[WikiEN-l] Questions about the "Wikipedia screenshot" category of images

Wed Dec 7 21:18:26 UTC 2005

Steve Block wrote:

> So that means we aren't an encyclopedia about anything then?  We're 
> actually an encyclopedia about what suits commercial usages?  Fair 
> play, we have to look out for commercial users, but what is more 
> important here, the encyclopedia or the potential reuse of it?

We've never been *solely* an encyclopedia---we've explicitly been a 
*free-as-in-freedom* encyclopedia.  The *entire point* of creating 
Wikipedia is to make a reusable encyclopedia, not solely to make an 
encyclopedia hosted on wikipedia.org and distributed by the Wikimedia 
Foundation (if that were the goal, there would be no reason to have an 
open-content license in the first place).  In the case of fair use, this 
is a tradeoff: We want to make as unencumbered an encyclopedia as 
possible, with maximal possible reuse by anyone for any purpose, 
balanced against the fact that we'd like maximal coverage of everything 
as well.  So, we allow fair use, but generally prefer free sources where 
possible, and only use fair use where it ads something that makes it 
worth the potential copyright difficulties for reusers.

-Mark