Re: Regarding fair use

Microsoft has licensing agreements with multiple book publishers, and even 
has it's own "Microsoft Press" that makes good money selling books about 
Microsoft applications. To that effect, I would be highly surprised if 
microsoft gave us any special permission to include it's images in our 
books.

I think at this point, the best thing that we can do is to wait and see what 
exactly the WMF has to say on this matter before we do anything. I will 
change back the text of [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] because that is an enforced 
policy, but I won't change the text of [[Wikibooks:Fair use policy]] and 
[[Wikibooks:Image use policy]], because those are just proposals at this 
point.

If the WMF chooses to ban such works that are "with permission", then any 
efforts on our part to secure such images will have been futile. Once we 
know what the WMF has to say on the issue officially, we can decide if and 
by how much we want to differ from their standpoint (without being less 
restrictive).

--Andrew Whitworth


>From: Iamunknown <[email protected]>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <[email protected]>
>To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <[email protected]>
>Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Regarding fair use
>Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:27:21 -0700
>
>I totally agree that if the WMF board decides to outright ban fair use
>then we have no choice but to comply. I, on a certain level, hope that
>they do not. I think what we should focus more on, however, is asking
>permission from copyright holders to use their copyrighted media.
>
>For example, Webaware recently created {{Microsoft screenshot}} out of
>his recent research into Microsoft policy. Microsoft screenshots are
>still essentially fair use: for our purposes as an educational
>website, we can technically use them for free, but because our goal is
>also to allow for downstream use in any context, it is definitely
>-not- free. What I wonder is if anyone has tried to contact Microsoft
>asking for permission to include low-resolution screenshots of their
>copyright software and interface in Wikibooks or in Wikimedia
>Foundatio projects? How would we even find that out? In particular,
>could we (or someone else on our behalf) access the OTRS archives?
>
>-Iamunknown
>
>On 2/16/07, Andrew Whitworth <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > >From: Iamunknown <[email protected]>
> > >In particular, we should allow very very limited use of non-free
> > >media when it would be practically impossible to use free media -- the
> > >media
> > >used in the European History wikibook comes to mind -- and for small
> > >textual
> > >quotations. What are everyone else's feelings?
> >
> > it would have to be very very limited, and in that case it would likely 
>be a
> > few exceptions to the rule as opposed to a rule in and of itself. And
> > regardless of what we choose to do with fair use media, if the WMF 
>mandates
> > a position one way or the other, we have to go with that. I doubt highly
> > that the WMF is going to say "all fair use images must be deleted now", 
>it
> > is more likely that they will be phased out over a period of time.
> >
> > Even the fact that fair use images might be hard to replicate doesn't 
>change
> > the fact that the use of these images is still illegal in most 
>countries.
> > Books like the European history book are illegal to print and distribute 
>in
> > much of europe, for instance. I can think of maybe a dozen instances 
>where
> > fair use images might be indispensible, and in those cases we would have 
>to
> > create workarounds so the books could be printed without them anyway.
> >
> > I think the best course of action for us is to disallow new fair use 
>images
> > from being uploaded, and evaluate the old fair use images, on a 
>case-by-case
> > basis. Most can likely be deleted (as mistagged and a copyright 
>violation)
> > many more will likely be duplicatable, and the remainder we can deal 
>with
> > later.
> >
> > --Andrew Whitworth
> >
>
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