On 4/21/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
The images he was removing failed the first fair use criterion "no free image could serve the same purpose" and thus were copyvios, mostly pictures of Japanese pop musicians.
Be careful of confusing our fair use rules with those applicable under copyright law. Because something doesn't meet our fair use rules does not make it a copyright violation, and you may really annoy someone by accusing them so.
That we have users who are clueless or apathetic about copyright is not a nothing new, I realize, but it concerns me how many of them are administrators.
In many cases, the rules have changed since they were promoted to admin. Also, as I said above - misunderstanding our fair use policies does not equal 'ignorant about copyright'.
Insisting that these images are violations of copyright will make you sound like you are ignorant of copyright law yourself. Instead, the argument should be that they don't meet our fair use criteria, which are intentionally much stricter than those allowed under US copyright law. Even better is to explain WHY our fair use policy is the way that it is.
-Matt