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Daniel Mayer wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid20040222134503.699C1138498@mail.wikimedia.org">Michael Snow
wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">My criticism was primarily out of concern
that people might read your statement as
reflecting the actual state of the law,
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->Well IANAL but I do often agree with them and their reasoning.</pre>
</blockquote>
Well, you've had disagreements with at least two so far. Though of
course, lawyers frequently disagree with each other, too. It's sort of
an occupational requirement.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid20040222134503.699C1138498@mail.wikimedia.org">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">especially coming from such a widely
respected source.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->I wish everybody would just take my statements at face value and not add
special significance (good or bad) to what I say just because I said it.</pre>
</blockquote>
I doubt that's completely possible for you anymore here. You're not
Jimbo, but most regular users probably know who you are. I expect Jimbo
probably avoids expressing his personal opinions in some situations,
just because people might attach too much weight to them.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid20040222134503.699C1138498@mail.wikimedia.org">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Ultimately, the GFDL and fair use are incompatible.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
No they are not - not any more than any other set of license terms. It doesn't
matter what license terms you have on a work - if you strip away everything but
the fair use content then the use is no longer fair (whatever the license). The
fact that the GNU FDL is involved is irrelevant. </pre>
</blockquote>
I consider it both relevant and different from other licenses. The GFDL
is a form of copyleft, and in my opinion, you can't copyleft something
if you don't own the copyright. We don't own the copyright to our fair
use materials (not when considered separately), yet we appear to be
licensing their use under copyleft. It's quite different than if we
were licensing our content under terms that were designed to limit
everybody else to fair use as well. However, if you feel that our
disclaimer of warranties shifts the obligation to downstream users,
making it their job to determine what they can legally copy, that's a
reasonable position to take.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid20040222134503.699C1138498@mail.wikimedia.org">
<pre wrap="">Otherwise we could not even have small quotes from copyrighted works.</pre>
</blockquote>
As I have pointed out in some of my other posts, there are other legal
justifications for quotation besides fair use under US copyright law. I
believe we should shift our reliance to Article 10 of the Berne
Convention, which specifically allows quotation of published works. We
would have to make sure we mention the source and the name of the
author. I think this can pretty much resolve the issue for text, and an
argument can be made to apply it to images and sounds as well. In any
case, the Berne Convention has much wider international acceptance than
fair use.<br>
<br>
--Michael Snow
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