[Foundation-l] Czech Wikipedia's EDP and WMF's licensing policy

[Brianna Laugher]

On 19/12/2007, Michal Zlatkovsky <lahcimit at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> after the Board approved the licensing policy
> (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy in case
> anyone forgot :) ), we have written an EDP on Czech Wikipedia that
> allows us to use things like company logos under certain conditions
> (okay with US and Czech laws, ie. explicit permission needed; okay with
> GFDL, ie. can be nonderivative; no free image available; fair use-like
> rationale) and we've been using it for a while. However, I talked to
> pfctdayelise about our EDP today and her opinion is that the
> Foundation's licensing policy was targeted to "legal loopholes" like
> fair use or fair dealing - and as we don't have any such thing in the
> Czech Republic (and I'm pretty confident we don't, there have been
> numerous discussions about that), our EDP is invalid and we can't make
> any exception policy at all.

The Resolution says of an EDP:
"a project-specific policy, in accordance with United States law and
the law of countries where the project content is predominantly
accessed (if any), that recognizes the limitations of copyright law
(including case law) as applicable to the project, and permits the
upload of copyrighted materials that can be legally used in the
context of the project, regardless of their licensing status."

limitations of copyright law = cases where you can legally use
something copyrighted regardless of the fact it is copyrighted, and
without seeking permission.
If there is no Czech fair use or fair dealing or similar, then it
seems to me it's not possible to have an EDP.

What I understand from talking to Timichal - At the moment, they get
permission, and then claim something fair-use-like anyway. My
understanding is that if you're using something under a legitimate
EDP, you don't need to get permission (from a copyright holder),
because it is irrelevant. Maybe it is nice, but not necessary. So
either they have a legitimate EDP and can stop bothering to get
permission, or they don't have a legitimate EDP, and the material
under it is non-free and should be deleted anyway.

cheers
Brianna

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