On 8/11/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/08/06, jkelly@fas.harvard.edu jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
It seems that I was recently invited by an admin to leave the
en:wikipedia
project...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ARequests_for_comm...
Let's read and quote what it actually says there, shall we?
"If you're here to do other things than make the best possible free encyclopedia, then -- to borrow a nauseatingly common theme from the other side's advocates -- the door's right over there."
I think every word of that is the case and needs to be drummed into people's heads, myself.
Note also it's an if-then. Your offence at the statement implies you meet the condition, and hence are here for some other reason. Is that what you meant?
The sentence before that is the problematic one.
Hero's full comment was: *"We are largely still operating as if most people here are working to give away a free, reusable encyclopedia, as if most editors here think of themselves as part of the open sourcehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source/ free culture movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_culture_movement"* We are? Maybe "we" better wake up. *It's supposed to be an encyclopedia*, not some la-di-da "free culture movement" love-in. I'd say that many, many editors think that the free-image-only policy is asinine -- which it is, obviously, *if you want to build a first-rate encyclopedia.* If you're here to do other things than make the best possible free encyclopedia, then -- to borrow a nauseatingly common theme from the other side's advocates -- the door's right over there. Herostratushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Herostratus06:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I would love to be able to use random professional copyrighted images for WP articles; there are plenty of great images out there which we won't get permission to use.
The impact on Wikipedia's redistributability - hence the "is this project still free or not?" question - is significant if we change the image policy much.
Is this policy subject to evolving consensus (and legal changes, etc?). Sure. Is it appropriate to ask people to leave just because they happen to agree with current consensus, that the legal implications of non-free images are much worse than what using them would bring to WP? No.
Copyright law sometimes causes freely redistributable things all sorts of pain and suffering. If you want to work to change the law, feel free, either through lobbying or court cases or whatnot. Taking a too-free interpretation of existing copyright law right now, though, could easily get Wikipedia in a world of hurt. There have been copyright cases with damages and legal fees which exceed the net value of WMF.