Wikipedia talk:Fair use/Fairuseexterminate

Fair use extermination

Many useful, informative images are being deleted because a Free replacement "might reasonably be found or created". But in many cases, no such replacement exists or ever will exist. This is bad. We certainly shouldn't use fair use images if a Free image exists to replace it, but the fair use images shouldn't be deleted until after a replacement is found. — Omegatron 06:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, if we can easily replace an image then we should not resort to fair use in the first place, we should get / create the free image instead. "No one's done it yet" isn't a valid fair use argument, by any definition. -- Ned Scott 06:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems that you haven't carefully read what Omegatron wrote. Badagnani 06:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I do agree with the first part of what he says, but the solution suggested seemed to be regarding all cases of fair use. My apologies if I have misinterpreted his words. -- Ned Scott 08:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As opposed to "No one's done it yet," how about because "we legally can"? That seems like a perfectly valid fair-use argument to me, especially since we're apparently going out of our way to make articles less useful. - Stick Fig 09:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we really have to have this debate every two weeks, or can I just refer Omegatron to archives? ed g2s • talk 10:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably going to be a regular occurrence until the replaceability criterion becomes a normal part of image handling - I'd give it six months to a year. In going through the oldest fair-use images here, it's almost comical how many have better free equivalents on commons now, but apparently I'm the first person to look at these old images since they were uploaded years ago. Stan 17:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as it continues to be silly and unreasonable, I'll be sure to chime in with my disagreement over it. You guys didn't win the last round because you were necessarily right; you won it because you had all the power already and wouldn't budge on the issue despite about a hundred attempts at compromise. I still see this as a winnable fight; this is still something I plan to fight for.

Consider the crop-ups a fact of life until you actually deal with the real issues here. - Stick Fig 17:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Just adding my voice to Stick Fig's previous post. The debates had on this subject are long from over as there hasn't been a definitive end. SF's correct in pointing out the only reason anything ended before was not a surrender but a lack of cooperation from those who implemented policy interpretation and enforcement changes without being properly vetted.--Jeff 10:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• Ed and others, I think the image watchers could relax. Other users are willing to cooperate on reasonable deletions. I assume good faith and that some users are working hard to prevent problems with copyright violations. Communication on talk pages was absent yesterday before a mass deletion of about twenty images in each of two top priority articles in WikiProject Minnesota. I did not die of a stroke as I thought I would and went to the Village Pump for help (not forthcoming in a way I would have expected but them's the breaks). The only sign now of what happened is a couple of notes like "feel free to restore PD images." With other users I spent a few hours restoring those pages that I bet were edited in one flick of the wrist. I hope for some peace and calm. -Susanlesch 18:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably going to be a regular occurrence until the replaceability criterion becomes a normal part of image handling

What does that mean, exactly? — Omegatron 06:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It means that they're going to eventually get their way on fair use images and feel they won't be subject to criticism as a result after it becomes more prevalent in the bloodstream. - Stick Fig 07:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

??? Who is going to get what way with what? — Omegatron 09:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fair_Use/Publicity_photos has a good summary for you to look over. You're wading into a several months long debate over fair-use's place on Wikipedia.--Jeff 10:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It would seem that the people permanently deleting "replaceable" images (and the text of {{Replaceable fair use}}) are not authorized by consensus, then. — Omegatron 18:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

In the early days of WP, lots of policies were winked at or only sporadically enforced. For instance, we used to have tens of thousands of images that had no description whatsoever, literally not a single byte, and now they're identified and whacked reasonably quickly. There was an intermediate period where I got nastygrams on my talk page from people trying to rationalize an image's lack of documentation, but of course that wasn't ever going to fly. Replaceability has always been a fair use criterion, but hasn't been taken seriously until recently, so we had "fair use" photos of schools uploaded by people living a block away and apparently too lazy to go outside and take their own photograph. We'll eventually develop a good sense of what is reasonable for replaceability, somewhere between a monthlong trek in the Amazon and getting up from the computer to point a phone camera out the window. (Although going by commons uploads, there are more Wikipedians in the Amazon than one might imagine.) Now I'm off to scout a remote part of the Mojave in preparation for the spring wildflower season, and to get pics of the reputed "world's tallest yucca"... Stan 15:48, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

And non-easily replacable photos? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

A mock-up of "putting a "non-Free" icon on each one". It's ugly, but it's better than deletion, and would actually encourage people to replace the image instead of just forgetting that the article was ever illustrated.

Even photos that seem like they could easily be replaced should be left on the project until they are actually replaced. It may, in fact, be completely impossible to create a replacement of equivalent quality.

We'll eventually develop a good sense of what is reasonable for replaceability

The criteria for replaceability is simple: If an image is easily replaceable, it will be replaced.

I fully support putting these in a prominent Category:Replaceable Non-Free images and linking it from places like Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia, or even putting a "non-Free" icon on each one to encourage their replacement, but this wholesale deletion of perfectly legal and encyclopedic content is harmful, and contradicts the project's goals. — Omegatron 18:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

One of those goals is to make a free encyclopaedia, ‘free’ as in ‘freedom’. —xyzzy_n 18:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

And? — Omegatron 19:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

And fair use media aren’t. The best one can hope for is that it’s not illegal to include them, but even this is very questionable outside the USA. There is a tangible significant reason to insist on free media in the current manner, and it’s the fact that they provide a degree of legal safety that is unattainable with fair use media. That, in turn, is fundamental for letting people copy, display and sell Wikipedia material—which is, as above, one of the goals. —xyzzy_n 21:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It's too bad that logic and reason doesn't break into all of this. Maybe if it did, we'd see moderated solutions. Instead, all we're seeing are the same arguments we've seen you guys come up with for months – if it's free, it's instantly better.

All of the solutions we've come up with – talking to PR people, making illustrations as a replacement for fair-use images, fucking FORKING so that you guys have your own sandbox to play in, this perfectly reasonable solution Omegatron has suggested – have been turned down because you find holes on the argument.

And we're not even talking about the myriad of holes in the free argument – a lot of the content called "easily replaceable" isn't, quality (a paramount desire of an encyclopedia) isn't being taken in as a concern, the sheer lack of access unavailable to most free photographers over fair use, and so on.

Maybe as opposed to calling it "free," we should just call it "woefully unrealistic, contradictory and illogical." But it doesn't have the same ring as "free" does, does it? - Stick Fig 22:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, pardon me for being a compliant sheeple materialist, but I like the fact that, where I live, ‘free’ means, among other things, ‘free to copy and distribute without fear of getting caught by vampire lawyers’ (and also ‘not in jail’)—unlike ‘US fair use’. If you think unlimited inclusion of fair use images makes a big difference in quality, why don’t you fork the project to your own server and prove this by including lots of fair use media and showing that many readers and editors (compared to the current numbers here) prefer it that way? —xyzzy_n 22:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• Amateur photography may be "free" and commendable and but isn't it sometimes detrimental to Wikipedia? Yesterday I rated an (unnamed so no one feels bad) article for WikiProject Biography. At one point the subject was the greatest athlete in his field of all time, but in the infobox he looks like a overweight retiree on vacation. Over time who living or related to deceased would want to be in such an encyclopedia? -Susanlesch 22:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

A bad free photograph is great motivation for a good free photograph. — Matt Crypto 22:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

However, if it’s really antithetical to the text of the article, it’s probably OK to remove it. (I’d look for a replacement, but I don’t know which article that is…) —xyzzy_n 22:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Stick Fig, you seem to be labouring under a misapprehension. Freedom isn't an "argument" advanced that you can find holes in. Freedom is a tenet of the project. Using non-free images directly harms our the purpose of the project by removing a significant motivation to contribute free content. — Matt Crypto 22:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Ideologues are impossible to argue with, as Stick Fig, myself and others have rediscovered here on Wikipedia. Logic will never convince people who feel there is a higher goal at stake. A personal attack has been removed from this comment. --Jeff 23:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Any debate over whether Wikipedia should sacrifice freedom for better pictures is like a debate over whether Wikipedia should suddenly become an online pet retailer. If we were "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, except for when we're not", then a debate might be useful. Nothing's stopping you from going and starting such a project, however. — Matt Crypto 00:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

We're a *free* *encyclopedia*. Those two principles are in tension, and the consensus has been that we should not sacrifice freedom when the encyclopedia could be improved by creating free content. Otherwise we could go as far as accepting NC-only text. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

We are first and foremost an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not GNUpedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is not the Free Software Foundation.

Our goal is to write an informative encyclopedia "of the highest possible quality" that is accessible to everyone; not to soapbox a Copyleft The World agenda. Whether mirrors can legally copy certain images without thought is irrelevant; the site is a heterogeneous mixture of copyrighted content with a variety of different, clearly-marked licenses, which will always include things that cannot legally be copied in certain circumstances.

Removing informative content that cannot be reproduced and that we have a moral and legally-protected right to use is clearly harmful to the project. Should we also purge the encyclopedia of all quotations and references to copyrighted material? We wouldn't want to get sued! Our fair use of that copyrighted text might be illegal to reproduce in other countries! A paraphrase is just as good, anyway, right?

I'm seeing a lot of high-quality, encyclopedic, and perfectly legal images being purged from articles in my watchlist over the past few months. In 2005, Jimbo said "I'm 100% committed to a goal of 'Britannica or better' quality for Wikipedia". I wonder if this is still the case. — Omegatron 19:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your statement of ‘our’ goal. There are five pillars; you consider only one. —xyzzy_n 19:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

And the first and foremost is? — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The numerically first one is the first one. Note the absence of any mention of quality. I don’t think there’s a foremost one; as with pillars in general, remove one and the structure falls. It is ridiculous to try to see some kind of priority or conflict here. All five pillars are mandatory constraints; you can’t pick some and omit others as it suits you. —xyzzy_n 17:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a comment about the watermarking. I know with some fair use images, there is no determination on what we can do with the image. But, lets say we find some fair use images that turns out cannot be modified (ND for yall Creative Commons folks). What should we do about those? User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, supid me, I clicked the image and it is just an icon added to the image caption. That doesn't sound like a bad idea, but I think while the concept is very good, this could start a bunch of edit wars where none exist. People are already upset at us for trying to carry out the free contant pilar, but I am not sure if this will inflame the situation or not. I like to see most fair use pictures gone as some of yall do, but I am not sure if this is the way to go. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I clicked the image and it is just an icon added to the image caption

If we actually implemented this, we would build the icon into the software instead of adding it by hand. Clicking the icon would go to a page explaining that the tagged image is not Free, which means it can't be copied by mirrors and we'd prefer a Free replacement if possible.

I'm not claiming this is an ideal situation, though; it's just the first example that came to my head of an alternative solution to the silly "Fair use images inhibit the creation of free content" argument. Deleting images inhibits the creation of free replacements, too! Including them for their informational value, while clearly labeling that we'd prefer a Free replacement, would solve both problems.

this could start a bunch of edit wars where none exist

??? What do edit wars have to do with anything?

People are already upset at us for trying to carry out the free contant pilar

That's because it's too heavy-handed and harmful to the project. Everything is subject to interpretation and special cases, and these are being completely ignored for the sake of a deletion campaign that doesn't have consensus.

I like to see most fair use pictures gone as some of yall do, but I am not sure if this is the way to go.

I'd like to see most fair use images gone as well, but only the ones that can actually be replaced. Since we have a legally-protected fair use right to use certain copyrighted images, let's use them until they are actually replaced. If you're worried about the fair use images preventing Free ones from being created, we'll find a solution for that, like tagging the images. But we need to find a solution that doesn't cause permanent harm to the project in the process. — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Omegatron: freedom, as in free content, is a central value of both Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Your characterisation of our goal is flawed, because you fail to mention freedom. The stated mission of WMF is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." That should not be up for debate. Given the axiom that freedom is a central goal, then it can be argued quite pragmatically that fair use images inhibit the creation of free content, and hence hinder our goal. The same argument doesn't really apply to short text quotations, or references to historical material, or images for which there is no possibility of obtaining a free alternative. — Matt Crypto 20:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Your characterisation of our goal is flawed, because you fail to mention freedom.

What are you talking about? Freedom is absolutely central to this discussion. "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."[1] In this case, our "encyclopedia of the highest possible quality" goal is in conflict with our free content goal. Which goal serves the other?

The same argument doesn't really apply to short text quotations

Of course it does. How do they differ? Every time you quote someone in an article, you're violating their copyright, but the fair use doctrine allows "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment", and so on.[2] If we wanted to be retarded about free content (as some people apparently do), we would remove all fair use quotations from articles and paraphrase them:

King's most influential and well-known public address is the "I Have A Dream" speech in which he talked about having a dream, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

This is a Free-content project, after all; we wouldn't want to violate his copyright...

or images for which there is no possibility of obtaining a free alternative

??? I thought that's what we're talking about. — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

"Fair use images inhibit the creation of free content". That has to be the silliest argument against fair use images I ever saw. And since they are all rather silly, that's saying something.  Grue  21:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a largely content-free rebuttal. Please consider contributing more than your emotions to this discussion. — Matt Crypto 21:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Except I actually think there is some truth to it. People wouldn't be going out and digging up the PD photos from government sites or finding CC-licensed ones on flickr or taking GFDL ones themselves of subjects that we could just throw up a fair use photo and say we're done with it. I myself think the fair use limitations have gone too far against usage of photos of subjects that are difficult, or extremely impractical to recreate, but the argument that it inhibits creation makes sense. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

It almost certainly does inhibit creation of free images to some extent. As I've said before, though, there are all kinds of comparable things we could do to deleting not clearly immediately replaceable fair use images, that would similarly have the potential to encourage "good behavior," that we don't do. We don't delete badly written stubs because red links make it more likely that someone will write a decent article than a blue link that leads to a bad article, for instance. And, to my mind, badly written stubs are much worse, and more embarrassing, for wikipedia than fair use images are. the whole idea is leninist - the idea that we have to make things worse to make them better. I can accept this, maybe, to a very limited degree - that we should delete pictures that could blatantly be replaced by fair use images without very much trouble. But many pictures of living people, for instance, do not really fall under such a category. As others have said before, if "replaceability" is to be the criterion, we ought to have a sane and practical understanding of what that means, at the very least. Instead, the current situation appears, deliberately, to have an insane and impractical understanding of what "replaceable" means, in order to categorize as many fair use pictures as possible as being "replaceable." john k 09:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Tell me, Omegatron, what images does the Encyclopaedia Britannica use without permission of the copyright holder? —Bkell (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

How many images in Brittanica are under a copyleft license?

How many things are illustrated in Brittanica that will never be illustrated in Wikipedia because we prohibit using images even with the permission of the copyright holder? — Omegatron 17:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course our requirements are stricter than Britannica's. That's the entire idea—Wikipedia is not just another Encyclopaedia Britannica or World Book. But it's absurd to make the claim that in order to reach the quality of Britannica we need to allow fair use (or at least the kind of fair use that is claimed by 99% of unlicensed images on Wikipedia, the kind where the image is just taken without any permission from the copyright holder at all), because Britannica itself doesn't do that. Images used under some kind of "Wikipedia-only" license actually given by the copyright holder are not the real problem here; the number of these is insignificant compared to the number of "I found it on the Internet" fair-use images. Of course, Wikipedia-only licenses defeat the goal of Wikipedia, but I think we have worse things to worry about right now. —Bkell (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course our requirements are stricter than Britannica's. That's the entire idea

That's exactly wrong. The entire idea of Wikipedia is to be less restrictive than Britannica.

Of course, Wikipedia-only licenses defeat the goal of Wikipedia

??? What in the world do you think the goal of the project is? Removing fair use and wikipedia-only images is in direct conflict with our clearly stated goal of creating a knowledge resource of the highest possible quality and distributing it to as many people as possible. — Omegatron 16:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely right - we need to be putting more emphasis on building a complete reference work. That means taking advantage of fair-use images where legal to do so. Johntex\^talk 18:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

"What in the world do you think the goal of the project is? Removing fair use and wikipedia-only images is in direct conflict with our clearly stated goal of creating a knowledge resource of the highest possible quality and distributing it to as many people as possible" OMG Omegatron, I could not agree more. It is getting to the point of pure ludicrous the number of photos that are being deleted here. I would be curious to know what the statistics are. From what I can see, the picture patrollers (who really make the policy, regardless of what the policy actually is) have the objective of making every single picture on Wikipedia amateur. There is no other sector of Wikipedia (even the copyright patrol of which I am heavily involved) has this impossible standard. In the John Mayer article there is a whole section on John Mayer's involvment with Fender and the ads campaign he was involved with. An example of the ad was put in the article. It was removed for lack of meeting the fair use criteria. I was flabbergasted. Is the company going to sue Wikipedia for - what? - free advertising? The picture was wholly relevant. And of course it was irreplaceable. What, should some groupie go hunt John Mayer down and ask him to pose with a Fender? What would that prove about his involvement with the company, his customized guitar line or his involvment with the ad campaign? And I personally have about 20 stories like this one.--Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 13:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)