Wikipedia:Fair use

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Guideline Template:Wikipedia copyright Under U.S. copyright law, almost all work published after 1922 may have an active copyright (there are exceptions, however — see United States copyright law for details). In general, the use of copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder is copyright infringement, and is illegal. As such, on Wikipedia, which is hosted in the United States, we are normally only able to use material that is not under copyright or is available under a sufficiently free license.

An important exception to this rule exists, recognized in a clause in the copyright act that describes a limited right to use copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder — what is known as fair use (or "fair dealing" in other countries, where standards may differ). This page is meant as a guideline for dealing with fair use materials on the English Wikipedia — it provides general guidance on what is or isn't likely to be fair use and how you can best assist editors when attempting to include material under fair use. However, it is not official policy. You, as the uploader, are legally responsible for determining whether your contributions are legal.

If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use", you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Wikipedia's material as possible, so original images and sound files licensed under the GFDL or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use. See Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission for a form letter asking a copyright holder to grant us a license to use their work under terms of the GFDL.

Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project. If in doubt, write it yourself.

Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia. (See plagiarism and fair use for discussions of how much reformulation is necessary in a general context.)

Contents

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Acceptable uses

This section lists several categories of usage of copyrighted, unlicenced material that are generally approved as likely being fair use on the English-language Wikipedia when done in good faith and when their use is in accordance with the Policy and Law sections below. Material that does not fall under one of the designated categories listed below may or may not be fair use depending on what the material is and how it is used. If you want help in assessing whether a use is fair use, please ask at Wikipedia:Requested copyright examinations. Wikipedia talk:Copyrights, Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems, and Wikipedia talk:Fair use may also be useful. These are places where those who understand copyright law are likely to be watching.

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General

In general four factors must be considered:

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
(Copyright Act of 1976, Template:UnitedStatesCode, [1])

Briefly, these indicate that 1. The use must not attempt to "supersede the objects" of the original but rather be educational or critical. 2. The less of the original that is used in relation to the whole the more likely that use is fair, though the importance of the specific portion is also considered (as the quoting the most important part may attempt to "supersede" the original). 3. The use must not infringe on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work for instance by acting as a direct market substitute for the original work though not through criticism or parody.

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Text

Brief, attributed quotations of copyrighted text used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea may be used under fair use. Text must be used verbatim: any alterations must be clearly marked as an elipsis ([...]) or insertion ([added text]) or change of emphasis (emphasis added). All copyrighted text must be attributed.

In general, extensive quotation of copyrighted news materials (such as newspapers and wire services), movie scripts, or any other copyrighted text is not fair use and is prohibited by Wikipedia policy.

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Audio clips

Brief song clips may be used for identification of a musical style, group, or iconic piece of music when accompanied by critical or historical commentary and when attributed to the copyright holder.

Spoken word audio clips of historical events, such as speeches by public figures, may be used when accompanied by critical or historical commentary and when attributed to the speaker.

Spoken word audio clips of Wikipedia articles that incorporate copyrighted text pose legal problems (since the resulting audio file cannot be GFDL'ed) and should be avoided.

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Images

There are a few blanket categories of copyrighted images whose use on Wikipedia has been generally approved as likely being fair use when done in good faith. These include:

  • Cover art. Cover art from various items, for identification and critical commentary (not for identification without critical commentary).
  • Team and corporate logos. For identification. See Wikipedia:Logos.
  • Stamps and currency. For identification.
  • Other promotional material. Posters, programs, billboards, ads. For critical commentary.
  • Film and television screen shots. For critical commentary and discussion of the cinema and television.
  • Screen shots from software products. For critical commentary.
  • Paintings and other works of visual art. For critical commentary, including images illustrative of a particular technique or school.
  • Publicity photos. For identification and critical commentary. See Wikipedia:Publicity photos.
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Counterexamples

Some people find it easier to understand the concept of fair use from what is not fair use. Here are a few examples of uses that would almost certainly not be acceptable as fair use:

  1. An article containing one or more unattributed pieces of text from a copyrighted source.
  2. An image of a rose, cropped from an image of a record album jacket, used to illustrate an article on roses.
  3. A detailed map, scanned from a copyrighted atlas, used in an article about the region depicted. The only context in which this might be fair use is if the map itself was a topic of a passage in the article: for example, a controversial map of a disputed territory might be fair use.
  4. A work of art, not so famous as to be iconic, whose theme happens to be the Spanish Civil War, to illustrate an article on the war. (However, because of its iconic status, it is presumably Fair Use where we have a small image of Picasso's Guernica in the article Bombing of Guernica.)
  5. A photo from a press agency (e.g. Reuters, AP), not so famous as to be iconic, to illustrate an article on the subject of the photo. If photos are themselves newsworthy (e.g. Muhammad cartoons), low resolution versions of the photos may be fair use in related articles.
  6. An image of a Barry Bonds baseball card, to illustrate the article on Barry Bonds. A sports card image is a legitimate fair use if it is used only to illustrate the article (or an article section) whose topic is the card itself; see the Honus Wagner article.
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Tagging fair use image files

Labeling images as fair use can be done with the fair use copyright tags. If you have found a file that appears to be fair use, you can add a tag corresponding to the type of material to the image description page: Template:Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/Fair use

Please also add the source from which the image has been reproduced. Remember there is no "general rule" about fair use, each fair use must be explained and a rationale must be established for that specific use (in other words every page that uses the image will have a distinct rationale for using the image on that page even though fair use is claimed on the image page).

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Tagging for review

The following is currently a proposed addition to the review process examining the fair use of images. It is not official policy or guideline, but is a suggestion being discussed.

There are several tags that you can use in addition to the fair use tag to help for review purposes.

If you would like an image to be reviewed by another user as to whether or not it is fair use, you can add the tag Template:Tl to it, which will flag it for an informal review by other editors.

If you believe an image that is tagged as fair use is definitely not fair use, you can add Template:Tl to it, and it will be eventually nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images or Wikipedia:Copyright problems.

If you have reviewed a fair use image (whether it is tagged as Template:Tl or not) and are quite confident that the image does qualify as Fair Use on the listed pages, add {{reviewedfairuse|pages=[[names of pages]]|user=~~~|date=~~~~~}} to the page. Do not review an image for fair use in an article if you either uploaded the image or made the decision to include it in the article where it is being used.

The reviewer may choose to accept a reasonably presented rationale in good faith without necessarily agreeing with each point asserted, as long as it does not contain information that the reviewer believes to be incorrect or misleading. If incorrect or misleading information is removed, and the reviewer believes that the remaining information is sufficient to provide a reasonable fair use rationale, then the rationale should be accepted. If the reviewer considers that the rationale is incomplete or does not provide sufficient detail to make a determination, then the reviewer should consider that the criterion has not been met.

Reviewers are urged to consider that some discretion and personal judgement is required in assessing whether certain of these requirements are met, and in these cases may choose to assume good faith, unless there is reason to doubt. Other users may be invited to review or comment if a clear determination can not be made.

If the image is used in more than one article, it is preferable that individual articles are assessed individually with a separate template box used for each article reviewed, as future edits to a particular article may render fair use claims as void.

As the aim of this process is to improve Wikipedia, reviewers should, where possible, attempt to elevate the standard of the Fair Use of the image, by making any edits they consider appropriate, where possible. For example rewording an inadequately written Fair Use rationale, or deleting unnecessary information, is a far more constructive action than simply deeming that a criterion has not been met.

If you see an image tagged as fair use that would appear to be quite easy to replace with a free alternative, add Template:Tl to the image description page. The image will be added to Category:Fair use image replacement request so that others are aware of the problem and can create a replacement if possible. Large images that should be scaled down to qualify as fair use may be tagged with Template:Tl.

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Law

The Copyright Act of 1976 sets out four factors to consider when deciding if the copying of a copyrighted work is fair and allowable without the consent of the copyright holder (Template:UnitedStatesCode)

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of Fair Use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.[2]

There is also a substantial body of case law which can be consulted, and is useful for determining what some of the vague terms in these factors (such as "substantiality" and "purpose") have translated to previously in a court of law. Stanford University Libraries has put together a summary of some of the most relevant cases on the subject.

On Wikipedia, copyrighted, unlicenced material may be used under fair use if we firmly believe that the use would be judged to be fair if we were taken to court. Where possible, "free" material should be used instead of fair use material to avoid compromising the goal of a free encyclopedia and to avoid unnecessary legal exposures.

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Policy

Image:Yes check.svg The following section of this page is an official policy on Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Feel free to edit this section as needed, but please make sure that changes you make to this policy reflect consensus before you make them.

Template:Wikipedia:Fair use criteria

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Downstream use

The primary goal on Wikipedia is to create a free content ("free" as in "free speech") encyclopedia which can be used by downstream users. For this reason we do not accept images which are licensed exclusively for Wikipedia, or licensed exclusively for non-commercial usage (which is not "free enough"). The current policy towards fair use is a notable blurry area in regards to this, as there are many conceivable circumstances in which the use of copyrighted materials would be fair use on the English Wikipedia (run by a non-profit organization), which might not be in many other contexts (such as by a for-profit organization). Just because something is fair use on Wikipedia does not mean it is automatically fair use in any other context — content re-users must evaluate their own circumstances on an individual level. Furthermore, Wikipedia fair use standards are currently modeled around United States copyright laws, and though fair use/"fair dealing" laws exist in some other countries, they are often very different than those in the United States.

For reusers, particularly commercial reusers, the most important part of a fair use description is good information on the original source of the image. That is essential to allow them to make their own determination of whether their own use is fair use. They can't rely on our judgment because they have legal liability regardless of what we say. Identifying the original source is good practice in general, as it bolsters our claim that we are not trying to defraud the original copyright holder.

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Other Wikimedia projects

The above guidelines are specific to the English language edition of Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org. Other Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedias in other languages, may have different policies towards fair use.

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See also

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External links

fa:ویکی‌پدیا:استفاده منصفانه zh:Wikipedia:合理使用 uk:Wikipedia:Добропорядне користування pt:Wikipedia:Posição das wikipédias em relação ao fair use sr:Википедија:Поштена употреба

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