[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

Delirium delirium at hackish.org
Thu Jan 18 22:41:06 UTC 2007


teun spaans wrote:

>So the question is: what do we pursue: the dream of a free content, or a
>compromise which add some chrome/culture but inhibits the free spreading of
>knowledge?
>  
>
I'm not sure it really inhibits the free spread of knowledge in that 
case, since a reuser who prefers not to or can't rely on fair use can 
always distribute the same article with the fair-use pictures 
removed---this can even be done automatically since we tag them as fair 
use.  What *would* inhibit free knowledge in this case is if we used a 
fair-use picture where a free one was available, since in that case we'd 
be forcing this kind of user to remove a picture when we could've 
provided one that they could have kept in.

But if it's a choice between providing no picture at all, and providing 
a picture that some large subset of users (but not all) can use while 
the rest can automatically remove it, I don't see why it *hurts* free 
knowledge to provide the optional image rather than none.

-Mark




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