On Jul 21, 2006, at 7:39 AM, Michael Hopcroft wrote:
Some problems I see with this:
If you are doing an article on any subject related to popular culture,
you are in a serious bind, because any film, television or comic image
is under copyright BY DEFINITION, even if the creators of the work you
are illustrating the article about had nothing to do with that image's
creation. For example, ANY picture of Superman would be in violation
regardless of its age or source, because the image of Superman is
itself
someone else's intellectual property (in this case Time Warner).
This, and the dispute over fancruft in the other thread, is
compounding
the dillemma I am facing over whether I can accept the idea of
contuing
to be involved with Wikipedia. If uploading images is such a
legally and
ethically complicated thing, then is not the editing of Wikipedia
itself
even more so? The civil penalties for libel and slander are much more
severe than those for copyright violation, after all.
My point is that I find myself questioning, almost as I did at the
beginning of my involvement with the project, the reason for it and
the
point to it. The very concept of "An encyclopedia anyone can edit"
is a
complete contradiction in logic. The purpose of any encyclopedia is to
provide a reliable baseline from which one can gain enough
groundwork to
do additional research about a topic without being led horrifically
astray. This purpose is utterly defeated by the ability of anyone,
anywhere in the world to alter and delete articles at will. while one
can certainbly show off what one knows or thinks he knows by editing
Wikipedia, the question is what does anyone actually gain from
READING it?
I am wondering whether we are not all engaged in some gigantic folly
that is destroying not only our own credibility but that of the
Internet
as a whole.
I think the way to look at it is from the improvement that your own
editing makes to the project. Everyone's small improvements add up to
something very useful.
Fred