[Wikipedia-l] What would Richard Stallman say?

Thu Feb 19 19:07:35 UTC 2004

It sounds as if some of you are talking about hypothetical situation of 
wikipedia contents used in other countries. But I think that kind of use is 
happening on a daily basis.

Just to illustrate what Taw and Daniel have said:

When a Japanese Wikipedian posts an unattributed image from en: (or 
somewhere else) to Japanese Wikipedia, then it seems that Japanese court can 
apply Japanese law to such action and give appropriate protection to the 
copyright holder - Berne Convention seems to offer a ground to give such 
protection to foreigners bringing lawsuits in Japanese court. And, 
importantly, Japanese courts have repeatedly denied fair use in Japanese 
copyright law (even though some defendants advocated that it should exist.) 
There are only more specific exemptions defined in the copyright law.

Legal technicalities aside (and please be reminded that I am not a lawyer), 
moral implication of this is that for some Japanese wikipedians, fair-use is 
non-free. We may some day start a project of tracking those images' 
copyright status, just so that Japanese wikipedia can remain free.

I found, in particular, Erik's and mav's arguments both attractive - though 
they are opposing positions.

But if images based on fair-use exist, I really hope they are unmistakably 
clearly attributed.

If I can push a bit more, it would be better if fair-use texts are treated 
in the same way, limited to clear quotes, not mingled with other texts. 
Well, I suppose this would sound really inconvenient or impractical, but if 
it doesn't happen either Japanese wikipedians or further downstream user 
might have to handle that inconvenience...

cheers,

Tomos

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