[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

[David Strauss]

Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
such items when we need them to discuss a topic.

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
the user interfaces.

And thoroughness is better than purity. With license-annotated, thorough
content, you can easily remove the offending bits to achieve purity. The
converse is not so easy.

Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 13/01/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/12/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 1/12/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> So, when is the English wikipedia planning to get rid of  the
>>>> noncommercial and wikipedia-only images that are still in use.
>>> less than 1000 of each less
>> And the list is being whittled down all the time.  The commitment to
>> get rid of them is there.
>>
>>>> And what
>>>> about fair use, which to me sounds like wikipedia-only but without
>>>> asking permission?
>>>>
>>> That isn't quite the case.
>> Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
>> wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
>> in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
>> for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
>> use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).
> 
> Keeping aside the "fair use text quotations" (what the??), are you
> sure you're speaking for everyone when you say "we" there? Somehow I
> feel certain I'm not the only one who would like to get rid of fair
> use on en.wp, and envisages a happy English Wikipedia future without
> this crutch.
> 
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
> 
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