quiddity wrote:
On 7/21/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/21/07, quiddity blanketfort@gmail.com wrote:
I've read through these 2 threads again, and I think Durin's initial post (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-July/077358.html) and George Herbert's reply (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-July/077966.html) are excellent summations of the issue.
(I'm a reductionist by nature, so, to synopsize even further...) This seems to be a fundamental disagreement between 2 philosophies: *The "open-content-first" folks (idealists), and the immediatists (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Immediatism) and *The "encyclopedia-first" folks (utilitarians?), and the eventualists (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eventualism)
Does that sound about right?
Sadly not quite.
There are eventualists who want us to be *eventually* strictly open content, and eventualists who don't really care as long as we are eventually a quality encyclopaedia, under what ever IP Regime.
There are also people who are in an unsconcionable hurry to make sure nothing that is of low quality *at the moment* remain on wikipedia, but who don't really register IP issues on their radar.
I don't really don't think you can make a case for such alignments. Wikiphilosophical attitudes are very much pick and choose. You won't be able to make "two parties" of wikipedians no matter how hard you try to massage the statistics.
some thoughts:
- I realize that nobody *is* an archetype, I'm just trying to reframe
the problem from another perspective (using over-generalizations/meta-labels/abstract archetypes (simply because my thought patterns gravitate towards point-form taxonomies)).
There doesn't seem to be a consensus forming, and from what I understand of the issues, consensus isn't likely to form, as the two viewpoints are fundamentally opposed.
While I make no secret about which polarity I prefer, I recognize the danger of defining them too clearly. It makes rallying about one's preference too easy, and the finding of compromises more difficult. Reductionism has the unfortunate tendency of sandpapering over the very flaws in each side that might be the start of some future life-line.
- I was specifically thinking of [[Image:Einstein tongue.jpg]] as an
example. The immediatists/idealists wanted it gone or fixed instantly; whereas the eventualists were happy with the initial short description under the assumption that it would get expanded at some point in the future. (with many other factors, disclaimer disclaimer, but that was the gist)
There are very few images that have the "iconic" associations of that Einstein image. That makes them bad examples upon which to base policy. As much as I support our use of this image, I do not accept that being "iconic" is the best argument upon which to base our stand. The apparent abandonment of rights, and the doctrine of laches strike me as more effective when we are dealing with an image that is ubiquitous.
A little search has led me to find out that the image is claimed by Corbis, and that they in turn acquired it when they bought out the rights of the Bettman Archive. Now there's a can of worms!! Does one believe everything that Corbis says? Does one believe everything that the man who ultimately pulls Corbis's strings says? :-$
Corbis aggregates archives. Bettman acquired the UPI archive. UPI acquired the picture from Albert Sasse. Someone has claimed that he was an employee, but can we be sure of that? Can Corbis trace its ownership of the rights with documentation? Do they even want to go there?
- I was going to suggest what Bryan Derkson wrote:
I'm suggesting that there's a _balance_ to be found here. Since we keep everything non-free tagged with explicit non-free labels, people who wish to create derivative works that can't make use of fair use exemptions the way we do can easily strip out the content that they can't use.
(much like the {{selfref}} template does) though it does get more complicated when one takes into account the non-free images that *are* explicitly discussed within an article. Those sections wouldn't make sense if the images were stripped out.
Using all non-free images would be as absurd as using none of them.
- My unhappiness/interest in the issue is primarily due to the harm
that it's causing - Good editors are being discouraged/disgruntled/dismayed, on a wide scale. Both sides have intelligent, rational, and positive positions, and we're an idealistic project to begin with, so it's always going to be more complex than a summary can do justice. But the more clearly/simply we define the legal/philosophical/opinion based stances, the easier it might be (for me at least) to discuss them. (Though I'm leaning towards agreeing that we need an official policy "from above", whatever that might be.)
It won't happen, because there is no simple solution that fits all circumstances, or even most of them. Some very broad policy can be developed "from above", but as these become more detailed the dynamics between the WMF and the projects can be radically altered.
Ec