On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Sascha Noyes wrote:
Obviously we could just throw them out. That'd be exceptionally stupid, though. Why is taking away relevant material from our readers good? In my other email I've stated that the "maximum reusability" argument fails if we package our material carefully. The only other argument I see is that we somehow want to be "pure", and free from fair use images. In my valuation, giving our readers relevant material that is nearly impossible to give under the gfdl counts for more than gfdl "purity".
There is another argument, besides the moral one (which Jimbo presents in a kinder formulation than you do, new readers should refer to it):
Using non-free images reduces in an article the incentive to get free images for that article.
I think this is a very important argument, and if that presents us with situations were we can't (without that time machine) get a picture for an article... well, I think those cases are a minority.
-- Daniel