I'm not an
attorney, but U.S. copyright law, as spelled out in 17 USC
107, says that
"fair use of a
copyrighted work...for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news
reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or
research, is not an infringement of
copyright." It goes on to specify
the following criteria to be used in
judging whether the use made of a work
constitutes fair use:
You seem familiar with copyright law. I have considered making Wikipedia
a little prettier by finding suitable pictures for some articles. If I
find a photograph of, say, a koala, and I want to add it to [[Koala]],
is that permissable (if I can attribute the photo)?
You really should try not to. Others think we can get away with it; but
it's certainly not in the spirit of Wikipedia.
But there is tons of discussion on this issue already on Wikipedia...can
someone pull up the links?