Ray Saintonge wrote:
Mark Wagner wrote:
Nothing will change for en.wiki? Hardly. If I'm reading this
correctly, most of the images used under a claim of "fair use" are no longer allowed, and we'll need to figure out how to delete some 200,000 images, as well as how to educate thousands of users who are used to uploading those sorts of images.
Record album covers? book covers? publicity shots? These are all used to such an extent that the owners can be treated as having abandoned copyright
Unfortunately there is no "statute of limitations" on copyright infringement. Unlike trademark and patent laws, copyright can be enforced retroactively many years, even decades after the infringement has occured. It does not require active enforcement if somebody wants to go in and try to seek damages... even if the image has since passed into the public domain. And due to the Berne Convention, there is no asserted copyright that must be filed first in order to assume copyright. All images have complete copyright protections unless you have explicitly recieved the content via license... hence the need for something like the GPL and GFDL.
This is relatively recent in terms of American copyright standards, where you could assume abandonded copyright if it wasn't registered with the Library of Congress, or if the copyright wasn't renewed. Politically, I think that is a much more valid way to address copyright where only those things that people are willing to say "I want this copyrighted!" can get that kind of protection, but that isn't current law.
In the case of most publicity shots (perhaps not book and album covers), I don't think the people being photographed really care all that much about copyright. The photographer, perhaps a little bit, but they are getting paid for the photos wheither anybody pays royalties or not, and strong copyright is not their bread and butter for those kind of photos.