[WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

[Justin Cormack]

On 19 May 2006, at 21:41, maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> 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.

We do not need pictures in these articles.

We can link to external ones.

If you dont want to make a *free* encyclopaedia you can join another
project.

I wouldnt mind a fork of wikipedia that has "fair use" and other copyvio
images on top of the wikipedia text. Someone else can deal with the  
legal
issues and the fact that distribution is a problem. Being free is a  
vital
part of out mission. Reuse is vital. It is the reason many of us  
participate.
I really do not care if we dont have pictures if we fulfil this mission.

I know other people just want to make the best encyclopedia and thats  
fine.
Its just not our project. Our project can support that one because it is
free. But these huge swathes of non free, non redistributable images are
a huge threat to the project.

Justinc