Jimbo said:
Fair use is a good legal doctrine. It says "look here, the extent of copyright has limits". We should support that and rely on it as needed.
We should also reward people emotionally for doing great original work and releasing it for free.
--Jimbo
I agree that there is a lot to be gained by rewarding people for original work. Still, I think each case should probably be decided on its own merits, case by case. I can imagine a case where there was a free image available, and also a clearly superior fair use image where the fair use issue was not in doubt. In that case, I would find it hard to justify using an inferior free image simply because it was free? I know this runs counter to pure open-source thinking, but I keep thinking our primary goal is to make the best encyclopedia possible, and if that means occasionally favoring fair use to free images, then I don't see a problem. But if the images are even roughly equivalent in quality, certainly the free should win out.
darin