[WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal

Mon Jul 11 19:58:53 UTC 2005

Actually, as a publisher, PRA gets people who ask us if we think a
particular use of our copyrighted material is "Fair Use" all the time.
If Wikipedia asserts a "Fair Use" and PRA recognizes this claim and
agrees with it, there is no copyright violation. If PRA later changes
its mind and asks that something be removed, it could not effectively
argue that the prior use was not appropriate, because it had agreed to
it. All archived pages would be covered by that prior use authorization.

Chip

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:37 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
> 
> 
> The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use 
> privileges. Fair use is a defense, not a form of permission. 
> When we post a fair use tag, it is really a pre-emptive 
> statement that says, "If you sue us, this is what we'll say 
> in court, and we think we'll win."
> 
> Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue 
> you" -- does that change anything? Not really. What if you 
> changed your mind? You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put 
> in a less accusatory way: what if your group was suddenly 
> acquired by someone else who did not want to honor your 
> previous informal agreement?).
> 
> So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is 
> totally unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The 
> transference of privileges you are talking about is really 
> just a form of licensing, which is *not* what fair use is about.
> 
> Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends 
> on its use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a 
> picture of you and a simple table don't sound like things 
> which are going to defraud anybody. And if we trust you not 
> to sue, that would probably bend the "is it fair?"-ometer 
> towards the "not going to sue us" section of things, so it 
> probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just 
> "granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense 
> against allegations of violating a license. That's an 
> important difference!
> 
> FF