[Wikipedia-l] Re: comment on wikipedia

Sun Feb 1 19:04:07 UTC 2004

Caroline Ford a écrit:

many things I agree with

but just, hi Caroline (I read the whole mail wondering who Caroline was) :-)

> Yann Forget wrote:
> 
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>> Hi,
>>
>> Le Sunday 01 February 2004 07:06, Alex R. a écrit :
>>  
>>
>>> Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information.
>>> Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can
>>> use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is
>>> something particularly creative about the photo there is just a 
>>> mechanical
>>> reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> This is something new to me.
>> Do you mean that, say, pictures of the 9/11 attacks are not copyrightable?
>> As well as pictures of the presidents of the US?
>> We have a problem with the pictures of the presidents of France which 
>> are "© Présidence de la République. Documentation française".
>> cf. http://www.elysee.fr/instit/fonct3.php
>> Can we put these freely into Wikipedia?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Yann
>>
>>  
>>
> As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I know 
> we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the same in 
> France.
> Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
> This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means 
> that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
> 
> We have no pictures of UK politicians for the same reason.
> 
> What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I 
> understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know that 
> most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British 
> contributors are cautious because the international nature of the 
> project never seems to be considered.
> 
> Caroline (User:Secretlondon)