Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 23/02/2008, WJhonson(a)aol.com
<WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
The point is, that the legalistic interpretation
of what is "free" under the
license is so narrow that we've been blocked from posting for example images
off book covers, which is tendentious.
A book cover is not free unless it's specifically licensed as such by
the copyright owner.
Not necessarily. All laws and rules are subject to
different
interpretations. Believing that there is always a black and white
reading of rules is overly simplistic.
If that's what you think of as tendentious,
it's
hardly going to surprise anyone if you describe a lot of the tagging
as tendentious.
It's tendentious when those tags are promoting a particular
interpretation of the rules.
"Free" does NOT mean "we can probably
get away with
using this here under fair use", it means "either the copyright on
this image has lapsed or the owner grants all people the right to use
the image in a manner compatible with our site license."
Sure, "getting
away with" is a wrong-headed approach. "Fair use" must
first of all be fair, and someone who approaches the problem with a
sense of fair-mindedness is unlikely to get into trouble.with the real
copyright owners. If they complain about it he will be all too ready to
accommodate them. The fact is that the owners of many images are not
easily identifiable. Many copyrights are effective nullities because
their owners don't exist; the frequency of these nullities increases
with the age of the material.
Ec