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

[Todd Allen]

George Herbert wrote:
> On 7/26/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Matthew Brown wrote:
>>     
>>> On 7/26/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> The money could be better spent elsewhere. That type of battle is best
>>>> left to the EFF.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> I'd personally say that that level of lawsuit paranoia needs to be
>>> left elsewhere as well.  Their lawsuit wouldn't get far without a
>>> takedown notice first.
>>>
>>> -Matt
>>>
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>>>       
>> Be that as it may, I'd oppose the use of most album-cover images even if
>> we got a letter tomorrow from every music label saying "You've got
>> permission to use any album cover you like on Wikipedia," removing any
>> fear of a lawsuit. Same old problem with Wikipedia-only or noncommercial
>> only content, same old reason we don't generally allow it. -It's not
>> free-. On the other hand, if we started generally disallowing it, I'd
>> imagine we could start getting GFDL releases for album covers,
>> especially from more notable independent bands who might just love the
>> idea of their album cover being used freely anywhere on Wikipedia it
>> might fit, and be disconcerted by such an album cover not being used
>> anywhere on the project. We're not meant to be "the encyclopedia with
>> some free content", we're meant to be "the free encyclopedia".
>>     
>
> Todd, fundamentally, here's the policy:
>
> Fair use is free, too.
>
>
>   
That is absolutely -not- the policy nor the case, else we'd use
"Wikipedia only", "educational uses only" or "noncommercial only"
anywhere we liked, since for us such use is perfectly legal. The policy
is knowingly and deliberately more restrictive than the law, and always
has been. Any image we must use under fair-use is by definition nonfree,
so your statement in effect says "Nonfree is free".

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