John Lee wrote:
Yes. Unfortunately some people have gone overboard
with the images; I'm by
no means a "make everything free!" kind of guy, but sometimes seeing pop
culture articles full of unnecessary imagery makes me wonder if we really
need all this.
Sure enough. But making things free requires a little more
sophistication than plugging something in and boldly claiming that it is
now free. Those indiscriminate louts make it very difficult for those
of us who would take a more permissive attitude.
My derived point is that it's somewhat
hypocritical to have a
different stance regarding appropriate and
carefully chosen fair-use
images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.
Indeed it is.
We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as
an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
The most important thing is to use them as necessary and appropriate; as far
as possible, we must avoid any less (which harms the encyclopaedia) and any
more (which harms the free nature of our encyclopaedia).
The difficulty with this
is that it requires an ability to have a global
outlook on the subject. It's about the overall result, and not about
whether this or that specific item is fair use, and that's a tough
transition for some people. Where would Wikiquote be without fair use?
Paper books of modern quotation can be had at any book store, and I
don't see a lot of fuss from publishers about these collections.
Ec