[Foundation-l] Wikimedia logos on Commons

Fri Aug 24 16:41:51 UTC 2007

IMO, this isn't about law, it's an appeal to Common sense. The Foundation
can host their trademarked/copyrighted images on commons if they choose to.
The proposed "solution" to this problem was to move the images to another
site whose bandwidth and servers are paid for from the same pool of cash.
You wouldn't notice a difference when you are viewing the site, and there
really wouldn't be much of a difference.

I think Erik really got to the heart of the issue. If this _were_ an issue,
it boils down to the fact that you need to have legal protection of certain
digital media that is somewhat stricter than your philosophy usually
permits, and finding a way to tackle that problem in all open source
projects is the place to do this, perhaps with a new type of license.

But moving these images to another server hosted by the Foundation doesn't
change anything. The images need to be displayed, they are going to be
displayed, and who cares where they are hosted. I consider this discussion
harmful.

On 8/24/07, John Smith <rememberthedot at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't think that any of the messages posted to this forum have really
> addressed the reason behind the deletion request.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation has stated in
> Foundation:Resolution:Licensing_policy that "All projects are expected to
> host only content which is under a Free Content License". This is why, for
> example, we are not allowed to display the Firefox logo in the user space
> (because it is not free enough for Wikimedia).
>
> Furthermore, in the Foundation-endorsed freedomdefined:Definition, it
> states
> "In most countries however, these freedoms are not enforced but suppressed
> by the laws commonly named *copyright laws*. They consider authors as
> god-like creators and give them an exclusive monopoly as to how "their
> content" can be re-used. This monopoly impedes the flourishing of culture,
> and it does not even help the economic situation of authors so much as it
> protects the business model of the most powerful publishing companies."
>
> Now, why should copyright held by Wikimedia be any less evil than
> copyright
> held by others? Given this anti-copyright stance of the foundation, it is
> only fair that all non-free content be removed from the Commons, no matter
> who owns the copyright.
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