On 1/12/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Seeing as how 99% of personal websites out there have images infringing on somebody's copyright, most users have the impression that nobody cares about the issue.
Perhaps it would be more effective to point out that WP is now a high-visibility site, and that all the other sites at WP's level (that are not personal page hosts) are pretty careful about copyright and attribution. You could even ask the user to try to find even one "fair use" picture on news.yahoo.com or some such, should drive the point home.
Perhaps it might also be worth mentioning that Wikipedia is *lucky* to be able to use material under fair use at all. In the UK you wouldn't be able to, nor in most other countries.
Copyrights is an are where we have to be particularly careful. IAR just cannot apply to it (though I have seen someone trying to), because there is enough confusion as it is and selective application of copyright law is plainly not going to help that. Copyrights is a fundamental policy, on a line with NPOV and that whole "you can edit" madness. Choosing when to apply NPOV would be asking for trouble. Choosing when to apply copyrights policies would certainly not be quite on the same scale, but it would have extremely unpleasant results.
I really do think that the only way people will not say "but $reason means it's alright" would be a blanket ban. As this is not about to come from our community, which is very fractured over this issue, it can only come from above.
This would be an ideal time for a fiat. :=)
-- Sam