On 1/21/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
- We approach fair use reasonably, not being afraid of using it where
we need to and with a philosophy of "least likelihood of anybody thinking they could sue us and win."
Going down this route is against Wikipedia's aspirations towards being a *free* (as in speech) encyclopedia, demonstrates an open contempt for intellectual property rights that is alien to the free content principle, and is likely to be used against us with some success in any future lawsuit.
As a free encyclopedia and the most significant free intellectual property entity ever created, we must never advocate, either openly or in private, the abuse of the intellectual property of others, lest we taint the entire free content enterprise.
Why is the inclusion of "fair use" content even a question for Wikipedia? People don't come to us in their millions for pictures of movie stars and album covers; for those they can go to better funded websites that have a considerable revenue and can retain legal advisers and are in a position to pay royalties on those items that they use.
We ought to be starting to deprecate fair use images ''in any context''. We are in a position now politely to request that, if editors want to obtain an image for use on Wikipedia, they should write to the copyright owner on our behalf and with our full blessing, explaining the free content license and requesting such a license for a specific image.
Knowing Wikipedia's reach and reputation, why would a content owner refuse a reasonable free use license over something as trivial as an image of an album cover?