Marco-
In my humble opinion we should think about how we can
solve the problems we
already have with the quotes and not make our situation worse by allowing
"fair use" images which clearly violate the GFDL.
Let's be clear on one point: On en:, we are *already* allowing fair use of
images. You would like to see this status *changed*. The legal case for
doing so is no stronger than the case for prohibiting fair use of quotes
or sounds (of which there are plenty). In fact, I will now demonstrate
that it is weaker; that we need to worry more about quotes than about
images.
The FDL was developed primarily for books and other printed works. As
such, it does not contain any reference to "linking" of any kind. The
relevant sections to our discussion are the following:
----------------------------
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions,
provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections
of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as
Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that
you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
....
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and
independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting
from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the
compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the
Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the
other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of
the Document.
----------------------------
What is now, in the context of Wikipedia, the work that is licensed under
the FDL? It is not what the server generates, it is not what the web
browser renders, for neither of these entities have the legal rights to
claim a copyright. It is the document entered by the user in the Wikipedia
article submission form, in its original, "transparent" wikitext source
code form.
This document may contain a line like
[[Image:Britney_Spears.jpg]]
This line of text is licensed just like all other text in the document. It
is implicitly understood by the user that this line will produce an image
that is rendered in-line, but the copyright status of that image is not
confirmed in the article -- it is confirmed during the upload of the
image. The image data is stored in a separate row in the table, and can be
referenced by *several pages*. The image pages even have their own
history, both for the image and the image description. The Britney image
is, for all intents and purposes, a separate work.
When the server creates the HTML page, it turns the above line into
something like
<img
src="http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/2/2e/Britney_Spears.jpg">
The user's web browser then produces the *aggregate work* consisting of
the text and the image by fetching both from the server, from different
locations.
The author did not create a "combined work" by combining the article with
the line [[Image:Britney_Spears.jpg]], any more than he would by combining
the article with the link [[Christina Aguilera]] or
[
http://www.britneyspears.com Britney official homepage].
Now what happens if I insert a Fair Use quote?
We do so in the text [[Martin Luther King]] under the heading "Views on
anti-Zionism", for example. This quote is indented and inserted in the
source text. Martin Luther King's estate holds the copyright on all his
works. The resulting article is, for all intents and purposes, a *combined
work*. This means that the work as a whole has to be FDL-licensed -- which
we cannot do because we do not own the King copyrights.
Of course, you might argue that the quote is not copyrightable, but that
is a very difficult stance to take given that even cell phone ringtones
are considered "intellectual property".
Directly included quotes are a much more serious legal issue than client-
side included images. As I previously suggested, that might be addressed
by supporting transclusion of some type, so you could say
[[>Martin Luther King on Zionism]]
which would automatically fetch the quote from a separate namespace (which
does not have to be specified because transclusion is only possible from
that namespace -- hey, even my hypothetical features have to be user
friendly) and insert it in the proper place. This would put quotes on the
same legal level as image pages (with the distinction that the
transclusion would happen server-side), and allow us to use the same quote
in multiple places comfortably. Editing would get a bit trickier, though.
But in my understanding, it's not image pages that we have to worry about
with regard to the FDL. Of course *we* do have to worry about what fair
use means in each individual instance, but the same applies to text.
Regards,
Erik