[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies (some important points)

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 2/8/07, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> If anything, I think it very sad that the biggest Wikipedia is
> condemning itself to be distributed "as such" only in countries where
> the fair use doctrine exists, and bars itself from being distributed
> in the rest of the world.
[snip]

I will offer you an interesting point for consideration here:

If and only if we are really good at only allowing "fair use" when no
free image is possible (i.e. only after we've tried to get the
copyright holder to make a release, only after we're sure that no
Wikipedian can create a comparable image)  AND only if we are really
good about tagging the non-free images in a machine readable way....

Then:

It would only take a trivial script to make a computer instantly
convert "Wikipedia, The Free* Encyclopedia. *includes some non-free
parts"  into  "Wikipedia, The Free (and we really mean it)
Encyclopedia".

To me, this would be a perfectly fine solution which does not
represent a compromise of our ideals. You may not agree, but I hope
you agree that it is better than many other alternatives.

However, for it to be true, we need to be really good at figuring out
what we can and can not expect to become free ... and we need to exert
constant pressure to move in the direction of freedom.  We are
certainly not there yet... our tagging isn't even really machine
readable and this reaction has shown us that there are still too many
people in our communities who do not share the dream of free content.

But ... I think we can do it. In order for it to work, however, we all
need to stand together.

I hope that those of us who don't think any concession to the non-free
world is acceptable, even temporally, can still stand along side those
of us who are more favor getting there through successive
approximation.