On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think the concept of the project is the
problem. I'm skeptical that
an "Uncommons" project built around fair use could be workable, considering
that the validity of a fair use claim is context-specific and no cross-wiki
project (like Commons) is going to have an easy time managing that
requirement.
We don't have to. As a basic inclusion rule, someone justified an image on
a fair-use project, and someone else wants to share it. If its use gets
deleted on both those wikis (and anywhere else that started using it) due
to not complying with fair use, and it stays out of use, we identify a
cleanup procedure. But as long as a basically credible "it's fair use over
here" exists for 1 or more projects, it's a candidate for Uncommons.
Uncommons should *never* see an image deleted out from under an article
using it, for example. If someone feels it's not compliant with X wiki's
local fair use criteria, they go to X wiki, argue the case, get it removed
from the article(s). Uncommons would consider deletion if all the projects
which tried to use it rejected it on fair use grounds.
Caveat that a copyright violation in the US, where the servers are, may
still need to be removed even if fair-use in (for example) Argentina and
Botswana apply, which is unfortunate, but we have a process for people to
report copyvios of their images to the Foundation, and allowing OTRS to do
their thing as usual would cover that.
The problem is the behavior of a certain core set of
Commons admins; time
and time and time again we have it reported here, we see it on Commons.
While not lawyers, they attempt to be extraordinarily demanding when it
comes to "legal" accuracy. Far more than the actual WMF lawyers have
required, incidentally.
It's not surprising that the locus of the dispute often revolves around
community members who have been banned on other projects but reached
positions of authority on Commons. Perhaps Commons social structures
haven't evolved enough to deal with people who are both productive and
deeply disruptive, and who are not uncivil but contribute to a toxic
environment.
I understand, and applaud those who still want to attempt to reform that.
The curation of the free content is affected along with the spillover into
fair use content.
That said, it's time to move on, for a large bulk of the content hosting
role. The fight now engaged on Commons is not the fight that content
creators and curators on projects need or want to be engaged in.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com