[Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture

[Ray Saintonge]

Sam Johnston wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk>wrote:
>   
>> 2009/1/28 Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net>:
>>     
>>>> Material in the public domain or under a fully free licence does not
>>>> require any kind of fair use consideration.
>>>>         
>>> I'm not talking about genuinely free material, I'm talking about protected
>>>       
>>> (copyrighted/trademarked) material being uploaded by others - for example a
>>>       
>>> periodic table of elements or medical charts which would normally be subject
>>>       
>>> to deletion (except that they are currently immediately available for
>>> sale!).
>>>       
>> I'm a little confused - surely we would delete this stuff whether or
>> not there's a "buy a print now" clickthrough button? I can't see
>> anyone arguing to keep it because they want to run off a poster...
>>
>> (and to a degree this is rendered moot by that helpful "lowest useful
>> resolution" requirement of the unfree material rules)
>>     
> 1. Upload high-resolution copyrighted image littered with trademarks as
> anonymous user.
> 2. Immediately order poster of said image.
> 3. File against WMF, its chapter(s) and the printer for good measure
> claiming [RI|MP]AA sized damages for copyright and trademark infringement,
> submitting said poster(s) and invoice(s) as evidence.
> 4. ???
> 5. Profit!
>
> Note that these steps need not necessarily be completed by the same parties.
> I'm not sure that the courts would have much leeway here (as they might were
> the image not used commercially as was the case before this function was
> launched).
>
>   
I find your scenario too conspiratorial to be believable.  A person who 
attempted this kind of thing would be in contempt for trying to subvert 
the legal process by making the court complicit in an extortion scheme. 

The scheme, which depends on speculative profits from law suits, doesn't 
make economic sense.  A plaintiff would need to make a considerable 
expense himself just to get the mater to court ... and that's without 
even considering jurisdictional issues.

Ec