On 7/25/07, Todd Allen wrote:
The idea here is to build a free content
encyclopedia, and every use of nonfree content harms that mission.
I also object to claiming that we have to only host truly free content
in order to protect free content's sake.
We need to ensure that content we host is safely usable by Wikipedia.
By safe, I mean "in compliance with generally accepted principles,
commonly used by other media and references, as far as we can tell in
compliance with the laws that are relevant, and unlikely to be
controversial with copyright or trademark holders". (check, for
logos, and for album covers)
This is more realistic. Contrary to Todd I believe that encouraging
certain classes of non-free content actually helps the mission. There
is a vast amount of material about which the status is uncertain. There
is an enormous amount of material where we could not easily find out who
owns the copyright, and the owners probably don't know that they have
it. To me it's the free result that matters, not some arbitrary
predetermination about the status of the material. When the US had
copyright renewals the percentage of renewed copyrights was very low.
Strategies that can help '''make''' material free are clearly in
the
interest of free content.
The history of copyright over the last three centuries has been in one
direstion only. Vested interests could pursue their monopolistic
protections, because the only people that could object had to be in a
financial position to put together a competing product in the first
place. Thee was very little push-back. The absence of resistance
allows monopolies to grow. If you are too willingly compliant they'll
do just that.
Ec