Fair use generally only applies if you are using the copyrighted material in an article about the material itself. Using it as a source isn't "fair". Most dead-tree sources can be found a good library, which should be enough to verify it if we need to.

Steve Bennett wrote: I think that the theory that fair use is applicable in this is a dubious one. In any event the place for this kind of medium would be in Commons, and they don't allow fair use at all. The academic who photocopies an article for his own research does not normally make that article available to a broad range of people. Even limiting access to logged-on users is still making the article available to a very large number of people. How much of an article would we keep? In some cases snippets may be enough, but in the really contentious material fact-checking may require a context for the material. Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut corners by avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a 100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently. Ec

Steve Bennett wrote: There is an essential contradiction here. I have no complaint about adding quotes or snippets, but that is not verification. The source gives us a context which is more than a mere snippet. We should want verification to be more than a rote exercise. If we only use snippets you're probably right in saying that the copyright problem will go away. Ec

On 12/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: This makes me very nervous, as I envision people challenging all sorts of what are now unchallenged, acceptable sources because they can't be bothered to go to the library and check out a widely available book. No way am I going to start scanning things in. This sort of thing should only be reserved for unavailable sources in controversial articles (things that probably shouldn't be used in controversial articles anyway, but that's another issue) and if we set up a system for it, it will encourage people to use and demand this sort of verification. AGF and a library card should suffice.

On 04/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: On Commons! Make sure it's a nice image. - d.

The text is definitely copyrighted. I guess taking a picture of it would be a derivative work at best (at worst, it would simply be a copy), so you wouldn't be able to release it under any license acceptable on commons without the permission of whoever wrote it (which they might well grant in exchange for the free publicity). As far as I know, making something easy for the public to read doesn't effect the copyright you can claim on it.

On 12/4/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: Wikipedia at least has the advantage that it's actively mirrored in several places, probably has hundreds of other copies floating around, and explicitly encourages further replication. Yeah, I don't think it's really likely to disappear soon, but it would be nice not to have to rely on third party organisations with which we have no affiliation. And as I said, it's only a partial solution anyway - that only works for websites, and ones that were archived at the right time, at that. Hmm, you're suggesting taking a copy of a database consisting of several terabytes of data is preferable to copying a few webpages? Think of all that hardware... $0.1 billion, but anyway... Steve

On 12/4/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: But in terms of Wikipedia? Anyway, why are we talking about buying out archive.org again? :) Steve