On 1/28/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I think there is a place for fair use in Wikipedia, and at the same time I support the rationale for its being prohibited in Commons.
Then we are in agreement.
Your talk of multiple sub-goals seems to be a second rate categorixation problem more than anything else. Don't make the issue more complicated than it should be.
This is the wording used on [[Wikipedia:Fair_use_criteria]], which I object to.
While I support fair use I still recognize the transitivity problem connected with it.
But as long as the fair use content cannot be replaced with free content, the transitivity is a non-issue. We can't do anything about it. When legal, we *can* still use it to further our encyclopedia, though.
Our goal is to create a repository of "the sum of all human knowledge"; not "a collection of copyright-free human knowledge". (That's what Project Gutenberg is for.)
Then what do you see as the goal of Wikisource?
I don't know much about Wikisource. They have their own comparison at http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Wikisource_and_Project_Gutenberg
To get your terminology straight "fair use" is specifically NOT a "copyright violation". Don't muddle the argument by mixing up claimed fair use and actual fair use.
Rather, it is "not an infringement of copyright", or an "exception to copyright".