Fw: [WikiEN-l] Wikilists and GDFL

Wed Oct 1 14:53:07 UTC 2003

Ops, sorry,
I realize that this was not posted to the list.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>
To: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikilists and GDFL


>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> To: "Alex T." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>; "English Wikipedia"
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 8:36 AM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikilists and GDFL
>
>
> > Who decides if they were fair use? Do we have a US Federal District
> > Court judge who can render binding fair use opinions? Do we have
> > someone who can even say what is a copyright violation? It is all
opinion.
> >
> > Well, observance of law is a duty of citizens, most of whom have limited
> > access to legal expertise. However being regularly engaged in a
regulated
> > activity as our editors are, results in gradual development of expertise
> > which is "good enough" for our purposes.
>
> This is exactly my point about collaboarative process. It gradually
develops
> into something more cogent, so why would anyone want to use some
> old out of date version of a page?
>
> > Even if one of regular contributors was a US Federal District Court
judge
> > and they chose to share their expertise with us it would not serve as
that
> > would be the opinion of only one judge in one jurisdiction in a
> complicated
> > field with diverse authority.
>
> You are now misquoting me. I did not state that Wikipedia needed a US
> Federal judge to be give his opinion but render a legally binding decision
> on copyright law.  Also you do not seem to know the basics
> of copyright law and fair use. It is an American concept and all of
> Wikipedia
> is published in the United States, so even French pages on the French
> Wikipedia written by French contributors is under US copyright law.
> It is all published in the good ol'USA. That's a fact.
>
> > What we have to do is in good faith do our best.
>
> And my point is that good faith applies to our collaboration on articles
> and the use of those articles and the contribution of others.
>
> > These and discussions on talk pages are a vital part of our
self-education
> > and our program for compliance.
> >
> > It is of course, opinion, but we need to form opinions which are
> sufficient
> > for our purposes, which are to appropriatly apply fair use and avoid
> > infringement and possible litigation.
>
> So on one had you think we need to work together, but only when dealing
> with legal issues, not when dealing with content. This seems
contradictiory
> to me.  You want to gain the benefit of collaboration only when it suits
> you,
> otherwise you want to discard collaboration when it doesn't.
>
> This does not bode well for the future of some formal structure that
> you are suggesting that "we" are part of.  the whole point of being in
> an organization is that you surrender your personal point of view to the
> collective whole so that the whole can function. If everyone wants to
> allow people to use old versions of pages, that does not seems to support
> the idea of the Wikipedia being more than just a rough compendium of
> randomly pooror incomplete  pages.
>
> Alex756
>