Someone will sue somewhere. Someone will win
somewhere. Either Wikimedia will say "we are an
American NPO - we exist under the American
(self-lauditory, self-preserving, self-centered)
protectionist system. Exactly how many nukes do *you
have?" If that somewhere is the USA, and free speech,
public good, and fair use are slapped down in the name
of tyrannical property and human puppetry, then WP
must go underground: Imagine a decentralized
peer-to-peer network that exchanges article edits, run
on light clients on any number of systems around the
world... Anyway, thats for later.
For now, the good that the project provides outweighs
almost any claim of "damages," and like Ray said,
(typed rather) judgements are made on a case by case
basis and are unsually limited to profits. Who poses a
danger? What philosophical grounds are they standing
on? What claim to property do they have that trancends
fair use? What would be the harm in a lost verdict?
Win-win all around, IMHO.
ReLaX.
S
--- mbecker <mbecker(a)jumpingjackweb.com> wrote:
Again, I've been gone for quite a while. Has
there
been a consensus by the community that we should
start using copyrighted material in wikipedia? Even
if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright
holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and
incurring a great deal of legal fees?
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