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(a)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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