[WikiEN-l] Fair use issues; we need serious help

[Nick Wilkins]

On 7/26/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
>
> Fair use is free, too.


That's a novel interpretation of free content, and at odds with the
Foundation's mission statement[1] and [[Wikipedia:Non-free content]].  Fair
use is *not* free.  It's legal (if truly fair use), an important right, and
there are certainly occasions where Wikipedia can and should make use of
fair use.  However, any material used under fair use remains copyrighted.
It is not in the public domain, nor is it freely licensed (or else we
wouldn't have to use fair use doctrine).

Fair use is non-free.  We may want to use non-free material at times because
the benefit to "encyclopedia" outweighs the cost to "free", but we do need
to recognize that there is some cost there.

-- Jonel

1: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement