On 11/28/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
The reason people have been cracking down on fair use tagging is because if something is tagged as such but is not actually "fair use", then it is a copyright violation and puts us in a legally bad position. People have been generously mopping up some of the simple cases (i.e. where images are claimed as "fair use" but are not used in an encyclopedia article) with the sole intention of helping Wikipedia keep a "clean" legal status. The goal is to avoid getting sued and having Wikipedia donations spent on lawyers rather than new servers.
C'mon now, many ISPs will give notice before taking down an *alleged* copyright infringement, even in the face of a DMCA takedown notice. To take down something which the uploader explicitly claims to not be a copyright infringement without even requesting clarification goes beyond just avoiding getting sued.
For legal issues, that should be sufficient. Wait until actual knowledge of infringement, or until a takedown notice is issued. Then it's up to the uploader whether or not she wants to indemnify Wikimedia using the DMCA put-back procedure.
Of course, that only resolves the legal issues. For images in the encyclopedia itself, they should be free. If the uploader wishes to indemnify all third-party users though, I guess that'd be acceptable for images in the encyclopedia itself :).
I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but I'm having a hard time understanding why you absolutely needed to have an image whose copyright was owned by someone else and not released freely kept on the Wikipedia servers even though it wasn't being used.
FF
I can see your point there, but I believe the main issue was the lack of notification, not the fact that the image was ultimately removed.
Anthony