[Wikipedia-l] Cross Wikipedia Image copyright

Mon Mar 10 12:38:08 UTC 2003

Giskart wrote:
> There is a system where there is asked permission to the owner of
> pictures and the credit and the permission is included to the
> picture discription page.

What kind of permission is asked?  The only acceptable permission for
us is quite strong: the image needs to be released under the GNU FDL,
or under some compatible conditions.

Merely asking people for permission to use the image here, on our
website, is not good, because it makes licensing a nightmare.

Also, as a matter of principle, we are Debian-like in our attitude,
i.e. we prefer free to non-free very strongly.  (Fair use is a
complication here, though.)

> I have to explain to a user of wikipedia NL that the image she has
> made by taking a frame from a televison broadcast not can be
> used. But it is very difficult to inforce a strong copyright policy
> when the other wikipedias are not taking the image copyright more
> serious.

Actually, a frame from a television broadcast is one of the easier
"fair use" examples.

--Jimbo