[Commons-l] Models, toys, and other objects can be copyrighted

Wed May 24 17:15:11 UTC 2006

2006/5/24, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:

> No, this is not the purpose of commons.  The purpose of commons is to be
>  very restrictive and narrow so that a huge range of people who would
> like to feel comfortable reusing our work can do so.  There will of
> course be borderline cases, but unlike the other projects, commons
> should come down firmly on the side of caution.
>
> Indeed, by doing so, we make all the more clear what is broken about
> aspects of current copyright law worldwide.

I don't see how that would work. If we are being extremely cautious,
we won't get into trouble. So we cannot make it clear by saying "we
got even sued for showing someone in a suit that just vaguely
resembled Superman's." And if we complain about what we have to
disallow, people can just retort by saying we're being too strict on
ourselves. The only way I can see you can use it to show how copyright
law is broken is when the way in which you believe it is broken is by
being so extremely hard to interpret.

-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels