On 12/7/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
But then you have to demonstrate the "harm."
Pretty easy, we have had plenty of examples of folks who didn't bother
to upload an image because we "already had one" in the form a fair use
image. It's happened to me personally, and it's not news. That alone
makes a pretty good example of harm becuase I don't think anyone would
argue that it's not better to have free images instead of non-free
ones.
You can also point out that since our goals which explicitly include
free content, any addition of non-free content is harm. Not all
additions are net-harm, however. The preamble of the Fair User
Criteria on enwiki addresses the issue of harm vs net harm like this:
"The primary goal of Wikipedia's fair use policy is to protect our
mission of producing and distributing free content which is
perpetually free for unlimited distribution, modification, and
application for all users and in all mediums. This goal could best be
met by completely disallowing all content which is not free content;
however, we understand that in order to completely meet the second
part of our mission, producing a quality encyclopedia, we must permit
some non-free material for critical commentary. Thus the authors of
the English Wikipedia have decided to permit a limited compromise
which is outlined in this policy. Most popular non-English Wikipedias
do not permit unfree images at all."
So the FUC would have us ask the question "Does excluding this
material preclude us from being a good encyclopedia?". Here the
building is visable and photographable by all, so we must answer "No"
even if we accept the notion that we can't be a good encyclopedia
without a picture of this building. As a result, we can conclude that
including the image is a net-harm from the perspective of furthering
the goals of the project.