On Jan 7, 2008 12:08 PM, Brian Hammer hammersoft123@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
When assessing risk, you need to consider not only the cost of something going wrong (in this case, clearly quite high), but also the chance of it happening. How far would a policy of complying with all but the most outrageous cease and desist notices go towards reducing that chance? In other words, would be a good idea to not worry about the borderline fair use cases until someone complains? What's the chance of us ending up in court even after removing the image in question?
"They would never sue!" is a very poor position to take.
Though fair use (for all users) is embedded in statute (in the US), the way it's done is that it's an affirmative defense, rather than an inherent right.
In other words, they can *always* sue, but under some circumstances their case is (rebuttably) inherently rather weak.
Note that mere publication of an image under a free license may not prevent lawsuits either. Who here really knows that an image was taken by the person who claims credit? An artist / copyright holder / creator can always discover that someone else claimed credit or tried to put something out under unapproved licenses or so forth. That results in lawsuits, too.
And we have this problem with text as well, given that we do find clear copyvio text cut/paste into Wikipedia at regular intervals.
Trying to live your life in a way that nobody can ever sue you is impractical and a poor life choice. Living your life in a way that you respect others' rights,and intellectual property freedoms in a balance and being educational and generally open will minimize risks.