2009/1/29 private musings <thepmaccount(a)gmail.com>om>:
.....it's illegal to break copyright, right? - and
if an article, or image
on a wikimedia foundation project breaks copyright then it gets deleted. I
just wonder how the copyright owner feels about the article / image still
being available to over a thousand (and growing) number of unidentified
people - that's illegal, right?
I think the practical explanation is - no, it's reasonable fair use :-)
This content are available to admins, rather than just outright wiped,
for administrative reasons; it's occasionally necessary to go back and
check details about them, use them to confirm that a later image is
also a copyvio, etc. Retaining them in this limbo, arguably, could
tend to decrease the amount of copyright-violating material that is
still available...
The analogy that seems appropriate is that we, a publisher, have
stopped printing copies of the offending documents - but we've kept a
photocopy in our files so that our workers have a record of the
mistake and can consult it later if need be...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk