On 8/18/07, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/18/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
No court has ever held that to be an exclusive list.
I made this point before, but I think I need to make it again: are we actually discussing whether or not this is ok and what we should do about it?
Not at all. We're just engaging in a fun debate over an issue which doesn't make any difference about anything at all, and hopefully learning a little bit about copyright law in the process.
We're wikipedia! We're the people that look at the culture of ownership and lawsuits and say "No! Free content can be as good as non-free!" We're supposed to stand for something profound. The policies could have been created so that every contributor licenses his contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation to do with what they wish and it would probably not have hurt wikipedia one bit (it certainly works well for YouTube). But we didn't! Because we're not those kind of people, that's not what we believe!
Seriously, are we really discussing this? There are times when I read this list and I just can't believe what some people are saying.
There are a multitude of opinions among Wikipedians on copyright law, litigiousness, ownership, etc. There's also a multitude of levels of knowledge among Wikipedians on the applicable laws.
Personally I'm pretty much of the opinion that copyright law is evil and should be repealed. I've had conversations with other Wikipedians who fall nearly on the opposite end of that spectrum. And the vast majority fall somewhere in between. And yet, I think it's possible for us all to get along, so long as we can agree that Wikipedia is going to A) be a free work; and B) work within the law.