The current guidelines for non-free content on Wikipedia, though written about at length on various project pages, does not seem to translate well into actual practice: many images are labeled as "fair use" without any deliberation, and many such images labeled would probably not be judged as "fair use" in a court of law.[citation needed] As of August 2005, the English Wikipedia has over 14,000 images tagged as "fair use", and if even a small percentage of those are copyright violations, the consequences could be unpleasant.
The goals of the policy reform are as follows:
- Develop new fair use image copyright tags. Many of the current image copyright tags for "fair use" are short blanket statements which encourage legally incorrect thinking about fair use. Some suggested general improvements:
- The tags should be more detailed, stating the rationale for fair use and implicitly defining what is and what is not fair use.
- They should be comprehensible to the average Wikipedian who neither knows nor cares much about the structure of U.S. copyright law.
- They should emphasize use and not medium.
- They should allow anyone who cares to help monitor proper use to quickly judge whether or not the use is "fair" or if it is copyright infringement.
- It should be noted (if not on the tags, then somewhere else) that it is best to use a free alternative if one is available. This is not strictly a requirement of "fair use", but the avoidance of a potential copyright situation is always better for the goals of Wikipedia (both in avoiding lawsuits, as well as creating a "free encyclopedia").
- Where appropriate, separate tags should be created for common "fair uses", such as using a book cover to illustrate an article about said book.
- They should clearly state that the work in question is copyrighted, and require the user to label the copyright source as best as is known.
- They should clarify that U.S. copyright law matters in particular because the images are hosted on a U.S. servers.
- They should provide reusers with information to help them decide whether their use is "fair" or not. 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). Where practical, they should also provide information on other conditions under which the image may be redistributed or information on obtaining a licence to redistribute it.
- Elimination of blanket "fair use" tags which have no applicability towards "use" which is different than a generic "fair use" tag.
- Develop a system for monitoring and verifying "fair use" images. Because "fair use" is based on use rather than media, it is impossible to set up a system which will permanently guarantee that any particular image will be used in a "fair" way — for example, the use of an image of Mickey Mouse could be "fair" in an article on the character himself, but the use of it on an article about mice in general would probably not be "fair". Something judged "fair" at one point could easily be used for infringement at a later date. Nevertheless, a good number of the images uploaded are unlikely to be "fair use" in any context, and these are worth weeding out immediately. Possible ways for this system could include:
- The use of specialized templates to indicate when an image has or has not been reviewed by another Wikipedian (associated with this project or not).
Fair use should also be reviewed in featured articles.
- Improve guidelines. At present, the guidelines are complex, and derive from mutltiple sources that are not fully publicized, with the result that people who do not understand copyright issues are, out of ignorance, uploading material for which there is no plausible fair use rationale. There exists a further concern that material which could fall within Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria lacks proper rationales, attribution, or other necessary information and is therefore eligible for deletion.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
