[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

[Philippe Elie]

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 at 21:57 +0000, Kat Walsh wrote:

> Greetings!
> 

Hi Kat,

[snip]

> 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.

[snip]

> 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.)

I don't get the figure. The Foundation mission statement is "to develop
educational content" but the board is saying "than all media [...]  must
be free for all users and *all purposes*". This disallow all license type
"for educational purpose" whilst giving at a first glance no advantage.

I and many people agree for a license allowing commercial/non
commercial use and derivative works which fulfill the mission
statement but the actual license requirement go far ahead from that.

> 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.

So it's agreed than "fair use is not free at all" but it's acceptable
whilst a license for educational purpose allowing derivative works and
commercial use isn't. That look like weird.

-- 
regards,
Philippe Elie