[WikiEN-l] New fair use tag proposal

Sun Jul 10 12:50:01 UTC 2005

One way that I think would increase the value of our "fair use" tags,
and prevent them from being just slapped around haphazardly, is if
they contained their justifications a little more explicitly, and also
explained themselves a little more specifically.

Here's an example I've been playing with (obviously it could enjoy
some editing, but I think my intent should be clear), for a fair use
tag which could be used on photographic portraits of individuals (not
promotional material, necessarily) used to illustrate articles:
--
    This is a copyrighted photographic portrait of a notable
individual. It is believed that this qualifies under the fair use
provision of United States copyright law (see copyrights), because the
editor of Wikipedia who has placed this copyright tag believes it to
satisify the following criteria:
    1. It is used for purely educational purposes and significantly
enhances value of the encyclopedia article it is being used to
illustrate and is not meant to defraud or otherwise harm the existing
copyright holder.
    2. Alternative photographs under a free license have not been
located and seem unlikely to currently exist.
    3. Its total pixel dimensions is far below any suitable print
resolution. As such it is only provides a limited amount of
reproducibility and in limited applications.
    4. Its ultimate source and likely copyright holder is listed above
if known, for those seeking to license the photograph for their own
use. If it is not known, its immediate source is listed above, who may
be possibly contacted for copyright information as well.
    5. It is being used on the English edition of Wikipedia, which is
sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, for the purpose of
creating an encyclopedia and spreading general knowledge. If you are
re-using Wikipedia content for another website (see our copyright
policy), these fair use criteria may not apply.
Please note that the posting of copyrighted material that does not
have the express permission of the copyright holder may be in
violation of applicable law and of our policy. Those with a history of
violations may be temporarily suspended from editing pages.
----
I didn't note all of the links and wikis, but suffice to say important
terms (i.e. "notability") would be linked, and the links to the
Foundation and Wikipedia itself would be hard-linked (URLs).

The benefits I see in a (long) tag like this is:
1. Its very use defines what characteristics the picture must have. It
would thus be very easy to spot whether or not it was incorrectly
placed or incorrectly used, and hopefully any user applying it would
understand what it meant. This is meant both to help police fair use
images, and also to help users who don't have a great understanding of
the requirements of the fair use clause.
2. It makes fair use look like serious business. Which it should be.
3. It clearly states that the fair use criteria may only apply to the
English Wikipedia, and that other re-users of content will have to
re-think whether the criteria applies to their our pages.
4. I think that if a copyright holder saw this, they'd at least
understand what they'd be going up against. Current fair use tags
provide no justifications for the decision (we're told it may have
been discussed, but we know that's not usually true) -- this one at
least has it built into it.

So... thoughts? Obviously the wording should be fixed up a bit, but
that can be done in the standard fashion. I'm more interested in
whether or not the concept is good (and whether some of the specifics
that I think are important are worthwhile -- i.e. the low print
resolution, which I think makes it clear that we are not trying to
encourage copyright violation). If so, this is something which could
easily be done, in one way or another, for all of our fair use tags.

FF