Currently, on many projects, we allow three kinds of multimedia content : 1) content in the public domain 2) content available under "free" licenses (with our own definition of "free"; some people disagree with GFDL being a free license) 3) content available under the "fair use" clause of US copyright law. 1) and 2) are easily reusable by third parties, while 3) is not (each use of a "fair use" document must be justified). Clearly, these rules were set with the view of the US law : we put stringent rules on allowing only "free" content, and then we opened a whole boulevard with the US-specific "fair use" clause. I might even go as far as to say that our stringent rules are acceptable only because we have this "fair use" allowance. Now, fair use does not exist in the legislation of many countries; or, rather, it exists in a weaker or different form ("right of citation"). As a consequence, many wikipedias, targetting citizens of countries other than the US, have decided to prohibit fair use content or at least severely restrict it. This proves a problem with some providers of content (companies, government administrations, etc.) who would gladly provide e.g. photographs usable for any informational or educational purpose, but that they do not want to appear in advertisements (especially for products unrelated to their activities). An example is the European space agency (ESA) and the French space agency (CNES) : they would gladly allow their photographs to be used for any educational or informational purpose (including commercial, e.g. DVDs, paper encyclopedias, textbooks etc.) but they do not want their material to appear in e.g. advertisements for supermarkets or, worse, political advertisements, because in such cases some idea of endorsement of the product on their part is implied. They cannot use trademark legislation to fight such abuse, in most cases. Note that, in the US, NASA, whose photographs are in the public domain, is protected from abusive by specific US laws prohibiting misuse of some symbols of the US government, including the NASA logo (the same applies for e.g. military insignia). The photo may well be termed "public domain", but they can actually prosecute you if you use it in an advertisement. Note also that the Wikimedia Foundation also copyrights its logos in order to prevent abuse. We should not be hypocrites and deny to others what we do for the same purpose (especially since the Foundation grants individual authorizations, not a blanket "for education or information"). In addition, the legislation of some countries may not allow blanket licenses for any use (considered as clauses abusing the rights of the authors, and thus null and void). A solution would be to create a new category of content allowed on Wikimedia projects : 4) Content available for use for any purpose, commercial or non commercial, as long as it is informational or educational. I see only advantages : * This would enable us to counter systemic bias ; that is, allow content from some providers from countries where "fair use" does not apply (we for instance currently totally unbalance the portrayal of space programs by having 7000 photos from NASA and hardly any from ESA/CNES). * This would enable us to attract interesting content from providers who do not want their work to be used in advertisements, for questions of corporate or institutional image. * This would be coherent with the goals stated in the bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation, that is, distribute informational content. Common objections are : * Jimbo said he would not longer allow content restricted to "non commercial" usage. => This does not apply here, since the above mentioned content would be usable for commercial uses. (Non-commercial only licenses would be an annoyance for people willing to distribute DVDs or in case we lack funds and we're forced to put up advertisements. Neither would be hampered by the above mentioned conditions.) * Such content would be "unfree". => Then ban all fair use from all projects, since "fair use" content is considerably more unfree. "Fair use" content is usable for educational/informational use only for narrow cases, and is only usable by US residents. In short, this objection is US-centric. :-) * ESA and CNES should do like NASA does. ESA and CNES operate under different laws and rules than NASA. NASA employs many of its photographers, whose work is in the public domain as work of US government employees ; ESA and CNES have to buy many photographs from non-employees, typically under conditions allowing any educational or informational use but disallowing uses in commercial advertisements. Again, US-centric objection. :-) To summarize my point of view: to be coherent, we should * either allow such content usable for any educational or informational uses, including commercial: * either prohibit "fair use" content from all projects (and perhaps also content constrained by laws other than copyright, e.g. insignia of US government administrations). Regards, --DM