[Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com
Sun Jan 28 22:31:33 UTC 2007


On 28/01/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >In the example I mentioned, it may be worth mentioning the Church of
> >Scientology has had to pay the attorney's fees for the people they
> >sued many a time.

> It can go the other way -- depends on who wins. In a case where we are
> using someones copyrighted images and
> they were posted by a n anonymous editor, I woud dare to guess we may
> not alays be on the winning side ...


Oh, yeah. Only a fool *wants* this sort of thing to go to court.


> >I suspect in a clear-cut case, you'd be surprised how many friends
> >Wikipedia has.
> >Not that I consider it a good idea to push it, of course.

> We should act in good faith always. Good faith means if someone creates
> a "cloud of doubt" and they are
> an undisputed owner of the materials in question, a good faith action
> would be to remove it.
> " your honor, we always strive to act in good faith in all situations,
> and in the present case, we were notified
> the materials may have been copyrighted and removed them immediately IAW
> with our policies. Given our
> actions in good faith, we cannot be held liable as the other side claims
> since we are simply a third party
> interactive web service and we have complied with the DMCA at all times ..."
> :-)


In a serious battle, the Wikipedia's proven leaning more toward
copyright paranoia than copyright violation will stand us in good
stead! And we do finally have proper channels for outside parties to
raise legal concerns with the Foundation.

So in the general case, yes, you're entirely right.


- d.




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