On 12/8/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)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