[Foundation-l] Foundation's position on non-free images

Thu Aug 17 15:52:05 UTC 2006

Hoi,
It is the Wikimedia Foundation that will be the one that will be served with
a notice of intent to go to court. It is also really nice when individual
contributors do not have to face this type of music.

All in all, I am not impressed with people who do not consider these things.

Then again, I am also on record that I do not agree that we cannot have
pictures that are trademarked and can be freely used with our content but
are not Free in that we are allowed to change these images.. Having logos in
Commons, would make the special position of the Wikimedia Foundation logos
not special anymore; it would make it a standard way of having logos and
have it in a legal way. The current paractie is imho not really defencible
as it is not consistent. Given that some insist that there should be no
exceptions to the notion of that at Commons everything should be "FREE",
these people are what makes progress on this impossible.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 8/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 8/16/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/16/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I think the projects are not (should not be) managed by the
> Foundation.
> > > The Foundation supports the projects, which is very different. Jimbo
> or
> > > others may provide some guidance, but it is not the role of the
> > > Foundation to say "fair use is allowed" or "fair use is not allowed".
> >
> > I'll state for the record my disagreement with that. I think copyright
> > policy should be made on the Foundation level in cooperation with the
> > projects. The current situation is an unsustainable mess.
> >
> FWIW, I don't think the Foundation should come along and say "fair use
> is allowed" or "fair use is not allowed", but mainly because that's
> such a ridiculous statement - it would be like saying "free speech is
> allowed" or "free speech is not allowed".
>
> I do think it is the role of the foundation to work with the community
> to come up with an a consensus agreement on what is and isn't allowed,
> on a very high level basis.  The basis of the definition should be
> freedom, and the definition should answer the question "what is free
> enough" on a high level basis, without referring to laws of specific
> nations.  IOW, it'd answer the question of what to do with certain
> content which is copyrighted, not licensed under a free license, but
> could be used quite liberally without permission under certain
> conditions, such as fair use - without actually mentioning fair use.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>