Fastfission wrote:
Amen. This is the goal of Wikipedia's fair use policy -- proper fair use when necessary, well thought out, with the issues at stake well understood.
A number of people have occasionally taken calls for a restricted fair use policy to imply copyright paranoia or some sort of feebleness in standing up for fair use rights. This is of course not anyone's goal. In my mind, the more careful, deliberate, and (hopefully) informed we are in the implementation of fair use policies, the more confidence we can have in our use of fair use images, and the more empowered we actually are in the end. Poor or pointless invocations of fair use strengthen nothing but the arguments and hysterical claims of those many parties out there whose goals are to make copyright law as binding and restrictive as possible.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, there are extreme views at both ends of this spectrum. The simple fact that publishing an image would somehow be in the public interest is not enough to defeat someone's copyrights. On the other hand it is also simplistic to say that because there is a subsisting copyright the image cannot be used at all. "Fair use" is a tool on the path to free use that can be used to great effect in the right circumstances. By rejecting it completely we also make it easier for those favoring more restrictive copyrights because they can now take the abandoned ground unopposed.
Ec
