On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 at 21:57 +0000, Kat Walsh wrote:
Greetings!
Hi Kat,
[snip]
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop
educational
content under a free content license or in the public domain. For
content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal
restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the
content for any purpose.
[snip]
It is therefore vital that all projects under the
Foundation umbrella
use these standards, not only because of our desire to enable the
creation of free reference works, but also because of our commitment
to allow those works to benefit everyone who wishes to use and reuse
them. Because of this, all media we allow on our projects must be free
for all users and all purposes, including non-Wikimedia use,
commercial use, and derivative works. (Some media may be subject to
restrictions other than copyright in some jurisdictions, but are still
considered free work.)
I don't get the figure. The Foundation mission statement is "to develop
educational content" but the board is saying "than all media [...] must
be free for all users and *all purposes*". This disallow all license type
"for educational purpose" whilst giving at a first glance no advantage.
I and many people agree for a license allowing commercial/non
commercial use and derivative works which fulfill the mission
statement but the actual license requirement go far ahead from that.
Some Wikimedia projects use media that is not free at
all, under a
doctrine of "fair use" or "fair dealing". There are some works,
primarily historically important photographs and significant modern
artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be released under a
free content license, but that are hard to discuss in an educational
context without including the media itself. Because the inability to
include these works limits scholarship and criticism, in many
jurisdictions people may use such works under limited conditions
without having license or permission. Some works that are under
licenses we do not accept (such as non-derivative) may meet these
conditions. Because of our commitment to free content, this non-free
media should not be used when it is reasonably possible to replace
with free media that would serve the same educational purpose.
So it's agreed than "fair use is not free at all" but it's acceptable
whilst a license for educational purpose allowing derivative works and
commercial use isn't. That look like weird.
--
regards,
Philippe Elie