2009/1/29 private musings <thepmacco...@gmail.com>: > .....it's illegal to break copyright, right? - and if an article, or image > on a wikimedia foundation project breaks copyright then it gets deleted. I > just wonder how the copyright owner feels about the article / image still > being available to over a thousand (and growing) number of unidentified > people - that's illegal, right?
I think the practical explanation is - no, it's reasonable fair use :-) This content are available to admins, rather than just outright wiped, for administrative reasons; it's occasionally necessary to go back and check details about them, use them to confirm that a later image is also a copyvio, etc. Retaining them in this limbo, arguably, could tend to decrease the amount of copyright-violating material that is still available... The analogy that seems appropriate is that we, a publisher, have stopped printing copies of the offending documents - but we've kept a photocopy in our files so that our workers have a record of the mistake and can consult it later if need be... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
