[WikiEN-l] defining Free Encyclopedia

Fri Aug 20 18:07:56 UTC 2004

Sorry, you are correct, I was missing a qualifier there. I meant to say "non-free copyrighted material." Clearly you knew what I meant anyway ;).

Pointing this out has brought up an interesting point to me though. How can we morally justify using other peoples copyrighted material, against their copyright agreement, and then expect others to respect our copyright agreement? Wouldn't people also be able to make a case of fair use when using our content? I for one have for a long time opposed other websites using our content without following our copyright agreement (i.e. the GFDL). However, I don't find it morally justifiable for us to in one breath say, we have a right to break other peoples copyright agreements, and then in the next, attack people who break ours, even though they often too have a case for fair use.

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 10:16:30 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- Michael Becker <mbecker at jumpingjackweb.com> wrote:
> 
> > In any case,  I'm also VERY concerned about
> > the effects of using copyrighted material in the wikipedia will have on it's
> > freeness.
> 
> What are you talking about? Wikipedia is *protected* by copyright. We happen to
> license our text under the GNU Free Documentation License to make it freely
> usable. "Proprietary" would be a better word to use since Wikipedia is most
> definitely copyrighted.
> 
> -- mav
> 
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-- 
Michael Becker