Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
Oh, it
is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album
covers.
Look at this yummie gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
Especially yummy, if you wanted to prosecute Wikipedia, is the fact that
the same entity holds the copyright on all of them. Also interesting is
that the gallery makes no note of this. It contains no critical
commentary
on the images in question and has no claim to be fair use - nor does it
assert that it is. It's just a web gallery of pretty little copyrighted
images used without permission of the copyright holder - about as
blatant
a copyright violation as we could arrange if we tried.
If it's such an awful violation, then why not send a letter to
Nintendo and/or Pokemon USA informing them of this nefarious
activity going on right under their noses?
We're all sitting around trading guesses on this sort of thing,
but an actual note from the copyright holder could put an
immediate end to the back-and-forth, plus it can be quoted to
any future uploaders, plus it can be used in speedy deletion
criteria.
It's such a simple solution, I'm a little surprised that fair-use
opponents haven't tried this already. (Of course, if the copyright
holder officially shrugs about WP usage, or defines what they
consider reasonable limits, that would make it harder to argue
that fair use is always unacceptable, so there's a little risk.)
If they are really concerned they probably would have sent out a take
down order long ago. Perhaps the person who sends Nintendo a note
should send them the note privately rather than as a Wikipedian. In his
note he could complain about how the evil people at Wikipedia are
flagrantly violating Nintendo's rights, and he wants to warn them of
this grave injustice. It would be interesting to see how they respond
to that. :-)
Ec