Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
--- "Alex T." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
I completely agree. Unless there is blatant copyright violation (which can be reported through the DMCA mechanism) trying to use Wikipedia to define what is or what is not fair use may be dangerous as it is too much self policing may just be unwarranted self censorship.
So we should just wait for those horrible "cease and desist" notices? You're sure they can't still sue us?
That can be a reasonable approach. A "cease and desist notice" is just that, a notice. If you think that the person issuing the notice has a point, you simply cease and desist, and that's the end of the story. Safe harbor provisions are there to give you time to act upon the notice. If you disagree with the notice then you're in a different ballgame.
Most individuals live in absolute dread of any kind of legal notices. They're so blinded by the vision of being law-abiding that they ignore all the protections that the law affords them. Lawyers know how that game works. They use it all the time to bully and intimidate. They're playing poker against opponents who believe that bluffing is dishonest.
In the corporate world lawsuits about anything and everything are just routine business.
I still think it would be best of us to take our own pictures for as much as possible.
Certainly
Besides, we don't want to be branded something like "a place for internet piracy disguised as an encyclopedia" in the media. Remember, 5 companies own 90% of the media, and they wrote the DMCA.
Does that picture really look right to you? What ever happened to the Jeffersonian ideal that the purpose of education was to know your rights and be able to defend them? Is media concentration an argument to support the principle that "might.is right"? Freedom and democracy do not depend just on laws and constitutions, but on the DUTY to defend one's rights. Caving in to intimidation does not make you part of the solution, but part of the problem.
Ec