On Dec 1, 2007 3:17 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 9:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
And this has exactly been our interpretation of the GFDL -- this is why we permit combining GFDL works with media under any license whatsoever (limited only by policy), because we regard the media and the text to be "separate and independent" as per the GFDL.
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In my opinion, this interpretation is inconsistent with the text of the GFDL. When the text of an article or other document relies upon a GFDL image to communicate part of its message to the reader, in my opinion, that text can not realisitcally be considered "seperate and independent" of the image. I do not believe embedding GFDL images in non-copyleft documents can be considered consistent with either the text or the spirit of the GFDL.
Personally, I take this issue quite seriously. For example, I reached an out-of-court settlement with a major publisher who took images I had included in Wikipedia under the GFDL and used them commercially without honoring the copyleft provisions.
-Robert A. Rohde