The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions.

That's why you don't find, for example, the nonfree nvidia driver in the Linux kernel. It could be legally distributed that way, sure, but it's not free. Anyone who wants it is welcome to download and install their own, but to keep the core product (the kernel) free, it must not be distributed as part of it. To be genuinely free, anyone should be able to take a database dump of Wikipedia, and provided that they comply with the GFDL, put it up on a commercial website with every last bit of data they got. Wikipedia is currently nonfree. A lot of -parts- are free, but it only takes a bit of pollution to make the whole nonfree.

On 10/09/2007, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: "Diese Datei zeigt ein Logo, das dem Markenrecht und/oder dem Namensrecht unterliegt." Which Babelfish tells me means "This file shows a Logo, which is subject to the trademark law and/or the right of the use of a name."...

Has there been any effort on English Wikipedia to separate trademarked images from the other non-free images, besides the upload logo tag? For example, the copyright for Krazy Kat appears to have not been renewed, however King Features is using trademarks to protect the comics. See [[Image:1937_1107_kkat_brick_500.jpg]].

On 9/10/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen(a)gmail.com> wrote: The Germans have done a remarkably poor job in some areas due to this. Some of their articles, even on fairly important topics, can never hope to be any good. We're trying to write a free encyclopaedia, which necessarily includes it being an encyclopaedia. Fair use and fair dealings exist for a reason - legislators recognise that we cannot hope to write something like an encyclopaedia without these rights. And we can't. Right now, people can and do take dumps of Wikipedia and put it on commercial websites with no real legal liability. The only issues are for highly transformative uses, or for very small fractions - an *article* with fair use images can reasonably be extracted and mirrored, but a fair use image alone cannot be extracted and say - put on a postcard. So the english Wikipedia isn't a source of strictly free content. But it is a free encyclopaedia, and we are taking strong steps to ensure that downstream users who want to reuse content outside of an encyclopaedia can easily identify and remove anything they can't use. And in the end, it doesn't cost us any free content - nonfree content is only permitted where free content could never be produced anyhow In the end, if the community has to choose between producing strictly free content and producing a free encyclopaedia, I'd put dollars to dimes they'd choose the latter. WilyD _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of

That's about as far from "minimal use" as you get, allowing blanket exceptions based on classes. If we're going to tighten the rules, let's have nonfree images only when significant, sourced commentary exists on the image itself. Remember the old saying you can't judge a book by its cover...

Steve Bennett wrote: If "ugh" and "yuck" are the only arguments against it, I'd say that's a good argument it's decorative. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

I've been tending to apply "enough to illustrate the article", and reducing higher resolutions to 300x300. (I suppose a particularly remarkable aspect of a particular cover could do with higher resolution on a case by case basis.)

"Case by case" is a lot of work, and a recipe for abuse. Care to make 300x300 a firm rule?

300*300 would kinda break for stamps since that would be pretty much print quality.

That assumes you know the size of the initial object. It also create problems with images that have always been digital. I don't think there is any easy way to get around the isssue.