Rich Holton wrote:
Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always issue a take-down notice if they do.
Again, you haven't answered my question. This time you responded with a straw man. I don't think any serious participant is proposing we accept blatant copyright violations. I'm sure not.
If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please just say so?
We are also here to encourage the use of free licenses in the process of building a free encyclopedia.
I accept that you're here for that. I just don't think most people are, and from the limited amount I've seen so far, it seems like people with that agenda are trying to force other people to comply with their desires by making the encyclopedia worse.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the agenda of promoting GNU-style freedom. Wikipedia aside, I've contributed to GPL projects and will continue to do so. I'm a fan of and contributor to various free-culture efforts. Free licenses are great. But not so great that it's worth harming Wikipedia articles.
And now that I think about it, I'm not sure that this current approach is really doing much to encourage people to get excited about free licenses. The people who were very excited about them are pleased, I'm sure. But from the comments I've seen, it doesn't sound like the image deletions are making anybody say, "Wow, now I see why GNU-style freedom is so great!"
The Mission Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement) states:
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
When we allow people to use non-free images where a free option exists, we are "preventing" them from using Wikipedia in the way that the mission of the foundation explicitly states is a goal. We are not educating our editors in the use of free materials.
Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism to achieve an end, not an end in itself. Even if promoting the GFDL license were a major goal, it would still be a goal, like the goal of collecting all of human knowledge. I'm not seeing the case for harming the primary goal (development and distribution of educational content) in pursuit of a temporary boost to another goal.
I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not also part of our goal?
Well, you're getting closer to naming some actual real-world harm. Can you name people who have not received Wikipedia content because somebody was unable to filter out the images tagged as "fair use" while making an offline distribution?
And yes, I understand the theoretical issue. I'm just saying that I've not heard of any real-world impact to balance against the real-world impact of making articles worse.
William