[Foundation-l] PD-art and official "position of the WMF"

Sat Aug 23 20:00:36 UTC 2008

Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>> *I officially pronounce that as of June 30, 2004, content which we are
>> using _solely_ by virtue of non-free licenses should be removed from
>> Wikipedia.*[1]
> 
> Well, back in 2005 Frankfurt Wikimania's "free culture manifesto",  
> Jimmy supported use of PD-art :)
> ""I wouldn't encourage you to break the law, but if you accidentally  
> take a photo of these works it would be great to put it on Wikipedia  
> for the public domain."
> 
> Please allow me to state my individual opinion, as otherwise we'd have  
> to hold an emergency meeting to provide a board-level answer to these  
> questions.

I certainly am not asking for an emergency meeting, only that it be
addressed at the next regular meeting.

> If you feel that Foundation may not be able to support you, if it  
> chose to be more flexible regarding PD interpretations, let us know,  
> and we will discuss that in next meeting.
> If you feel that Foundation should be actually restricting the  
> community, so our values are better preserved, we can probably do that  
> too, if that is really needed, though I'd really really like to trust  
> community with that.

I do generally trust the community with that, but I am noticing a
long-term slide on Commons towards ignoring laws that are not convenient.

> Personally, I want to be able to spread more information, rather than  
> less.
> I'd like others to be able to spread more information too. Thats what  
> we're doing, right?

I always thought we were spreading as much /free/ information as possible.

Matt Flaschen