[WikiEN-l] Deleting orphaned unfree images

[William Pietri]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one
>> notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not
>> have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that
>> any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
>>     
>
> And for those 7 days we are breaking the law. Copyright violation is
> illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being
> acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it
> isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.
>
> IANAL, but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work
> out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when
> it is so easy to undo a deletion.
>   

If it comes down to a legal question, perhaps you could ask for a legal 
opinion? I can think of a couple of reasonable justifications, and I'm 
sure others can think of many more. But I've never found amateur 
lawyering to be particularly productive.

William