [2] [3]. As a result, his position is more likely than usual to be over-represented in this discussion. |
Please note: Inflammatory... funny... oh and my wikitables sexier! —The preceding signed comment was added by Matthew ( talk • contribs). |
I'm sorry Ed, If there was anyone else who was bringing this up again, I might be inclined to go into a discussion about it again. But like Cburnett says. You have had SOOO many runs at removing all the screenshots from television articles, i just can't believe we are gonna have to go trough this all again. Not to be blunt, but I just don't wanna hear it, not from you, regardless of wether you are wrong or right. I'm sorry, that's just how I feel. I don't feel this discussion is going anywhere unless it's carried by other people. :( -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 20:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
People seem to be suggesting that there are "too many" fair use images, what people forget though: Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is also not paper, we have very high potential for a lot of high quality articles, these are often assisted by fair use imagery. WP:NOT states, "Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopaedia in a spirit of mutual respect". Generally fair use imagery does add a lot of value to articles (if used correctly), mutual respect: Like I stated in my above comment about the two "cultures", one side taking a dislike to the usage of non-free imagery and going to great lengths to get it removed is not mutual respect. Respectfully, Matthew 16:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I think they are mandated in a "good free television encyclopedia" as well. Also, what do we mean by "free content?" Adding a telvision screenshot doesn't reduce the amount of free content, taking up room that could be filled with a free image. - Peregrine Fisher 20:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Some editors might remember that I used to defend the use of screen shots in LOEs, but I can no longer do so. Removing the screen shots does decrease the quality of these lists greatly, significantly so, however, our free content goals are a higher priority. I hate to see screen shots go in these lists, but they conflict with the goal of Wikipedia to have free content, free of copyright red tape, to be able to be reused by anyone for any reason. Even if the majority of the community has no problem with using this many fair use images, that can never override our free content goals. We feel like Wikipedia is a bit ours, and we should, but this issue is out of our hands. Identifying individual episodes in a list is a great thing in our modern media arts world, but that's not why Wikipedia is here. Our free goals actually limit us in being truly complete, but being free is that important. I hope more of you will come to this same conclusion, as I have. We don't need these pictures badly enough. -- Ned Scott 00:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
My favorite part of this? When I re-wrote the intro for WP:FU, I posted it on the talk page, waited a week for people to comment on it, then when I made the change, I had it reverted (for the second time) by an editor who said "If we are going to change it, we need to have a proper discussion first." And now, thanks to that editor's actions, I've finally figured out what he meant by "a proper discussion" -- It's one hour, twenty one minutes long, and conducted entirely with User:Gmaxwell.
Side note to GMaxwell -- Enough with the harshing on YouTube! It's starting to sound like sour grapes. I'm sure you have plenty of reasons to be pissed at YouTube, because they're like, you know, billionaires and stuff, while you and your non-cabal (because, as we all know, there is no cabal) have your popular, but, sadly, free (as in beer AND speech) playground here, but gee, give it a rest. Yes, YouTube has some copyright issues... but they're obviously doing something right. Comparing the posting of movie studio promotional stills or official state government photographs on Wikipedia to the challenges YouTube faces in protecting the rights of copyright holders is like comparing apples and ducks. Jenolen speak it! 11:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
"in accordance with United States law and the law of countries where the project content is predominantly accessed" - surely this means we have to comply with UK, Australian, Canadian (etc.) ... law, i.e. all the interpretations of fair dealing? ed g2s • talk 14:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
look at the article. theres a section which is the content of the file. The file explicitly states that u may not publicly display this file in whole or in part. But the file is being displayed on the article itself. And under the doctrine of "Fair Use" does he (the person who posted the content of the file) have the rights to do so?
Um. In Penny Arcade (webcomic)#American Greetings, we have a comic that the publishers of said comic took down because of a C&D from American Greetings. Is this a good idea? - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire | past ops) 20:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Please see this. The resolution by the board specifically says that "An EDP may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals." Does this mean that we have to change our FU policy? What about the large number of publicity photos of living people that we have here? - Aksi_great ( talk) 13:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Apropos of the screenshot discussion above, everyone should read the Foundation resolution passed last week. It states, in part, that project uses of content which is not under a free license "with limited exception, should be to illustrate historically significant events, to include identifying protected works such as logos, or to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works." I think that last clause merits some discussion.
"...to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works."' This clause should set some boundaries for discussion on this page. It clearly shows that the Foundation is not attempting to remove all fair use images from "pop culture" articles. It also shows that the Foundation does not wish fair use to be abused willy-nilly.
It's worth noting that the Foundation statement doesn't say anything about "decorative" uses. IANAL, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that U.S. fair use law doesn't either. The long-standing guideline says that material "must contribute significantly to the article (e.g. identify the subject of an article, or specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text) and must not serve a purely decorative purpose."
Both sides of the screenshot debate should recognize that the other is expressing a point of view which is consistent with Wikipedia policies, guidelines and philosophy. The central question is whether a screenshot needs specifically to illustrate a discussed directorial or cinematographic technique (as, for example, the use of Image:Citizen Kane deep focus.jpg in Citizen Kane) or whether it is "purely decorative" to have a screenshot which depicts a key plot point or element (as, for example, the use of Image:MashEpisode72.jpg in Abyssinia, Henry). It is perfectly reasonable to say that screenshots and other fair use images should not be used indiscriminately, and there should be a limit placed on their uses to prevent this. It is also perfectly reasonable to point out that in many cases (such as articles about individual television episodes) a screenshot may show a key scene from the episode's plot to aid identification and to illustrate a relevant point within the text. That is, there are circumstances in which a screenshot which depicts a plot or character aspect may not be purely decorative.
Since both sides have legitimate points, and it should be clear to everyone by now that this debate isn't actually progressing towards a consensus, shouldn't we consider a compromise? Many television articles use an unofficial "one screenshot per article" rule. What if we made that part of the fair use guideline? Obviously, there would be exceptions — but we could try to figure out what those exceptions are and make them explicit. (Intuitively, it should be possible to see why, for example, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope needs more screenshots than Surf Nazis Must Die. We should be able to articulate this distinction.)
Instead of trying to get rid of all screenshots (and other fair use images), or trying to use as many screenshots and other fair use images as we can get away with, let's work together figure out what the "narrow limits" the Foundation wants us to work within are. The conversation on this page has not been productive. Anyone for a fresh start? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 09:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
So any compromise is rejected? - Peregrine Fisher 15:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Based on the comments above, some editors still seem confused about my comment. When I said "one image per episode", I wasn't talking about lists of episodes. I was talking about individual episode articles, not lists of episodes. I don't really care whether lists of episodes have images or not. What I do care about is whether articles for individual television episodes can have screenshots at all. Some of the comments above suggest that Image:MashEpisode72.jpg should not be used in the featured article Abyssinia, Henry, because it doesn't depict a directorial or cinematographic technique. I think this is absurd. The Foundation resolution explicitly allows us to use nonfree content "to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted contemporary works." Using one image which illustrates a key moment of a television episode, discussed a plot summary in the article, is obviously acceptable by U.S. fair use law. It even meets our fair use policy's requirement that the image should "specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text". The suggestion that only cinematographic or directorial techniques meet this requirement frankly does an injustice to the value of fiction in culture. When people discuss television, whether it's an academic discussion or chat around the water cooler, they generally discuss plot and character, not directorial techniques. This discussion is a vital part of "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching... scholarship, or research", and therefore there is no legitimate reason for excluding images which represent plot or character points discussed in a plot summary. — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 10:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. The recent board resolution on our licensing policy mentions that all non-free media must be "must be identified in a machine-readable format". I can say with confidence that our current practice is not machine readable. We have a constantly shifting set of dozens of templates and categories which must be detected by someone working with a wikitext dump. It's also impossible to detect by inverting the set of free images since the free images are also marked through a constantly shifting set of tags.
I think we can solve this fairly simply by deciding that "all templates which identify non-free media must have a name which begins with {{nonfree-, and that all such templates must place the media in the category Category:Nonfree media". A non-free image which does not contain {{nonfree- will be treated as an improperly licensed file no matter what any of the templates on the page expand to. (i.e. nesting a nonfree tag is not sufficient for machine readability).
I think we should avoid the words "fair use" in place of my "nonfree" in the example, because non-free is a broader classification which does not require a complicated judgment. Is it freely licensed or not? If not, it's going to have a {{nonfree- on it.
I don't care too much what the actual text or category name. This is the general approach which I think would solve the machine readability issues and would not be too hard to implement. This would require renaming all our fair use templates, but since this can easily be carried out by bot, it will not be much of an effort. I expect the harder job will be finding all of them. Objections? Thoughts on going a step further and also requiring that all such templates also transclude a universal non-free boilerplate template which says that the media is non-free?-- Gmaxwell 14:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
And perhaps we need to rework and reevaluate all the template licensing and naming conventions. In that case it might be a good idea to take a closer look at the reasoning behind all the commons conventions. Perhaps some of the ideas there can be applied here. The BIGGEST problem of course will be to process all the images and make sure they are actually complying with any new convention, because it's easier to identify what's free at the moment, then whats not. Basically, if we are gonna do this, why not take the time to evaluate almost everything about the en. images, templates and categories, since they will all need to be processed because of this. -- TheDJ ( talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 18:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree that we need some form of machine readability, at least to easily generate reports about fair use usage, non-article space usage, etc. How about, for the time being, we simply create a null template, Template:Non-free media and add it to every known non-free image copyright tag? I'll go create it and provide a list, and an admin can add 'em in. Be right back. -- Iamunknown 04:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems that some userboxes have logos in them. Is that allowed? Althepal 01:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Althepal, a lot of the stuff on your user page is not allowed. - Peregrine Fisher 05:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Use of international wheelchair symbol: I believe that this would result in a change to the fair use policy, or at least a clarification that a limited number of "official symbols" like the International Symbol of Access are not replaceable and do not require specific rationales for each use. -- NE2 19:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
"I love your new standard of "adequate"! Unfortuantely, that's not Wikipedia's standard;" - You clearly haven't read FUC#1 recently, the first point of our policy. As I have stated, the ISA is not the only way to indicate disabled access - we are not trying to create a new international standard, just finding an adequate free way to abbreviate "disabled access available". "The text "disabled access" being not at all adequate for the billions of people in the world who do not read English." - This is the English Wikipedia!!! If using English isn't good enough here then we're in real trouble. ed g2s • talk 12:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
A user has placed this image of a sword at Excalibur, because the item in the picture is a "replica" of Excalibur. It's a copyrighted image of a commercial product, and there must be dozens of free images that can be used to illustrate King Arthur's weapon. Anyone care to comment?-- Cúchullain t/ c 23:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I need someone to drop by Ayumi Hamasaki discography to explain, in better words, why covers there are decorative. As you can see, there was an awful edit war between AMiB and an anonymous. -- ReyBrujo 04:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I read a post recently which said Fair use abuse is a constant presence and must be fought as hard as possible, and it got me thinking - shouldn't this person be devoting their energy to fighting copyright violations? (Fair use, of course, being a legal way to use copyrighted material...) Anyhow, I don't know where to find a list of the copyrighted material that has been found to actually (not hypothetically) have caused a fair use problem here. (I mean, there must be something in Wikipedia's history, in the past four years, that failed a legal test for fair use, right?)
So, I've created a place on my user page for just such a list. If anyone here knows of copyrighted material, uploaded to Wikipedia, and later found to be in violation of fair use laws, please stop by User:Jenolen/Fair Use Convictions and add it.
Not unrelated side note: Can we just go ahead and stop all this pussyfooting around, and go "German" already? Put a bullet through the head of silly arguments like the wheelchair thing, the state government photos thing, the "should we make an exception for the Main Page?" thing ... and just ban fair use! The most vocal, influential editors here hate it -- so why isn't it banned? It's the hypocrisy of those who claim "Free! Free! Free!" and yet won't put their quite considerable free time behind a simple, well-thought out and Jimbo supported proposal to simply ban it which I find so off-putting.
In the spirit of consensus, I'll even help with the press release: "Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, today announced a rededication to one of its core principles, deleting thousands of copyrighted images from its database, and encouraging users to replace the discarded content with material that is free of copyright concerns. As part of the plan to expand its rights-free offerings, Wikipedia also announced the elimination of "fair use" within the project, a legal doctrine which until now had permitted the limited use of copyrighted material."
Take it away! Jenolen speak it! 06:32, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
By "fair use abuse" in "Fair use abuse is a constant presence and must be fought as hard as possible", what was meant was " fair use abuse" or " Fair use" abuse?
I, for one, don't think we should "go german". That would prevent us, for instance, to use a screenshot of Darth Vadder to comment on his look. Do you understand a lot of us "absolutists" here believe there are valid reasons to use unfree material on a free encyclopedia? This "accept only 100% free"/"accept anything that's legal" dichotomy is not a creation of us? -- Abu badali ( talk) 08:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
The problem, of course, comes when one editor accepts (random numbers used here to make a point) a 90% libre Wikipedia... while another wants a 95% libre Wikipedia ... and a third (the most strict, anti-fair use, most libre idealist) editor wants a 99% libre Wikipedia. Of these three editors - who's standards get applied? The 99%-er deletes nearly every image of copyrighted material, every promotional photo, every state government photo... everything that in his mind COULD be replaced, were we living in the libre utopia he slowly sees the real world becoming. And the policies and guildelines of Wikipedia are so confusing, contradictory, and poorly written, the 99%-er has no problem getting any image he wants deleted, citing a variety of rules, sub-rules, intents, pillars, off-list messages from Jimbo, etc.
Fun? Not really. Productive? Not at all. But it is part of the inevitable creep toward a fair-use free EN. Trust me - if you can't "save" totally harmless photos taken by state governments (and released specifically to Wikipedia to "do whatever you want" with), you don't have a prayer of saving the images of all 493 species of Pokemon. Make no mistake - within a year, that faux press release I started up above will seem positively Nostradaman. Jenolen speak it! 17:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I suggest protecting Wikipedia:Fair use-- Vaya 21:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
A discussion about how we should use the International Symbol of Access on Wikipedia is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Use of international wheelchair symbol]. — Remember the dot ( talk) 05:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Apparently the Foundation resolution wasn't clear enough for some people...
The Foundation policy explicity highlights portraits of living notable individuals as not being covered by EDPs. How much clearer does it need to be! The image will be deleted. If you still have a problem with this take it to WT:FU, WP:AN/I or anywhere else you want, but I have said all I have to say, several times over. ed g2s • talk 00:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
The image in question is Image:Mbragg1.jpg. ed g2s • talk 00:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Are you arguing the the policy allows you to use the images, or that the policy is wrong? The former would be absurd, and the latter would be somewhat fruitless. ed g2s • talk 16:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Above user has now tried to re-upload two deleted images under different filenames (objections he filed for deletion are in brackets):
Both images were caption-less at the top of the page, with no reference to either "specific subject" in the article. Disagreeing with our policy is fine, but he must abide by it. Objections to deletion must be taken to undeletion requests. ed g2s • talk 18:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I have drawn this image myself. Can I tag it {{ GFDL-self}} and use it to describe Gmail logo?-- Vaya 10:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Critical and criticism have several meanings, so "critical commentary" is vague. Unfortunately the meaning of the phrase is not explained on this page. Critical can mean to pass judgment upon the qualities of something; clearly we do not mean that here because Wikipedia has a NPOV policy. Critical also means accurate and precise; while Wikipedia encourages our commentary to be accurate and precise by following reliable sources, I don't see how this is relevant to fair use. Maybe it does mean we should be critical in the accurate and precise sense, but just so it is clear that our purpose is scholarship, one of the six fair purposes listed in the law. But if that's the case, why not just say "scholarly commentary"? (though it is not clear why we should do that, since commentary alone is one of the six examples). I gather from my dictionary that critical, especially in scientific contexts (critical mass, critical pressure), also means the point or threshold something must obtain before something can happen. In this sense, I suppose "critical commentary" means our commentary should be in-depth as opposed to superficial. For example, an album cover in the article about the album is accompanied by a sufficient amount of text, whereas an album cover in a discography article is accompanied by a superficial amount. This seems to me the intended meaning, but I can't be sure. If it means that, it should say that; if it means something else, it should say that. It shouldn't cloak what is meant using words with a cornucopia of definitions.
"Critical commentary", a phrase seemingly invented by Wikipedia, can also be confused for language used in the Fair Use law. "Critical commentary" looks like a hybrid of criticism and comment from "...for purposes such as criticism, comment..." But in that context: (1) Criticism and comment are distinct. (2) They refer to one of several purposes you can select from, and the purpose is only one of the four considerations which all must be taken into account. In contrast, you either have "critical commentary" in Wikipedia or you don't: if you do the image's inclusion might be justified, if you don't it can't be. Having Wikipedia policy that is confusable with U.S. law is a problem.
In short, "critical commentary" is a problematic phrase that should use clearer terminology and be explained more thoroughly. Punctured Bicycle 22:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
With this edit, Jimbo his own self seems to indicate that Fair Use, while (allegedly) acceptable within the pages of Wikipedia, is no longer welcome on the Main Page. Thanks for the clarifying "guidance," Jimbo! People who claim to be in the 90% and 95% categories above - Abu, Ed, etc. - the 99%'ers are gaining on you. And when they eventually take away your Darth Vader image, even if only to discuss Vader's fearsome appearance ("because text can adequately describe what he looks like!"), I don't want to hear any complaining about how you didn't see it coming... Jenolen speak it! 03:27, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Either it IS derivative... and is supposed to, I guess, "evoke" Scooby-Doo, or it's NOT derivative... and has no business illustrating an article about Scooby-Doo. WP:FU at its finest... Jenolen speak it! 04:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Wow, the Main Page of a free content project restricting itself to free content! Truly a sad day in our history... ed g2s • talk 11:03, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I know I've proposed this before, but I think this has more pertinence now that the foundation has explicitly advocated stricter rules regarding free content: have any of you guys who are opposed to the foundation's stance considered forking off wikipedia to a new project (say, Fairwiki)? You can pretty much copy all of Wikipedia's articles and add fair use images, audio, even video. Copying wikipedia in this way is definitely legal (an in fact, implicitly encouraged) by the GFDL license. FairWiki would focus on being "a publicly editable encyclopedia" rather than a "free encyclopedia"- I'm pretty sure you'd get sufficient support to get it off the ground.
This is an analogy with the various linux distributions- some are more strict about their interpretation of free content than others. Debian, for instance, is so strict that the developers didn't even allow firefox because they trademarked their logo- hence the creation of Iceweasel. The GFDL is designed to be dynamic, so users can create variations of the GFDL-licensed software/product to meet their own goals or needs. Those people who share Wikimedia's goals vis-a-vis free content can use wikipedia, those who want to create the highest-quality publically-editable encyclopedia legally permissible can use FairWiki. Everybody wins. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Borisblue ( talk • contribs) 12:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC).
What is the latest on property rights viz a viz fair use images? The Eiffel Tower at night is a good example. Can we still take pictures of buildings and statues and stuff from a public place, or do we have to look for the small print on the structure that tells us who owns the property rights? Carcharoth 14:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Just been thinking about this some more, and I realised my "statue erected in 1701" example was a little bit facetious. Did they have copyright back in 1701? How does copyright apply to future technologies? Before photography came along, people must have worried less about image rights. How does current copyright attempt to future proof (bah! it was predictable there would be some random music album called futureproof...) itself against future technologies? How far can it go in doing so, and how far should it go? Carcharoth 10:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I uploaded this image at Image:Navdeepbains.parl.gc.ca.jpg after finding that the article was lacking an image and had a red linked image. User:Jesse Viviano tagged it twice now as replaceable fair use, with the summary once, "This man is still living and not a prisoner nor a fugitive, so a free image could be created." I actually went and contacted the Canadian Parliament, who holds the copyright, and explained how and why Wikipedia would like to use the image, and was granted permission in response, which I posted to the image page and the image talk page. Jesse tagged it again as replaceable fair use to delete. Is this image given that I've received permission from the copyright holder (Canadian parliament) alright to use? - Denny ( talk) 15:40, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Clearly, this guideline/policy has very little acceptance among editors. The tags should be changed to clarify that this is a Foundation mandate and was not decided by consensus or general agreement. — Omegatron 21:11, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Some Idea? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alx 91 ( talk • contribs) 01:56, 7 April 2007 (UTC).
There is a discussion on the above page, which could do with some informed participation, regarding deletion of what I consider a copyvio. [5] Tyrenius 02:04, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Featured list criteria#Fair Use images about the permitted level of usage of Fair Use images in Featured Lists. Your input would be welcomed. Tompw ( talk) 23:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a new proposed guideline, Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline. It's nothing new really, just a reorganization done a while ago. It never got the guideline header, and not a huge amount of people discussed it. If you have any input add it to the talk page to see if we have consensus. This page is transcluded into Help:Image page also. - cohesion 01:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
The regular reviewers at WP:FAC and WP:FAR are increasingly dealing with nominations that have a lot of fair-use excerpts, often without sufficient justification, either educational or WRT the replaceable criterion. A current nomination at WP:FARC, Genesis (band), has no fewer than 17 fair-use excerpts. I posted the following note at Wikipedia:Featured_article_review#FARC_commentary_14:
I wonder whether we should be concerned about this issue. Is it possible to engage some of the experts in FU when we meet these problems? Tony 22:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
A point that is missing from this discussion is that WP has gone further than the strictures of the law WRT allowing fair-use content in its articles. This is because WP is meant to be freely available worldwide—copiable. This is the rationale behind using only a minimal number of tracks in each article. These tracks can be downloaded off WP, out of context, and used for whatever purpose we don't know. This is in conflict with the notion of fair use. I hold that 17 tracks, none of them nested within the surrounding text in a way that educates the reader in musical and/or lyrical matters, is legally risky and goes beyond one of the key tenets of WP (its own free reproducibility in any context). Tony 05:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Abu, Ed, GMax, anyone who has an opinion, let's figure out what a song clip needs to be on an artist page. I'm thinking about adding some audio clips to artist pages, and I would like to avoid revisiting this discussion. Give me some idea of what to look for to tell me it's OK, please. Something more specific than "If some text passages feels like incomplete information that could never be fixed with free text only." That kind of thing is a non-starter, since we have trouble agreeing. - Peregrine Fisher 07:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Just as every Flickr image uploaded to Commons must be reviewed, why don't we just force a review of every fair use image uploaded here? I remember there was a template requesting a review of an image license; we could modify the image upload interface to include it to every fair use image. Yes, huge backlog, but at least we will have a more reliable way of determining which fair use images are acceptable (if only temporarily). -- ReyBrujo 04:03, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
So, suppose a video is released under CC-NC-SA, if you take a screenshot of the video, can you claim fair use to it? I am thinking about Image:Joannecolan1.png. -- ReyBrujo 13:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Hey Guys, I'm not certain if this is the place to put it, but if its not legal to put lyrics (full song lyrics I mean, not quotes) then how are there so many sites out there that devote themselves to them, and yet are left out of the RIAAs crosshairs?
Ferdia O'Brien The Archiver And The Vandal Watchman (
Talk) 22:48, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps its not clear on the policy page, but should it not be noted here somewhere that Fair Use will be removed upon refusal to publish by copyright holder of the image? Cary Bass demandez 15:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
This seems one of our worse fallacies really, we have tens of thousands of them. Personally, I cannot see how this benefits us. A logo or book cover, in that location is being used for identification purposes and is redundant to the text of the infobox, article title and lead section. As far as I can tell removing all the images used solely in this manner would slightly reduce the decorative appeal of articles, but would not really affect the informative qualitye. However, the fact that the majority of our fair use imagery is probably used in this manner suggests a change here is probably unlikely. Can someone give me links to prior discussions on this matter; I'm certain it has come up before.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 18:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Limiting_the_use_of_WMF_logos_in_article_space.
This relates to some of the discussion further up this page, but that discussion has grown a bit stale and differs in focus from what I see as the core concern, i.e. of having incidental uses of unfree works distributed in our content dumps. Please comment at the linked page. Dragons flight 22:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
We don't have a "fair use policy"—the U.S. legal system does. We have an unfree content policy that goes beyond fair use. "The material must be used in at least one article", for example, has nothing to do with fair use; it has to do with Wikipedia's value that we shouldn't use unfree content unless we have to. Yes, this page has a section on fair use, and some of the points of our policy serve as a safety net for the legal guidelines, so having Fair use as the page title is somewhat appropriate. But it is imprecise, and imprecise wording too often leads to imprecise thinking. New users commonly conflate Wikipedia's unfree content policy with the legal doctrine of fair use; they speak about policies invented in Wikipedia as if they are written in the law books themselves. It also leads to remarks that those unfamiliar with Wikipedian lingo might find silly or incoherent, like "Fair use images should not be used here"—if they're really fair then why not? "Unfree images should not be used here" makes a lot more sense. The page briefly tries to distinguish fair use law and Wikipedia law in the intro, but in my opinion it isn't enough. The page is broader than Fair use, so naturally it should be given a broader name than Fair use.
The exact name is a trivial detail: Whether it should be "non-free content," "nonfree content," "unfree content," "unfree material," or something else can be hashed out. Punctured Bicycle 22:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Throw my support into the ring under "unlicensed content policy", because that's exactly what we're dealing with. -- Cyde Weys 00:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
This page concerns our polices when it comes to fair use. The name is appropriate. - Peregrine Fisher 00:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I've long argued against using the term "fair use" to refer to media used on Wikipedia without a (valid) license, usually using the term "unlicensed media" or sometimes "nonfree content". Any of the names suggested by Gmaxwell would be fine with me. The name "fair use" is peculiar to US law (the same concept is called "fair dealing" in Commonwealth countries, and is absent entirely from German law, for example), and also tends to confuse editors into thinking that the policy does, or should, mirror the copyright law of the United States or some other nation, which is clearly not the case. Kelly Martin ( talk) 00:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree that this should be renamed and like Gmaxwell’s suggestions, in descending order of preference. — xyzzy n 01:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I would be wholeheartedly in support of renaming this to "Exemption Doctrine Policy" on "non-free media" or something similar; I think "fair use" give a misleading impression when our policies differ somewhat. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 01:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I like Kat's idea of "Non-free media" WP:NFM, as is describes exactly what we're dealing with. "Unlicensed content" will just get us into more problems that it solves, along the lines of "but it had a license" (i.e. a non-commercial use license). Physchim62 (talk) 01:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with changing the name. Wikipedia:Fair use is not the same as fair use. This already came up a while ago, I then created Wikipedia:Non-free images. Basically the fair use criteria without naming it fair use. Non-free media sounds even better btw. Garion96 (talk) 15:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Definitely support renaming to "non-free"/"unfree" as this precisely describes what the policy covers (now our definition of "free" is fixed). EDP is confusing and "unlicensed" is incorrect. Many of these images have licenses, just not ones we accept. "Fair Use" is our legal defence and part of policy, but by no means the whole story. ed g2s • talk 23:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would mean no copyrighted material of any kind unless we have permission, including text quotes, right?I don't believe that is necessarily true in respect of the abolition of 'Fair use,' unless we are talking about the abolition of all 'non-free' material (per the adopted meaning of non-free in the current discussion). For example, in respect of the EU see: Copyright (Harmonization Information Society), Directive, 22/05/2001 Art 5, para 3(d). Also in many Commonwealth countries there are Fair dealing defenses to a copyright infringement action, which should be considered in relation to each country where EN Wikipedia is consulted. Regarding the question of copyrighted photos of historic events, this is something that Jimbo Wales has suggested be allowed as a rare exception to his own principle on copylefting. But, merely to ask, why should there be any exceptions to a core principle such as he suggested if it is indeed a core principle. Regarding your remark on the Foundation's attitude to quality v. freedom, I think Kat has already made clear in discussions elsewhere that the number one priority is freedom.-- luke 06:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
My preference is non-free content or nonfree content. Wikipedia and the Commons call the stuff they encourage users to contribute " free content". The stuff that Wikipedia allows only under limited circumstances and what Commons bans entirely, then, would naturally be called "non-free content". Punctured Bicycle 09:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
having Fair use as the page title is somewhat appropriate. But it is imprecise, and imprecise wording too often leads to imprecise thinkingThe word free has generally understood meanings (e.g. see free). If you were to tell a woman in the street that you were making an encyclopedia and it is more 'free' to ban the use of NC content etc, I suspect she would be very puzzled. And furthermore, if you tried to explain what you meant and your reasoning I doubt her puzzlement would end, although she may say that she understands perfectly. Because many people are deeply offended that the freedom to make a profit from other people's work (while those doing the work receive nothing themselves) should take precedence over the freedom to use content which is 'freely' offered on the one perfectly reasonable condition that no commercial advantage is made from its use.
Wikipedia:Non-free content sounds the best to me. "Nonfree" without the hyphen looks like yet another WP neologism. :-) Stan 14:10, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I was just going to suggest this. Wikipedia:Exemption Doctrine Policy is accurate but confusing. Wikipedia:Non-free content is better and more descriptive, and should say the phrase "Exemption Doctrine Policy" somewhere at the top with a link the Foundation mandate. — Omegatron 22:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
A screenshot of the front page of Something Awful has been up for deletion at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2007 April 4, but the rationale is one that would invalidate the inclusion of any web screenshot. Basically the argument for deletion is that it includes too much content (never mind that it's only the taglines/leadins to a handful of articles, and no full articles) and that it would be easy enough to click the link that we shouldn't include an image of the page when people could go there themselves (never mind that we try to be medium-independent). Could somebody else step in and provide a good explanation to this person of why web screenshots are legitimate? Night Gyr ( talk/ Oy) 08:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
is the placement of this copyrighted image (screenshot from a film) in the article consistent with fair use guidelines? WP:FU criteria stipulate the presence of critical commentary discussing the image in the article and establishing specific relevance. it's a no-brainer that this commentary must be present in the article text (and not the caption), but we've had editors arguing over it because it apparently doesn't explicitly specify critical commentary outside of the caption itself. the article currently does not discuss the film at all, nor does it establish the image's relevance to criticism directed against the Qur'an. please also see this discussion. ITAQALLAH 03:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Is material on house.gov pages fair use? Here is the page [8], I want to use the image of the district ( [9]) to fix this page Georgia Congressional Districts. Thanks. Akubhai 14:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if this is answered somewhere, but I can't find a clear Wiki policy regarding the use of scanned pages of books. For example, this sample page was scanned from a Sanskrit text that is copyrighted. [10] The page image was referenced in connection with a discussion of what the text says on an article talk page: Talk:Ashvamedha#Griffith_reprint_.28again....29 Is it ok to scan pages in this way? Can they be used in articles or on talk pages to support references? Buddhipriya 18:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)