I have tried to make a difference in the handling of purportedly "fair use" materials on Wikipedia. I believe that we have a plague of copyvio images, many of them bearing bogus fair use claims.
One of the problems is that there is no project-wide policy on the requirements for using fair use images. The validity of a fair use claim is up to the uploader.
Though I am not an attorney, I am myself unconvinced that such things as misappropriated news photos and graphics on current events, when appearing prominently in articles linked from the main page, and edited by many people, would qualify for OCILLA safe harbor provisions. Though we have many dubious fair use claims, the ones involving recent news media images concern me the most because of the potential for bad press for us, and because of the potential case to be made for genuine monetary losses by news media that are in competition with the free information source we provide.
Some basic things like deleting newly uploadeded, unsourced images would be a start. So would a policy that states, specifically, that images taken from present-day news sources or wire services are against Wikipedia policy, regardless of the fair use case that the uploader thinks may apply.
I have been trying to form policy by working through issues on Wikipedia, but it is becoming clear that (a) the general opposition to deletion of anything, (b) the inability to undelete images, and (c) the lack of understanding of the nuances of U.S. copyright law are working together to prevent any useful work from being done by consensus. I believe that leadership, and careful involvement of counsel, will be necessary to adopt useful policy.
The Uninvited Co., Inc. (A Delaware corporation)