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(a)Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@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