[Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

Tue Jan 30 19:39:51 UTC 2007

Marco Chiesa wrote:

>rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>  
>
>Just to make an example of how fair use is not allowed in Italy, a 
>couple of weeks ago an Italian amateur website about contemporary art 
>was sued and forced to pay about 5.000 € because it displayed a few 
>photographs of work of arts. The website is non-profit and was using the 
>images to illustrate what it was talking about, pretty much in the same 
>way that Wikipedia uses fair use images. I guess this would easily 
>qualify as fair use in the US, but this is not the case in Italy. The 
>article (in Italian, I don't know if English-language press had talked 
>about it) is at http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?id=1858783&r=PI
>
>Marco (Cruccone)
>
I should note that fair use representations of art works are one of the 
areas that I would like to see removed from en.wikipedia, but making 
such a request seemed to landed with such overwhelming support that I 
didn't even get a single reply on the topic until I posted a request for 
comments about the idea on the fair-use talk page (after seeking 
comments on the Copyrights talk page and the Village Pump first).  And 
all I seemed to have recieved on the fair-use talk page was ad hominum 
attacks suggesting that I was clueless about copyright and fair use, and 
didn't know what I was talking about to even suggest there might be a 
copyright infringement issue here on Wikipedia for any use of the images 
as they are currently being displayed.

I see no reason why this same line of reasoning that you mention here 
isn't going to be used with American website owners, especially with the 
current trend of the SCOTUS to be using legal opinions of foriegn courts 
in their briefs, and the homoginzation of IP law around the world.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning