[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

Sat Jan 13 20:22:12 UTC 2007

The difference is that material licensed NC usually has freer
substitutes. Invoking fair use usually indicates the absence of a
substitute. Furthermore, fair use and NC are orthogonal considerations:
an image can be neither, one, or both. Just because we might allow fair
use as a compromise doesn't mean compromises elsewhere are warranted. I
don't see the logical step from allowing fair use to allowing
non-commercial media.

So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
under fair use because we don't have a substitute.

If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.

The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
(Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
images undermine that goal.

effe iets anders wrote:
> If there is no freely licensed substitute, I think we have in the long run
> justr to accept that, and work with substitutes of minor quality. Thats just
> bad luck, but a direct consequence of what we are doing. That is a
> consequence of our choise for freedom, for free licenses. How can you EVER
> expect a photographer, national institutes, record labels, to license their
> stuff freely when even *we* refuse to use the free versions of lower
> quality, and use copyrighted content under the flag of fair use?
> 
> I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
> as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
> Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
> use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
> (To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
> educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
> is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
> principles, what is more our principle then free licences?
> 
> Lodewijk
> 
> 2007/1/13, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>:
>> On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>>> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
>>> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
>>> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
>>> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.
>>
>> You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free
>> licenses
>> are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
>> free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
>> their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
>> asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
>> added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
>> copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
>> the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" -
>> right
>> to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).
>>
>> For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
>>> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
>>> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
>>> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
>>> the user interfaces.
>>
>> I agree, but this does not make those images free.
>>
>> Marco aka Cruccone
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