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Nobel Prize medal
Apparently following the lead of another language wiki, a number of users have been taking on Nobel Prize images to the beginning of articles about Nobelists with the use of the {{Nobel medal}} template (i.e. ).
Does this present a fair use issue? The photograph of the medal—a dead on, well-lit photo—was made by a Wikipedian. But the medal itself is still probably under copyright protection—the engraver died only in 1966, and while I don't know much about engravings and statues in copyright law I assume it does not count as "published" in the same way that a mass-produced printed work does (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
The image itself is dual tagged—once as fair use for the engraving, once as GFDL for any creativity imparted by the photograph.
Should this image be used in templates in what is clearly a decorative fashion? It is clear to me, anyway, that the image does not have any substantive content role (it actually tells you less about the fact of the Nobel Prize than words do, since it does not tell you when and for what the prize was given, much less the question of people even recognizing the medal at that size), and it is certainly not being analyzed by the text itself, all of which leads to a diagnosis of "decorative" in my book. --Fastfission 03:50, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed with fastfission. Can't release this under GFDL. Furthermore, the whole way this template has been implemented is absolutely awful . A large uncaptioned picture of a coin, left aligned in the opening paragraph of every article! Definitely a TfD. ed g2s • talk 01:37, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Per this, the design of the medal has not changed since 1902. See also the bottom left quadrant of the coin image. I'm not sure why this is not considered public domain? KWH 20:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Where to post justifications
I've (self-)nominated Ace Books for FA, and I'd like to make sure the images in it are correctly fair use. I see on the image page for one of the images that the fair use tag I used includes the phrase "To the uploader: please add a detailed fair use rationale for each use, as described on Wikipedia:Image description page, as well as the source of the work and copyright information." I took a look at Wikipedia:Image description page but wasn't quite clear to me where to add the text I wanted. So I figured I'd find a featured article and look for how a magazine or book cover was supposed to have fair use justified. I found this which was used in the Tony Blair article, but I can't see any justification written in anywhere, either in the article or the image page. Can you tell me if there is one and I'm missing it? And if it's missing, where should it go -- should I click the "edit" link on the "licensing" section of the image page and add text after the {{bookcover}} tag? Thanks for any help. Mike Christie 20:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Hilton Playboy cover clarification?
There's currently some discussion as to whether the current use of an image in Paris Hilton is reasonable or not at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive129#Repeat Copyright Offender?, and Thatcher131 suggested that y'all might be able to shed some light on the situation. Any thoughts? -Hit bull, win steak (Moo!) 19:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
^^^^^^^ Wikipedia's official "fair use" policy says that editors should "Always use a more free alternative if one is available." Most "fair use" pictures are only protected by copyright. Magazine covers are protected by copyright (on the picture) and trademark (on the logo). Photographs of almost all notable subjects who have appeared on magazine covers can be found. Therefore, Wikipedia "fair use" policy tells us not to use unlicensd magazine covers if any alternatives can be found.
More specifically:
Unlicensed magazine covers may not be used in infoboxes about the cover subject. Unlicensed magazine covers should not be used as the main illustration in the article on the subject. An exception could sometimes be made in the very rare case where the subject is known mainly for appearing on the magazine cover. Even then another image would be a better choice and the unlicensed cover could be used to illustrate specfic comments in the article. Even then the unlicensed cover could be used only if its importance was explained in the article. There it would be complimenting the text and not illustrating the subject. ^^^^^^^^ The editor formerly known as Harmonica Wolfowitz 23:56, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Always?
The policy says that we should ALWAYS use a free version instead of a fair use item. This may be a bit too extreme. I note that originally the policy said "It is best to use a free version". I am asking this because, rather than use publicity photo's for Mel Gibson a really horrible amateur drawing is used instead because it is "free". This so substantially reduces the quality of the article that it seems egregious and a good example of how "Always" is not a good rule. I request comment --Blue Tie 03:33, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I note that this sense of "always" was not part of the debate. --Blue Tie 03:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Magazine covers -- a more general discussion
I'm trying to break this off from the more specific discussion above and maybe get us out of a serious of seriously-indented quotation. ;-) Sorry about the length of it...
Here's what I would do to clarify magazine covers as a set of guidelines:
- In general practice magazine covers should not be used simply to illustrate someone who happens to be on the cover.
- The text should reference the magazine cover specifically, but it need not be a detailed analysis of the cover.
- The name of the magazine should be clearly visable on the cover and the caption of the image should clearly indicate the magazine and the date of publication.
- The scanned cover should be no larger than is necessary to read the headline text on the cover. A good guideline is a width of an individual cover should be no wider than 350px, though there could be some flexibility in this. 600 px wide or wider is likely in all cases to be too large.
- Freer images should be more privileged on the page itself than the magazine cover.
- Multiple magazine covers on a single page are discouraged unless each one portrays something visibly distinct from the other, i.e. very different phases in a person's life or how they were considered by the media.
- In cases where the above conditions are met, individual fair use rationales would not be needed, since the rationale would be the same in every situation. A specific rationale and justification would need to be included for any divergence from the above guidelines, however.
The ultimate effect of the above would be to lower the "critical commentary" bar a bit to make it more on par with the law and common sense (and to make it less of a stick for beating people with), but at the same time to encourage a minimum standard of use which makes the magazine covers worthwhile but not gratuitous. Something which followed the above guidelines would, I believe, be pretty safely within the bounds of "fair use", and would also be used in articles in a constructive way. Additionally I think that these guidelines would also privilege free images and encourage their creation and promotion within an article. It would also make it very easy to determine what the "right number" of magazine covers on a given page is.
The advantage here is also that this would make it very easy for people who think magazine covers are good to illustrate pages to incorporate them in a meaningful and legally conservative manner. It is, I think, a good compromise between the camps of people who believe that the freeness of the images outweighs the aesthetic/illustrative value of the page and those who believe the converse. Additionally it would make policing this easy—the guidelines are concrete but not draconian, and the thinking behind them is at least to me fairly straightforward and obvious, though we could elaborate on that if necessary.
Legally I think this would guarantee that all use was at least plausibly transformative, encyclopedic, and non-competitive. In thinking about these issues I heavily recommend that people read the ruling of Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Limited (2006) which is a well-articulated and careful ruling about the use of small reproductions of one type of media (in that case, posters) as elements in another type of media (in that case, a biography). Obviously the ruling of just one Circuit Court of Appeals is not the end-all in discussions of fair use, but in this case the details of the case in question are so very directly applicable to our situation (unlike most of the fair use case law), and the logic and motivation behind the ruling so carefully spelled out, that it seems appropriate to use it as a potential model for how to think about these issues.
I think the above could be also applied more generally to all media covers (CD covers, video covers, DVD covers) without much modification. The above guidelines would not necessarily cover their use in "non-encyclopedic" articles (i.e. lists) nor necessarily prohibit them (at this point in the discussion, anyway). I want to bracket that as a separa
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