Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/8/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It is an explicit goal of the project to produce an encyclopedia of free content. Fair use images are not free. Thus it is harmful because the explicit goals of the project define unfree content as a non-solution. The fact that other factors may make the harm preferable to other harms does not change the fact that unfree content is a harm.
Let's paraphrase into parable language:
"The explicit goal of the project is to acquire a collection of apples. Therefore, every time someone gives us an orange, this is harmful to our project."
Except that we have people who argue that the project is really to acquire a collection of fruit, and see no reason to acquire apples because "we already have the oranges, and they taste better anyway".
A number of people on the fair use policy pages have explicitly declared that they consider the free content goal to be secondary at most. I suppose it's fortunate that they haven't started lifting text from other websites en masse...
Stan