[Foundation-l] Fair use being badly abused on en.wikipedia

[Thomas Dalton]

On 07/01/2008, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/01/2008, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Though fair use (for all users) is embedded in statute (in the US),
> > the way it's done is that it's an affirmative defense, rather than an
> > inherent right.
> > In other words, they can *always* sue, but under some circumstances
> > their case is (rebuttably) inherently rather weak.
>
>
> Note, by the way, they can not only lose,  but lose and be spanked.
> e.g. some suits brought by the Church of Scientology, where they had
> attorney's fees awarded against them and were reprimanded by the
> judge. After a few active years, the CoS has been spanked so hard so
> often it hasn't brought a copyright suit in several years.

If we could be confident that our legal fees would be paid for in the
event we were incorrectly sued, Mike's comments wouldn't apply. He was
explicitly talking about cases where we win but still have to pay
large amount of money. In the UK (where I live), I believe that's
fairly unusual, but as I understand it, it's quite common in the US.
Probably one of the main reasons people sue each other so much
there...