Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Images and Media/Non-free/Archive 4

Fair Use from a legal stand point

Hello, I am studying to be a lawyer. As a disclaimer, I want to state up front that:

• I have not taken the bar,
• nor have I taken a intellectual property class yet.

That said, I have gotten into some arguments with other Wikipedians in regards to fair use. Because of these arguments, I have become familiar with fair use law more as a layperson then as a lawyer, although I have used my skills learned in law school to examine the case law on the subject[1][2] and the fair use statute[3][4].

There are two points I would like to make here:

• First that fair use/intellectual property law is vague and is difficult to interpret even for copyright lawyers.
• Second many Wikipedians, out of ignorance and fear of the law, and worse against the spirit, dreams and goals of wikipedia's mission, often delete items which could potentially be considered fair use.

First, fair use/intellectual property law is vague and is difficult to interpret even for copyright lawyers. The law was intentionally written and intended to be vague:

"There are no hard-and-fast (fair use) rules, only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit the definition of fair use. They wanted it--like free speech--to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation."[5]

If it is difficult for lawmakers and lawyers to understand the rules of fair use, which were intentionally meant to be difficult to quantify/understand, it is insulting and intrusive that certain Wikipedians, with no legal background whatsoever, take it upon themselves to interpret fair use law.

Worse, in my experience many Wikipedians use copyright law as a POV weapon.[6] These Wikipedians often decide to delete material, "just to be on the safe side" they argue, when they don't even know what either side of the copyright debate is, let alone what the "safe side" is.

If Wikipedia were to go to court (and this appears highly unlikely) Wikipedia could be potentially seen as similar to a file sharing network, not liable for what its users do. File sharing companies like Napster and Gnutella have transformed the music industry for the better. Wikipedia has the potential to do the same for intellectual property, if its users would just allow it too.

Second, as mentioned above, many well intentioned but ignorant Wikipedians take it upon themselves to use heavy handed tactics to delete anything that is potentially a copyright violation. Many Wikipedians ignore this statement:

"As a general rule, if you are using a small portion of somebody else's work in a non-competitive way and the purpose for your use is to benefit the public, you're on pretty safe ground. On the other hand, if you take large portions of someone else's expression for your own purely commercial reasons, the rule usually won't apply."[7]

As I have argued before[8], web sites such as Common dreams, another non-profit, copy whole articles onto their website with no legal trouble. No person has ever given me a satisfactory answer why this is acceptable for Common Dreams but it is taboo for Wikipedia. Copy and paste one sentence from an article onto a controversial Wikipedia site, and a Wikipedian who is ignorant of the law, will heavy handedly delete the sentence citing copyright.

As I have mentioned before [9], the worst part of this destructive copyright policy on wikipedia is how it undermines the stated dreams and goals of Wikipedia. As Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia envisioned:

• "Finally, we should never forget as a community that we are the vanguard of a knowledge revolution that will transform the world. We are the leading edge innovators and leaders of what is becoming a global movement to free knowledge from proprietary constraints. 100 years from now, the idea of a proprietary textbook or encyclopedia will sound as quaint and remote as we now think of the use of leeches in medical science." [10]

• "Wikipedia goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth. This is an ambitious goal, and will probably take many years to achieve!"--[11]

• "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004[12]

• "Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal." -- Wikipedia-l mailing list, March 8, 2005[13]

• "Fair use (and the narrower fair dealing) is an important freedom from abuse by copyright holders. It is good to see a decision which supports it." [14]

Wikipedia could be the "vanguard of a knowledge revolution that will transform the world" on the forefront of opening up intellectual property for the entire world to share and benefit from, as Google is doing today. Instead, because of a handful of misguided zealous Wikipedians, who are afraid of some vague potential legal threat, Wikipedia is so much less. Travb 15:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• Two small responses:
  1. The question of whether Wikipedia's fair use policy should be strict or not is not connected to whether people use it as a way of getting rid of controversial content. A completely plausible argument could be made that it is only in controversial cases that people start really thinking about "fair use" in serious way, and thus they end up getting a much higher standard of scrutiny than most marked instances. But anyway, this has nothing to do with the law or the policy.
  2. What Common Dreams does has no bearing on our policy. There are websites which post entire song lyrics in a way which is clearly outside the bounds of the "fair use" clause but they receive little to no legal difficulties. One possible interpretation is that it isn't worth anyone's time to try and prosecute those instances, or the material that Common Dreams infringes upon happens to be from people who aren't inclined to sue. Wikipedia can take no such luxuries — we are becoming more and more high profile every day, and the copyright holders on our unlicensed material are all over the map. If Common Dreams is posting the entire copyrighted contents of articles, they are probably breaking the law. The question is whether anyone will sue them, which is an entirely different concern.
  3. I've never seen anybody delete content based on "one sentence" from a copyrighted website, unless it is uncited, unquoted, and clearly plaigiarism. There have been a few instances of people not wanting to include a few song lyrics on pages but they seem to get cleared up -- usually in favor of allowing the content. Most "fair use" issues are related to images, especially those which are 1. generic, 2. being used incidentally (non-critically, non-encyclopedically), and 3. are images which a user primarily justifies as using because "they want it" rather than on intellectual grounds required for a real defense of using unlicensed materials.
  4. I think you are misinterpretting Jimbo's intentions. They are not, from what I can tell, to create a vanguard source of unlicensed copyrighted materials. THey are rather to create a vanguard of free materials. At least, this is what I have picked up from his various postings on the subject. Whether our use of fair use material is compatible with the latter goal, I personally am suspicious. But since nobody on the high has decided that it isn't, the goal of our fair use policy should be to 1. keep Wikipedia respectfully in the clear, and 2. keep our re-users as much in the clear as possible (that is, while acknowledging that they will have to make "fair use" determinations for themselves, we shouldn't be using anything which is only "fair use" in the specifically Wikipedia context).
• Humorously, the situation used to be, not so long ago, that "fair use" was almost completely abused in the opposite direction -- people would claim anything as "fair use" just because they wanted it on a page for whatever reason. If it has swung the other direction somewhat as a curative, I do not, in the end, think that is such a bad state of things. The more critical people are of "fair use" claims, the better fair use rationale they can make themselves, and the more empowered they actually become in terms of copyright law. But I understand there are different ways to read this.
• If you'd like more feedback on this, I recommend posting it to the Wikipedia-en mailing list if you haven't already, where a lot of discussion on policy issues takes place. --Fastfission 16:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I Totally agree that some usersrs take this too far. At one point a Wikipidian even argued with the person who created an image that we are not allowed to use his immage as fair use on userspace even after he gave us persmion too becose we can't make exeptions. Some Fair Use Police take it too far

--E-Bod 03:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Excellent points Fastfission

Fastfission thank you for your points. I will respond at length to each one soon.Travb 17:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

To clarify your stance, and make sure I understand what you are saying, your four main points can be summarized as follows:

1. copyright abuse by "POV warriors" is irrelevant.

2. fair use policy of other non-profits is irrelevant and probably illegal.

3. copyright abuse by "POV warriors" does not exist.

4. Jimmy's intentions are not to create "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

The first two points (1,2) are opinion and as opinion they cannot be "proven" nor "disproven".

The third point (3) is a blanket statement of fact and can easily be disproven with little effort on my part.

Thr fourth point (4) is an interpretation of another persons thoughts, which are always open to interpretation, but I think Wales views clearly support my views. That said, even if Wales views do or do not support my views, they are ultimately not the deciding factor in the debate at hand, but are only persuasive ideas from a benevolent dictator about the fair use debate.

I will write more later, dissecting your argument at length.Travb 17:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Copyright infringement is both important and does exist, although I am not sure it is more interesting or important if there exists some POV-warrior motivation behind it. Wikipedia content is intended to be able to be used in a for-profit manner. If you believe that User:Jimbo Wales would support removing restrictions on copyright-infringing material, I suggest that you ask him about it. Jkelly 20:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your statements.

I actually asked User:Jimbo Wales before[15], and got no response.

I hope the following comments do not eclipse my much more important comments above, if they do, I will strike them:

The more I think about it, with all due respect to User:Jimbo Wales, the more I feel it doesn't ultimatly matter how Mr. Wales feels. Mr. Wales views are not the definitive deciding factor in any debate, but are only extremely persuasive ideas by the founder (and that is why I posted them here). Mr. Wales views are ultimately only one voice among millions. I feel this way because even though Wikipedia was Mr. Wales creation, and we all owe him immense gratitude, Wikipedia has become a concept now owned by the world as a whole, not by one sole individual, no matter how important and influencial that individual is.Travb 21:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Returning to Fastfission points:

1. Copyright abuse by "POV warriors" is irrelevant.

I was simply stating the real negative consequences of such deletion policies which probably have not been addressed here before. Since you feel this argument is irrelevant, there is no point in arguing this.

2. fair use policy of other non-profits is irrelevant and probably illegal.

What Common Dreams does has no bearing on our policy.

I disagree, CommonDreams, and other sites are examples of webpages which have much more liberal policies and which have not been sued.

There are websites which post entire song lyrics in a way which is clearly outside the bounds of the "fair use" clause but they receive little to no legal difficulties.

I am not talking about websites which post entire song lyrics with no legal difficulties, I am talking about CommonDreams which has a liberal fair use policy on each of its pages.

In this argument, you use a lot of words such as: "One possible interpretation" "probably". In otherwords, you don't know. Please cite any copyright violation lawsuit which has been filed against Wikipedia. You can't. If you can, I will apologize, issue a mea culpa (apology) and leave this wikipage talk board.

Fastfission wrote:

Wikipedia can take no such luxuries — we are becoming more and more high profile every day, and the copyright holders on our unlicensed material are all over the map. If Common Dreams is posting the entire copyrighted contents of articles, they are probably breaking the law. The question is whether anyone will sue them, which is an entirely different concern.

For some reason, every wikipedian who enforces copyright, sees himself/herself as a protector of wikipedia. But ironaclly, every enforcer I know knows as much, or usually much less about intellectual property rights than I do, and I know very little about intellectual property law. So there are many people who are ignorant of intellectual property law, who delete portions of articles with impunity. Fair use is ignored or rarely discussed. When fair use is discussed, it is in negative terms: delete, delete, delete. "If you are not sure, delete". The result is the heavy handed deletion of large amounts of material which DOES NOT NEED TO BE DELETED.

You are talking about possibilites. Since wikipedia has not been sued, you are basing your assumptions on predictions of the future. These predictions by their very nature are shaped by opinions and cannot for certainty be proven or disproven, so I cannot "prove" to you that Wikipedia will not be sued, anymore than you can prove that Wikipedia will be sued.

3. copyright abuse by "POV warriors" does not exist.

I wrote: Worse, in my experience many Wikipedians use copyright law as a POV weapon.[6] These Wikipedians often decide to delete material, "just to be on the safe side" they argue, when they don't even know what either side of the copyright debate is, let alone what the "safe side" is.

The footnote [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Winter_Soldier_Investigation#Sources 6]. Links a heated revert war currently in arbitration between two stubborn foes. The anon in this case is quoting all of the examples of times that the user had sentences deleted for copyright violation. This user, a "POV warrior" (not my words), slapped copyright violations on two controversial web pages and later admitted that he wanted the entire article deleted. He was using copyright violations to push his own POV, after many other users had used copyright violations against him.

But, unfortunately, I fear, this arugment is also irrelevant to you Fastfission, because I sense that "POV warriors" using copyright violations to push their own bias, in the words of Madeline Albright, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Lets err on the side of caution right? If a person is not sure about "fair use" (and no one here seems to know what the policy on fair use is), then lets err on the side of caution and delete, delete, delete.

The irony is the abuse is real and documented, but your hypothetical law suit that so many Wikipedian enforcers repeat by rote is nothing more than that: a hypothesis.

4. Jimmy's intentions are not to create "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

I think the quote says it all, but as mentioned above, even if Jimmy does really mean what he says (and I am starting to wonder as I learn about all of his commercial ventures), it is again ultimatly irrelevant. It is important to state that Jimmy's quotes are here only as convincing, inspiring words, not as bibilical scripture.

So what we are we left with? Four irrelevant arguments, which I brought up. None which will convince anyone who sees themselves as a Wikipedian protector. I think the bottom line is that many users enjoy feeling like they are protecting Wikipedia and they get a sense of self-worth. And hey, if a few articles and sections are deleted by Wikipedians ignorant of current copyright law, "the price is worth it." Travb 22:56, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Most of these post don't belong here

Most of these posts are inquiries about individual instances of fair use/copyright.

Few of them discuss the larger topic at hand: WikiProject Fair use. I suggest (and I think I may do this right now) moving these irrelevant topics to another, more applicable forum.Travb 16:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Postings have been moved to Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems.Travb 16:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Where have you moved such psots? I always understood thwat this page was a very good palce to ask about questions on indiovidual instances of fair-use policy, adn i have recommended it as such on the help desk. If this is not a good forum for such psotings, where is there a good place where knowlegable people will read and respond? DES ^(talk) 19:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. If you have, in fact, pasted the material that you removed somewhere else, please provide us with that location. Jkelly 20:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I just read your page header. Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems is where User:Travb moved all of this page's contents. Jkelly 20:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clear, I hope I didn't step on any toes. I clarified where I moved the posts. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Did I archive the talk page incorrectly? If so let me know. Sorry for the hassle. 20:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair Use Club?

I had written on the WikiProject Fair use page:

• Another view on improving guidelines. Another view holds, that current guidelines are complex, vague, overly heavy-handed, and worst of all, contrary to the founding dreams and ambitions of Wikipedia, with the result that people who do not understand copyright issues are, out of ignorance, deleting material for fear of a legal crisis which in all probabability will never happen. Establishing fair use policies which correspond to the law is difficult, if not impossible, because the authors of the fair use statute intended the law to be vague. Wikipedia should not err on the side of caution, but be an inovator and trailblazer in intellectual property law, as Gnutella and Google book search have been. Wikipedia should be on the forefront of realizing founder Jimmy Wales ambitious dream: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.[16]

Jkelly responded by deleting all of this but one sentence and explained the reason for his deletion:

Re-word (mostly delete) personal essay not endorsed by signers of project. Feel free to userfy your perspective. [17]

I think I may understand after Jkelly heavy-handed deletions the purpose of this page. (As Jkelly edits show,you don't have to use the excuse of copyright to delete entire passages.)

I must have misunderstood before, and for that I apologize. I cannot emphasis this enough: Please correct me if I am wrong in my understanding of this page. This is a group of "volunteer copyright police" joined together to enforce what I see as often heavy-handed fair use policies which I argue against. In other words, this group of like-minded individuals actions is exactly what I have been arguing to stop.

In otherwords, although no one here appears to be a intellectual property lawyer, and no one seems to no much more about copyright law than I do, this group of like minded individuals are here to uphold their version of the way they feel Wikipedia should look. Jkelly appears to have already made up his mind about fair use policy, and will not allow disenting views on the wikipage. Please correct me if I am wrong, but such one sided page protection is against Wikipedia policy.

Again, please correct me if I am wrong and I will humbly acknowlege my mistake.

I recall a group of like minded Catholics with a wikipage page who recently attempted to gang together to push their version of Wikipedia. The consensus was overwhelming in favor to deleting this Catholic page. Although the circumstances are different, this page, if I understand its function correctly, has similarities to the Catholic page. Banding a group of like minded individuals together to push for a particular policy for wikipedia.

• Does this mean I can now build a page in favor of liberal fair use policy and bar users like Jkelly from adding comments which contradict my own POV on this new liberal fair use page?

I apologize if I come off as aggressive here, but please keep in mind that Jkelly was the person who aggressively deleted my contribution to this article first, and then hinted, by using the term Template:Userfy that my comments, are "vanity statements". (if I understand him correctly--if not I again apologize--I am sticking my neck out here and trying to avoid my head getting chopped off by a group of Jkelly like-minded individuals) Travb 21:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The difference is that this "club" is merely enforcing existing policy, not trying to make up new stuff. The deprecation of fair use has been in place ever since I started at WP three years ago, but the old strategy of asking editors to police themselves has simply not worked - we have thousands of blatant copyvios all over the place - and so we need to get tougher about it. If you want to see real hardnoses though, go over and check out de:, they don't put up with any of this argument at all - it's either free license or delete. Stan 22:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I apology if you didn't like the word "club", I can change it if you like.

It is not as black and white as you seem to portray it. Existing policy is vague, because the current fair use law is vague:

"There are no hard-and-fast (fair use) rules, only general rules and varying court decisions. That's because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit the definition of fair use. They wanted it--like free speech--to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation."5

So Wikipedians take it upon themselves to interpret the law, usually in a negative way. I think the current policy is: "when in doubt: delete". This is in stark contrast to the purported mission of wikipedia. In otherwords, heavy handed volunteer Wikipedian volunteers, far from saving wikipedia from a hypothetical court case that hasn't happen and may never happen, are actually undermining Wikipedias mission and goals.

Your comments: we have thousands of blatant copyvios all over the place - and so we need to get tougher about it I never have understood law and under types like yourself. I am sure in a perfect world (your perfect world?) en: would follow the same policies as de: am I correct? Do you prefer the de: policies over the current en: policies with "thousands of blatant copyvios all over the place"?

I apologize if I used an unfair anology, I was just explaining my first reaction to your posting. If you find this offensive, please tell me and I will delete all offensive portions. Travb 23:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

You make some reasonable points. You are right, fair use is rather vague and ill-defined. IMHO, that would be an argument for ensuring that our uses really are fair, rather than taking risks and discovering later that we were wrong.

Even a small copyright problem could potentially lead to significant problems to the project even if it doesn't go to court (and, unlike Google, we simply don't have the resources to go to court to fight legal battles). For example, I'm still really upset with the software changes that Jimbo had put in after the libel stuff back in December.

You mentioned something about the mission of Wikipedia, and I think that that's a good idea to keep in mind. Our mission is to build a free encyclopedia (emphasis mine). It could be argued that the use of unfree images under fair use does not help that mission, even if it is legal. I know that others on the WikiProject have different beliefs, but personally I believe that it makes sense to discourage fair use except in cases where it is required so that people are encouraged to contribute free content. Furthermore, what may be fair use for us may not be fair use for our commercial reusers or reusers in other countries who can't take advantage of liberal fair use laws, so from the perspective of keeping our content free, taking a fairly conservative stance on fair use is the way to go. JYolkowski // talk 23:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments JYolkowski, my beliefs on what Wikipedia should be and can be are in the miniority, just as my other beliefs. I am tired of being in the minority and marginalized on this topic, as I usually am throughout life. I could argue your points, but I am tired of arguing for now. Thanks again for the comments. I will leave with a few of my favorite quotes:

No man can struggle with advantage against the spirit of his age and country, and however powerful a man may be, it is hard for him to make his contemporaries share feelings and ideas which run counter to the general run of their hopes and desires.--Alexis de Tocqueville

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.-- Bertrand Russell Travb 23:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Interesting to be characterized as a "law and order" type. If anything, I'm a freeness zealot (all those years of working on GNU); it irritates me when somebody uploads a copyrighted photo of a high school when they could just as easily go out on the front lawn and take a free version of the same picture themselves. A gigantic body of free imagery will make a big difference in the world, but it won't get built if people keep falling back on material with a complicated legal status. Why should anyone agonize over a fair-use image when there are a dozen better ones on commons? Stan 23:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

On the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States...

Looking through my watchlist, I noticed that someone removed the text "on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation" from Template:Promophoto. That bit there was added to the tag as part of our goal to rewrite our fair use tags, specifically #9 on WP:WPFU under goals: A large part of our invocation of "fair use" is because our site is educational in purpose and run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, and that our invocation of "fair use" for our use of the image might not apply to other uses (that is, third parties can't "piggyback" on our "fair use" claims). Having said that, I've never really questioned the utility of that text myself so I'm wondering what others think. Do you think that that bit of text is useful to have on the fair use templates? JYolkowski // talk 23:11, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I do, and I think this change should be reveted. DES ^(talk) 23:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I just expressed my opinion. Jkelly 23:53, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I do think it very important to specify our being non-profit educational to be fair.--Jusjih 07:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Project page change

Am I the only one that thinks the new paragraph on the project page isn't what a bunch of people here endorsed when they signed up? Jkelly 23:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• Yep, I also think the project page should be reverted to the original text, the objective of this projects is not to justify or endorse the use of fair use images on Wikipedia.--nixie 00:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair use videos of copyrighted software?

Please have a look at WP:CVG talk. I'd like to get some feedback from this WikiProject before proceeding. Cheers, Jacoplane 06:57, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Fair use

I just added a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Fair use, aimed to allow sports team logos to be used on userpages, and I'd like to get some comments on it from the people in this project. Thanks, VegaDark 03:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Peer review request

It looks like we've rewritten all known fair use tags (one of the project goals), so I'd appreciate any comments on the tags and how they can be further improved (or if they're totally hopeless and should be deleted). See Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use/Fair use tag reform for a complete list. Again, I'd welcome any comments. Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 22:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been using them already, they seem generally OK. More media-specific tags would be handy, for instance we have a huge amount of Gundam stuff that I'm never sure how to handle. It would be nice to have a number for what "low resolution" means - somebody thinking of a print encyclopedia is not going to have the same idea of "low" as somebody on a dialup. :-) The deprecation of {{fairuse}} is apparently not strong enough, people are still using it. Could perhaps the text be subst'ed en masse into the existing images, and then the template deleted? Stan 00:26, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Having taken a quick look at Category:Fair use images, I think you're right in that we could use some more media-specific stuff. I tag the Gundam stuff as {{comicpanel}}, that's not exact but it has a close enough meaning IMHO. Maybe I'll create a tag for that one.

The huge number of images tagged with {{fairuse}} is a big problem. I remember cleaning out Category:Posters; that was a huge effort on my part (and I know that at least three other people put a lot of work into it as well), and that category was much smaller than this one is. My suggestion is to tag all of the easy stuff first - i.e. things that are obviously album covers, logos, etc. when viewed in gallery mode. After that, I guess perform some sort of bulk en masse cleanup of the category. Maybe a bot might be useful. JYolkowski // talk 02:41, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been stomping through that category for almost two months now, knocked off a couple thousand so far I think. Did most of the easy ones already, sorry. :-) Don't think it's bot-able, since for instance it's not usually obvious whether a sourced photo is legit (from official website) vs from a fan site, with no pedigree. As long as it can't be added to, and we chew at it steadily, it will disappear eventually. Stan 23:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I decided to change the category on {{restricted use}} (which {{fairuse}} redirects to) to Category:Improperly tagged fair use images. That way, we can figure out who's adding stuff to the category and politely ask them to tag stuff differently.

Regarding the Gundam stuff, I took a look at it and it looks like the person who drew the images is not the copyright holder, so to me the entire set of images look kind of dodgy. Do you still think it's worth creating a tag? I don't like creating tags for stuff that I don't think is clearly fair use, but it would have the advantage of being able to find them easier to delete them. JYolkowski // talk 21:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC) Note that I've undone the category change because it now seems that all images are now in the Improperly tagged category, which really doesn't help at all. JYolkowski // talk 21:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably a good idea, just to make them easier to deal with en masse. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 22:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

The Gundam fan art was apparently donated, saw a comment about it somewhere. It seems like there is a whole class of images of game/anime artwork used legitimately for identification, not screenshots or comic panels. Perhaps be explicit and call it "identifying-artwork" or since they're mostly characters, "character-artwork"? Stan 23:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I've created {{character-artwork}}. Comments are welcome. JYolkowski // talk 00:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

The line about free alternatives needs to be removed, there are no free alternatives for copyrighted characters, even is someone draws a character for wikipedia - it is a derivative work and the original copyright still applies.--nixie 00:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed. JYolkowski // talk 00:21, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Based on a comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fair use/Fair use tag reform, I thought it might be a good idea to have more standardisation between our fair use templates. With that in mind, I've created {{image-license-fairuse}}, based on {{image-license}} but with a few small differences. I have used it to reformat {{music sample}}, {{speech}}, and {{USPSstamp}}. I have also rewritten these three templates to use bullets to emphasise the valid uses. Please let me know if you have any comments about these three templates and I'll make changes as necessary before standardising everything else. Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 23:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

All the templates are reformatted now. JYolkowski // talk 19:54, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Those are awesome, by the way. --Fastfission 22:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! JYolkowski // talk 21:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Requesting removal of "fair use" images in userspace

Removing, or asking users to remove, copyright-infringing images that they are rendering in their userspace is not reliably one of the most conflict-free aspects of going through the fair use image categories. Do we have, or should we create, some boilerplate for this, or perhaps create a list of editors who are willing to do this and have demonstrated both willingness and appropriate tact? I note that editors are posting requests at WP:AN/I rather than taking on each one themselves, and it would be great if there was something more in the way of resources for this. Thoughts? Jkelly 23:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

We have a template, {{fairuseuserpage}}, that can be used to replace the image. Its syntax is {{fairuseuserpage|Fair use image.ext}}. JYolkowski // talk 23:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

That template seems quite intrusive... most people dont take very kindly to edits to their user space... --Admrb♉ltz (T | C) 23:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that's the essence of the problem. On the one hand, removing images from people's user pages is, as Jkelly said, "not ... conflict-free" (and some heavy-handed approaches that some people have taken in the past haven't helped). On the other hand, it's often hard to get people to remove images without doing it yourself. Personally, I see the template as a reasonable, if not perfect, compromise. I've used it a few times (in late 2005) and haven't got any negative comments about its use. If anyone can see any way of making the template more friendly, that would be cool. JYolkowski // talk 23:54, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally I've just left a kind note informing the user that they can't feature fair use images on their userpages, and they've removed it themselves. I think that's a better way of going about it because it doesn't encroach on their territory and it gives them an opportunity to respond if necessary. ~MDD4696 00:20, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi User. Please remove [[:Image:Some Image]] from your userpage. Unfortunately, it is tagged as a copyrighted image, and under fair use guidelines it may not be used on userpages. Thank you. ~~~~

I don't like that template. I prefeer to write a message from scratch each time. I made a "template" on a user-subpage, but I've only used it a couple of times because we are rarely talking about just one image. A tip though: Do not start talking about copyright infringements and copyright law. People will just start making arguments that it's legal fair use and what not (or even acuse you of making legal treats). Instead simply politely say that it's against Wikipedia policy and point to WP:FUC. Some people grumble, but usually comply (though it might take them a couple of days). On a related note: For those that don't already know about it User:Interiot/Reports/FairUsers and the asosiated toolserver script is a handy tool for locating the "big offenders". With the big gallery pages I tend to just fix them myself and then leave a polite message explaining why, and I've only been reverted once so far (mabe the others just haven't noticed yet though). --Sherool (talk) 01:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Greetings Sherool. Would you be so kind as to write customized messages for the more than five thousand (be patent the list is generated in real time, and it's an expensive query) tagged fair use images used in User namespace? Interiot's worst offender style reporting makes it look like less of a problem than it is... the problem isn't single pages with hundreds, it's a thousand pages with one... And this doesn't even address the fact that a huge number of images are mistagged. In my view, any procedure which requires more human work to remove a violation than it did to create one is doomed to fail.--Gmaxwell 03:39, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I am against using fair use images at userpages, which is much less likely to be fair. As I do not like editing others' userpages without strong valid reasons, I would like to tell them our policy here.--Jusjih 07:30, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair use tags

Myself and another user have just finished categorizing the image copyright tags. Fair use tags can be found in Category:Non-free image copyright tags, along with a few other non-free tags which haven't yet been completely deprecated. Physchim62 (talk) 09:40, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I left a suggestion on the category's talk page. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 13:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)