[WikiEN-l] More fair use image overreaching

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 10:26 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 03/03/2008, WJhonson at aol.com <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> > Just to address the "lawyers are not required to send a 'takedown'
>  notice"
> >
> >  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 ?
>
> Unfortunately they can demand money as part of their attempt to settle
> out of court.  A few hundred dollars is not unusual (see people
> moaning about picscout). A few hundred per pics so say about a million
> for 2K images. Of course that is rather less than you risk ending up
> paying if you take is to court.
>

Under the DMCA, the WMF is plausibly a service provider, as we don't create
the content, and as such our liability for damages prior to notification is
zero.

An attorney could ask us for anything:  "Take down this and that images
which are owned by my client.  And we want a Pony."

They aren't legally entitled to the Pony, no matter how nicely they ask for
it.

For the WMF, damages would start after a legally compliant takedown or
equivalent was received; given that, in any case with an apparently legal
takedown notice we take it down, the damages are going to be nil.



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com