File talk:Newspapers.jpg

This image was nominated at Wikipedia:Files for discussion on 2007 May 13. The result of the discussion was keep.

There may be a copyright problem with the image. It is probably considered a derivative work of the copyrighted Haaretz logo, which means you cannot release all of the rights. So we would need to add Template:logo or something similar. The photo is really nice, BTW. nadav 07:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Nadav. My son added a logo tag (I don't know how to do stuff like that...)

--Gilabrand 07:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

With your permission, I am adding text to explain the copyright status. If you have any questions at all in the future, I would be glad to answer them on my talk page. nadav 08:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You can't copyright a logo. You can trademark a logo. You are talking nonsense. jbolden1517^Talk 04:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I was loosely using "copyright" to refer to intellectual property in general, which includes trademarks. And I find your comment uncivil. nadav 04:11, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

To quote you above, "It is probably considered a derivative work of the copyrighted Haaretz logo" You weren't speaking loosely you were just dead wrong. There is no such thing as a derivative work of a logo. jbolden1517^Talk 04:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

jbolden, it looks like we've started this discussion on the wrong foot. I didn't mean to sound adversarial in any way. So let's discuss the status of this image in a friendly way. I believe that in addition to the copyleft licenses, there should also be some sort of tag that indicates that the important component of the picture, namely the two Haaretz mastheads, is non-free and is being used without explicit permission (as fair use for identification purposes in the article Haaretz). I thought the template:logo tag does this well. May I ask what it is that you object to? Best, nadav 04:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC) The guideline Wikipedia:Logos may be useful here. nadav 04:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem is you are confusing copyright law with trademark law. Concepts like "derived work" are parts of copyright law. As are concepts like "fair use". My statement about the legal status of those pictures is (excluding the issue of the photograph on the front of the israeli newspaper, and assuming you are correct that there is a trademark here):

• Copyright to that image is held exclusively and in an unencumbered way by Gila Brand.
• Gila Brand has legally licensed wikipedia to redistribute those images under the terms of the GFDL and that license is valid and unencumbered in any way.
• In particular this means there is no fair use claim at all. It isn't needed because the copyright holder has granted explicit permission which overrides (and in fact may even invalidate) a fair use claim.
• The image may contain a trademark. Misuse of a trademark could subject a person to liability under trademark law.

Now my objection is

• The situation above is an entirely different situation then using a copyrighted logo as in and of itself under fair usage guidelines. There, the issue is that the content (the logo) with respect to the type of article falls under fair use. That is the discussion is about copyright law and how because the subject of the copyrighted image is a corporate logo fair usage claims can be made stronger. Those statements wouldn't apply in this case because the logos (if they are logos) are only incidentally in the copyrighted work.

In effect you are saying something like , This left turn into a yellow light is presumed to be allowed because I legally own the radio in my car. A person making that statement is simply confusing traffic law with property law. jbolden1517^Talk 12:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I am surprised that you are so adament and sure of yourself without being a lawyer. Let us stipulate for this discussion (even though I am not 100% sure about this) that the Haaretz nameplate is not copyrightable. However, it obviously is a trademark/trade dress. Fair use applies to trade marks as well, according to the trademark article. As you say, misuse of a trademark is also a problem. The issue here is just intellectual property rights in general, and your distinction between trademark and copyright is not relevant (moreover, I have removed the mention of derivative work from the image description and there is no mention of copyright there). Furthermore, the {{non-free logo}} template as well as Wikipedia:Logos guideline specifically say that they apply to works that are trademarked and/or copyright.nadav 18:31, 12 May 2007 (UTC)The analogyabout a car radio insults my intelligence.

I suggest you look at Fair use (US trademark law) which is what the trademark article refers to. Fair use for trademarks is entirely different than for copyright materials. Its like which vs. witch. As for intellectual property, there is no such thing as "intellectual property law" that's an abstraction like "state laws". There are laws for Pennsylvania, laws for New York, laws for California there are no group of laws called "state laws" that exist themselves. You can't cite "state laws" you have to cite a particular state's laws. Finally the image contains a logo in a natural setting which as it was placed by the trademark holder. That's a defense to most trademark violations. Moreover the use of the trademark is consistent with the owner's (Haaretz's) intent. If there is a violation then cite the violation. Finally, you are feeling insulted because you keep trying to argue something you simply don't know anything about. You are saying stupid things because for some reason you can't just admit you were wrong about the legal status of the image and move on. If you want to play lawyer, start reading the articles like Copyright follow the links and learn what you are talking about. jbolden1517^Talk 18:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

For more on trademark fair use, see and Fair use (US trademark law).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nadav1 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC).

And now I see that you have removed any semblance of a fair use rationale, which is definitely not ok according to Wikipedia policy!nadav 18:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I continue to be baffled by the opinion that an image that prominently displays two trademarks is free. The current free content licenses allow the image to be used for any purpose including commercial uses! Thus if it were really free, I could take this image and use it as the banner of my for-profit newspaper and face no risk of prosecution from Haaretz. But this would be an obvious breach of trademark law, since use of a trademark should "not suggest sponsorship or association with the trademark owner's product or services and therefore is not being used in a manner to confuse the reader."

The Wikipedia:Logos page specifically discusses the use of logos: "However, unlike people, where it is often possible to take a free photograph of that person, logos are typically protected by copyright and/or trademark." Obviously, the Haaretz nameplate is a logo: it has a distinctive logotype that is closely associated with the paper. It is also used as such on the paper's English and Hebrew sites. The image at hand is in fact being used on the article page in order to illustrate the Haaretz trade dress. How could it possibly be called a free image? nadav 03:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

You are continuing to confuse copyright law and trademark law. If you used the letters in "zeta heard" and rearrange them the right way you can violate Haaretz trademark. That doesn't mean that Haaretz owns the trademark on "zeta heard". You could use that image as the banner on your newspaper without violating copyright law. You would however be violating trademark law. Its your constant refusal to realize that these two aspects of the law are different that makes this confusing. There is no trademark fair usage because Gila isn't the one who put the Haaretz trademark on those newspapers, Haaretz did. Thus she never took an action which requires fair usage. jbolden1517^Talk 03:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not talking about copyrights at all. I am only talking about trademarks. Use of the free license implies that the image can be used for any commercial purpose with out encumbrance. It obviously cannot, since doing so would violate trademark fair use since the image prominently incorporates a trademark. (In certain cases, logos can be incorporated into a GFDL image, namely when any use of the image would unquestionably be fair use, e.g. if the image is a parody. However the potential use I gave above shows that it could in fact be confused as being related to Haaretz.) Your statement "There is no trademark fair usage because Gila isn't the one who put the Haaretz trademark on those newspapers, Haaretz did" does not make sense: They are free to put their trademark on their products, but that doesn't mean I can do whatever I want with their trademark. The "zeta heard" aside is totally irrelavent since in the image we are discussing, the complete Haaretz nameplate is prominently shown without modification to it. nadav 03:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

OK good I'm glad we are now to only one type of law. The GFDL applies to copyright not trademark. I can create my own original version of IBM's logo and release it under the GFDL. It is a GFDL image, that is there are no copyright restrictions on its use what-so-ever. . Anyone who used it however would still be subject to trademark law. IBM owns the trademark, on 'my image but not the copyright. That is if I you misused the image they could sue you under trademark law (since its their trademark) but not under copyright (since its my copyright). Tell me if you agree to that point. jbolden1517^Talk 04:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The analogy you give now is excellent. It is exactly what we are debating. The answer to your question is Wikipedia:Logos, which calls for the use of a tag. The IBM logo is located at Image:IBM logo.png. It has a {{logo}} tag. That's all I'm talking about. nadav 04:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Good glad we are agreeing. The problem with Image:IBM logo.png is that's its a derived work, that is it is fair usage. In my example the IBM logo was an original. I'll get to wikipedia logos in a second. But I'm still trying to get you to agree that my logo is GFDL clean under copyright, that is there is no copyright issue for my IBM logo. Then we'll about wikipedia tags and trademark.... jbolden1517^Talk 04:38, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we're starting to understand each other more clearly now. Concerning the GFDL, my current understanding of it (and of course it's possible I'm wrong) is that in order to license something using the GFDL copyright license, it must be free from all obstacles to any type of commercial use, including obstacles stemming from trademark law. I suggest though, that since neither of us are lawyers, we should base our discussion on the wikipedia policies (which could be stronger than the law requires perhaps). The IBM logo used on Wikipedia looks like a correct application of your analogy, since it is based on an SVG type graphic which probably indicates it was drawn especially for Wikipedia. In any case, let's not use just one example as a precedent. I suggest we proceed to discussing how Wikipedia:logos relates to your analogy and the image at hand. nadav 05:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Concerning the GFDL, my current understanding of it (and of course it's possible I'm wrong) is that in order to license something using the GFDL copyright license, it must be free from all obstacles to any type of commercial use, including obstacles stemming from trademark law. Good we have found the point of disagreement. That is precisely the point I am declaring to be incorrect. A good example is RedHat's Enterprise Linux. Most of the software is released under the GPL. However it contains RedHat trademark materials. Moreover, inside the distribution permission is refused for the trademark to be applied to the software in the distribution. This means that someone distributing the software needs to remove lots of little occurrences of RedHat logos, the name.... Incidentally the GPL3 is designed specifically not to allow this kind of game with respect to patents. They have to do this because it is allowed. Going back to my IBM analogy... The letters I,B,M in order are too short to be copyrightable. That means they are PD from a copyright standpoint. You could do whatever you want with them, like sell books with those 3 letters on them, and IBM could never touch you for a copyright violation. As for Wikipeida policy, I'm going slowly here so that we establish each point of law and policy as we go. Remember my contention that you are failing to understand the policies because you mixing copyright with trademark. Check out what I'm saying above and then tell me if you agree that this image is unencumbered GFDL with respect to copyright. Then I can move on to trademark status. jbolden1517^Talk 10:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

1)I don't know much about the Red Hat distribution, so I can neither agree nor disagree with anything you deduce based on it. 2)Did I say that the IBM logo is copyrightable? No I didn't. You introduced the idea that the logo used on Wikipedia is a derived work. I don't know what you meant by that exactly. All I did was point out that it has a {{logo}} tag. There is a chance perhaps that the logo passes the threshold of originality for copyright, but sure, if you insist let's stipulate that it is only a trademark. 3) I am trying to base my arguments on the wikipedia guideline. I think that is more helpful, since we are on wikipedia and not in a court of law, and I am not qualified to make legal judgements about the GFDL license. All I know is that trademarks on Wikipedia should carry the {{logo}} tag. nadav 21:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Resolved

This discussion has been rendered moot, since DHowell has now placed a very good tag on the image page, which I think is even more appropriate than {{logo}}. I don't know why Wikipedia:Logos doesn't mention it. Also, I've found an earlier discussion that addresses my points. Apparently, my objections are all already explicitly taken care of by Wikipedia:General disclaimer#Trademarks. I suggest we work together to propose an emendment to Wikipedia:Logos to prevent these questions from arising again in the future. Cheers, nadav 22:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)