I am not a US lawyer, nor is [[Pamela Jones]] of [[Groklaw]]. But here's some food for thought:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070907195435565
Despite my personal fondness for slash-and-burning fair abuse on en:wp and taking away children's eyecandy, I remain a big fan of fair use, because quotation is a necessary part of being able to talk about something. [[Golan v. Gonzales]] (that's a red link. Could someone please write the article?) is the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals saying it is too.
So what's Wikipedia and Wikimedia's duty to exercise that right in the pursuit of educational value?
- d.
On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:09:32 +0100, David Gerard wrote:
because quotation is a necessary part of being able to talk about something. [[Golan v. Gonzales]] (that's a red link. Could someone please write the article?) is the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
There is [[Golan v. Gonzalez]].
For the most part, there seems to be a strong consensus that we should steer clear of the boundries we could push fair use (or in many of our cases, such as mine, fair dealing) to.
As an educational resource - there's probably a lot of space - I'll warn you that I live in a foreign socialist country where we don't believe in copyrights or suing people, so my advice may not be all that great.
The issue is - we want to provide a free encyclopaedia for downstream users, who may be commercial in nature. How do we be free while still being an encyclopaedia? How do we be an encyclopaedia while still be free? Tricky ...
WilyD
On 9/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I am not a US lawyer, nor is [[Pamela Jones]] of [[Groklaw]]. But here's some food for thought:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070907195435565
Despite my personal fondness for slash-and-burning fair abuse on en:wp and taking away children's eyecandy, I remain a big fan of fair use, because quotation is a necessary part of being able to talk about something. [[Golan v. Gonzales]] (that's a red link. Could someone please write the article?) is the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals saying it is too.
So what's Wikipedia and Wikimedia's duty to exercise that right in the pursuit of educational value?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Wily D wrote:
For the most part, there seems to be a strong consensus that we should steer clear of the boundries we could push fair use (or in many of our cases, such as mine, fair dealing) to.
As an educational resource - there's probably a lot of space - I'll warn you that I live in a foreign socialist country where we don't believe in copyrights or suing people, so my advice may not be all that great.
The issue is - we want to provide a free encyclopaedia for downstream users, who may be commercial in nature. How do we be free while still being an encyclopaedia? How do we be an encyclopaedia while still be free? Tricky ...
WilyD
On 9/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I am not a US lawyer, nor is [[Pamela Jones]] of [[Groklaw]]. But here's some food for thought:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070907195435565
Despite my personal fondness for slash-and-burning fair abuse on en:wp and taking away children's eyecandy, I remain a big fan of fair use, because quotation is a necessary part of being able to talk about something. [[Golan v. Gonzales]] (that's a red link. Could someone please write the article?) is the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals saying it is too.
So what's Wikipedia and Wikimedia's duty to exercise that right in the pursuit of educational value?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions. That's why you don't find, for example, the nonfree nvidia driver in the Linux kernel. It could be legally distributed that way, sure, but it's not free. Anyone who wants it is welcome to download and install their own, but to keep the core product (the kernel) free, it must not be distributed as part of it.
To be genuinely free, anyone should be able to take a database dump of Wikipedia, and provided that they comply with the GFDL, put it up on a commercial website with every last bit of data they got. Wikipedia is currently nonfree. A lot of -parts- are free, but it only takes a bit of pollution to make the whole nonfree.
On 10/09/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions.
You think the image on the top right of this page is free:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_United
That's why you don't find, for example, the nonfree nvidia driver in the Linux kernel. It could be legally distributed that way, sure, but it's not free. Anyone who wants it is welcome to download and install their own, but to keep the core product (the kernel) free, it must not be distributed as part of it.
To be genuinely free, anyone should be able to take a database dump of Wikipedia, and provided that they comply with the GFDL, put it up on a commercial website with every last bit of data they got. Wikipedia is currently nonfree. A lot of -parts- are free, but it only takes a bit of pollution to make the whole nonfree.
That would involve stripping all wikipedia logos out. Tricky. In adition en is now pretty good at makeing it clear what is and isn't free.
On 10/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/09/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions.
You think the image on the top right of this page is free:
"Diese Datei zeigt ein Logo, das dem Markenrecht und/oder dem Namensrecht unterliegt."
Which Babelfish tells me means "This file shows a Logo, which is subject to the trademark law and/or the right of the use of a name."...
On 9/11/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/09/2007, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions.
You think the image on the top right of this page is free:
"Diese Datei zeigt ein Logo, das dem Markenrecht und/oder dem Namensrecht unterliegt."
Which Babelfish tells me means "This file shows a Logo, which is subject to the trademark law and/or the right of the use of a name."...
Has there been any effort on English Wikipedia to separate trademarked images from the other non-free images, besides the upload logo tag?
For example, the copyright for Krazy Kat appears to have not been renewed, however King Features is using trademarks to protect the comics. See [[Image:1937_1107_kkat_brick_500.jpg]].
-- John
On 14/09/2007, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been any effort on English Wikipedia to separate trademarked images from the other non-free images, besides the upload logo tag?
No.
On 9/14/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Has there been any effort on English Wikipedia to separate trademarked images from the other non-free images, besides the upload logo tag?
For example, the copyright for Krazy Kat appears to have not been renewed, however King Features is using trademarks to protect the comics. See [[Image:1937_1107_kkat_brick_500.jpg]].
Note that German Wikipedia appears to often use the German definitions of trademark and copyright law, in which most simple logos are non-copyrightable.
It's really hard to tell if an image has fallen out of copyright or not through non-renewal; I've never gotten a wholly satisfactory answer about what happens to the copyright of an image only published as part of a larger work, if one but not all copyrighted works in which it was published were not renewed.
-Matt
On 9/10/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Wily D wrote:
For the most part, there seems to be a strong consensus that we should steer clear of the boundries we could push fair use (or in many of our cases, such as mine, fair dealing) to.
As an educational resource - there's probably a lot of space - I'll warn you that I live in a foreign socialist country where we don't believe in copyrights or suing people, so my advice may not be all that great.
The issue is - we want to provide a free encyclopaedia for downstream users, who may be commercial in nature. How do we be free while still being an encyclopaedia? How do we be an encyclopaedia while still be free? Tricky ...
WilyD
On 9/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I am not a US lawyer, nor is [[Pamela Jones]] of [[Groklaw]]. But here's some food for thought:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070907195435565
Despite my personal fondness for slash-and-burning fair abuse on en:wp and taking away children's eyecandy, I remain a big fan of fair use, because quotation is a necessary part of being able to talk about something. [[Golan v. Gonzales]] (that's a red link. Could someone please write the article?) is the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals saying it is too.
So what's Wikipedia and Wikimedia's duty to exercise that right in the pursuit of educational value?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions. That's why you don't find, for example, the nonfree nvidia driver in the Linux kernel. It could be legally distributed that way, sure, but it's not free. Anyone who wants it is welcome to download and install their own, but to keep the core product (the kernel) free, it must not be distributed as part of it.
To be genuinely free, anyone should be able to take a database dump of Wikipedia, and provided that they comply with the GFDL, put it up on a commercial website with every last bit of data they got. Wikipedia is currently nonfree. A lot of -parts- are free, but it only takes a bit of pollution to make the whole nonfree.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The Germans have done a remarkably poor job in some areas due to this. Some of their articles, even on fairly important topics, can never hope to be any good. We're trying to write a free encyclopaedia, which necessarily includes it being an encyclopaedia. Fair use and fair dealings exist for a reason - legislators recognise that we cannot hope to write something like an encyclopaedia without these rights. And we can't.
Right now, people can and do take dumps of Wikipedia and put it on commercial websites with no real legal liability. The only issues are for highly transformative uses, or for very small fractions - an *article* with fair use images can reasonably be extracted and mirrored, but a fair use image alone cannot be extracted and say - put on a postcard.
So the english Wikipedia isn't a source of strictly free content. But it is a free encyclopaedia, and we are taking strong steps to ensure that downstream users who want to reuse content outside of an encyclopaedia can easily identify and remove anything they can't use. And in the end, it doesn't cost us any free content - nonfree content is only permitted where free content could never be produced anyhow
In the end, if the community has to choose between producing strictly free content and producing a free encyclopaedia, I'd put dollars to dimes they'd choose the latter.
WilyD
Wily D wrote:
On 9/10/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Wily D wrote:
For the most part, there seems to be a strong consensus that we should steer clear of the boundries we could push fair use (or in many of our cases, such as mine, fair dealing) to.
As an educational resource - there's probably a lot of space - I'll warn you that I live in a foreign socialist country where we don't believe in copyrights or suing people, so my advice may not be all that great.
The issue is - we want to provide a free encyclopaedia for downstream users, who may be commercial in nature. How do we be free while still being an encyclopaedia? How do we be an encyclopaedia while still be free? Tricky ...
WilyD
On 9/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I am not a US lawyer, nor is [[Pamela Jones]] of [[Groklaw]]. But here's some food for thought:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070907195435565
Despite my personal fondness for slash-and-burning fair abuse on en:wp and taking away children's eyecandy, I remain a big fan of fair use, because quotation is a necessary part of being able to talk about something. [[Golan v. Gonzales]] (that's a red link. Could someone please write the article?) is the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals saying it is too.
So what's Wikipedia and Wikimedia's duty to exercise that right in the pursuit of educational value?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of nonfree. Period, end of story, no exceptions. That's why you don't find, for example, the nonfree nvidia driver in the Linux kernel. It could be legally distributed that way, sure, but it's not free. Anyone who wants it is welcome to download and install their own, but to keep the core product (the kernel) free, it must not be distributed as part of it.
To be genuinely free, anyone should be able to take a database dump of Wikipedia, and provided that they comply with the GFDL, put it up on a commercial website with every last bit of data they got. Wikipedia is currently nonfree. A lot of -parts- are free, but it only takes a bit of pollution to make the whole nonfree.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The Germans have done a remarkably poor job in some areas due to this. Some of their articles, even on fairly important topics, can never hope to be any good. We're trying to write a free encyclopaedia, which necessarily includes it being an encyclopaedia. Fair use and fair dealings exist for a reason - legislators recognise that we cannot hope to write something like an encyclopaedia without these rights. And we can't.
Right now, people can and do take dumps of Wikipedia and put it on commercial websites with no real legal liability. The only issues are for highly transformative uses, or for very small fractions - an *article* with fair use images can reasonably be extracted and mirrored, but a fair use image alone cannot be extracted and say - put on a postcard.
So the english Wikipedia isn't a source of strictly free content. But it is a free encyclopaedia, and we are taking strong steps to ensure that downstream users who want to reuse content outside of an encyclopaedia can easily identify and remove anything they can't use. And in the end, it doesn't cost us any free content - nonfree content is only permitted where free content could never be produced anyhow
In the end, if the community has to choose between producing strictly free content and producing a free encyclopaedia, I'd put dollars to dimes they'd choose the latter.
WilyD
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In a few areas, I might even choose the latter.
As to the WMF logos, trademark is a different beast then copyright. (This is why I hate that lazy "intellectual property" term, not only does an idea fit very poorly into the idea of property, but it encourages the conflation of several very different laws into some meaningless umbrella designation.) Copyright is designed to lock things up, trademark is simply to prevent deception of consumers and unfair degradation of the reputation of the trademark holder. If I make a crap version of Linux, I shouldn't be able to smear Linus Torvalds or deceive its users by distributing it as "Linux". I could still use the trademark nominally (for example, "Based on the Linux kernel"), just like people can say "Wikipedia" to comment on us.
This all being said, if someone ever did propose the German solution on nonfree images, I'd have to think very carefully over whether I'd be for or against. It would be nice to have a totally free project (and if one can build software that way, one can build an encyclopedia that way), but a few articles would suffer greatly. In the meantime, though, we should quit passing ourselves off as "free" (at least the libre sense of free), when we're not. We can certainly decide what we want the project to be, but in the meantime we should not be dishonest about what it is, and it is currently only gratis-free.
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
This all being said, if someone ever did propose the German solution on nonfree images, I'd have to think very carefully over whether I'd be for or against. It would be nice to have a totally free project (and if one can build software that way, one can build an encyclopedia that way), but a few articles would suffer greatly. In the meantime, though, we should quit passing ourselves off as "free" (at least the libre sense of free), when we're not. We can certainly decide what we want the project to be, but in the meantime we should not be dishonest about what it is, and it is currently only gratis-free.
If we only distribute free content (not sure if this is the case) then we are "free" - we just happen to have a web portal containing non free content too.
Steve
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of
Losing CD and book covers is a big price to pay. We could certainly tighten up our fair use rules even more, defining the exact circumstances you can use a nonfree image:
* One CD cover for the article on the CD. * One book cover for the article on the book. * One image of a piece of artwork in the article on that artwork, and/or the creator of it, as long as there is text discussing it. etc.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
The Germans seem to have solved that question quite well. We took a page out of their book on userboxes, maybe we should take the flipside on nonfree content too. The way you remain free is to steer clear of
Losing CD and book covers is a big price to pay. We could certainly tighten up our fair use rules even more, defining the exact circumstances you can use a nonfree image:
- One CD cover for the article on the CD.
- One book cover for the article on the book.
- One image of a piece of artwork in the article on that artwork,
and/or the creator of it, as long as there is text discussing it. etc.
Steve
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That's about as far from "minimal use" as you get, allowing blanket exceptions based on classes. If we're going to tighten the rules, let's have nonfree images only when significant, sourced commentary exists on the image itself. Remember the old saying you can't judge a book by its cover...
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
That's about as far from "minimal use" as you get, allowing blanket exceptions based on classes. If we're going to tighten the rules, let's have nonfree images only when significant, sourced commentary exists on the image itself. Remember the old saying you can't judge a book by its cover...
An article on a CD with no image of the CD cover? Ugh. I mean really, yuck.
While we're at it, could someone define "low resolution"? Every editor uploading an image of a CD cover seems to have to use their own judgment. A standard size, like 600x600 or something, would be great.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
That's about as far from "minimal use" as you get, allowing blanket exceptions based on classes. If we're going to tighten the rules, let's have nonfree images only when significant, sourced commentary exists on the image itself. Remember the old saying you can't judge a book by its cover...
An article on a CD with no image of the CD cover? Ugh. I mean really, yuck.
While we're at it, could someone define "low resolution"? Every editor uploading an image of a CD cover seems to have to use their own judgment. A standard size, like 600x600 or something, would be great.
Steve
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If "ugh" and "yuck" are the only arguments against it, I'd say that's a good argument it's decorative.
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 9/11/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
That's about as far from "minimal use" as you get, allowing blanket exceptions based on classes. If we're going to tighten the rules, let's have nonfree images only when significant, sourced commentary exists on the image itself. Remember the old saying you can't judge a book by its cover...
An article on a CD with no image of the CD cover? Ugh. I mean really, yuck.
While we're at it, could someone define "low resolution"? Every editor uploading an image of a CD cover seems to have to use their own judgment. A standard size, like 600x600 or something, would be great.
Steve
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If "ugh" and "yuck" are the only arguments against it, I'd say that's a good argument it's decorative.
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Ugh and Yuck in this context refer to how badly the articles would be degraded. An article on Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollock without an example of their art ... http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock ... eww. This art isn't decorative, it's informative. Even unfree images for identification - [[Homer Simpson]] really isn't a quality encyclopaedia without a picture of him. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Simpson#Homer_Simpson <- Really, this does a poor job of conveying The Simpsons ...
It depends - fair use images are really overused, no doubt, but making a truly comprehensive encyclopaedia requires them. Of course, we also flag our unfree images so they can easily be removed by any downstream user anyhow. Removing the fair use stuff from Wikipedia.org wouldn't improve the quality of the downstream free use stuff, it would only make the encyclopaedia shittier. Of course, unfree quoted text should probably be flagged.
WilyD
On 11/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
An article on a CD with no image of the CD cover? Ugh. I mean really, yuck. While we're at it, could someone define "low resolution"? Every editor uploading an image of a CD cover seems to have to use their own judgment. A standard size, like 600x600 or something, would be great.
I've been tending to apply "enough to illustrate the article", and reducing higher resolutions to 300x300. (I suppose a particularly remarkable aspect of a particular cover could do with higher resolution on a case by case basis.)
- d.
On 9/11/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I've been tending to apply "enough to illustrate the article", and reducing higher resolutions to 300x300. (I suppose a particularly remarkable aspect of a particular cover could do with higher resolution on a case by case basis.)
"Case by case" is a lot of work, and a recipe for abuse. Care to make 300x300 a firm rule?
As an example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Pepper%27s.jpg That's 325x325, and while you can't make out the fine details, it's sufficient for our purposes. We could always have some cropped closeups of some of the faces.
Steve
On 11/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/11/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I've been tending to apply "enough to illustrate the article", and reducing higher resolutions to 300x300. (I suppose a particularly remarkable aspect of a particular cover could do with higher resolution on a case by case basis.)
"Case by case" is a lot of work, and a recipe for abuse. Care to make 300x300 a firm rule? As an example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Pepper%27s.jpg That's 325x325, and while you can't make out the fine details, it's sufficient for our purposes. We could always have some cropped closeups of some of the faces.
I wouldn't go in and shrink a 325px image :-) I would, however, shrink a 1000px image that doesn't have any particular reason to be that high resolution.
- d.
On 11/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
"Case by case" is a lot of work, and a recipe for abuse. Care to make 300x300 a firm rule?
300*300 would kinda break for stamps since that would be pretty much print quality.
On 11/09/2007, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
"Case by case" is a lot of work, and a recipe for abuse. Care to make 300x300 a firm rule?
300*300 would kinda break for stamps since that would be pretty much print quality.
And I didn't note that "case by case" is actually required for justifying fair use. If the "abuse" is removing a nonfree image, I generally find myself almost entirely unable to manifest two hoots.
- d.
On 9/11/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
300*300 would kinda break for stamps since that would be pretty much print quality.
So let's specify "low resolution" in dpi.
Steve
On 15/09/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/11/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
300*300 would kinda break for stamps since that would be pretty much print quality.
So let's specify "low resolution" in dpi.
Steve
That assumes you know the size of the initial object. It also create problems with images that have always been digital. I don't think there is any easy way to get around the isssue.
On 9/15/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
That assumes you know the size of the initial object. It also create problems with images that have always been digital. I don't think there is any easy way to get around the isssue.
I agree; unfortunately, I don't think there's any sensible way to make a simple, general rule for this.
We should be using a resolution that is necessary in the article but not greater, fundamentally.
-Matt
On 9/11/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I've been tending to apply "enough to illustrate the article", and reducing higher resolutions to 300x300. (I suppose a particularly remarkable aspect of a particular cover could do with higher resolution on a case by case basis.)
There's a sort of standard now for images in articles which has organically evolved and has been around for a long time. 300px wide is the largest that most images get, at least the ones in portrait orientation. Images wider than that are usually landscape panoramas in articles about locations.
300px is more than enough for a CD cover, book cover, DVD cover etc. Note that the infoboxes for albums, films etc all default to 200px width, which is a good size for infobox use.
On 10/09/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
So what's Wikipedia and Wikimedia's duty to exercise that right in the pursuit of educational value?
None.
Fair use, fair dealing, right of quotation those are all part of the traditional copyright structure. By relying on them to any extent you are getting into the traditional copyright game.
One of the key things about free content is that we in effect say to the groups within the traditional copyright system "here's your ball go home".