Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:48 UTC
We have an issue with fair use images whereby an image may be uploaded for a particular article and correctly used under fair use, but in another article may not be used as a fair image. An example of this would be [[TIME Person of the Year]], where there are TIME covers that are appropriate to this article as they illustrate and make critical commentary about the TIME article, but are inappropriate on the article about the person themselves because that article doesn't have critical commentary about the article. I would like to ask for a way of restricting images (particularly fair use images) to particular specified articles.
Due to the open and fluid nature of Wikipedia and its requirement for free licensing, content that imposes these kinds of restrictions probably isn't appropriate for Wikipedia. Recommend WONTFIX.
Good luck with Wikimedia gets SUED.
Hmmm... that was harsh. But you are dead-set wrong: we DO allow content that is not free: fair use images.
That's a mistake. Hopefully it'll be corrected, since our entire project is based on being freely editable, copiable, reusable...
One problem with this proposal is that free use images can legitimately be used in more than one article – a TIME cover might be used not only with a Person of the Year, but also in an article about that year (it might be the year that person famously died), a more general article with a section that deals with that person, etc. This would simply put up lots of red tape to legitimately including fair use images in articles.
With respect, I cannot agree with that last comment. My enhancement request would not restrict all images from being used in different articles (the mechanism would be to allow you to specify a list of articles the image can be used in), so it wouldn't be applied to truly free images. Currently we have a situation where fair use is being abused. Unless we get rid of it entirely, as Brion has suggested, we must have a way of restricting its use. This is a compromise that would allow fair use but restrict its use.
Just an idea: This proposal could also go some way to stopping penis pictures (etc) being used in vandalism attacks.
Can I ask whether developers are still interested in this bug?
*** Bug 6880 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #7) > Just an idea: This proposal could also go some way to stopping penis pictures > (etc) being used in vandalism attacks. Use the bad image list for that. Although, if the picture is superfluous to requirements, perhaps it should just be deleted.
Bad image list is for /really/ bad images, and stops them being in-lined at all. It would be useful to have an control list for unfree images (allowing on multiple pages if required) Saying that all Fair Use should be removed (which would be nice) isn't really a fix for this bug. As an alternative, if someone could write a bot to enforce a template based system (Template:Allowedin), which would run: foreach image in Category:Restricted use images { Open image page, extract whitelist. (Remove non article namespace links from whitelist.) (Check for redirects in the whitelist. Auto-fix (if possible) or add to to-do list.) Write cleaned whitelist back to image page. Iterate file-links for image. { If page not in whitelist, load and remove image instances. } } I have put the template on a few test images, if you want to play around.
As an admin on the german wikipedia and commons i can only say: get rid of fair use images. Its even unclear if description pages for fair use images are legal, not to speak of image dumps, Fair use material is a huge problem for a site that tries to host truly free content. This is a policy issue, not a technical issue. I don't think its even feasable to implement this - what if the "allowed" article gets renamed? Should the image be allowed on the talk page? What if it is replaced? How to make the restriction obvious and easy to handle for users? How and when should the restriction be (re)checked? What if the relevant text, refering to the image, is removed from the artilce? etc...
As mentioned, this would also be useful for moderately offensive images that aren't worthy of the bad image list. I agree with your sentiment with regards to Fair Use, and in an ideal world we probably wouldn't need this, but then in an ideal world we wouldn't need any of the anti-vandalism tools we have, but we still code them.
As an admin on the English wikipedia, I say: don´t get rid of fair use, as it is a valid and useful legal concept. There are certain images, for instance [[The Falling Man]] and screenshots of software, that are extremely valuable and are valid uses of fair use. Please note that I agree that fair use is far too liberally used. However, if you don´t want fair use on the .de Wikipedia, that´s fine. Just don´t foist this on the .en community.
Reclosing as WONTFIX per Brion; if he changes his mind...well, he knows how to reopen. ;)
