Ziko's original comment appears to derive from the "Terms of Use/Licensing" section of the Recommendations.[1] It says: "Present licensing for both text and photographs should change to allow restrictions for non-commercial use and no derivative works, if those will improve the ability of the project to better reflect diverse knowledge on a global scale, such as by including videos, allowing culturally significant text or photos to remain intact without misappropriation, etc."
The recommendation appears to have been written in the absence of a full awareness of the extensive debate throughout the Wikimedia movement that resulted in the present policies. That debate exists in mailing list archives, Board of Trustees minutes, on Meta Wiki, and elsewhere.
Wikimedia already has a framework for permitting non-free files. It's called an "Exemption Doctrine Policy"[2]; any project may adopt such a policy according to a framework defined by the WMF in a 2007 resolution.[3]
I am someone who has tried hard to get such a policy passed on English Wikisource, and I have failed. I believe it would be the right choice for English Wikisource, but the people I have to persuade are English Wikisource volunteers.
To have any weight, a recommendation like this one would need to demonstrate familiarity with the history behind Wikimedia's current policies toward licensing. Absent that, there is plenty of room to advocate for the use of non-free files on a project-by-project basis. Demonstrating an ability to win support at specific projects, and then demonstrating that implementing an EDP paved the way toward good results, could form a compelling argument.
Strong advocacy in a strategy document does not form a compelling argument.
-Pete -- Pete Forsyth Volunteer primarily on English Wikipedia, English Wikisource, Wikidata, Commons, and Meta Wiki.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_... ? [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-free_content#Exemption_Doctrine_Policy [3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 3:41 PM Aron Manning aronmanning5@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 22:45, Ziko zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
The concern is that allowing NC and ND would lead to more content being
uploaded under these "unfree" conditions that otherwise would be uploaded as "free".
I share those concerns, and believe it's not in the general interest of uploaders to use nonfree licenses. These licenses limit the visibility of the content, therefore uploaders are generally demotivated from using it. I think we should focus on how to communicate that the use of these licenses do not benefit the uploader, or Wikipedia as a whole, or its users, except in a few marginal cases, when it is a necessity.
There are a few options to do so, and minimize the proportion of free content converted to "unfree":
- Free is the default. Make it a significant effort (multiple steps) to
choose NC or ND license. This is what the cookie opt-out UIs do, very successfully.
- At each step inform the uploader, that an unfree license severely
limits the visibility of the content (no media, no private schools, no Internet-in-a-Box).
- If a user mostly uploads non-free content, notify them, this
negatively affects Wikipedia as whole in its mission to be a free encyclopedia.
- If non-free content is uploaded in great quantity, that content should
be examined by other editors, and proposed for deletion, if similar content is available with free license.
- If some content is available elsewhere with free license, the content
and license can be replaced with that. This can be automated to an extent with reverse-image search.
- After all these measures, I will have good faith, that most editors
understand the benefit of free content over non-free, and only uses these licenses when it's truly necessary.
See the excellent brochure published by WMDE some years ago.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Free_Knowledge_thanks_to_Creative_Commo...
Thank you, it's really excellent.
I fail to see how these two articles "explain the need for ND". The -
interesting - article about the daguerrotypes relates to images that are
long in the Public Domain.
My bad. 1st article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/us/slave-photographs-harvard.html is about commercial use (NC): "the university is illegally profiting from the images by using them for “advertising and commercial purposes,” such as by using Renty’s image on the cover of a $40 anthropology book." 2nd article < https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/10a84c6c-538e-41d6-816e-f614...
is about derivative work (ND): "The past year has had several high profile examples of the perceived misuse of Native American culture find significant echo in the media. These include a Victoria’s Secret model wearing a headdress during a fashion show, the No Doubt music bands ’cowboys and Indians' themed music video, and the use of the “Navajo” name and symbols on various goods by the clothing company Urban Outfitters attracting legal proceedings for misrepresenting the products’ origins as well as public ire."
It's my conclusion these "explain the need" for *some* solution to disallow such usages. NC and ND is one way to express this prohibition.
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