On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that important.
Fair use is an extremely important exemption to copyright law. There are good reasons to prohibit it e.g. in the User: space, and to require users to upload their own works as free content. But there is no single good reason why a photo that is important to Wikipedia's history, and that cannot easily be obtained as free content, wouldn't qualify as fair use in the Wikipedia: namespace.
You make these comments as though they are obvious, but I for one don't understand what you're referring to.
What are the good reasons to "prohibit fair use" in the User namespace that don't apply to the Wikipedia namespace? If the photo of Bernard was on my User namespace, would that be inappropriate?
Personally I don't see the problem with allowing ND licenses throughout the user namespace and the Wikipedia namespace, and even in the article namespace in situations where a more free license is not available. Anything under an ND license is pretty much automatically fair use.
Anthony