[WikiEN-l] J-Pop and the art of fair use abuse

[Matthew Brown]

On 4/21/07, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb at gmail.com> wrote:
> The images
> he was removing failed the first fair use criterion "no free image could
> serve the same purpose" and thus were copyvios, mostly pictures of Japanese
> pop musicians.

Be careful of confusing our fair use rules with those applicable under
copyright law.  Because something doesn't meet our fair use rules does
not make it a copyright violation, and you may really annoy someone by
accusing them so.

> That we have users who are clueless or apathetic about copyright is not a
> nothing new, I realize, but it concerns me how many of them are
> administrators.

In many cases, the rules have changed since they were promoted to
admin.  Also, as I said above - misunderstanding our fair use policies
does not equal 'ignorant about copyright'.

Insisting that these images are violations of copyright will make you
sound like you are ignorant of copyright law yourself.  Instead, the
argument should be that they don't meet our fair use criteria, which
are intentionally much stricter than those allowed under US copyright
law.  Even better is to explain WHY our fair use policy is the way
that it is.

-Matt