Beste medelijsters,
Hieronder een e-mail van Kat Walsh van de Wikimedia Foundation die ik met
jullie wil delen.
Voor een aantal lopende discussies op de wiki (niet commercieel en ESA)
lijkt mij de volgende paragraaf van belang: "It is for these reasons, which
we have long supported, that all media on Wikimedia sites which are used
under terms that specify non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or
permission for Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out and replaced with
media that does not have these restrictions."
Dat wil overigens niet zeggen dat de onderstaande e-mail niet de moeite van
het lezen waard is.
Groet, Siebrand
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kat Walsh <kwalsh(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 08-Feb-2007 13:57
Subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Greetings!
Because licensing has been an active topic in the community, the Board has
discussed the issue at its recent meetings; thank you to those whose
thoughtful input furthered the discussions.
A formal declaration in the form of a Board resolution has not yet been made
and will be forthcoming; however, we hope that this longer message will
provide the explanation behind the resolution. The resolution will seek to
clarify something that has been true for some time but may not have been
stated in a clear enough form as guidance for the various communities to
follow.
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.
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.)
There are many different licenses that allow these freedoms. The licensing
page on the Wikimedia Commons,
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing>, discusses some of
these license terms and gives links to the many licenses that are acceptable
to use.
While we appreciate the goodwill of those who give special permissions for
Wikimedia to display a work, this does not fulfill our greater purpose of
giving others the freedom to use the content as well, and so we cannot
accept media with permission for use on Wikimedia only.
Derivative uses are also important. The value of allowing modifications
becomes clear to anyone who edits the projects, as new work builds on the
work of others, and work you cannot change to meet your needs and purposes
is not free.
Commercial and non-commercial use is more controversial, as many people are
concerned that allowing commercial uses allows others to abuse their
generosity. But ultimately Wikimedia's longstanding and carefully considered
position is, as with many other organizations devoted to free content, that
disallowing commercial use does not provide significant benefit to the
content creator or to the public.
Non-commercial licensing stops many valuable uses that help distribute and
support free works, and hence does not further our mission. Where commercial
use spreads the works without taking away others' rights to use and
distribute them for free, it helps our purpose of making the content as
widely available as possible. This is a long enough message without going
deeply into detail, but Erik Moeller's essay at
<http://www.intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC> is a thorough and clear
explanation of the reasons why the harm is more than the benefit, and so why
non-commercial content is not something we use.
It is for these reasons, which we have long supported, that all media on
Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that specify non-commercial use
only, no-derivatives only, or permission for Wikimedia only, need to be be
phased out and replaced with media that does not have these restrictions.
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.
Since individual projects have differing community standards and there are
potentially legal issues in different jurisdictions, individual projects may
choose to be more restrictive than Foundation policy requires, such as the
many projects that do not allow "fair use" media at all. However, no project
may have content policies less restricive, or that allow licenses other than
those allowed on Wikimedia Commons and limited fair use.
We hope this clears up some of the uncertainty about what types of material
may be uploaded to and used on the projects as well as why we take this
position.
Thanks to everyone for your input and hard work.
For the Wikimedia Foundation,
Kat Walsh
--
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http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
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