On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 08:01:17AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy-
On the other hand, I'm also absolutely not comfortable with some of the images that we currently have on the server, even though I think it is fairly clear that *we* can use them under fair use.
Please cite examples.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Dafoe
There's no clue as to where that image came from, but it seems unlikely that it's use is appropriate under fair use, except *perhaps* for us, under an aggressive interpretation of fair use.
Certainly, if someone wanted to take our content and use it as a foundation for a highly commercialized celebrity database, or let's say a "50 greatest actors" magazine special, they'd not be able to use this photo.
It has no attribution of any kind, we have no idea where it came from, we have no idea what justification we might or might not have for using it. It is a clip from a movie? Is it a publicity still that was circulated freely by the studio? Is it a famous artwork by a litigious photographer of repute?
We just don't know, and that makes me uncomfortable.
Don't we have "when in doubt, remove" policy when it comes to copyrights ? If some unknown (usually ip) user posts something that looks suspitious, and doesn't answer questions about that in about a week, then it's best to remove it.