[Foundation-l] A letter to Wikipedia collides with the non-free content policies

[Ray Saintonge]

Remember the dot wrote:
> I'm hoping for clarification by the foundation on whether or not
> by-permission-only works like this may be used. This could soften Jimbo
> Wales' previous statement that every image used by permission only must be
> deleted immediately (
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html), which
> would be a big deal. It would place the decision squarely back in the hands
> of the English Wikipedia.
>
> It's not that I'm whining that the foundation come to the rescue and tell us
> what to do. It's that the foundation has given us an ambiguous statement on
> when it is and is not OK to use non-free content. That statement could all
> too easily be unilaterally interpreted to forbid any relaxation of the
> English Wikipedia's non-free content policy. This has actually happened in
> the past:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ANon-free_content&diff=130081453&oldid=130064409
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Non-free_content&diff=next&oldid=130081453
>
> and I would really like for it to not happen in the future.
Let's hope that the foundation keeps giving ambiguous responses!  From a 
strictly legal point Mike would seem right in saying that the letter in 
question can't be used without the proper authorization from the letter 
writer.  When asked questions about the law a lawyer must respond on the 
basis of how he sees the law.  He can also say that within the strict 
terms of the licence a particular action is not free.  A lawyer advises 
about the risk; the client ultimately decides how much risk is 
acceptable.  There are many areas that are clearly red or green, but 
there is also a vast yellow middle   It's very common to find ambiguous 
legal wordings, and as a group we have run into a lot of this in 
copyright law.  The statutory provisions seem to say one thing, but 
there is absolutely no case law supporting either possible 
interpretation.  Perhaps one reason is that the economic value of the 
material involved is trivial. 

Jimbo does tend to be categorical in his statements at times, and to the 
best of my knowledge he is still on the Board of the Foundation.  Given 
the level of cluelessness that is often exercised it's easy to see why 
he tends to the categorical.  I believe there should be common-sense 
exceptions to nearly every rule. The apology letter in question could be 
an exception, given that even for us there is no reason to put it in the 
main namespace.  If the letter writer's apology is directed to the 
entire Wikipedia community it should be available to the entire 
Wikipedia community, but there is no apparent reason for it to be used 
by anyone else.

An ambiguous statement could be "too easily" used in the way that you 
say, but it can just as easily be used to support the opposite view.  A 
statement made about a particular example only applies to that example, 
and one should be careful about making unwarranted generalizations.

Ec