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

[Matt Brown]

On 11/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> 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"?
>

They are not a copyright infringement and it is not a legal loophole. It is,
rather, a sensible limit to the extent of copyright protection, which is not
an absolute right and is not 'intellectual property'.

What we should tell him is that we use those pictures under the United
States doctrine of Fair Use and that we cannot give any permissions, since
we do not own the copyrights ourselves. He must either obtain permission
from the copyright holder or make his own determination as to whether Fair
Use is applicable to his situation.

There is a strong argument that those concerned with freedom should
aggressively use the provisions of Fair Use - explicitly to never allow the
fiction that copyright owners have absolute control to establish itself.
Fair Use is equivalent to a public right of way, in a sense - and should not
be a right allowed to lapse through unuse.

-Matt (User:Morven)