[Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc at ktchan.info> wrote:
> Marcus Buck wrote:
>>
>> The Swedish Wikipedia decision is consequent and logical. Logos are
>> copyrighted. Copyrighted material cannot be included. So no logos. It's
>> plain and simple. The problem is not the reasonable decision of the Swedish
>> Wikipedia, but the unreasonable decision of the Foundation to claim
>> copyright for the logos. The foundation did that because they thought that
>> would make it easier to defend the brand. But that's just intermingling
>> trademarks and copyright. Trademark protection does everything we need. No
>> need for additional copyright protection. The Coca Cola logo is PD-old (and
>> in many jurisdictions also PD-ineligible) and they have no problem defending
>> their brand. Why should Wikimedia logos be any different?
>>
>> Just release the logos under a free license and the problem will be gone.
>
> Or just use common sense that it's silly for a Wikimedia project to say it's
> not allowed to use a logo own by Wikimedia Foundation....
>
> KTC

If this was the English Wikipedia, the response would be somewhere
between "please do not be silly" and "Stop this or we will block you
for disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point ( [[WP:DISRUPT]] )".

I don't know Swedish Wikipedia's local standards and policy - but as
Dave Gerard and Ting say, this is at the very least silly.  We can't
stop you from being silly, but it's not constructive in building an
encyclopedia.  If you want to play legal games or fight intellectual
property law reform fights, this may not be the project for you.


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