On 2/28/14, 9:18 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On 28 February 2014 01:23, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 27 February 2014 22:03, Galileo Vidoni galio2k@gmail.com wrote:
And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which to our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.
We could do that but it pretty much removes commons only advantage over say imgur or flickr. We want the images on commons to be free. Not simply stuff no one has got around to complaining about yet,
This supports what I noted: Commons increasingly just can't be relied upon as a repository for the other Wikimedia projects.
This implies no bad faith or bad actions on the part of the Commons community. (But that that's a distinct thing from the Wikimedia community is a lot of the problem.) Nor that what Commons *is* is inherently problematic; but what it is is less and less useful inside Wikimedia.
But the other Wikimedia projects are *also* supposed to share that goal: of producing a Free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia whose contents can be safely reused and adapted by a wide range of other people and organizations, who should be able to assume that it is legal to do so without exhaustive case-by-case investigation. The movement's main job is not merely hosting the websites *.wikipedia.org, putting up whatever we find useful to put up, and taking down things when we get complaints or lawsuits.
What level of scrutiny we want to apply is indeed a judgment call, so and I don't know if the current URAA policy falls on the right or wrong side of that (I haven't investigated it). But I don't think the fundamental goals are different. And if they are, it's the other projects that are in the wrong: *not* having a free, reusable body of content as the project goal is fundamentally incompatible with the Wikimedia Movement. We want the content on all Wikimedia wikis to be free-as-in-freedom and reusable by anyone. That's the point.
-Mark