On 7/30/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 7/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that important.
You are really asking, is it ok for Wikipedia to breach people's copyright when the chance of them suing is very slight? I would say yes. Most would say no.
Although I consider the chance of a suit to be an important factor, it should never be the only factor. It should be accompanied by a rationale based on at least one of fair use, public domain, uncopyrightability, etc.
A good argument for fair use could probably be made in the vast majority of the situations when the chance of a lawsuit is very slight (in article space, anyway, as the use is already non-profit educational, and if no one is likely to sue the impact on the potential market for the work is probably small).
Anyway, I think another factor when utilizing this exception is that the person can't be easily contacted to ask them for permission. I'm thinking something like a video shot and released by Osama bin Ladin. 1) It's probably not released under a free license; 2) There's about 0 chance of Osama suing anyone over copyright infringement; and 3) It'd be really hard to contact bin Ladin to ask him to license his video under CC-BY or whatever.
Of course, any video shot and released by Osama bin Ladin probably also falls under fair use.
Anthony