On Friday 30 May 2003 20:49, Daniel Mayer wrote:
Marco wrote:
No, you lose much more. You can not easily combine the content of two "free" encyclopedias and get something that is "free". You can not copy images from the English Wikipedia to the German Wikipedia anymore because the "fair use" right works not this way in Germany.
What? Since when has the German Wikipedia moved to a German-based server?
Well, I know for a fact that it hasn't so German law has no bearing on the legality of having "fair user" (per US law) images on the German Wikipedia.
However, those people who are subject to German law may be legally barred from uploading such images. But there are plenty of German-speaking Wikipedians living outside of Germany to do this.
O.k. you can circumvent this, but I wouldn't even be allowed to tell someone outside of Germany to do this for me.
But this is not my main point. I say that by allowing "fair use" pictures we violate the GFDL and our content is not "free" anymore. Citing Axel Boldt:
"Illustrating an article by adding a photo creates a derivative work, therefore the whole has to be put under GFDL, therefore it cannot be fair use material (or anything besides public domain or GFDL)."
We are not allowed to derive from "Fair use" images and even the intuitive rule:
"free" article + "free" article = "free" article
is not true anymore (because the new free article might contain that many images that the result is not covered by "Fair use" anymore).
Therefore we are violating the GFDL and/or we give up the important idea of a "free" encyclopedia. In my humble opinion a few images simply are not worth this. At least I thought that the "free" in "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" is an important and fundamental principal.
best regards, Marco