[WikiEN-l] Questionable fair use claims: a case study

Fri Oct 21 11:24:13 UTC 2005

On 10/20/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
> No, thats not reasonable. Just because you cant find a picture doesnt
> make it copyright free. Hardly anything has a justification that we cannot
> ever find a free one. I have recently been tagging all cars as
> fairusereplace
> as there are so few that there is no specimen surviving.

The legal doctrine of Fair Use does not require that we are unable to find a
replacement under any circumstances. It is the general policy of Wikipedia -
not the law - that we should attempt to replace Fair Use images with a
wholly free one whenever we can, which I agree with.

I have found 2 pictures (in the wole of wikipedia) that I think are
> fair use, there are easy replacements for everything else.

It sounds to me that you simply are working on a different definition of
legal Fair Use than everyone else ...

> The other category is people who, wanting to illustrate the
> > [[GrassMaster Lawn Master 2000]] article, will rummage through their
> well-thumbed
> > stack of "Lawnmower Monthly" until they find one on the cover, scan that
> > cover, and use the magazine cover to illustrate the article. After all,
> "aren't
> > magazine covers always fair use"?
>
> No they arent. The bogus fair use for specific categories should go.
> There is no fair use without justification.
>

You missed the sarcasm indicated by the quotes.

-Matt