User:AVRS/Fair use

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This user feels that fair use images have no place in a free content encyclopedia.


I've been thinking of a reason to replace it with “no fair use unless absolutely needed”, but I'm yet to learn of such a case.


I'm not against an existing screenshot in Wolf (video game), but it could be removed and a link to an external source could be added. A con is that, if a source for such a thing dies, a new source may be hard to find.


This is more debatable.

  • It's been “extracted from the Mac OS 9.2.2 System Suitcase.” -- not sure if that's good enough.
  • It's not really needed in “Susan Kare”, since the link to “Happy Mac” is right there. I think the article should not be considered when calculating the need for the image.
  • The notability of Welcome to macintosh, another article linking to it, IMO, is as good as the patentability of walkingLooking for a good analogy, there is a lot of them…, even if the latter is possible.
  • See also the OpenBSD song “Blob!”.
  • Update: the image has been removed from Susan Kare and Welcome to macintosh.


Screenshots of software running on Microsoft Windows are in grey^Wfair use area, whether or not the software itself is free. It may sound silly, but Microsoft content use policy prohibits partial screenshots of its products.

Contents

[edit] Why

[edit] Wikipedia

Wikipedia calls itself “The Free Encyclopedia”, meaning freedom of the content, not its price.[1]

That doesn’t work well with fair use. Only Wikipedia’s text content is free right now, everything else is “various”.

Thus, Wikipedia as a whole also cannot be licensed under GNU FDL.

You cannot include a proprietary piece into an object and license the object under GNU FDL. You cannot call the non-free images invariant sections, since they are not Secondary.

Most fair use is worse than just NoDerivatives or Noncommercial stuff, because the latter explicitly permits you to do something, like verbatim distribution, and fair use is often just “All rights reserved, use without a written permission is prohibited”. A big problem is that a single “fair use” image, like a screenshot, often includes “fair use” of the “property“ of multiple companies.

In the Pringles article, there are 5 photos of the cans (two of them pretty clear), and 1 logo. In this case, the logo is not even necessary for identification, because the photos (at least the first one) show the logo clearly enough to recognize it. And that image is at Wikimedia Commons, however right that is.


See also: User:Angr.

Thanks. Now I see the problem with fair use a little better. IANAL, but it seems that it is not legal for someone to create a full copy of Wikipedia due to fair use images.-- Mumia-w-18


[edit] References

  1. ^ Wikipedia:About


[edit] Non-free screenshots

[edit] Non-free screenshots in general articles, where free ones would work

[edit] Free software that can run on a free OS I have (GNU/Linux), but is shot with proprietary UI parts instead

[edit] Free Windows software that can run on WINE or ReactOS, but is shot on Windows instead

This is arguable by some, unfortunately… unless one uses a Windows-like theme for this? …but would that not make it fair use again?

[edit] Images probably marked with a license more free than they should be.

Image:Pringles (aka).jpg - contains the logo; almost twice the real size at 1024x768 17″.

[edit] No argument = confusing position

I'm a little confused on your position WRT fair use images. You seem to be against them, but you don't make an argument against them.

BTW, thanks for helping protect the Mozilla Firefox page.

—Mumia-w-18 09:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out! I’m trying to fix that, see the Why section above. --AVRS 11:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
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