[WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

[sannse]

I'm speaking here as someone who works on OTRS, so has to looks at cases 
like this all the time (I'm not claiming extra authority from that, just 
extra insight).

What it comes down to is that fair use is not a right, it is a defense. 
  The only way to fully show that any image is used legitimately under 
"fair use" is to go to court and win a case where you use this as your 
defense.

In this particular incident, a person with an apparently legitimate 
claim to the image asked us to remove the image, with the understanding 
that he was willing to defend his rights and test our defense in court.

Now you may believe, and you may be right, that we would win that 
case... but it would be at a significant financial cost (and possibly 
significant other costs, but lets stick with the financial for now).

The advice the OTRS team were given was to remove the image.  Quite 
sensibly, the foundation doesn't want to pay that cost out of our 
donations, for the sake of an image that can be linked to without /any/ 
risks of costs and no significant loss of content.

However, if anyone wants to agree to pay all legal costs in defending 
the use of this image - and it is /highly/ likely that there will be 
some if this image is used - then I say go ahead!  I'm sure Danny can 
arrange for a contract to be drawn up with that agreed.  I'm not sure of 
costs in the US - but I guess a few thousand as a down-payment for 
initial legal advice would be sensible too.

--sannse




geni wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> O RLY? is a copyvio, which weakend our fair use case even further.
> 
> Umm how?
> 
>