[Foundation-l] Fair use being badly abused on en.wikipedia

Tue Jan 8 08:14:14 UTC 2008

Hoi,
It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair
use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that
does. The board of the WMF has been explicit in its choice of the license
and has voiced it wish to do away with fair use. This has been roundly
rejected by enough en.wikipedians, I can understand how this point be
argued, and consequently putting a brave face on it, the board has allowed
for a policy whereby it can be phrased under what conditions exception can
be made.

The way the policy is phrased is that for *every *project there has to be
such a policy. This means that the assertion that Fair Use helps in
disseminating knowledge is wrong; it only helps when a project has such a
policy in place. Several Wikipedias have not and cannot. This means that
Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair
Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On Jan 8, 2008 3:56 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 7, 2008 6:33 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Your comment seems to ignore some of the previous posts, Robert. While
> > I disagree that the WMF should be willing to pay through the nose in
> > order to attempt to set DMCA and fair use precedents the argument
> > misses the important point. The issue is not "Fair use threatens
> > Wikimedia" it is "Fair use violates our license and threatens our
> > mission by making it difficult for our content to be reused freely."
> >
> > Nathan
>
>
>
> If fair use really violates the license (and I can understand how the
> point
> could be argued) then we should be done with it and remove all fair use.
> However, Wikimedia currently operates on an assumption that the two are
> not
> intrinsically incompatible.  Resolving the legal ambiguity is exactly one
> of
> the areas where establishing a legal precedent would be useful.
>
> To the other part, I'd say removing fair use threatens our mission by
> handing power back to the copyright holders and unnecessarily limiting our
> ability to fully discuss some topics.
>
> It's not that I am ignoring previous points, but rather that I have a
> fundementally different opinion of the role of fair use within the scope
> of
> WMF's mission than many of the people here.  I believe there should be no
> greater goal for WMF than to distribute high quality, free-of-cost
> knowledge
> throughout the world.  The "fair use" system of the US and the similar but
> different "fair dealing" systems of other countries provide mechanisms for
> disseminating images and knowledge we would never be able to access
> otherwise, and we should embrace that opportunity rather than shy away
> from
> it.  Excersing those rights to otherwise inaccessible content compliment
> our
> mission rather than detract from it.
>
> -Robert A. Rohde
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