[WikiEN-l] "Fair use" images of living people

Thu Nov 16 20:08:47 UTC 2006

On 11/16/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the net reuslt of culling all images of people who are living
> would be a decrease in overall article quality and the isolated
> creation of a minimal number of replacements.

Um. We are far from having "all images of people who are living" being unfree.

> None of your legal examples have any relevance to the question of
> whether or not we should ban all images of living people.
[snip]

Any argument against all images with a weak argument for fair use is
an argument against some images which have a weak argument for fair
use.

> > == The ethical ==
> > No matter what your position is on the ethics of copyright in general,
> > I suspect that if you think carefully you will agree that acting
> > against the wishes of the producers of content is not the right thing
> > to do.
>
> Again, you are making general statements that do not justify this
> approach to policy at all.
>
> In both cases you are making general arguments against using "fair
> use" media at all, which has nothign to do with this policy. This is
> exactly the sort of "drift" of conversation that I was referring to
> before.

Perhaps I didn't yell it loudly enough:  I believe that "replaceable"
is not only directly related to our primary focus of providing free
content, but is ALSO a useful proxy metric for both the legal and
ethical considerations.

That is, images which tend to be irreplaceable also tend to have much
more clear legal positions as fair use (without fair use being
permitted our ability to provide critical commentary would be
disrupted), and it is generally much easier to make a solid ethical
argument (we couldn't provide a fair treatment of this work without
excerpts).

> One cannot reasonably discuss whether or not we should use "fair use"
> at all and how to specifically implement "fair use" criteria at the
> same time. They are different discussions, and using one to try and
> slip in a new policy about the other is both complicating and
> misleading.

You have completely misunderstood me.
I have never advocated that we avoid using fair use entirely.

I have always argued that we should gladly use fair use where we must,
for those are the cases which fair use was specifically designed.

I made an effort of pointing out how I advocate fair use to parts of
our community that reject it.

I do not know how to make it more clear.

> In the end, in any case, if this were, in reality, what FUC#1 was
> trying to do, then that should be discussed and ARTICULATED. As it is,
> this interpretation of FUC#1 is simply added on as a throwaway line,
> was not discussed in any detail, and is now being used to delete all
> sorts of things as if it were gospel.

The intention of FUC#1 is clearly embodied in its words. That you do
not agree with its intentions does not imply that it is incorrectly
worded. Nor has its application changed in any qualitative way.

> We should keep getting them and reward those who get them heavily
> through our other mechanisms. We should not use the desire of free
> images as an excuse to destroy all images which are non-free, unless
> we are deciding to get rid of "fair use" alltogether. Which would be a
> fine discussion to have but is not the one I am trying to have at the
> moment.

Following your reasoning, why do we not copy all the "Groves
encyclopedia of music" and "McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Engineering"
articles for which we do not yet have coverage into Wikipedia?

> I am of course fine with keeping our "ultimate intentions" in mind
> when making policy. But when it comes to the protocols for
> implementation, we need to keep in mind that Wikipedia runs on more
> than just ideals -- it runs on users, and users are going to want
> policy that makes sense, and they are going to want policy that does
> not appear arbitrary.
[snip]

There have been plenty of people who have been angered by our
"arbitrary" refusal to allow them to copy text from commercial sources
the Internet.  Is this really what you are advocating?