On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
If we don't maintain the focus on free media, we may as well direct people to a web image search, all of which is "use at your own risk" anyway, just like our proposed new repository. Being free content is the Commons value add over Google Images or the like. Keeping a nonfree image repository adds... what?
It allows free reuse of images which fall under the fair use criteria between separate Projects, without directly copying them N times between the projects, which is an obvious and self evident waste of time and disk space.
If fair use is allowed at all, and it is, then we should support inter-project reuse on a reasonable basis. What Commons has become with its copyright Stazi is no longer acceptable as a component of a project whose educational goal has always and must remain an equally balanced part of its total portfolio.
This is not a call to disband Commons; the project and world benefit from that existing as is. But we need an alternative to support the educational mission, reasonable inter-project reuse, and end the endless deletion wars.