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

[Brown, Darin]

Forgive me if I'm not acknowledging future posts. For some reason, there was
about a dozen digests over a single weekend, and I don't see why I should
have to wade through all of them first, losing train of thought.

Jimbo said:

> Terry Foote (who works in the office with me) loves baseball.  He goes
> to a lot of baseball games and takes pictures of players.  He then puts
> those photos into Wikipedia.  A great hobby, a great thing to do.
> 
> It's always a little disappointing to him, though, when he goes to put
> in a photo and sees a "fair use" photo already there.  He'd like for his
> work to be making Wikipedia a lot better, and of course it *does*.
> 
> There are many cases like this, in my opinion, where we are currently
> relying on (perfectly valid) fair use claims, but in which those photos
> are discouraging people from developing alternatives.
> 
> This is a balancing act.

It is a balancing act. I would say that free images definitely have a
priority, and the burden of the doubt should be on the fair use images to
prove their superiority. And it depends what level both images are at. Say,
on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being pathetic, and 10 being super-professional
shot, the difference between 2 and 4 is a lot more than difference between 7
and 9. At the lower end of the scale, a difference in quality could justify
using fair use, whereas it's much harder for me to justify giving up a free
image just to go from 7 to 9. In other words, if a fair use image raises
quality from abysmal, say 2, to at least adequate, say 4, that's one thing.
But, if there's a studio shot at 9 (near-professional) but a skillfully done
free image of slightly less quality, at 7, I would choose the free image.

darin