[WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

[maru dubshinki]

On 5/19/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:

> If the copyright holder objects then they might sue. Whether we win
> or not, its not worth our while wasting money on cases like this. We
> are trying to make a free encyclopaedia, so paying lawyers to defend
> our right to use non free stuff is against the aims of the Foundation.
>
> Dont get attached to fair use. Its not part of our mission. It will all
> be gone in a few years at the latest. Dont bother defending it.
>
> Justinc

Unless you are speaking in the ridicoulously long-term sense in which
everything (hopefully) passes into the public domain, fair use is
inevitably part of our mission. There are entire sectors of articles
where fair use is necessary, as the copyright holders will definitely
not release the images under a decent license, and where recreation
under a different license is not acceptable. From my own experience:
the Star Wars article. We only accept canon depictions- and because
canonicity policies say that only material authorized and licensed by
the copyright holders is canon, and because the copyright holders will
only do proprietary releases, we cannot, by definition, have free
images relating to Star Wars. Indeed, the absolute best we could do is
perhaps have some free images of fans, (though trademark and copyright
issues are still problematic. If we have a picture of a bunch of fans
dressed up in pitch-perfect Stormtrooper , tusken raider, Royal Guards
etc. costumes, can that really be GFDL'ed or PD'ed?), or maybe of
productions.

~maru