== Fair Use and how it works == 

 My understanding is that a lot of "fair use" images were being deleted because their actual use did not correspond to the legal definition of "fair use", and they were therefore being used without copyright permission. 

 Just to clarify: Jimbo himself has said that he knows of NO instance of fair use on Wikipedia has failed to meet the LEGAL standard for fair use; WP:FU is much more strict than the legal guidelines for philosophical reasons.  Additionally, no instance of fair use requires copyright permission; fair use is invoked INSTEAD of obtaining permission from a copyright holder.  The problem has been that many items which meet the legal guidelines for fair use - promotional photos, state goverment photos, international logos and the like - are being deleted by those who prefer all information on Wikipedia to be "free" in a libre sense.  The German version of Wikipedia is often hailed as a model; they've prohibited the fair use of copyrighted material, meaning articles about copyrighted images are not illustrated with those images, etc.