[WikiEN-l] Icelandic "fair use" equivalent

Fri Jul 15 01:38:35 UTC 2005

> You could have saved yourself some work.  An English translation of the
> whole law is available at
> http://www.unesco.org/culture/copy/copyright/iceland/iceland.html

Great! Thanks! Let's look at article 14 in
a better translation than I could make:

"Article 14. It is permitted to quote from a disseminated literary work,
including dramatic works, as well as disseminated cinematographic works
and works of music, if this is done in the context of critical and
scientific treatises, general information or some other recognized
purpose, provided the quotation is correct and of reasonable length.

With the same limitations it is permitted to reproduce pictures and
drawings of disseminated works of art and documents mentioned in the third
paragraph of Article 1.

If pictures or drawings of two or more works by the same author are
reproduced in the context of a text for general information, then the
author is entitled to remuneration."

So, that's Icelandic fair use for you.
The wording sounds broad enough, what
with "general information" and all.

What I want to know is if all of Wikipedia
would be considered one text, which would
be severely limiting, or if each article
would be considered on its own - which
would allow one to do almost anything.

At any rate this doesn't sound any less
clear or more limiting than what I've
been able to glean of U.S. fair use
stipulations.

As for the rest of Europe I don't know.
One thing to remember is that Iceland is
not a part of the European Union, an
organization which I seem to remember
recently publishing a little directive
concerning this...

> The prevailing right to use one picture is especially interesting.  In
> many instances that would be more than enough for our purposes.

Yes, that's actually pretty reasonable.

> The difficulty is in determining how much remuneration is fair.

Other such remuneration stipulations always seem
to be as a percentage of money made. But I'm not
a lawyer.

Regards,
Haukur

P.S. Here's a quote from article 15:

"It is permitted to reproduce in newspapers, periodicals, television
programmes and in films, pictures or drawings of disseminated works of art
in connection with narrative accounts of current events."

This would be helpful for an Icelandic version
of something like wikinews.