Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer "news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
expect that if there will be any major legislation, it will mainly cover presumptions of fair use rather than changes in the release of public documents. And fair use is clearly something that even Wikimedia projects tend to abuse on a large scale.
I think it was a very wise and prudent move on the part of those who set up the Wikimedia Commons that they avoided fair use images altogether. This may be ultimately a saving grace for all Wikimedia projects that this has been done.
What's more needed is clarification and a balancing of interests. Much of the legislation is clouded by an absence of defining litigation. This allows for a great deal of private interpretation based only on speculation; that is so on both sides of the debate. Thee is quite enough abuse on the English language projects alone; much of it does not meet my own standards of belief in a more aggressive copyright policy.
I agree that there's an element of sense to the policy on Commons. It makes allowing fair use images more workable on the individual projects, where a context for the images must be provided.
Ec