This is very true. I too am not as concerned about the legal repercussions for the Foundation as I am the downstream users who potentially could face a lawsuit from a company asserting their copyright.
However, there is an even bigger issue I don't think this thread is touching yet, and that is our goal as an encyclopedia. We are (supposedly) here to help produce a free encyclopedia. We are the freely licensed encyclopedia, not the freely licensed encyclopedia with copyrighted images. At least we shouldn't be. This is the major crux of the issue in my opinion. Personally, I advocate /no/ fair use except in situations otherwise completely unavoidable (and not having a picture of BoyBandXYZ is not such a situation). I'm referring to situations such as major media events of which there are no free photos and things of that nature. Maybe a few hundred or thousand for the entire English Wikipedia, total. Not having a picture of every CD cover from every album will not make us a less-complete encyclopedia. Sometimes when it comes to free alternatives, there are none. Not having an image doesn't necessarily make an article less informative. And only having 1 free image on an article instead of 10 fair use ones isn't bad either.
I know the larger community disagrees with me, and fair use is pretty much here to stay on en.wiki (unless a Board resolution mandates it). I just hope the community can at least enforce the current standards, if not improve them. I've always found this quote by Erik himself on fair use in the encyclopedia to be rather accurate in how we should view this as a community:
Well, perhaps you do not understand that Wikipedia is an open content project and intends to stay that way. The more non-free images we include, the harder it will become to distribute and re-use Wikipedia articles. Building an encyclopedia is only half of our mission -- our encyclopedia needs to be freely usable by everyone.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-April/009975.html
Always, Chad H.
On Jan 7, 2008 4:12 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I'm less concerned with the Foundation being sued (because we are protected in most cases, both by our ability to respond to takedown notices and our educational purpose) and more concerned by the vulnerability of content reusers to suit. Our policy on free content is not to protect *us* - if that were the case, we could just request permission to use whole troves of content and be done. The policy protects those who, through our license, reuse our content for their own purposes. They are potentially much more liable to suit and this liability for them violates our goal to assemble a completely reusable base of knowledge.
The best way to protect those who wish to utilize our content under its license is to ensure that we adhere to it - or change it. The best way to ensure our compliance is by guarding the insertion of non-free content - not laboriously deleting it once its eventually noticed.
Nathan
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