Hoi,
It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair
use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that
does. The board of the WMF has been explicit in its choice of the license
and has voiced it wish to do away with fair use. This has been roundly
rejected by enough en.wikipedians, I can understand how this point be
argued, and consequently putting a brave face on it, the board has allowed
for a policy whereby it can be phrased under what conditions exception can
be made.
The way the policy is phrased is that for *every *project there has to be
such a policy. This means that the assertion that Fair Use helps in
disseminating knowledge is wrong; it only helps when a project has such a
policy in place. Several Wikipedias have not and cannot. This means that
Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair
Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Jan 8, 2008 3:56 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Jan 7, 2008 6:33 PM, Nathan
<nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Your comment seems to ignore some of the previous
posts, Robert. While
I disagree that the WMF should be willing to pay through the nose in
order to attempt to set DMCA and fair use precedents the argument
misses the important point. The issue is not "Fair use threatens
Wikimedia" it is "Fair use violates our license and threatens our
mission by making it difficult for our content to be reused freely."
Nathan
If fair use really violates the license (and I can understand how the
point
could be argued) then we should be done with it and remove all fair use.
However, Wikimedia currently operates on an assumption that the two are
not
intrinsically incompatible. Resolving the legal ambiguity is exactly one
of
the areas where establishing a legal precedent would be useful.
To the other part, I'd say removing fair use threatens our mission by
handing power back to the copyright holders and unnecessarily limiting our
ability to fully discuss some topics.
It's not that I am ignoring previous points, but rather that I have a
fundementally different opinion of the role of fair use within the scope
of
WMF's mission than many of the people here. I believe there should be no
greater goal for WMF than to distribute high quality, free-of-cost
knowledge
throughout the world. The "fair use" system of the US and the similar but
different "fair dealing" systems of other countries provide mechanisms for
disseminating images and knowledge we would never be able to access
otherwise, and we should embrace that opportunity rather than shy away
from
it. Excersing those rights to otherwise inaccessible content compliment
our
mission rather than detract from it.
-Robert A. Rohde
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