[WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

[Christopher Larberg]

On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 14:30 +1030, Alphax wrote:
> This is where allowing "Fair use" images is getting us... what do I tell
> them? "Sorry, that's actually a copyright infringment which we can use
> via a legal loophole, but nobody else is allowed to"?
> 
> I thought the idea was to allow "maximal reuse" and "free content", not
> "copyright situations so complicated that nobody can understand them"!

It's not really a "legal loophole," per se; it's a group of restrictions
upon copyright law. That said, I agree with your point. Having totally
Free content on Wikipedia would be great. But, reality seldom conforms
to ideals. As long as the vast majority of the world's content producers
adhere to restrictive copyright schemes, it's either fair use or no use
at all. I, personally, would rather have non-redistributable content
than none at all, at least for illuminative purposes.

Of course, reasonable fair use is necessary. Authors who think Wikipedia
needs images of every single character in a work, no matter how minor,
are obviously overstepping the bounds of fair use. And yes, fair use
does complicate our situation somewhat. I think the benefits of
responsible fair use outweigh the downsides, however. And remember,
there will always be people uninformed about copyright or Wikipedia in
general asking if they can do this or that. We do have Wikipedia: pages
for explanations.
-- 
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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