[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

[Marco Chiesa]

On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david a fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>
> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.


You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free licenses
are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" - right
to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
> the user interfaces.


I agree, but this does not make those images free.

Marco aka Cruccone