[Foundation-l] Asking for clarification of licensing policy resolution

Tisza Gergő gtisza at gmail.com
Tue Jun 26 13:32:31 UTC 2007


The resolution about the Wikimedia licensing policy (
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy )
states that an EDP should be "in accordance with United States law and
the law of countries where the project content is predominantly
accessed".  If I recall correctly, one of the aims of the resolution
was to forbid media that is "not free enough" for fair use, such as
noncommercial and Wikipedia-only licenses. I can't find this
requirement, however, in the resolution: using an image with a
Wikipedia-specific permission on Wikipedia is certainly in accordance
with the law
of any country, even if one can't claim fair use on the image. What is
the position of the Foundation in the following two cases?

1. Using an image that is not adequate for fair use, with a non-free
license that makes it legal to use the image in Wikipedia.

2. Using an image with a non-free license, when the image is adequate
for fair use (according to US laws), but it is not adequate for the
local version of fair use
(meaning that it would be legal due to fair use to set up a mirror or
publish a printed version of the wiki in the US, and use the image
there, but it would be illegal to do the same in the country where the
project content is predominantly accessed).

Note that in some countries, there is no equivalent of fair use, so
virtually all non-free content would fall in one of these categories.
(This is the case with the Hungarian Wikipedia, where we are trying to
draft an EDP, and ran into this problem.)

thanks
Tgr
(hu:User:Tgr)



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