[WikiEN-l] More fair use image overreaching

[David Gerard]

On 02/03/2008, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fair use doesn't work like that (okey I admit I'm not totaly certain
>  what would happen since no one is yet to take such a monumentally
>  stupid case to court). You appear to think that fair use is some magic
>  incarnation that can make all your copyright issues go away it does
>  not. If fact it makes them worse. Fair use is hard. It is case law
>  rather than statute law driven. That means that not only are their
>  vast grey areas but there are random islands of black and white in the
>  greyness that you are unlikely to know about. On top of that rather a
>  lot of it is subject to change without warning.


The key point is that "fair use" is a *defence* in court *when someone
sues you*. So there's good reason most times not to push it in the
name of good sense (and good reason other times to hold firm in the
name of freedom).

As an encyclopedia run by a non-profit that doesn't even take ads,
Wikimedia could probably get away with pushing it *very far indeed* if
we wanted to be dicks about it, and could take and use really quite a
remarkable range of stuff as fair use.

But (a) we're all about the free content (b) we'd actually rather not
be dicks about it all. So the Non-Free (note, not "fair use", it's the
"non-free" aspect it's all about) Images Policy is much more
restrictive than what we could get away with, and really isn't about
the law at all - it's about an overwhelmingly strong bias toward
genuine free content, and non-free content is basically here under
sufferance.

So any discussion of the non-free images policy that talks about fair
use and what the law allows is (IMO) missing the point of the non-free
images policy.


>  Claiming fair use on your own work makes no friggin sense (unless you
>  no longer hold the copyright) no matter how you try and dodge around
>  the point thus we are not going to change policy to white list those
>  who try.


Indeed, because an author cannot violate a copyright they own, and
cannot sue themselves for the violation.


- d.