On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
There are two more angles that are of significance:
- The legal.
- The ethical.
[discussion of each snipped]
I think that the vast majority of these 'fair use' images are not images in either problem category. Most that I've seen are fundamentally images whose licenses/permission would permit them to be used on Wikipedia - in other words, we won't be sued for using them, nor will their creators have an issue for them to be used here. The issue is that the licenses, while permitting use on Wikipedia, don't count as sufficiently free to be acceptable.
In other words, 'fair use' is being used as an end-run around the prohibition of non-free with-permission. The only conflict is with Wikipedia policy, not the law or general ethics.
-Matt