Talk:Fair use/Archive 2

Fair use > EULA... right?

fair use > eula? can an EULA take away your right of Fair use? i hope not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yqbd (talk • contribs) 00:46, 22 January 2005 (UTC)

Fair use isn't legally listed as a right (nor is it legally listed as an affirmative defense). You can contract away ordinary fair uses just as you can contract away copyright. The validity of EULAs is questioned, but if they are legal you can click away fair use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.172.225 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 8 April 2005 (UTC)

Wikiquote Policies

I found this section in Wikiquote:

• Don't infringe copyrights. Wikiquote is a free compendium licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Submitting work without the copyright holder's permission threatens our objective to build a truly free compendium of quotations that anyone can redistribute, and could lead to legal liability for the project. See Wikiquote copyrights for more information.

What does that mean ? How far does Copyright and Fair Use go ? Can I cite a living person or a short passage from a recent book if its relevant ? Does it need to be embedded in a scientific or critical .. article like in Wikipedia ? Or is a link to the originating Wikipedia article enough ? I hope that i can find the answers here. Thanks, --Mononoke 20:15, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

quoting a dictionary

Anyone know if quoting a definition from a dictionary, if sourced, is fair use? RJII 03:37, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Pretty much the same standard as quoting any other non-fiction work. It is mostly a matter of context and of how long a quote. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:38, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

creating a sample

If I create a (obvious fair use) sample of a copyrighted song, do I have to actually own a legal copy of the song I'm sampling? Or can I just download it off the internet, make my sample, and delete the song 5 minutes after I downloaded it?

• Don't take legal advice from strangers on the Internet. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:33, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

What is not fair use for images on Wikipedia?

I've seen numerous editors who interpret the "four factors" described in the article so broadly that essentially any image they find on the Web seems, to them, to fall under fair use. To combat this tendency, it would be extremely useful to have a section listing things that are definitely not fair use for Wikipedia.

(Of course, it's impossible to be "definite" outside of a court decision on the matter. However, we can list things whose fair-use defense seems shaky enough that we wouldn't want to include them in Wikipedia.)

For example, how about: an AP photo of a celebrity? A personal photograph of a boat taken (without permission) from someone's home page? A promotional photo of a location from a commercial tourism site? A (low-resolution) image of a shark from a professional marine photographer's web site showcasing samples of artistic work? A technical drawing scanned from a textbook? A frame from a comic book illustrating a character? A still from a DVD for a famous film?

—Steven G. Johnson 17:50, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

• It's pretty much all a matter of how it is used. I don't think there is such a thing as an image or text inherently incapable of being used fairly. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:37, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's a cop-out; it's precisely this unwillingness to rule out anything as fair use that makes the "fair use" on Wikipedia so wishy-washy. We're talking about the image being used to illustrate a Wikipedia article on a related subject; I think that's a specific enough context to make reasonable statements. —Steven G. Johnson 05:36, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Fair use is wishy-washy. It's supposed to be. To give you some idea, copying every TV broadcast made by every major US television channel for commercial purposes without the permission of the channels was found to be fair use. From your list, though remember that context is vital so this is not definitive:

• an AP photo of a celebrity? fine, though use with contextual care, like about the photographer and their work.

What about used on a page about the celebrity, not about the photographer?

• A personal photograph of a boat taken (without permission) from someone's home page? fine, commercial loss seems minimal and it's a transformative use.
• A promotional photo of a location from a commercial tourism site? fine, depending on use. Use it in an article about the photographer or the tourism site and it's fairly easy.

What about in an article about the location, e.g. an article about Jamaica if it's from a Jamaica tourism site, but not about the tourism site/company/photographer in question.

• A (low-resolution) image of a shark from a professional marine photographer's web site showcasing samples of artistic work? fine, assuming it's about the artist and their work.

No, say we use it in to illustrate an article about sharks.

• A technical drawing scanned from a textbook? maybe. fine if about the work of the person who produced the drawing or to provide an example of the contents of the book, for example.

No, say it's a textbook about clocks and we use it to illustrate an article about clocks, not an article about the book in question.

• A frame from a comic book illustrating a character? fine, given the purpose specified here.
• A still from a DVD for a famous film? fine, assuming the typical uses, to illustrate an article about the film, the character(s) in the scene or those involved in the production.

On the other hand, not fine would apply to many of these if on the user page of one of the authors of the encyclopedia, because the context there is different. Might also be fine there but it's less likely. Depends on the context, as always. Just because something is in the images available doesn't mean that it can be used anywhere - each use has to be considered and some can be fine while others can be not fine. Jamesday 08:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

• It is not a "copout" for me to attempt to describe the law accurately. We can choose to make Wikipedia policy more restrictive than the law, but we cannot change the law and should not misrepresent it. -- Jmabel | Talk 15:39, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

• It is a copout because you still refuse to name a single use to illustrate a Wikipedia article (not for user pages, come on) that we would not accept as fair use. Add any specific context that you need. All I asked for was examples, and you are dodging the question by saying you can't give a general formula, which is not what I asked for. —Steven G. Johnson 19:05, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

• Oh. Sorry. If you look back, that's not what you asked. You didn't ask about contexts, you asked only about types of images. And I replied that context is crucial. Examples that would clearly not be fair use:

  • an image of a rose, captured off of a record album jacket, used without permission to illustrate an article on roses.
  • a detailed map, photocopied from a copyrighted atlas, used without permission in an article about the region depicted (unless the map itself was a topic of discussion: i.e. a particular map of a disputed territory might be fair use).
  • a work of art, not so famous as to be iconic, whose theme happens to be the Vietnam War, used without permission to illustrate an article on the war. I say "not so famous as to be iconic" because it is presumably be fair use for us to use a small image of Picasso's Guernica in the article Bombing of Guernica. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:44, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, those kinds of examples are exactly what I think would be useful for Wikipedia to combat the "everything seems fair to me" tendency. I should apologize for not being clearer, and also I think I should have commented in Wikipedia:Fair use rather than here. Could you please add a section to that page giving examples (with all needed context) of things that are not fair use for Wikipedia? —Steven G. Johnson 01:12, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Copyright law clarification question

Please correct me if I am wrong, isn't the concept of "fair use" a copying exception, it does not apply to or mean copyright law can restrict "uses" of the original that was purchased or otherwise obtained legally? There seems to be much confusion over whether "fair use" means uses of the purchased version that are fair, or copying that is considered fair. "Fair use" should really be renamed to "fair copying" to avoid confusion. Perhaps it originally meant something like "fair uses of having/making copies that would normally be disallowed under copyright law". zen master T 20:48, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

• "Use of the material" not "use of a physical object". -- Jmabel | Talk 07:09, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

Misleading statement under Common misunderstandings

"If a work is not copyrighted it is in the public domain and you can use it anyway." I think this statement is misleading. In the US, for works created after 1/1/78, one does not proactively "copyright" a work. It is not something that is done *to* a work. Copyright protection exists the moment a work is tangibly created. Filing with the Copyright Office perfects the author's rights and makes it easier to defend against infringers, but registration is not necessary. If the author hasn't filed, that doesn't automatically mean that the work is public domain. Please see the information on www.copyright.gov for clarification.

The current wording in this article could lead people to believe that if there is no copyright notice on a work, then it must be in the public domain. Although there was once a time in the US when this was true, it is no longer the case.

It might be better to write "If a work is in the public domain, you can use it anyways. If a work is not in the public domain, then unauthorized use must follow the fair use doctrine. The absence of a copyright notice does not mean that the work is in the public domain." (anon 20 Aug 2005)

• I agree, plus "anyway" or "anyways" should be "in any manner". Editing accordingly.

-- Jmabel | Talk 23:48, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

• "fair copying" would be misleading, as fair use is a defence to all the various rights listen in §106 of the Copyright Act - §106(1) (right to reproduce), §106(2) (right to modify), §106(4) (right to publicly perform) etc. So it's not just about copying.

Cut section from intro

"Fair use makes copyrighted work available to the public as raw material without the need for permission or clearance, so long as such free usage serves the purpose of copyright law, which the U.S. Constitution defines as the promotion of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (I.1.8), better than the legal enforcement of claims of infringement. The doctrine thereby attempts to balance the interests of individual copyright holders with the social or cultural benefits that follow from the creation and distribution of derivative works. Insofar as this doctrine protects forms of expression that might otherwise be enjoined as infringing copyright, it has been related to First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution."

It's not particularly accurate -- courts have only recently considered the constitution's language at all wrt fair use. And the first amendment bit is certainly something commentators have claimed, but I don't think I've seen it cited by any court opinons.

I moved some of the content around, removed some of it, and cleaned some of it.

Novalis 19:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Trademark section contains an inaccuracy

Last year, in the KP Permanent case, the Supreme Court ruled that trademark fair use doesn't necessarily require an absence of consumer confusion. I'll try to fix it myself at some point, but wanted to flag it in case someone else has time first. Bob92 21:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)