On 1/25/07, Sean Barrett <sean(a)epoptic.com> wrote:
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Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
geni wrote:
False.
It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their
construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
False. Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
-Jeff
False. It is rooted in free redistributability.
I think both are true. The goal from the organizational point is both
to be able to redistribute the content without any concern for what's
in it, and avoid people filing complaints (or worse, suits) about
copyright violation.
The enforcement seems more rooted in copyright paranoia, from my
experience. Not the "ok, you stole this image" part, where whapping
people over the head is appropriate, but "this is a fair use of the
image" is legally true (in the US at least) for a lot of things where
the current policy as enforced is removing them. And would be true
for anyone else who downloaded and redistributed a copy of the WP
article and images.
Fair use is generally (but not always) transitive, and would generally
be to others who re-distribute WP content. This is not generally
acknowledged in the debate or policy but remains true.
It's hard to avoid looking at the policy as enforced some days and see
an unholy alliance of the hyper-free-content freaks who demand that
everything in the world be GFDLed or die, and the copyright police.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com