[Foundation-l] Re: what is partnership ?

Neil Harris wrote: > Christopher Mahan wrote: > >> --- Neil Harris

There are some very important points here in the matter of intellectual property law. I have long believed that in terms of copyrights the big argument will not come over the inclusion of copyvio material in some Wikipedia article, but over the willingness of Wikimedia to defend the collective rights of its multitude of licensors. The collective has a history of removing copyvio material when it is found, often to an extent that far exceeds what may be required by law. We only need to be aware of the copyvio material before we act. So far, I believe that those who have used the Wikipedia material have been reasonably willing to be compliant when advised of the GFDL. What happens if someone bluntly and stubbornly refuses? What tools do we have that we are willing to use to enforce compliance? Who has the personal responsibility to take the necessary legal steps? Prosecuting cases can be more difficult than defending them. The fact that our collective rights are primarily not fiscal ones makes protecting them more difficult in a judicial system that reduces all disputes to dollar values as the lowest common denominator. A lawyer working on contingency fees knows how to calculate 30% of nothing. I remember well the first "24" who was chased away when I arrived three years ago. (He should not be confused with the more recent and now more familiar one who really was a PIA.) Anyways, the first 24 was concerned with a set of ideas in economic theory based on different kinds of capital. He considered such things as social capital, educational capital and environmental capital, all of which should appear on some kind of balance sheet. IIRC he was mostly criticized for presenting original research, but some of which I had heard already heard about in other sources. The point in raising this is that we need to look at capital in other than monetary terms, because that may be the one common idea that underpins all movements for the free distribution of knowledge. In the matter of partnerships being big has certain advantages; it allows us to be in the driver's seat. We can, for example, charge a fee for the right to call oneself a Wikipedia partner while doing very little else in return. A single page which shows the logos of all our partners would be enough. That would only be there as verification that someone that calls himself a partner really is. Picture this: We have, by volunteer effort alone, created a half-billion dollar gorilla that can't be sold (though not for a lack of willing buyers). Its physical assets are a tiny depreciating server farm, and a little pocket change in the bank. Enron could only wish to have done so much with so little? That's the ultimate futures trade by the libertarian capitalist king of a socialist monarchy. Ec