On 11/28/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The reason people have been cracking down on fair use
tagging is
because if something is tagged as such but is not actually "fair use",
then it is a copyright violation and puts us in a legally bad
position. People have been generously mopping up some of the simple
cases (i.e. where images are claimed as "fair use" but are not used in
an encyclopedia article) with the sole intention of helping Wikipedia
keep a "clean" legal status. The goal is to avoid getting sued and
having Wikipedia donations spent on lawyers rather than new servers.
C'mon now, many ISPs will give notice before taking down an *alleged*
copyright infringement, even in the face of a DMCA takedown notice.
To take down something which the uploader explicitly claims to not be
a copyright infringement without even requesting clarification goes
beyond just avoiding getting sued.
For legal issues, that should be sufficient. Wait until actual
knowledge of infringement, or until a takedown notice is issued. Then
it's up to the uploader whether or not she wants to indemnify
Wikimedia using the DMCA put-back procedure.
Of course, that only resolves the legal issues. For images in the
encyclopedia itself, they should be free. If the uploader wishes to
indemnify all third-party users though, I guess that'd be acceptable
for images in the encyclopedia itself :).
I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but I'm
having a hard time
understanding why you absolutely needed to have an image whose
copyright was owned by someone else and not released freely kept on
the Wikipedia servers even though it wasn't being used.
FF
I can see your point there, but I believe the main issue was the lack
of notification, not the fact that the image was ultimately removed.
Anthony