George Herbert wrote:
On 7/25/07, Todd Allen wrote:
The idea here is to build a free content encyclopedia, and every use of nonfree content harms that mission.
I also object to claiming that we have to only host truly free content in order to protect free content's sake.
We need to ensure that content we host is safely usable by Wikipedia. By safe, I mean "in compliance with generally accepted principles, commonly used by other media and references, as far as we can tell in compliance with the laws that are relevant, and unlikely to be controversial with copyright or trademark holders". (check, for logos, and for album covers)
This is more realistic. Contrary to Todd I believe that encouraging certain classes of non-free content actually helps the mission. There is a vast amount of material about which the status is uncertain. There is an enormous amount of material where we could not easily find out who owns the copyright, and the owners probably don't know that they have it. To me it's the free result that matters, not some arbitrary predetermination about the status of the material. When the US had copyright renewals the percentage of renewed copyrights was very low. Strategies that can help '''make''' material free are clearly in the interest of free content.
The history of copyright over the last three centuries has been in one direstion only. Vested interests could pursue their monopolistic protections, because the only people that could object had to be in a financial position to put together a competing product in the first place. Thee was very little push-back. The absence of resistance allows monopolies to grow. If you are too willingly compliant they'll do just that.
Ec