On 12/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
I think that the theory that fair use is applicable in
this is a dubious
one. In any event the place for this kind of medium would be in
Commons, and they don't allow fair use at all. The academic who
photocopies an article for his own research does not normally make that
article available to a broad range of people. Even limiting access to
logged-on users is still making the article available to a very large
number of people.
I'm talking about a small excerpt from an article, book or whatever -
not necessarily the whole thing. We're not possibly taking copyright a
little too seriously here are we...?
Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to cut
corners by
avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I
have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from
asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to
convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a
100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it
could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors
looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
So overall do you think that, copyright issues aside, the idea of
making snippets of source material available for verification is a bad
thing, or just not a very good thing?
Steve