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

Tue Jan 16 10:25:33 UTC 2007

>
> Dutch citaatrecht is much more limited than fair use, and we decided
> to comply with both Dutch and Belgian law (...)

I think that could be one of the main reasons for also abolishing fair use
on the English Wikipedia. The main juridical difference between the two is
that 'Citaatrecht' (the Dutch term for 'citation rights') is no 'right'. The
term simply means that no copyright can be claimed on citations, while fair
use is more a 'right' than a law (at least, as far as i know, and IANAL).
Citaatrecht is a typical example of fair dealing, opposed to fair use. We do
use 'citation rights' on the Dutch Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects)
but only in terms of text (else the Dutch Wikiquote couldn't even exist!),
but not on media (such as images) because the legal aspects of it are far
more difficult than text.

The difference between the US legal system, where much more is allowed in
terms of using citations of copyrighted work, and other (European) law
systems seems to me to be the main reason for abolishing fair use for images
and other types of media, and just restricting it to text and some small
exceptions (because text citations are allowed in many more countries). If
'fair use' in the broad terms of American law would be available in many
more countries it would make sense to allow it on Wikimedia projects, but at
the moment it is an almost exclusively American law, and raises many
problems on non-English projects.

-- Hay Kranen / [[User:Husky]]