Daniel-
Free software and free content projects are very
vunerable to corporate
litigation simply because they don't have the financial resources to tackle
it. The projects are generally run by a group of individuals, which make
ideal targets for corporate threats about liability.
That's why having a non-profit organization is a good idea. It is one of
the best arguments to join the GNU project when developing free software,
for example -- still, most people are understandably irritated by their
zealous nature. For Wikipedia, we will have the Nupedia Foundation to
offer legal protection.
So speaking in practical terms (wich should please
you) the question isn't
so much about who is right or wrong - but what the risks are. And the risks
of using material that isn't 100% verified as free are enormous. As the SCO
debacle clearly demonstrates.
Only that the "SCO debacle" happened in spite of assurances by everyone
that only GNU GPL code was involved -- according to SCO, however, IBM
screwed up. Aside from the fact that the entire lawsuit is a Microsoft FUD
project, all this demonstrates is that in spite of your best intentions,
you can still get sued -- exactly what I've been saying.
It makes no sense to ignore the freedoms offered to us by law -- and one
of these freedoms, in the US and most other civilized nations, is fair use
-- only because some people might interpret that law differently.
Realistically, the only real threat to Wikipedia is that someone will send
us a nasty letter to take this or that image down, which we obviously will
do in most cases. What you are promoting is to give up freedom because the
Large Evil Corporations have deeper pockets. I don't think we should give
in that easily. See also:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/avoid_copyright_paranoia
It makes sense to be careful, it makes sense to use open content whenever
possible. But a purely ideological stance is counter productive. I find it
quite ironic that the most ardent advocates of open content also
frequently adopt a police state mentality with regard to perceived
violations.
FreeBSD is a project where they have learned from
bitter experience that
every last piece of code included or inherited must be double checked for
copyright, patents and non disclusure problems.
I'm all for double checking. I'm against saying "Everything but the GNU
FDL or public domain is forbidden". I'm against removing images
prematurely because they *might* be protected. There is no analogy to fair
use in the free software world.
(Wikipedia also has the great advantage of
incorporating hundreds, if not
thousands of authors world wide. Cameras are cheap. If there is a
serious dearth of pictures, we should organize a project to have more of
our authors go out and take pictures, and work to aquire permission to
use copyrighted pictures where this isn't possible.)
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia photo squad?
Erik Moeller wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org
Wed, 30 Oct 2002 15:51:29 +0100 (MET)
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006804.html
As you can see, I'm all for collaborative content creation. However, it
will be difficult to get a nice FDL photo of Clark Gable, because the
guy's been dead for quite a while. Incidentally, the current article about
Clark Gable uses a copyrighted photo, uploaded by Zoe, a long-time
Wikipedian who is also very careful about finding and reporting copyright
infringements. Fair use is a common practice on Wikipedia, and I don't
think that should change.
Regards,
Erik