On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 6:55 PM, Patricia Rodrigues snooze210904@yahoo.se wrote: [...]
What I hopefully can point out today is that Commons is also not complying to the Four Freedoms, in light of its own licensing policy, which is the centerpiece of the project (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing). We have several inconsistencies in our "subpolicies", but the biggest one has just been introduced: the modification to {{PD-Art}} that has been the topic for this thread. The new wording on this template reflects a position of the community in light of opinions/positions of WMF staff members, and goes to the point of considering this an official position of the WMF.
We have never followed the Definition of Freedom to the letter and neither to its spirit. The Commons community has always followed their own way interpreting freedom just like they did in the PD-art discussion. Which ended up in a decision that will allow us to use become a broader repository but arguably also will drift us away from freedom in its strict sense and may have rather unfortunate consequences for our fellow UKians and Scandinavians. I know at least one admin who did not want to take the risk of administering a repository that would cause him to break his country's law. In the end this was the decision of the Commons community itself only. The Foundation allowed the project decide for themselves which they did.
I believe that if we start allowing exceptions of this kind, Commons does not fulfill its role as a media repository that is indeed free to reuse, and its existence is not making much sense. So I would like to know what is the future of this project, and whether it is more feasible to have local uploads everywhere else, tightly regulated with a legislation, whichever that may be, instead of a central repository of "more or less free stuff, it sort of depends, you know".
Free to reuse is rather vague. The community has always drawn the line of freedom themselves (indeed in some cases directly violating the Definition of Freedom and the Licensing resolution).
Bryan
(As a side note I had seen this coming. It has always been a matter of when, not if)
Bryan, I agree with you that we are not following the spirit of the Definition of Freedom strictly. That is the main problem, and we keep on introducing exceptions to the general licensing spirit for the sake of convenience. Two wrongs does not make one right - where does it stop?
Yes, it's rather unfortunate that we have already lost one administrator because of possible legal issues. One issue is: people working with free software/free culture in affected countries are faced with the issue that they are promoting something (liberation of material to the public domain or under free licenses by those who have such material closed in cellars in museums or available only through gatekeepers, so that it's usable by Wikimedia Commons) that in the end is useless to promote because it's possible to use it anyway, on a clause that is perfectly fine in the US but absolutely not in those countries. So instead of smoothly and diplomatically convincing such institutions, we're bullying them into it. A bad strategy, and bad publicity for Wikimedia, imho.
The other issue is: what to do if you are an admin from one of the affected countries and receive a request from the authorities in that country to take down some PD-Art media from the site (copyrighted in that country)? Do you refuse your local authorities saying "it's in a server in the US, ha-ha", risking whichever consequences, or do you violate Commons "policy" so you won't disobey local authorities, and delete the media?... Is it possible to be an admin in such conditions?
It's very nice to talk about lobbying for Free Culture and having some courage against such unfair and ridiculous legislations when you're sitting comfortably on US soil.
Well, there you go, more questions to be answered.
Regards, Patrícia
--- On Thu, 21/8/08, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com wrote: From: Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] PD-art and official "position of the WMF" To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, 21 August, 2008, 9:18 PM
We have never followed the Definition of Freedom to the letter and neither to its spirit. The Commons community has always followed their own way interpreting freedom just like they did in the PD-art discussion. Which ended up in a decision that will allow us to use become a broader repository but arguably also will drift us away from freedom in its strict sense and may have rather unfortunate consequences for our fellow UKians and Scandinavians. I know at least one admin who did not want to take the risk of administering a repository that would cause him to break his country's law. In the end this was the decision of the Commons community itself only. The Foundation allowed the project decide for themselves which they did.
Free to reuse is rather vague. The community has always drawn the line of freedom themselves (indeed in some cases directly violating the Definition of Freedom and the Licensing resolution).
Bryan
(As a side note I had seen this coming. It has always been a matter of when, not if)
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