[WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

Thu Sep 22 17:19:08 UTC 2005

This is a problem I've been thinking about fairly specifically as of
recent. Specific fair use tags serve a number of useful functions --
they help categorize an overly large category, they help specify
specific criteria for "fair use" images in that category (at least, in
the rewritten ones), and they may at some point be able to be linked
to specific fair use rationale pages (specific to that type of media).

The downside is that people read them (especially the old,
non-rewritten ones) as being unlimited "get out of jail free cards".
Which is dangerous and bad and promotes sloppy thinking.

One way to get around this is to of course modified the captions to
say that they MUST be used in actual *articles* (i.e., in the article
namespace). I might do that soon.

One of the big things which is a problem at the moment is that there
are two or three different places to list CV/Fair use disputed images
for deletion (WP:CP, WP:PUI, WP:IFD). This promotes confusion, lack of
standardization, and long nasty debates with people who are sad that
their favorite image of some supermodel is nominated for deletion (and
they hastily try to insert it into articles to make it seem "used" and
for "analysis", etc.). It doesn't make it easy to nominated
copyrighted images for deletion, it makes it very hard in practice.
Add the fact that there are a lot of people who are relatively
clueless about copyrights, or have drastically divergent opinions
about what is "fair" or not, and we get nothing but logjam.

In a project of this sort, it should be *easy* to delete copyrighted
material. The difficulty should be in defending them from deletion.
The burden of proof should be heavily on the person to convince that
it is *not* copyright infringement. All use of non-free images should
be considered copyright infringement *by default*, and only considered
otherwise after convincing reasoning. It's a place where "assume good
faith" is a bad idea (I've had people criticize me for not "assuming
good faith" when people just label images as PD without providing any
explanation and I ask for some reasoning) because there's more at
stake here than a user's desire to help the project (i.e. a user's
understanding of the copyright categories they are dealing with).

I don't have the slightest idea how to change this though, at least
not from my level of things (I have absolutely no authority, either on
Wikipedia or by means of claiming to be a lawyer or expert, neither of
which I am). But I think it's a general problem at the moment, one
which hinders intelligent reform quite a bit. Someone with some sort
of authority (on Wikipedia or in a legal/expertise sense) could
probably do a big favor by trying to work this out in an intelligent
way. I don't think it's something which lends itself to collective
discussion and decision, because of the ambiguity of the legal issues.

(Of course, in the absence of said Voice-on-High, I'm happy to mull
about as usual. Something is better than nothing. I think we're doing
some good work at WP:WPFU, getting a much better understanding of the
salient issues at the very least, and are being forced to confront a
lot of assumptions and find good ways to talk about them. Much better
than nothing.)

I'm *almost* inclined to suggest that we just NOT accept "fair use"
images at all. Not because our use of them is likely "unfair", or even
dangerous, but because this is a legal problem beyond the knowledge
base of most of our users, and we leave most of the impetus on *them*
to figure out what's legal or not. Almost inclined... but not
completely. It would simplify things, but we'd be poorer for it, as an
encyclopedia, and we'd also look like we were copyright paranoid or
cowed, neither of which is a good reputation to have. But it's a
thought.

FF

On 9/22/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I've just removed two references to [[Image:Mac Internet
> > Explorer.png]] and two to [[Image:XPlogo.png]] from user pages. While
> > both of these images have a good argument for fair use on the
> > appropriate articles about their related products, there is no fair
> > use argument for placing these on user pages or in cutesy little
> > "product endorsement" boxes (see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]) for people to
> > put on their user pages. Wikipedia doesn't need to carry
> > advertisements for anybody, especially not using copyrighted logos.
> >
> >
> I see this fundemental lack of understanding all the time. And it seems to
> be exacerbated with specific fair use tags.
>
> One example I recently ran across was a user uploading a lot of porn and
> nude screenshots from various movies. I listed these on the copyright
> problems page. Instead of the images being deleted, the person processing
> the copyvios added a {{screenshot}} tag to a bunch of them. These were
> orphans. They had zero fair-use rationale. But what the hell, there was a
> {{screenshot}} tag to use.
>
> I just ran across
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JilKelly-BonitaSaint-DevenDavis-Perfect_Pink.jpgthis
> morning and am wondering if it is even worth the effort to list on
> WP:CP.
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