On 1/25/07, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
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Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
-Jeff
False. It is rooted in free redistributability.
I think both are true. The goal from the organizational point is both to be able to redistribute the content without any concern for what's in it, and avoid people filing complaints (or worse, suits) about copyright violation.
The enforcement seems more rooted in copyright paranoia, from my experience. Not the "ok, you stole this image" part, where whapping people over the head is appropriate, but "this is a fair use of the image" is legally true (in the US at least) for a lot of things where the current policy as enforced is removing them. And would be true for anyone else who downloaded and redistributed a copy of the WP article and images.
Fair use is generally (but not always) transitive, and would generally be to others who re-distribute WP content. This is not generally acknowledged in the debate or policy but remains true.
It's hard to avoid looking at the policy as enforced some days and see an unholy alliance of the hyper-free-content freaks who demand that everything in the world be GFDLed or die, and the copyright police.