[Foundation-l] Stewards are ignoring requests for CheckUser information?

Wed Apr 19 11:55:29 UTC 2006

--- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2006/4/19, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>:

> > Going out of our way to ensure that downstream
> users will be able to
> > copy this material is ultimately an untenable
> position.  People must
> > accept responsibility for their own actions.  We
> do well to warn them of
> > possible problems, but we should have no
> obligation to hold their hands
> > in the way that we would hold those of a child. 
> We can say that we have
> > reasonable and supportable grounds for saying that
> a given document is
> > in the public domain, or that it is covered by
> fair use (or dealing) in
> > the server jurisdiction, and that we cannot vouch
> for its legal status
> > in some other jurisdiction.  In saying this I make
> a specific statement
> > that I do not consider public interest alone to be
> grounds for
> > publishing most documents.
> 
> And here I disagree. The right to re-publish is at
> the heart of the
> Wikimedia philosophy. It's very nice that you ensure
> you have the
> right to republish (although I think "they haven't
> complained yet"
> isn't exactly 'ensuring a right' - I strongly advise
> you to take
> stricter guidelines), but Wikimedia was made for
> free material. Which
> means that others have the right to republish. That
> that is under
> different licenses - Wikipedia allows changing, but
> requires it to be
> under the same license, Wikisource only requires
> that it may be copied
> unchanged - is no problem. But if your material may
> not be reproduced
> by others at all, I think you are not following the
> spirit of
> Wikimedia.

First off I want to say that the English Wikisource
does not take anything under fair use/dealing.  
Although I think that making information available is
the true heart of Wikimedia, the ability to freely
disseminate it right up there.  And I would never want
to accept material where an author gave permission for
publication on Wikisource without giving any
distribution rights.  However I believe it is not
possible to guarantee worldwide that the downstream
user can just take Wikimedia information without
looking into their local laws.  Even with GFDL.  Some
countries simply do not have provisions for
recognising a license like the GFDL.  Right now
Wikisource only has material that we believe is freely
distributable for commercial use somewhere.  I cannot
guarantee it is freely distributable *everywhere* but
I do not believe that would be possible no matter how
restrictive we are. I feel we just need to stress the
importance of keeping everything properly tagged so
downstream users can sort it out.  We have been told
no non-commercial and we got rid of that. My concern
is that the thinking behind non-commercial was that we
need to be able to give such a blanket guarantee. 
Also there are odds and ends that I do not understand
where they fit in to copyright at all.  

BTW we are not talking about any licenses here that
are not used at WP and Commons (mainly various PD
reasons).  Whether the people there do not see the
issues I do or simply never looked very far into it, I
do not know.

Birgitte SB

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