I think these are good comments. One way around this might be to make
fair use tags require article names, i.e., {{fairuse|Article}}, which
would then start off by saying, "This page is copyrighted etc. but
thought to be fair use on the article {{article}}..."
FF
On 7/10/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/07/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Postscript:
I also think it would be a good idea to create a template along the
lines of {{fairuse-reviewed}} which would contain the normal fair use
notice, as well as something like "The fair use criteria of this item
has been reviewed and found satisfactory by at least one other user."
or something like that. The process of reviewing fair use images would
then be one of converting {{fairuse}} tags to {{fairuse-reviewed}}
(after they had been reviewed). Perhaps a Wikiproject of some form
would be good for this? Anyway, it would allow us to keep track of
things. Just a thought.
I like this idea; might need a lot of manpower, though, and people do
tend to have rather wide-ranging differences in how stringently they
accept copyright restrictions. (I've more than once heard "well, it
*should* be free" used to defend copyvios, and in one delightful case
encountered someone who thought "in the public domain" meant *both*
"this information is not secret" and "this information is free to
copy"...). But I'd certainly be interested in seeing it work.
One fair-use problem, that I've been mulling over of late (I've been
incommunicado for a few days), is that of context.
With something like a publicity photo of $celebrity, "fair use" is
fairly incontrovertible. But... let's say we're dealing with the
Lindisfarne Gospels, and the much-discussed photo thereof; assume it's
tagged as fair use.
Even if would be fair use to use this to illustrate an article on the
[[Lindisfarne Gospels]] (rare item, not much photographed, &c.)
despite it being copyrighted... would it be fair use to use it to
illustrate an article on, say, [[Rare-book photography]]? Sure, it's
an example of such an image, but there's certainly thousands more of
equal usability. How about using it to illustrate an article on
[[Books]], or the [[Bible]]? Again, some relevance, but other images
are just as good or better.
As I understand fair use - I don't claim to, one set of copyright law
is confusing enough - it is quite dependent on the claim being a
reasonable one in context.
But we'd have the one image, tagged as {{fairuse}} without that
context; anyone wondering about using it in another article would
simply see that we had it, it was under a legitimate-use license of
some form, and slap it in their article, unless they were the
introspective type given to considering license details.
This may, potentially, be a problem with the way we tag things - fair
use inherently seems to imply "in the context of the article for which
it was originally used". It may be fair use the second time (and
probably is), but may not... I don't know what, if anything, to do
about this, but thought I'd kick it out.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk