[WikiEN-l] Non-free images, there has to be a better way

Thu Jul 7 17:47:10 UTC 2005

Fastfission wrote:

>The more I think about this, the more I think that sitting on ~20,000
>copyrighted images is a time-bomb waiting to go off. I see some
>distant future in which Wikipedia gets taken down with a cease and
>desist -- of course, some intrepid person would no doubt create a
>"totally free" mirror which would continue, but at what overall cost?
>Personally I think an un-illustrated article is better than one which
>puts us in a highly compromised legal position -- most of the articles
>in print AND online encyclopedias are unillustrated, we wouldn't be
>doing anything wrong in that respect.
>  
>
There are two important perspectives on this, the per item perspective 
and the overall perspective.

Periodically, each and every item needs to be reviewed, and the fact 
that one meets today's criteria for inclusion does not imply that it 
will meet those same criteria next year.

The overall perspective will look at such things as the proportion of 
fair use images to total images, or any tendency to narrowly draw fair 
use images from a single source.  Applying this requires a intuitive 
sense of judgement because the parameters are more fluid.  It probably 
makes sense if we are to have a separate article for each Disney 
character that each such article would have one necessarily free use 
image of the character. Beyond that there is no precise rule that can be 
established, but we do know that there is some imprecise point out there 
which will be over the top.

The straw that breaks the camel's back does not function in isolation.

Ec