[Foundation-l] Fair use being badly abused on en.wikipedia

[George Herbert]

On Jan 8, 2008 12:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that operates on the assumption that Fair
> use and the GFDL are incompatible, it is the English language Wikipedia that
> does. The board of the WMF has been explicit in its choice of the license
> and has voiced it wish to do away with fair use. This has been roundly
> rejected by enough en.wikipedians, I can understand how this point be
> argued, and consequently putting a brave face on it, the board has allowed
> for a policy whereby it can be phrased under what conditions exception can
> be made.
>
> The way the policy is phrased is that for *every *project there has to be
> such a policy. This means that the assertion that Fair Use helps in
> disseminating knowledge is wrong; it only helps when a project has such a
> policy in place. Several Wikipedias have not and cannot. This means that
> Fair Use is mainly argued for English language content. The value of Fair
> Use is therefore not as great as the proponents want us to believe.

Gerard, I have discussed this with two of the board members directly
in person, and I believe that you are misrepresenting what they feel
and the policy that was enacted.

Those two were speaking for themselves and not the board as a policy
whole, and the rest could have other opinions, but it's a fairly
significant data point.

I do not believe that the board policy was intended to hand a complete
moral victory to the anti-fair-use crowd.  I believe that the board
stated a moral goal (more free content, as much as practically
possible) and practical rules for now (fair use ok under the
reasonable policy rules and legal protections for the Foundation) that
pretty much is where en.wikipedia community consensus was anyways,
though that consensus includes polar disagreements among factions.


If everyone who got into this argument went out and took a free
picture a day to replace fair use ones we use now, we'd have replaced
a lot of the ones we can actually practically replace.  Apparently it
is easier to come argue here about it over and over again rather than
actually solve it?



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com