Jimmy Wales wrote:
Fastfission wrote:
Since Bridgeman v. Corel currently IS the law (whether the archivists like it or not) and has BEEN the law for the past six years, I think we shouldn't be too worried about using it. In any event, if something horrible happened which changed the legal situation we can always go back over the images tagged as such and delete them.
While I am of course sympathetic, it bears repeating that Bridgeman v. Corel is *not* binding authority, as it was merely a district court case.
It may not be binding outside of that district or on any higher court but it is influential as long as no contrary decision has been issued. As someone else has noted it has not been appealed, and that may very well be because the losers in the district court were convinced that such an appeal would get nowhere. Saying that is was "merely" a district court case does not mean that we cannot rely on it to some extent.
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