Actually, as a publisher, PRA gets people who ask us if we think a particular use of our copyrighted material is "Fair Use" all the time. If Wikipedia asserts a "Fair Use" and PRA recognizes this claim and agrees with it, there is no copyright violation. If PRA later changes its mind and asks that something be removed, it could not effectively argue that the prior use was not appropriate, because it had agreed to it. All archived pages would be covered by that prior use authorization.
Chip
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:37 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use privileges. Fair use is a defense, not a form of permission. When we post a fair use tag, it is really a pre-emptive statement that says, "If you sue us, this is what we'll say in court, and we think we'll win."
Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue you" -- does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed your mind? You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way: what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else who did not want to honor your previous informal agreement?).
So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is totally unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The transference of privileges you are talking about is really just a form of licensing, which is *not* what fair use is about.
Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends on its use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a picture of you and a simple table don't sound like things which are going to defraud anybody. And if we trust you not to sue, that would probably bend the "is it fair?"-ometer towards the "not going to sue us" section of things, so it probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just "granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense against allegations of violating a license. That's an important difference!
FF
Whether you get requests or not is still beside the point: fair use is not a license (and cannot be "granted" by the publisher), it is a defense which claims that no license is needed. Of course, it only comes up *if* someone sues, so getting a publisher to agree not to do that ahead of time certainly helps! But it should not be confused with licenses or any other agreements where you, the publisher, are giving us some sort of right to your material. "Fair use" is just a defense -- it is us saying, "we didn't need their permission, for X and Y reasons" if we got sued by a publisher.
FF
On 7/11/05, Chip Berlet c.berlet@publiceye.org wrote:
Actually, as a publisher, PRA gets people who ask us if we think a particular use of our copyrighted material is "Fair Use" all the time. If Wikipedia asserts a "Fair Use" and PRA recognizes this claim and agrees with it, there is no copyright violation. If PRA later changes its mind and asks that something be removed, it could not effectively argue that the prior use was not appropriate, because it had agreed to it. All archived pages would be covered by that prior use authorization.
Chip
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:37 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use privileges. Fair use is a defense, not a form of permission. When we post a fair use tag, it is really a pre-emptive statement that says, "If you sue us, this is what we'll say in court, and we think we'll win."
Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue you" -- does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed your mind? You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way: what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else who did not want to honor your previous informal agreement?).
So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is totally unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The transference of privileges you are talking about is really just a form of licensing, which is *not* what fair use is about.
Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends on its use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a picture of you and a simple table don't sound like things which are going to defraud anybody. And if we trust you not to sue, that would probably bend the "is it fair?"-ometer towards the "not going to sue us" section of things, so it probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just "granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense against allegations of violating a license. That's an important difference!
FF
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l