[WikiEN-l] More fair use image overreaching

[David Gerard]

On 03/03/2008, WJhonson at aol.com <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> By this I assume BC means a "cease and desist".  I believe this is de  facto
> false.  While it is true a lawyer could file a suit for anything, any  case
> being brought, without having made any preliminary action to correct the  issue,
> would be, imho, thrown out of court.
> The first thing a judge looks at is, "have you attempted to correct this  out
> of court" ?  That is did you make any attempt to settle this without  wasting
> the court's time ?
> Which is why documenting what you did is so important to winning your  case.
> If you did nothing, like for example, not even informing the  offending party
> that there was a correctable offense, then your case won't  win.  That's my
> opinion.


Indeed. In civil court battles, your level of civility does gain you
points. That Wikimedia takes a proactive approach to ferreting out
possible copyright violations - and BetacommandBot is a perfect
example of how we take proactive care with this stuff - and always
tries to fix problems first would in fact get us a long way in the
event of a real fight. So far we've yet to have a real fight. Cross
fingers ...


- d.