Michael Snow wrote:
Well, you've had disagreements with at least two so
far.
Though of course, lawyers frequently disagree with each
other, too. It's sort of an occupational requirement.
Actually I agreed with and helped to defend most of Alex's positions -
including most of his views on using fair use materials in Wikipedia. Our only
major disagreement was the last one (which turned out to be a misunderstanding
on my part - I have sent two emails apologizing to him but have not heard from
him yet...).
However, if you feel that our disclaimer of warranties
shifts the obligation to downstream users, making it
their job to determine what they can legally copy,
that's a reasonable position to take.
That is one of the major reasons why I supported Alex in getting the disclaimer
linked from every page.
As I have pointed out in some of my other posts, there
are other legal justifications for quotation besides fair
use under US copyright law. I believe we should shift
our reliance to Article 10 of the Berne Convention,
which specifically allows quotation of published works.
That seems like a good idea, given our international bent. I find the wording
in the Berne Convention to be easier to follow than the convoluted mess of fair
use doctrine.
We would have to make sure we mention the source
and the name of the author.
Exactly! We have WAY too many images that don't have this type of information.
IMO, we should stop all uploads and launch a tagging effort. Once that is fully
underway a form should be added to the upload page that would force uploaders
to enter text into author, source, and license fields. I consider the current
situation to be untenable and dangerous to the long term viability to the
project.
To even have a chance of being considered fair, the use *must* give author
info, no? I hear that over 20% of the images on the English Wikipedia do not
give that information.
I think this can pretty much resolve the issue for
text, and
an argument can be made to apply it to images and sounds
as well.
Yep. That is my IANAL interpretation. Has this been tested for non-text
content?
-- mav
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