[Foundation-l] Re: Copyright issues...walking on thin ice

Sun Aug 8 14:18:44 UTC 2004

Michael Snow wrote:

> Angela_ wrote:
>
>>On Sat,  7 Aug 2004 18:44:52 -0400, mbecker wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the copyright holders from suing the wikimedia foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal fees? 
>>>    
>>>
>>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>>
> Even if the Foundation would ultimately prevail on the merits, it's 
> still correct that the copyright holders can sue, and can force us to 
> incur serious legal fees. Also, the publisher can be liable for 
> copyright infringements, so I think it's inaccurate to suggest that 
> there's no legal risk to the Foundation. More correct is Angela's 
> later statement that OCILLA protects us to some extent.

May I add that - as English is spoken also in many other countries where 
there are no fair use regulations in copyright law - the copyright 
holder can - in principle -  sue the individual publisher there as the 
online edition of wikipedia is offered and used internationally. Also 
the foundation could be sued in other countries as the foundation 
already knows about fair use images being published worldwide including 
countries where the fair use principles are not supported by law or 
jurisdiction. There might however be some protection for the foundation 
being located in the US, but not in principle, it only makes it more 
difficult for the copyright holder. In case the foundation did not know 
about possible copyright violations of an image put online by an 
individual publisher it cannot be sued for the mistake by others. But 
since the foundation knows that there many pictures are neither public 
domain nor published under open content license such jurisdiction would 
not apply in the case of pictures under fair use US regulations on 
courts of countries without fair use legislation.

As cameras are around today nearly everywhere and it is easy for 
everybody to make photos and there is also much open content or public 
domain material around - I personally think that it would not harm the 
success of Wikipedia in any way when fair use images are no more 
included. The growth rate of the number of images published on Wikipedia 
is about 25% a month - much larger then the growth rate of articles.

Dietrich