--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
And just to be a little more provocative, the same goes for fair use (I don't know what Jimbo's mom has to say about that, though): By endorsing fair use, we defend this principle. By rejecting it, we
give
the opponents of fair use an opportunity to say: "Oh well, look at Wikipedia, they have built a free encyclopedia of 3 million articles without stealing any content with that so called fair use thing. So
why
not get rid of it altogether?"
I can turn that one around. Suppose we freely use fair use materials. "I have heard from my dear constituents, the media conglomerates, that the Wikipedia people have built a free encyclopedia of 3 million articles, much of it stolen as so-called 'fair use'. We need to put an end to this immediately."
As you might have guessed, I don't see the two topics of filtering and fair use as analogous at all. If we don't filter, and schools eventually block us, we'll get a tremendous boost of positive publicity out of it, and the school blockers will look like the idiots they are. On the other hand, if we allow fair-use materials, and fair-use is eventually limited by law or court interpretation, then we don't get anything positive out of it, indeed quite the opposite.
Axel
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