[Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: yet another image lost for posterity

Mon Nov 28 20:09:50 UTC 2005

On 11/28/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> The reason people have been cracking down on fair use tagging is
> because if something is tagged as such but is not actually "fair use",
> then it is a copyright violation and puts us in a legally bad
> position. People have been generously mopping up some of the simple
> cases (i.e. where images are claimed as "fair use" but are not used in
> an encyclopedia article) with the sole intention of helping Wikipedia
> keep a "clean" legal status. The goal is to avoid getting sued and
> having Wikipedia donations spent on lawyers rather than new servers.
>
C'mon now, many ISPs will give notice before taking down an *alleged*
copyright infringement, even in the face of a DMCA takedown notice. 
To take down something which the uploader explicitly claims to not be
a copyright infringement without even requesting clarification goes
beyond just avoiding getting sued.

For legal issues, that should be sufficient.  Wait until actual
knowledge of infringement, or until a takedown notice is issued.  Then
it's up to the uploader whether or not she wants to indemnify
Wikimedia using the DMCA put-back procedure.

Of course, that only resolves the legal issues.  For images in the
encyclopedia itself, they should be free.  If the uploader wishes to
indemnify all third-party users though, I guess that'd be acceptable
for images in the encyclopedia itself :).

> I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but I'm having a hard time
> understanding why you absolutely needed to have an image whose
> copyright was owned by someone else and not released freely kept on
> the Wikipedia servers even though it wasn't being used.
>
> FF

I can see your point there, but I believe the main issue was the lack
of notification, not the fact that the image was ultimately removed.

Anthony