[Wikipedia-l] Re: Fair use

[Toby Bartels]

[Note: This is posted to both <wikitech-l> and <wikipedia-l>
to preserve continuity; replies should go to <wikipedia-l>.]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Eclecticology wrote:

>>How others use the material is their problem, and their risk.  We
>>shouldn't have to baby-sit them.  Whatever license or copyrights are
>>applied to Wikipedia reflects a collective comfort level.  The user is
>>still responsible for his own due-dilligence, no matter how conservative
>>we are on the matter.

>They're not "others", lot of "them" are Wikipedians.
>If everyone had to consult a lawyer before distributing free software,
>it wouldn't be half as successful as it is now.

This isn't entirely true; the more paranoid must still check the less paranoid.
But Wikipedia needs to make it easy by separating out the "fair use" pics
and not claiming any longer that they are being distributed under the GFDL.

As for brief quotations, well, I knew that the GNU licences
would come back to bite us someday, but I expected 50 years from now
(hopefully *after* current copyright law became impossible to maintain).
I never thought they would prove to be inadequate so soon!
Surely RMS thought of brief quotations, one hopes?


-- Toby