G'day Phil W,
On May 19, 2006, at 4:33 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I support serious action to ban people who commit copyvios. We are supposed to be using fair use only in certain very limited circumstances and people who do not realize that should be banned from the project.
This seems overly aggressive to me. It's better to re-educate than to ban whenever possible.
I agree. Re-educate first. However, *aggressive* copyright violators, especially people advocating (and agitating!) we relax our guard against copyvios, are making our life harder and potentially causing serious damage to the project, all for the sake of a few unnecessary but pretty pictures. Such people (and most copyvio fans are not in this league, and should be re-educated, not banned) fall well and truly into the "more heat than light" category and shouldn't be pandered to.
If people want a fight on copyright issues, they should understand ahead of time that they'll lose, and they'll lose *big*.