[Foundation-l] Fwd: fair use on Hungarian Wikipedia - help!

Fri Oct 3 02:44:32 UTC 2008

Michael Bimmler wrote:

The situation sounds for me similar as in most european countries like 
Germany and France. There are no fairuse paragraph or very restricted 
fairuse paragraphs there. So, if you look at the german Wikipedia, you 
will see that most articles about movie or CD have no posters or covers 
and a lot of celebrities have no photos.

The problem is local country law. If you disobey that law, you may face 
the danger that Wikipedia get banned one day from your country, or if 
one day you want to form a hungarian chapter, that chapter may face 
legal problems in the country.
> Lot of user would like to illustrating again the article of books,
> movies, etc.
Yes I know that a lot of users like that. But the most important part of 
our articles is not pictures, but texts. You must make your editors 
aware of this. It is sometimes disappointing if I see on the german 
Wikipedia no poster for a movie and when I flip to the english one there 
is a poster. But we don't make law, and we must obey law. The best way 
to change this is to urge your parliament delegates to change the 
country law in this respect.
>  We maked a fair use like policy for our Wikipedia but
> Foundation policy not totally grant it because of Hungarian law. Why
> need to be stopped the visual evolution of Hungarian Wikipedia? This
> images is not deplete the book publisher and movie studios, etc! It's
> popularize them, but they usually don't answers the mails.
The question is not, if we are popularizing them or if we are harming 
them. Because your country don't recognize fairuse. Pictures you 
uploaded are illegal in your country. Some artists do want their 
portraits or posters only used for money.

Ting.