On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 09:13:08AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
What I do suggest is that we use common sense to
determine the few cases
where we think fair use law is applicable, instead of simply ignoring
these few loopholes in the current restrictive copyright code. I would
think that someone opposed to intellectual property would embrace the idea
that we should defend and make use of our rights, instead of bowing to the
pressure from copyright holders.
I agree with this approach, but I don't see where we have had problems
with the copyright holders themselves. It would be easy to agree to
remove this material if the request came from the copyright holder
himself. The pressure so=far seems to be coming from people who imagine
that something is copyright.
To me, an important question is, "Can a copyright exist without a
copyright holder?" In a simple case suppose that the apparent copyright
holder died intestate last year, with no apparent heir, and not enough
in personal assets to warrant probate. Who now owns the copyright?
My inclination would be to use borderline material, with an appropriate
warning that we will happily remove on request from a properly
identified owner.
When whole Wikipedia will be included in Linux distros, distributed on CDs,
and articles from Wikipedia will be used by hundreds of books and magazines
and thousands of web sites, how are you going to do that ?
We'd better play safe here.
Anything that doesn't allow Debian and other distros distribute Wikipedia
in their main section is not acceptable. (That means DFSG and OSI
compatibility, and "fair use" is clearly incompatible with these rules,
btw. invariant sections/front and back covers etc. of GFDL are also
incompatible with DFSG, negotiations with FSF are in process now to fix
that problem with GFDL, plain GFDL is DFSG-compatible)