On 12/4/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think that the theory that fair use is applicable in this is a dubious one. In any event the place for this kind of medium would be in Commons, and they don't allow fair use at all. The academic who photocopies an article for his own research does not normally make that article available to a broad range of people. Even limiting access to logged-on users is still making the article available to a very large number of people.
I'm talking about a small excerpt from an article, book or whatever - not necessarily the whole thing. We're not possibly taking copyright a little too seriously here are we...?
Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut corners by avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a 100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
So overall do you think that, copyright issues aside, the idea of making snippets of source material available for verification is a bad thing, or just not a very good thing?
Steve