Commons talk:De minimis/Public scenes

Comments

File:Dali on the Rocky Steps.jpg (edit · last · history · watch · unwatch · global usage · logs · purge · w · search · links · DR · del · undel · Delinker log)

This image was recently deleted as being a copyvio of the Dali photograph displayed on the steps. An undeletion request has so far failed on the basis that the image was properly deleted in accordance with current policy.

The currently policy view was put to the WMF's Legal Counsel, Mike Godwin, by me, as follows:

• "There clearly is copyright in the Dali image, that image has been copied without the consent of the copyright holder by the photographer, the extent of copying is not de minimis, and there is no available "Freedom of panorama" under US law that allows copying of images in a public place".

Mike replied - surprisingly, at least to me:

• "No U.S. court would hold that this photographic image was a violation of the copyright interest in the original Dali image. There are multiple paths to this conclusion. It does not depend on "freedom of panorama" analysis".

He went on to say:

• "A better approach would be to list the cases in which photographs of public scenes that happened to include copyrighted images would held to be infringements. Then one would argue that the museum image is either similar to such cases or distinguishable from them. I haven't seen any such analysis, and I frankly doubt it can be advanced. (The converse position would effectively make all images of Times Square illegal, to name only one absurd result.) Whether admins are rational in risk assessment on this question is not anything I have control over. But one clearly rational response with regard to this image would be to leave it up and wait for a DMCA takedown notice (which I doubt would appear)."

Given the divergence between Mike's opinion and the policies we are working to, we have a problem. If we stick to existing policies, it is clear that this image should remain deleted. Alternatively, we could discuss whether we might be able to relax our policies to allow this and similar images. There are, it seems to me, two points where we are quite strict and where perhaps relaxing policy a little might bring us into closer alignment with Mike's view:

• 1. Relax the De minimis rules, noting that Mike characterises this as a photograph of a public scene that happened to include a copyrighted image. Mike does not explain though how "happened to include" can cover a photo that was taken specifically in order to include the Dali image.

• 2. Relax the precautionary principle, noting that Mike talks about "risk assessment". That perhaps implies (this is my interpretation) that our current approach of trying so far as we can (given that we are all volunteers) to be almost certain that the image is OK is too restrictive. To what extent can we host images that we suspect may be problematic, leaving it to the copyright owner to complain?

The difficulty is that Mike has said that he would prefer not to influence policy directly by contributing here, so we are on our own.

Comments are welcome. I would suggest that, to keep the topics together, we discuss both 1. and 2. here. I have posted a cross-link from Commons talk:Project scope.

I suggest that anyone who feels that existing policy should be relaxed in the light of Mike's view should propose some specific wording for discussion. If no specific change can be identified and agreed upon we should keep policy as it is and keep the image in question deleted. There would be little worse for future consistency than taking Mike's view as an ex Cathedra announcement which sets this image up as a special exception to our normal policies. To do that would be to invite this image to be used to undermine DR's for pretty well every outdoor photo which includes a copyright work: posters, billboards, outdoor TV screens and all. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

---

• Support relaxation of policies in like of WMF's Legal Counsel, Mike Godwin, statement. I also recommend that we get Mike involved in this discussion; perhaps he would like to propose the change in relevant wordings? I'd certainly like to hear his opinion on specific changes before we make them.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 18:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Piotrus. This isn't a vote about whether we should relax policy, but rather a forum for you to suggest specific wording. Just supporting relaxation is easy to say but does not help in devising the wording; that is the difficult part. Also, Mike has said that he will not be posting - see my comment above. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• 1. I oppose the relaxation of the De Minimis rule, as I cannot really follow Mike's argument. I may be missing something, but the first quotes statement seems to be the complete opposite of the second and third statement. What made him change his mind? Also, I don't think that this is De Minimis, because it does not happen to include the copyrighted Dalí image. This was taken at a specific time when a specific image was on display at this specific location and the photographer's aim was to capture the copyrighted image on display at the Dalí steps. The current COM:DM policy explains this quite well and has some example images. I'd formulate a general rule of thumb: If you can remove the copyrighted part without changing the actual character of the main image, the copyrighted parts are DM. If this applies to this image, I don't see why we would want to take the risk of hosting a possibly non-free image. We do have images of the museum without copyrighted imagery on the steps, so why not use those instead?

The first quote was from me, the second and third from Mike Godwin. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• 1. I oppose relaxing the precautionary principle. We have to be very careful about copyrights, because a) we are non-profit, meaning we can't just gather images and hope nobody will sue us and b) we claim to host freely licensed imagery. Now, many copyright owners will probably not object to their images being used for educational purposes, but image what happens when their images are used by third parties for TV ads, T-shirts, posters etc.. Copyright owners will pretty fast become aware of their image being available under a free license, which they didn't hand out. IANAL, so I don't know whether the WMF could be sued for damages, but it will certainly damage our reputation and the trust people have in us. We are one of very few image hosters allowing their content to be reused by anyone, so we should be pretty sure that images are free when we decide to host them.

• There would be little worse for future consistency than taking Mike's view as an ex Cathedra announcement which sets this image up as a special exception to our normal policies. To do that would be to invite this image to be used to undermine DR's for pretty well every outdoor photo which includes a copyright work: posters, billboards, outdoor TV screens and all. Please keep in mind that Mike is only a counsellor, meaning the community gets to make the decisions. If our policies don't allow the image or the community decides, that this image has an at best uncertain copyright status, then that is a basis for deletion, even if Mike says the image is fine. It's a pity Mike is not willing to participate actively on our discussion as people with insight copyright knowledge could really help a lot shaping policies in this project. While we don't have anyone of the like, we are stuck with our layman's opinions, of which I posted mine above. Best regards, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 19:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I have sympathy with this view, if only for practical reasons. Mike has not stated any legal basis for his comment, and without that it is difficult to extract any underlying rationale that could help us formulate a revised policy. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

• Support relaxation of policies following Mike Godwin's comments. To me, our current interpretation of the De Minimis rule is not consistent. As an example, in the image discussed, Dali's photo is not the main object of the image, therefore it is De Minimis. That's how we should interpret the rule. Yann (talk) 20:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support relaxation of policies following Mike Godwin's comments - no surprise. To me, our enforcement is rather draconian. I have less of a problem with the DM policy as I do the rigid manner in which it is enforced. I think the copyright paranoia that comes along with the COM:PRP is an issue. Let's just take a deep breath ... :-) Evrik (talk) 21:10, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
• I don't think we should change our de minimis policy; I find Mike's interpretation very unclear and prone to all kinds of personal interpretation and abuse. Well, I'm sure he has a very precise interpretation of de minimis, but if he's not willing to elaborate in this discussion, we're stuck guessing. The policy we have right now might be too rigid, but it has the merit of being perfectly clear: if copyrighted material makes the whole point of a picture, then de minimis does not apply. With Mike's "happened to include" rule, I fear we would have endless discussions about how "accidental" the inclusion was; if FOP doesn't apply, maybe the building just happened to be there, the billboard happened to be on the wall, etc.
  I'm more inclined to relaxing the precautionary principle, especially when I think about some historical documents, where authorship is sometimes hard to establish (even for historians); we tend to delete those saying "the author could very well not be anonymous and could have lived a hundred years", whereas the risk of the image being a copyvio (and even less likely, having someone sue us) is next to nothing. However, I'm not sure how we could implement this rule precisely, given the wide variety of cases that we encounter. --Tryphon (talk) 22:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
• Looking at the image, there is no way to reconcile Mike's interpretation with any reasonable generally-applicable rule. The image does not "happen to include" Dali's work; Dali's work is the central and sole focus of the image, taken from a straight-on angle, with limited creative contribution from the photographer or the environment. An image of Times Square, on the other hand, has no object of central focus. Per Mike's "risk assessment" remarks, Commons is free to adopt a policy that is more strict than necessary, with the occasional exception, and for de minimis considerations I believe that is prudent. I do not address the question of whether this particular image should be an exception to this rule, but I do think that in cases where WMF is explicitly willing to assume risk, it should generally be permitted to. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I think it's important to note this part of Godwin's quote, "But one clearly rational response with regard to this image would be to leave it up and wait for a DMCA takedown notice (which I doubt would appear)." I think that this is the crux of the argument - since the image is DM, we should wait for a takedown notice. Otherwise the image is fine. Evrik (talk) 23:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
    • This only makes sense in the very limited context of the Wikipedia website. We have to keep commercial reusers in mind, including those who would use it in print. Dcoetzee (talk) 08:52, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

 Comment Wikipedia has turned "fair use" into something it's not. Turn off those instinctive sirens going off in your head. Fair use is your friend. In reality, what we are trying to make de minims mean is simply a form of fair use (the amount of the protected material used and it's purpose ("accidental inclusion") - 17 U.S.C. §107). Some would say if you reuse a small enough part of a work, it's too insignificant to matter and therefore falls outside the scope of copyright law. Apparently, even one note of a song is not insignificant enough to be safe from copyright (Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films), so I don't think we can justifiably say what is or isn't covered. However, a policy like our version of de minims is not without merit. Except in this sense, it isn't an exception that places a use outside the jurisdiction of copyright, but is actually an exception defined within copyright law itself. And any exceptions given by that law are correctly referred to as "fair use". The thing is, fair use is so ingrained and so a part of copyright that it's almost impossible to separate them. You see, it's all about use.

Commons' policies have always extended above and beyond the law. Mike's response isn't surprising to me. It reflects the real world and real legal situations, not what some internet project has determined "free enough". Remember, we are not just trying to avoid lawsuits here, we are trying to ensure our images really are free for reusers. Intellectual property law is anything but a black-and-white issue. There's a huge gray area there that we try and avoid all together, whereas most of the world never worries about it. Just look at the rest of the web. Look at the lack of understanding by new uploaders who never encountered so much focus on licensing/copyright in their whole life. Flickr and MySpace and YouTube don't act like that. And they have no reason to.

It is not our responsibility to protect WMF from lawsuits. They have hired staff that would do that if there was any real danger of legal action. No, our responsibility is to the reusers of our content. Keep the policies, but let us make more of an effort to stay realistic and not get carried away with copyright paranoia. Let us not pretend we can reach any sort of definite conclusion on something that even our courts can't figure out. Rocket000(talk) 01:39, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree very much with "our responsibility is to the reusers of our content", and it's probably what Mike forgot about when he said one clearly rational response with regard to this image would be to leave it up and wait for a DMCA takedown notice. This attitude clearly protects WMF from a lawsuit, but what about someone who created derivatives of the image and sold them? Suddenly they would have to pay royalties, or stop selling copies? There are so many use for our images outside of wikipedia, and if lawsuits against usage on wikipedia are unlikely, lawsuits against commercial use are far more likely. –Tryphon^☂ 11:12, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

• (ec - this is basically the same thing as what Tryphon just wrote.) I'm sorry to say this, but I find Mike's comments extremely unhelpful. It's close to "there's something wrong with one of the policies; can you guess which policy and what the problem is?". I'll comment on the only sentence with specifics: the claim that waiting for a DMCA notice would clearly be a rational response. That might be the case if we were trying to build a repository of images for use on websites owned by the WMF, but Commons is much more than that. Maybe we could create a template warning that "this file isn't really free, but close enough, so we thought we'd keep it. If you reuse it and are sent a DMCA takedown notice, do what they say and pray they don't sue you". Pruneau^talk 11:39, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

• I tend to agree that the goal is not necessarily protecting the WMF, but rather upholding the "freeness", which is also part of our charter (fair use and similar sections like 17 U.S.C. §113(b) and (c) would in most cases exonerate the WMF anyways). That said... I do think we sometimes go too far. Photographs of copyrighted objects are always going to be contentious, and it is really hard to have a one-size-fits-all rule. I've always thought though, if the presence of a copyrighted object in a photo is fair use (sort of a fair-use-once-removed situation), then pretty much *any* use of the photo should also be OK, since the depiction of the object is still always "fair". Basically, I think situations where fair use is a complete defense are essentially the same thing as de minimis. The problems come when certain uses of those photos would not be OK (such as in some cases directly selling the photograph, or maybe a t-shirt with the photo on it)... those are probably not "free", but determining the difference is hard. One situation would be a lot of the recent cosplay photos -- in most or all cases, I think those should be allowed; it is hard to fathom a photograph of a costume would affect the potential market for other costumes. Other cases would be photos which include two-sentence descriptions of items in a museum display, or photos of historical markers -- while they include technically copyrightable text, they are depicting it in the manner intended to be seen, and I really can't see how such photographs are an issue in any context. On the other hand, photographs of public statues put on a t-shirt for sale have resulted in lawsuits, and also photographs directly of toys -- so I think we should still be careful of that type of photograph. The photo of the museum steps is in uncomfortable middle ground to me... I don't think it is really a problem with respect to the original photograph (since assumedly it was put on the steps with permission), but you might argue that the artist(s) who put the photo on the steps are creating a separate derivative work, and the photo could be infringing on their work if used in some situations. The reality is that it was likely done for publicity, and the chance of a lawsuit from the museum is near nil (they would probably like the extra publicity), but I'm not comfortable relying on that type of reasoning, if there are court precedents indicating that similar use of a different work is infringing. (BTW -- the photo is I think by Phillipe Halsman, from a 1954 book called Dali's Mustache, which was renewed in 1982). On the other hand, if it is a photo of the entire museum, and not just the steps... that may be OK. On the whole I think our existing policies are good and on-target, but perhaps we could take Mike's comments as a prod (and backing) to adjust our de minimis rule a bit with respect to otherwise-free photos of public scenes, as I think paranoia has run a bit too far in those situations. Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:05, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • One note on how hard some of this can be -- we have some policies which relies on the s:Ets-Hokin v. Skyy Spirits Inc. ruling, though apparently there was a 2000 case of SHL Imaging, Inc. v. Artisan House, Inc., which ruled in a completely different manner ("A photograph of Jeff Koons's ‘Puppy’ sculpture in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center merely depicts that sculpture; it does not recast, transform, or adapt Koons's sculptural authorship. In short, the authorship of the photographic work is entirely different and separate from the authorship of the sculpture"; though the photos in that case were of uncopyrightable objects). Just last year, there were a pair of conflicting court cases about a month apart, one which went with the Ets vs. Skyy reasoning (Schrock v. Learning Curve Intern., Inc.), and one which went the other way (Latimer v. Roaring Toyz, Inc.). William Patry argued that such photographs are not derivative works in blog postings related to those two rulings here and here, though he does argue (in the comments sections) that they still violate the reproductive right of the original artist, meaning his distinction is primarily academic and is meaningless for Commons. I don't propose changing anything based on these other rulings (unless the Supreme Court eventually gets an appeal of one of them), but it is in illustration on how controversial this area is even in decided cases. I would therefore be in favor of expanding de minimis arguments a bit, so as to keep closer to actual precedent in case law or statute, where it is much easier to explain such deletions ("yes, there was actually a court case..."). Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:05, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • This is an interesting argument - no one would blink if someone added a short quote from a book on a Commons image description page describing the subject, but such a quote does traditionally depend upon fair use. One component of fair use analysis is "effect upon value's work" and "purpose and character," which are both very context-dependent, but in many cases this is universally outweighed by "amount and substantiality" and "nature of the copied work" concerns. Should Commons accept these type of works? Dcoetzee (talk) 17:21, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Right -- often, the photograph is the "use", and so in many cases the "purpose and character" is also fixed for any use of that photograph (simply depicting how it appeared to the public). There are certainly works where photographs of them are considered part of the original works "value" (photographs of just statues in many cases), so the question is if the photograph itself can be considered a copyright infringement of the underlying work if used in certain ways. One of Mike's suggestions would be good -- create a list of court cases which have actually ruled that photographs of objects are in fact infringement of the underlying work, and try to keep deletions to similar situations without extrapolating too far. (Just as helpful would be cases where they were ruled to not be infringements.) For example, I did try to find some cases relating to photos of costumes, and I couldn't find anything remotely close -- there were cases of costume manufacturers being successfully sued (often more on trademark than copyright grounds, but some of both), but that is a completely different situation than a photo of a costume being worn. Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:21, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

 Comment If the policy is relaxed, the Dali image should be undeleted. Has a consensus been achieved that the policy should be relaxed? -- Avi (talk) 17:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Avi, no consensus achieved yet, if a consensus to change our policy is reached here that would have to be reflected in COM:DM. Finn Rindahl (talk) 19:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

 Comment I don't think the DM policy is wrong per se, it the Precautionary principal and how the DM policy is applied. Until the image is restored, I'd appreciate the discussion staying on the undeletion page. Evrik (talk) 18:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

This is not about this single image, but about an actual change of policy. The undeletion request has been closed because our current policy says it is a copyright violation. So now we have to discuss if we wish to relax our policy, and this is the right place to do so. If we change our policy in a way that would allow your image to stay, then it will get undeleted. –Tryphon^☂ 18:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

• The single image in question got the okay from the WMF GC. It *IS* acceptable under the current DM policy. The policy itself is fine, it's how it is being applied. It should be separate from this discussion. Evrik (talk) 18:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Evrik, you should know better. Mike Godwin in not in charge of policy here, nor of its interpretation. The community is. If you expect ex Cathedra statements of Mike Godwin immediately to override policy you misunderstand what Commons is all about. Policy is not going to be changed unless there is a consensus to do so, and that means a consensus of specifically how the existing wording should be re-written. Nobody so far has suggested how that might be done to accommodate Mike Godwin's view. It is perfectly clear that his view is inconsistent with policy, and this is not just about "how it is applied". --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
• The DM policy as it is written allows for the undeletion of the image. It is the current interpretation of those policies (precautionary principle,) that is the issue. That's why the "ex Cathedra" opinions were important. It is all about perspective and each users view of what is DM. This whole discussion of policy while important is differnt than the discussion of the image. That should have been settled. Evrik (talk) 02:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Have I missed something, or are we still missing a specific wording? Samulili (talk) 05:41, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Straw Poll What seems to be the problem?

I understand that this may replicate some of the work that has gone on above, but at the risk of being redundant, could we get a quick measure of where things stand now? -- Avi (talk) 23:37, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

• I support the DM standard as it is. It's how it's applied (the precautionary principle) that is the problem. I don't think this is the right question. Evrik (talk) 02:01, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Maybe that is part of the issue. Does everyone here agree on what the crux of the matter is, or are we all missing each others points? -- Avi (talk) 02:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Who knows. Paralysis by analysis. Evrik (talk) 13:59, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
      • Update, anyone? -- Avi (talk) 03:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
• Well, to try to restart the conversation, the root issue here is that this image got deleted, but Mike Godwin says it's okay and shouldn't be deleted. Here are a few possible positions people might take:
  1. The image should not be on Commons, as it fails to comply with our strict guidelines, which are designed to facilitate commercial reuse. It may be uploaded to local Wikipedias if the local communities choose to do so.
  2. The image should remain on Commons and the de minimis policy should be amended to permit images of this type in the future; the risk to downstream commercial reuse is believed to be small. (Question: what changes are needed?)
  3. The image should remain on Commons and the de minimis policy should remain the same, but we should be more generous and less cautious in our interpretation of it. (Question: how should this principle of interpretation be codified?)
  4. The image should remain on Commons as a singular exception, and any similar cases in the future will require explicit legal approval from Mike to be retained.
• Any thoughts on these possible options? Dcoetzee (talk) 05:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I would immediately oppose #3 and #4; #3 because of the potential for a "slippery slope" slide into outright violations (boundary creep) and #4 because we should not have to be running for specific legal advice all the time. The upshot of the discussion, as I understood it, was that the image is not a copyright violation, but is not in accord with the current de minimis guideline. So the result should be either #1 or #2--we adjust our collective guideline (NOT the strictness of our interpretations of that guideline) or we do not undelete the image. -- Avi (talk) 06:21, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

• I'm going to say that Avi is wrong on this one ... the DM policy states, "Where a technical violation is so trivial that the law will not impose legal consequences" and I think that's what at the heart of this issue. It's not the policy, but its application. I agree with thought #3. Evrik (talk) 13:55, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I think you may be the only person contributing here who believes that Mike's comment is consistent with our written policy. I'm with Avi here. Option #2 would be great but after a very long discussion nobody has the slightest idea how our policy wording could be changed to make it consistent with a statement that appears almost to be diametrically opposed. So the only possibility is #1. We keep the policy as it is and accept that Mike's comment cannot be incorporated into our existing framework. That's fine; Mike does not determine Commons' policy, and he is very careful in being seen not to do so. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:59, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

• What kind of logic do you use? The policy may be correct, but its the interpreation is wrong. Obviously, the interpretation policy is out of line with reality. Instead of acknowledging this, you keep on saying that the policy is right and that's it. The whole argument of the slippery slope twists the discussion about 'policy'. Evrik (talk) 01:38, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Although I wasn't initially, I'm increasingly leaning towards #1 myself. No one, myself included, can seem to imagine and verbalize a policy change (whether to the DM policy itself or to our principles of interpretation) that would permit this image, without causing the policy to lose its force entirely. Keep in mind the reason that Commons is so conservative in the first place: any image permitted on Commons is permitted on all projects. Would every or even most local Wikipedia communities agree that they want this image to be permissible in their articles? If not, then we must delegate to them. If there's a project with no local uploads that disagrees, they do have the option to turn on local uploads (perhaps only for admins). Dcoetzee (talk) 06:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• Let me quote again:

No U.S. court would hold that this photographic image was a violation of the copyright interest in the original Dali image. There are multiple paths to this conclusion. It does not depend on "freedom of panorama" analysis".

What more need be said. This is not in conflict with our policies. Evrik (talk) 02:22, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Reading the decision in this case, which goes into aspects of de minimis and fair use in-depth, I don't think it falls within the realm of de minimis. However, if Mike Godwin is correct, then it probably implies a sort of fair use where the use is fixed by the otherwise-free photograph and therefore is a complete defense (much like parody, which also does not fall under de minimis), and if so we should keep those (provided the photo itself is licensed appropriately). I'm not sure we have a specific policy page on that though. This photo is certainly quite "transformative" of the original photograph, and it certainly seems a bit much to imply that any photo of the museum while those steps were in place becomes controlled by Halsman, but the question remains if there is any possible use of the photo (other than cropping it so to remove all context) which could be considered infringing of Halsman's photograph. I haven't found a court case which really relates, but if Mike Godwin thinks that this photo would be OK under all circumstances (and not just because it is being used in an educational context on Wikipedia), then that opens up an option 5 -- photos where fair use is a complete defense are OK. The normal "no fair use" policy is for unambiguously copyrighted images which are needed to illustrate wikipedia articles; this is a bit different situation. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

That's well-said. I think this may be the route to go - this is the policy I would propose:

Fair use images on Commons: As a rule of thumb, Commons does not permit non-free images that are only available under the doctrine of fair use. The reason is that fair use analysis depends on context, and our images must be usable in many different contexts. However, in some limited cases fair use may be a complete defense for an image, in the sense that it applies regardless of the context in which that image appears; for example, this may be the case if the extent of the work borrowed is so small that it overrides other concerns. In such cases the image is permitted and may be tagged as {{Context free fair use}}.

What do you think? Dcoetzee (talk) 21:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, that is tantamount to free-use—fair-use everywhere. We may need to have this brought to the greater commons community, but that makes sense. -- Avi (talk) 04:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• This conversation has run its course. In the end, the consensus about policy ... I can't speak to that, however, the Dali image is within our policies. It should be restored. Evrik (talk) 17:24, 5 August 2009 (UTC)