On 8/15/06, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:
GFDL is in fact really strong. If a GFDL image was
used to advertise Coke,
then the whole advertisement could be claimed to be under GFDL
This is, in fact, a common misunderstanding with copyleft licenses.
If coke managed to make a derived work from a strongly copyleft image
their choices are to copyleft their derived work, to distribute the
work in violation of copyright law, or to not distribute it at all.
Nothing about a copyleft license can cause an accidental loss of the
protect privileges of another copyright holder.
[snip]
Plus, not
allowing fair use, thus saying "the only way to have this on wikipedia" is
also a good wayy of receiving images that would be otherwise forced to the
fair use.
This is quite true.
Because of automatic copyright protection the vast majority of
copyrighted works are materials which no one has any need or desire to
protect through copyright. Friction, both in the form of the
acceptance policies of popular forums (like wikipedia) and in the
requirements for derived works in copyleft licenses, is useful to
encourage people to release otherwise exclusive rights for their works
which they do not actually want or need.