[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and U.S. specific laws (was Non-free images etc.)

[Haukur Þorgeirsson]

> The goal of the project is not to produce an encyclopedia with content
> that is free for some people for some uses.

But that's exactly what's happening as long as
all the focus is on U.S. laws. Fair use won't
protect you if you're publishing Wikipedia derived
content in Denmark. Nor will Bridgeman v. Corel.

Recently a picture of the Lindisfarne Gospels
taken from the British Library website became
a featured picture even though the BL explicitly
claims copyright on it and that claim may well
hold up in a British court.


>> In my opinion there's nothing wrong with Wikipedia
>> using that image even if non-encyclopec down-stream
>> users can't. I'm sure they would allow a Wikibook
>> too if you ask them. If you can get them to release
>> it under CC-BY that would of course be great. And
>> if you can get a PD image of a z-machine which is
>> as good as this one I salute you.
>
> Well, the policy of Wikipedia disagrees with you,
> and has for a fairly long time.

I know. And I will abide by it. But I will also argue
that it should be changed.


>> No-one in this thread has suggested we break the law.
>
> Fair enough. Pardon my tunnel vision, because the vast majority of
> images being canned right now are not cases where we have been given
> permission and in those cases people are suggesting we break the law.

Fair enough. I'm sure this is a stressful job
and I applaud you for doing it.


> As I said, if the images are not tagged it is impossible short of
> having someone read all of the image texts and removing a lot of
> images that are free but left untagged.

Agreed. But if we properly tag everything the
technical problem is a minor one.


> Downstream work which is visable to you, there is a lot of substanital
> downstream work which isn't useless and in any case we are not
> providing freedom if we exclude even the stupid mirrors.

I don't want to exclude stupid mirrors or anyone else.
If a neo-nazi wants to publish Wikipedia content modified
to a nazi POV that's fine with me as long as she respects
the GFDL.

But I hope you'll agree that we have a visibility problem
here. We're losing the excellent Eastern Yellow Robin.jpg
because its author won't release it for use outside of
Wikipedia, due to concern about stupid commercial mirroring.

We should by all means try to highlight the positive reuse
that the GFDL allows.


> With permission isn't a lame excuse, it's a good one.. but it's still
> not one we can always accept.

I'm arguing that in many cases it is
no worse an excuse than the U.S.-specific
legal niceties currently tolerated.

Regards,
Haukur