Help:Fair Use
| Sensible Section |
You might ask "hey, why are Wikipedia so harsh on use of images randomly found from the Internet?" Well, that's because most of them have copyrights attached and the Wikipedes reckon there's no place for them in an online encyclopedia. Illogicopedia begs to differ, with most images covered under fair use. This is a section of US copyright law, similar to 'Fair Dealings' in the UK, which allows use of copyrighted images for certain purposes.
So, how do we get away with it then?[edit source]
According to Wikipedia:
- Although a parody can be considered a derivative work under United States Copyright Law, and thus within the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, it may qualify for the "fair use" exception to the exclusive rights, which is codified at 107. Parodic works are not automatically fair use of the material parodied, however. The Supreme Court of the United States stated that parody "is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works." That commentary function provides some justification for use of the older work; in contrast, a satire (which is not targeted at the work borrowed from) does not require use of the original work to make its point.
In other words, you can copy-edit images and use most images freely under the parody bit. Yahoo!
In addition, you can also use stuff such as CD/DVD covers, film posters etc. as long as you are commenting/reviewing that item. On Illogicopedia, use of this is pretty rare as the parody/satire part usually covers things, but worth mentioning anyway.