[WikiEN-l] "Editorial purposes only" images

Thu Sep 30 11:46:42 UTC 2004

> But we already incorporate fair use images. It's not fair use to uses
> someone's image to advertise your product - so what's theproblem with
> this licence?

> Theresa

I agree.  As long as the image is usable in a commercial mirror, I think we
should allow it.  Since Wikimedia refuses to define freeness itself, I'll go
to http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html.  This page says
that a free encyclopedia requires permission of modification of images, but
the examples it gives are related to editorial modifications.  I think this
license is well within the spirit of this definition.

> The problem is that one (for-profit) publisher of wikipedia which is not
> the wikimedia foundation could say: "hey, look what terrific
> images we have got in this publication"... And AFAIK that
> goes against that very license.

> Theresa

Seems to me that this would go against the license even if it was a
non-profit publisher doing that.  But I don't see the big deal.  The
publisher can just use a different image for eir ad.

> GFDL implies absolute freedom or nothing at all. In this spirit,
> Richard Stallman had two or three interventions in this mailing list
> some months ago.

I think you're thinking of public domain, not GFDL.  GFDL is not absolute
freedom.  Furthermore, we haven't committed ourselves to the GFDL, only the
spirit of the GFDL.

> But IANAL (and probably those images are not THAT terrific though :)

I'm not a lawyer either, so I'm relying on Jimmy Wales' assertion that
mixing *any* image with GFDL text is legally permitted.  The question here
is whether or not we *should* use these images, not whether or not we
legally *can* use them.

> Pedro.

Anthony