[WikiEN-l] wikipedia:copyright changes -- "special permission"

[Axel Boldt]

I made a couple of changes to [[wikipedia:copyright]], explained on the
talk page. The most important one was to take out all references to
"special permission materials". Reading through the page, I found that
we actually had three categories of materials:
* GFDL
* fair use
* "special permission", which means that the copyright holder gives
permission to use the material *only for Wikipedia*.

The third category of materials was added by Lee on Aug 27, 2002. I
don't think it was properly discussed, and I disagree with it. The fair
use situation is already bad enough. Adding "special permission"
materials on top of that makes free reuse of Wikipedia next to
impossible.

If fair use cannot be justified and GFDL permission cannot be obtained,
then the material simply cannot be used in a project that claims to be
freely reusable.

There is also a legal issue: contributors license their article under
GFDL to the public. If somebody else adds material to that article,
then they are technically creating a derivative work, and are
*required* to license all of it under GFDL, i.e. they cannot insist on
a special permission only for Wikipedia.

Axel

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