I have a question about licenses in the wiki

[ratcreature]

On the Fanlore:Copyright page it says "Fanlore's position is that the reproduction of zine covers and other fannish artwork falls constitutes a fair use under U.S. copyright law. Artists should be credited (in accordance with any privacy concerns)." -- so I gather if someone else say uploaded a copy of some fanart I posted online to illustrate something, Fanlore doesn't claim the uploaded artwork is theirs even though it is in the Wiki, and others couldn't take it under the "Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license" that the wiki content is released under, the wiki just uses it.

But if I uploaded a copy of my own art to illustrate something (let's say it was even completely original, to not complicate it with the fanart aspect, like say I wanted to illustrate the "drawble" article, I could pick one that doesn't show characters I don't own), that would count as my original work, and be like text I contribute to the wiki, right? So my art, because I uploaded it myself as my original work, would then be automatically released to everyone under the wiki's CC license. Did I understand that right?

Comments

[ratcreature]

Well, I can see the point if it makes really a difference to the license whether you published the artwork somewhere else (like in your LJ) before, obviously most that would be included would have been published in some fannish medium before. But IMO the impulse to use your own art to illustrate something is about as likely as it is for fic writers to mention their own fic when it fits an article, only with art you have then a copy of it in the wiki, because it's not like you'd upload the right hand corner of your picture like you would quote a fic or a meta essay.

I mean, if I was editing say the article about "crack" as a genre and notice that it doesn't have any pictures, and thought maybe having an image in that article would be niche, uploading my SGA/Watership Down fusion with them as rabbits would fit there, and okay maybe it would be tacky mention your own stuff and people would rather look for the most "famous" example for an image, but it is not that far fetched that an artist might put their art in an article sometimes.

And if that was then available under a CC license, that would make a difference. Of course it's non-commercial and non-exclusive and so on, but I intentionally do not post my art under a CC license.

[(Anonymous)]

I am not a copyright lawyer, but I don't see how the creator of the work would necessarily be treated any differently when it came to uploading previously-published works. There are really 3 cases under consideration here:

1) Person A uploads PublishedImage created by Person B that constitutes Fair Use.
2) Person B uploads PublishedImage created by Person B that constitutes Fair Use.
3) Person B uploads unpublished artwork created by Person B - constitutes original work that presumably would fall under the CC license.

I think this is actually a really tricky issue - it's the reason tha Wikipedia eventually disallowed all fair-use claims and said everything had to be either original or CC.