Forgive me if I'm not acknowledging future posts. For some reason, there was about a dozen digests over a single weekend, and I don't see why I should have to wade through all of them first, losing train of thought.
Jimbo said:
Terry Foote (who works in the office with me) loves baseball. He goes to a lot of baseball games and takes pictures of players. He then puts those photos into Wikipedia. A great hobby, a great thing to do.
It's always a little disappointing to him, though, when he goes to put in a photo and sees a "fair use" photo already there. He'd like for his work to be making Wikipedia a lot better, and of course it *does*.
There are many cases like this, in my opinion, where we are currently relying on (perfectly valid) fair use claims, but in which those photos are discouraging people from developing alternatives.
This is a balancing act.
It is a balancing act. I would say that free images definitely have a priority, and the burden of the doubt should be on the fair use images to prove their superiority. And it depends what level both images are at. Say, on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being pathetic, and 10 being super-professional shot, the difference between 2 and 4 is a lot more than difference between 7 and 9. At the lower end of the scale, a difference in quality could justify using fair use, whereas it's much harder for me to justify giving up a free image just to go from 7 to 9. In other words, if a fair use image raises quality from abysmal, say 2, to at least adequate, say 4, that's one thing. But, if there's a studio shot at 9 (near-professional) but a skillfully done free image of slightly less quality, at 7, I would choose the free image.
darin