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

[Andre Engels]

2007/2/9, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com>:
>
>
> Il giorno 09/feb/07, alle ore 00:15, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:
>
> > Yes, although I should make sure to be really clear.  (2) is only okay
> > if (4) would be possible. The reason for this is that we want the
> > material submitted to itwikis to be maximally free in the rest of the
> > world.
>
> That's silly. Fair use is not maximally free "in the rest of the
> world". Fair use is "maximally free" only in such countries where
> fair use/fair dealing exist.
> Which are...? United States, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia,
> India... Commonwealth?
>
> But not in Czech. Nor in Nederlands. And the other countries?
> Why are you talking "for the rest of the world" is fair use is usable
> only by fair-use-countries?
>

I don't know about the Czech Republic or Italy, but I'm quite surprised that
you mention the Netherlands here. Perhaps it is because Dutch Wikipedians
tend to loudly proclaim there is no concept of fair use in the Netherlands.
And they're right. However, the Netherlands do have a 'right to citation'
(or however it is called in English), and at least some of the fair use
cases under discussion here would be well within the Dutch citation
paragraph - it even *explicitly* says that for photographs and drawings,
showing the whole work can be an allowed citation (under certain conditions,
one of which is that the copy is 'in size or manner of production' has a
clear difference with the original work).

Somehow the nl: community seems to accept that this state exists, but not
that we can use it. "Fair use does not exist in the Netherlands, so we
cannot use fair use images" is what is always said. Although we don't have
US style fair use, that doesn't mean any fair use is impossible, the rules
are just different - usually stricter.

-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels