Forum:TV Comic & other periodical issues
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.
Opening post
Right, so a while ago, another user on this site went through various issues of TV Comic which featured Doctor Who-related content, and made pages for them. Admin CzechOut later decided that they didn't deserve pages due to not being released under the Doctor Who brand, and deleted the pages, redirecting them to a list of covers. Additionally, said list of covers only features the very top banners of these issues, with the article claiming that "Because of the lack of a need of Popeye content on this wiki, these galleries will mainly function to cover the top banner of the issue.". Personally, I quite strongly disagree. First off, in terms of a "lack of a need of Popeye content on this wiki"... we now have an overview for Popeye. And secondly, the full covers would allow the issues to be more easily identifiable (and be more in line with how issues of other periodicals are covered).
Additionally, the idea that the covers couldn't be featured on the site would also suggest that all non-Doctor Who-branded periodicals from TV Century 21 to BeanoMAX couldn't be properly illustrated either, at least for specific issues (although these do often advertise the DW content on their covers... but so does TV Comic!). Although the decision that TVC's issues couldn't have pages wasn't the result of a forum decision, I feel that a forum thread would allow this issue to be resolved if consensus is reached, as a single individual's choice generally cannot override forum consensus.
So, tl;dr, my proposal is as follows: any issue of a periodical which features licensed DWU content should be given a page, with its full cover shown (this may also apply to documentary-esque periodicals which could be useful for behind-the-scenes citation, but that's a separate issue). So, what are people's thoughts on this? Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 15:31, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
Wholeheartedly agree with this opening post. Something a single admin decided years ago in a lost part of the Wiki without any input from other users, which not only doesn't hold up to current practise and, frankly, is therefore completely unenforceable under T:LOCAL RULES... we absolutely should official overturn this bizarre decision. Of course we should have pages on individual issues of magazines that contain DWU content; it's a step away from redirecting any anthology without DWU branding to the overall series page.
15:41, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- Completely agree with everything here, we should totally have pages for individual issues of stuff featuring DWU content. Aquanafrahudy 📢 15:46, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- It has always been my opinion that we should have pages on select issues not because they're DW material, but for pure navigational purposes. I, for instance, have recently bought a bunch of old issues of Marvel reprint publications. Because the wiki rarely has pages on these, I've often been forced to use the Marvel comic wiki. It's terrible. I hate the layout, I hate the search ability. I don't want to force our readers to use worse sites or even sites that don't exist (there is no TV Comic wiki).
- I will also explain, for those interested in being able to revisit historical debates, that the discussion I had with Czech happened in the defunct wiki chat window. Thusly, there is no historical debate to revisit. At the time I asked that we have a forum discussion before he delete everything but he insisted that there was no point as he was simply correct and it would be a waste of my time.
- I do think there is some kind of middle ground here. It is fair, in my opinion, that an editor on the Doctor Who Magazine has more of a right to have a full page on our website than the editor of BeanoMax issue one. So I think it's logical that we cover DWM more in the vein of "every collaborator to this publication deserves a page unless they don't want one", but that we still have navigational pages documenting reprint history and the like, otherwise the entire point of having reprint information documented in infoboxes is moot.
- I will say that the TV Comic banner thing was my choice. I was very weary about uploading full pages of comics to the wiki, due to the fair use argument, and thus I chose to crop the issues. I don't truly care much if we keep this choice, but I always felt the most important part was always the banner. OS25🤙☎️ 16:02, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- Gonna surprise everyone and agree with OS25 twice over. I'm not thrilled with Czech unilaterally dictating policy, I think this is a fundamental mistake, and I think the fair use argument for portraying an entire comic strip is probably quite weak. The first row of the strip might be sufficient for identification purposes, or perhaps the entire thing with a blur attached below the banner. I dunno off hand. But the full comic is probably not the way to go. Najawin ☎ 16:35, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- To be honest I doubt any copyright issues will arise over a cover-that-contains-a-comic from fifty years ago, especially as these covers are elsewhere on the internet and the people hosting them don't have issues. If we, in the unlikely situation where the copyright holders did object, blurring/redacting out parts of the cover would be my preference over cropping covers. 16:42, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- (Edit conflict)
- Huh, I hadn't realised entire comics were shown on the cover (I'd assumed the cover story somehow continued inside). I mean, really it's their fault for putting an entire comic on the front cover of their magazine - just walking through a store at the time, you'd probably see the entire comic clearly on display. I'd personally still prefer to have the whole thing, but if people think that would run too large a risk, I guess some kind of compromise could work... Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 16:44, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Do I think they care? No. Do I think that we should be wary of this given both ToU and the fact that if they suddenly do decide they care I'm pretty sure we instantly fail three of the four factors of fair use? (I think harm to market would be hard to show.) Yes. Najawin ☎ 17:17, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think we should play it safe in regard to the covers. Beyond that, I agree with what everyone else has already said, it was wrong for Czech to make a decision like that all on their own. These magazine issues should get pages. Time God Eon ☎ 01:02, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- As regards the full-comic-on-the-first-page issue, may I suggest that we simply upload at a low enough resolution that the comic isn't legible? That's how I've known a number of online resources to do it — the INDUCKS database of Disney comics, for example, gives a thumbnail of the first page of any given comic (including one-pagers), but the page as a whole is too small to make out any dialogue, while a single panel is extracted in higher resolution as a fair-use preview. See here, for example. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:26, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- Well, we could do both. The low-res full covers in the infobox on the issue pages, and the high-res cropped banners at TV Comic/Gallery, for example? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:48, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
- The 4 factor test is not a thing with fair dealing in the UK (as far as I'm aware as a non-lawyer), but I've looked it up and, assuming what I've read is correct, I don't think many of our images can be considered fair use. Fandom is a commercial site with ads so we fail the first factor. A large number of images on our site are from "imaginative or highly creative" works (e.g. works of fiction) so we frequently fail the second factor. Factor 3 seems a little more nuanced to me: with regard to screenshots and the like, we are only using a small portion of the full work. When we upload full standalone illustrations and promotional pictures, not so much. Factor 4 is also a little more nuanced. I don't think our use of many images is transformative, but some of them are from works long "out of print or otherwise unavailable", so this also depends. In summary, I don't really feel that we follow fair use anyway right now. Where we want to proceed from this, I don't know, but I'm not sure we want to delete a large quantity of our images. I do think that we should stop, or at least reduce the extent to which are, claiming that the images we upload are being used under fair use in any case. Bongo50 ☎ 20:07, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
As far as the first is concerned we have a leg to stand on here collecting data for archival purposes, even if it's commercial, is somewhat transformative. There's case law where if you collect too much it stops being fair use. Which is where my concern of screenshot of a tv show vs full comic comes into play. (See the comment about the Harry Potter encyclopedia here: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/) But we don't immediately fail the first prong site-wide. The second is one we definitely have issues with often, yes. Factor 3 depends on the nature of the work we're considering a page for. A tv show? We're good. A single page comic or promotional image? We need to be very careful here. (But, I note, that for Factor 3 promotional images mean that Factor 2 is less of an issue for us.) And Factor 4 is something that is very case by case as well. Let's be very clear that out of print works only weakly support fair use. (If it's an orphaned work, I suspect that you're unlikely to run into any problems. But that's not at all the same thing.) There's case law that says potential markets count. If a copyright holder wanted to say that they were contemplating reprinting these things (or selling them digitally!), but market harm was generated by someone who uploaded out of print comics, those people would be on the hook. Showing the entire thing clearly is far more damaging to that potential market than showing the first panel, or a blurry outline. So site-wide it's blurry on 3, usually a fail on 1. For the comics, it's an instant fail on 3, blurry on 1. Najawin ☎ 21:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
- Realistically, if we were really considering fair use as our first and only criteria, we would only allow VHS screengrabs with noticeable quality issues. This is what Wikipedia does, with the argument being that a lower source of material proves that the use is not serving as a replacement. We have historically gone against this - actually banning VHS recordings of some sources. There has always been an expectation of our website existing as a fan project which relies on the unspoken good graces of groups like the BBC.
- Second of all, I hate to posit myself as an expert on fair use. But in this case I likely have the most experience out of everyone here. The simple fact is that there is no consistent measure for how much tenants of fair use you have to accommodate for before it becomes justified. Something can fail 3 "factors" and still be fair use. That's just how it works.
- Responding to Bongo's point, I think it's fair that we consider this wiki an American website considering that's what we've done when tackling other laws. (I can't remember the issue, but there's basically a law about websites based on children's properties, and our stance is that as Doctor Who is not for kids in America, we are not applicable to this).
- But I will, for the sake of clarity, go through the three main pillars:
- Factor 1: The Purpose and Character of the Use: This is simply how we are using the copyrighted content and if we serve to make a profit. In this case, we are attempting to upload the cover pages from these issues essentially for the means of preserving a process of navigating the contents of the individual issues in question. We make no profit from presenting these images, and indeed we are effectively providing a tool for those interested in buying these back issues.
- Factor 2: The Nature of the Copyrighted Work: So hot take, but this one pretty much only exists in cases where the copyrighted source is a newsreel or the like. If I make a documentary about Michael Jackson, I can show a compilation of anchors announcing Jackson's death because of factor 2. In very few other cases does factor 2 actually serve a purpose to deciding fair use, which is also why fair use is not a process of checking "yes" next to all these topics.
- Factor 3: The Amount or Substantiality of the Portion Used: This rule is the reason why, usually, it is better to upload one panel rather than one page of material. We strive as a site to not upload backups or archives of material because there is a difference between using 1% of a piece of media and 95%. So an entire page is more than average - but in my opinion the important factor is that these are not one-page comics, thus we are not even half of the material. If I were making a Batman documentary, there would be no viable argument that showing one panel of a Batman story is fair use, but showing one page is "too much," Factor 3 isn't so literal.
- Factor 4: The Effect of the Use on the Potential Market for or Value of the Work: This is, very simply, "does the existence of this work negatively impact the original media by serving as a replacement for it." So, if someone makes a compilation of the TV Comic Tom & Jerry comics and releases it commercially, will our uploading of TV Comic cover pages cause someone to decide not to buy the compilation? The answer, in my opinion, is obviously that because we do not upload the interior pages as well. Someone who wants to read all of the TV Comic Tom & Jerry comics would not be satisfied just by the cover page, as it gives no resolution or punchline. Thus they would still buy the compilation, thus it does not impact the theoretical market.
- So, do I think this would be fair use? Simply put, it's about as much fair use as uploading the covers to any other magazine. If File:DWM 595.jpg is okay, then I figure this is too. Sure, if you're buying up issues of Doctor Who Magazine just to stare at the covers, maybe it's not fair use to provide high-quality copies of the front pages. But more realistically, our DWM pages simply exist for navigation because most people do not buy publications to stare at the cover page (indeed, back in the day it would have been free to look at the front cover when you saw it in public!). Thusly, I would argue that it is absolutely fine to upload TV Comic covers in full, as we are not providing the same purpose, we are not replacing the original for the audience in question, and we are using the material in a semi-transformative fashion. OS25🤙☎️ 23:19, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
