[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] contents under education/information licenses

Tue Nov 21 18:47:53 UTC 2006

On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Delphine Ménard wrote:
> > My take is that these organisations need to be taught that it's better
> > to make a licence with two exceptions (advertisement and political
> > purposes, for example) rather than try the broader and anyway, in my
> > opinion, non enforceable way of "educational and informational use
> > only". And I may be dreaming, but I am pretty sure that with time and
> > patience we can bring these organisations to something like that and
> > end up with free-er images and material than an "educational use only"
> > type thing.
> >
> One thing I wonder - if US govt images are PD, then theoretically they
> could be misused for advertising or political purposes; but does that
> actually happen now? Are we talking about neo-Nazis using the "big blue
> marble" Apollo photos in their propaganda, or what?

The fun part is that I totally agree with you. This is exactly where
the whole pedagogic(al?) bit comes into play. Ask for a few images,
make them free (as in, real free, our accepted licences) see how that
goes, and go on from here. Releasing material under a "Free" licence
is all about teaching people that it is not evil, that it will not
prevent them from selling them to whomever, that it will not
necessarily be used to nasty political ends. There are many ways to go
about this. The first one is making sure we talk to these
organisations in a civilized manner. Step by step. Go a bit in their
direction, to show them the light...

That is why I am always wary of radical speeches that say "tell them
to free their images". On the contrary to national libraries that are
keeping works effectively in the public domain as hostages in their
dark and dusty back chambers, these organisations, which are not
*only* state funded, but also partially privately funded, or funded by
countries with very different cultures/laws have a real "right" to
their copyright, if that makes sense. We just need to teach them about
making the better use of it.

Ya know, it's like telling Mr. S. to "go and edit his own article".
Doesn't work all that well. :-) You gotta take them through the
process.

Again, screaming at them and saying "make all Public domain, you
thieves!" is, in my opinion, a shortcut that simply shows a lack of
understanding on our part. And one which I personally find a very poor
move if we're going to <s>take over the world</s> (errr...) make all
of these things free and available to the greater number.

Delphine
-- 
~notafish
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