A conceptually similar paper by another MIT economist looked at how the IP protection afforded to different genes at the time of sequencing affected follow-on research. Genens that were immediately in the public domain stimulated about about 20-30% more research/product development than comparable Celera-sequence genes that had IP protection. The paper is here: http://economics.mit.edu/files/6803
Another source of imbalance here is countries being stingy with their government-created works. You end up with a larger percentage of Wikipedia articles, and therefore also anything that draws from Wikipedia as a source, being illustrated by US-government-sourced photos than should otherwise be the case, since U.S. federal govt works are public domain. It's slowly changing in a few cases, though, with initiatives like: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv
It is an obvious foregone conclusion that a copyrighted image is going to be used less than one that is in the public domain.
Given the administrative hassles of getting a permission, not to mention having to make royalties payments, all ensure that this is the case. Surely, to stop people using the image or whatever is the very purpose of copyright in the first place?
Where is the utility and novelty in 'research' like this?
What's more, you can't fairly assess the full effect unless you account for the usable content that exists out there and would not exist but for copyright laws.
I know it's popular on sites like this one to act like copyright laws are strictly bad, that no work's creation ever depends on IP laws, etc., but an honest assessment would be that some works require IP to exist, while some do not.
So, after creation, copyright hurts Wikipedia's ability to incorporate a work, while some works would not exist but for copyright. Which effect is more significant, and is that a net positive or negative for Wikipedia?
You cannot say "but it's obvious" on a court a law when there's a lawyer in the other side being payed to to point you're wrong. I'm pretty sure the MAFIAA lobbyists will try to make a compelling case why it isn't obvious. So this might become useful when there's an IP reform bill circulating around.
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In most European countries the origins of copyright law lie in the efforts of government to regulate and control the output of printers [...] printing made it possible to have as many exact copies of a work as there were persons who wanted and could afford to buy them. This meant much more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information. While the state and church thought this was to be encouraged in many aspects [...], it also meant that undesirable content -- dissent and criticism of government and established religion, for example -- could circulate too quickly for their comfort. So, all over Europe, government established controls over printing, by requiring printers to have official licenses to be in business and produce books. These licenses typically gave the printer the exclusive right to print particular works for a fixed period of years, enabling him to prevent others from doing so during that period.
"""
This incarnation of copyright is pretty directly prohibited by the 1A's guarantee of freedom "of the press", but there seems to be agreement that that's what copyright was about when it was established.
"a copyrighted image is going to be used less than one that is in the public domain"
That wasn't the conclusion.
The conclusion was that images are worth more, in terms of updates and visits, to Wikipedia articles than text.
This is still a conclusion that will doubtless have its share of people calling it obvious, but it's one I haven't seen quantified like this before. And in the case of baseball players in particular, in theory an image doesn't add nearly as much as their stats and team/championship information.
This isn't about copyright, really. Wikipedia has a faction that dislikes fair-use non-free images. This faction is largely political in nature. It's not about the actual laws.
It is about the laws. Fair use is a very restrictive use for copyrighted images - you can only use the if you transform them significantly in some way, reduce the image quality so that you don't reduce the value for the original owner, or use the in a not for profit medium as fair use tends to be more friendly to this sort of thing.
None of these things are really viable for Wikipedia. Fair use is a necessary evil, but when they can replaced with a free image then that is what is done!
And in the US, fair use is an affirmative defense, with the burden of proof on the defendent. It can't keep you from getting sued in the same way a completely free image would.
The problem is when images are replaced with nothing or with far inferior images. I agree that free should be prioritized when the two images are in the same ballpark of quality.
It is indeed a problem, however the project has as one of it's five pillars that it is free content that anyone can access, use, modify or distribute.
This means that if the image is restricted in such a way that others can't modify or distribute it, then it can't be used. Fair use is a legal doctrine that limits the rights of copyright holders, but it is very narrow.
Essentially, to be "fair use", the usage must consider the purpose of the work, the nature of the work, the amount used and the effect using the work has on the market for the work.
In essence, while fair use allows for free distribution, it also severely limits it. Fair use is thus controversial on Wikipedia, and while allowed is severely frowned upon.
As I stated before, one of the primary tenets of Wikipedia is that it is "free content that anyone can access, use, modify or distribute."
If you can't modify something that is part of the project, then this is defying the essential raison de être of the project. Fair use allows it, but it's so problematic that many would just like to get rid of it. I'm not one of those people, but it should only be used judiciously.
> Wikipedia has a faction that dislikes fair-use non-free images.
... because Wikipedia can be sued for using them, and fair use is a very, very bad thing to try and rely on in an actual court. 'Fair use' is whatever a judge says it is, which isn't something you can rely on going your way.
"But Nagaraj found was that the availability of public domain material dramatically improved the article's images. Before the digitization, players from between '44 and '64 had an average of .183 pictures on their articles. The '64 to '84 group had about .158 pictures. But after digitization, those numbers dramatically changed: there were 1.15 pictures on each of the older group's articles -- but only .667 in the new group. More recent players, covered by privately-owned parts of Baseball Digest, had half as many images on their pages as did old-timers."
So for one specific example where there was one data source partially copywritten, the open content was used and the copywritten information wasn't. Thus, sweeping conclusion about copyright law.
