On 3/9/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 3/9/06, Anthony DiPierro
<wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
Absolutely. Fair use should be abandoned in
favor of allowing
CC-BY-ND. I just found out that CC-BY-ND allows "the right to make
such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights
in other media and formats", so use of such a license is much better
than relying on fair use.
I don't agree at all. Our goal is to make a free content
encyclopedia. When we speak of free we mean freedom and not cost. ND
content is not free.
Neither is "fair use content", of course.
By allowing ND images we would be in a position of
three
possibilities: no image, a free image, or an ND image which is 'free
enough' to post on our website but fails our goal of producing free
content. If we allow ND images it will specifically be at the expense
of free images. A downstream users who can't accept unfree content
will be in a worse position if we were to make that decision.
No, you misunderstand. ND images would only be allowed in situations
where fair use images are currently allowed.
Of course the
major disadvantage is that people have to be convinced
to release their image under the license. But right now it's not even
an option.
Who are you expecting to convince? The impact on the real commercial
value of the work between GFDL and a ND license is minimal. ND
licenses primarily appeal to the vanity of artists who are not
sufficiently satisfied by mere attribution.
Well, we disagree here. I think there's a huge difference between ND
and GFDL. There's only one way to find out for sure, though, and
that's to give it a try. Allow ND in places where fair use is already
allowed, and see if you get any takers.
The lack of ND images has, no doubt, cost us some
images on the short
term... but we could equally say that our failure to illegally copy
current edition Britannica articles has also cost us some level of
coverage. Fundamentally if someone isn't interested in creating a
*free* encyclopedia then they aren't interested in helping us. Yes,
we'll sometimes include the copyrighted works of others... but with
fair use we can do that whether they like it or not.
It isn't acceptable to give up freedom to gain a little more quality content.
I just don't see what freedom is being given up. An image which *is*
licensed under CC-ND is more free than an image which is not.
The loss of natural freedom in the embodiment of ideas
has been a huge
burden on our civilization, at least since computing put publication
in the hands of almost every person. This burden will continue until
we unify to remove it; It will continue until we create enough free
content that the artificial social and economic imposition created by
copyright is longer an impediment to the flow of knowledge to the
people who want and need it most.
This isn't going to happen quickly, but it can't happen at all if we
compromise unnecessarily.
We can afford to wait:
Wikipedia is forever.
Hey, if your answer is to remove all non-free images completely from
Wikipedia, you have no objection from me. My suggestion was merely to
replace one set of non-free images with another set of non-free images
which were more free.
Anthony