Re: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks fair use policy

My heart goes out to you, I've suffered the same in the past. Nothing ruins your agenda like a complete computer failure. The issue always seems to come back to one of heavy restrictions on fair use to the point that all images tagged as "fair use" should be viewed with absolute scrutiny. There are few instances where fair use are "required", and plenty of opportunity for people to abuse fair use, or misuse it out of ignorance, and those misuses can be dangerous for our project. I've made my opinion on this known, and I won't continue to kick this poor horse any further. What I envision (a vision that is likely not to gather much support) is the uploading of all images (or nearly all images) to commons, and almost banning outright image uploads to our server. This serves a variety of purposes. Foremost is that commons is staffed by more people who are knowledgeable and proficient at dealing with images and copyright licensing. The few fair use images that don't qualify at commons could be uploaded to wikibooks, and those select few could be examined through the proper lenses. I am not trying to start a discussion on this issue here, i'm just trying to draw a complete portrait of my intent. I do want to hear what the WMF has to say officially about fair use (it was mentioned that they had a statement on it "forthcoming") before we start making any radical alterations to our policy pages. --Andrew Whitworth _________________________________________________________________ Refi Now: Rates near 39yr lows! $430,000 Mortgage for $1,399/mo - Calculate new payment http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-17727&moid=…