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

Mon Aug 9 00:42:55 UTC 2004

--- Dietrich von Hase <hase at akademie.de> wrote:
> ....
> 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.

Until time machines are created so that the cameras you talk about could be
used to snap photos of people now dead, events now past, and places now gone,
we will continue to need to use low resolution versions of these images. 

However, you do correctly note that we should not depend on the fair use
doctrine in the U.S. We should instead work with more international doctrines
such as fair dealing (which covers much of the English Speaking world and is a
bit more restrictive than fair use and thus will be fine in the U.S. as well).
But this would be much less useful for non-English wikis (each language wiki
should develop its own policy on this). 

-- mav

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