[WikiEN-l] No derivatives (was: Would you like one of your videos posted on Wikipedia?)

[dmehkeri at swi.com]

> Who are you to say that we won't edit the video?  Maybe you won't, but
> maybe someone else will, in a way that makes it more useful, and then
> link that on Wikipedia.  That's the point of viral licensing and
> ShareAlikes.  I'm afraid "you're not allowed to edit it" is a deal-breaker.

Eh, why is that anyway? I understand why we would dislike it, of course, but I'm
not sure why, exactly, we would want to make it a deal-breaker. (We, english
Wikipedia, rather than say, Wikimedia Commons which has slightly different goals.)

For starters it isn't mentioned in the copyright FAQ at all. With a bit more
digging, it does seem to be disallowed. For rationale, I get pointed back to
either Jimbo's posts on disallowing non-commercial-use media licenses, fair use,
or discussion of downstream use. 

None of these reasons seem to apply here. For the free encyclopedia, a CC-BY-ND
media license, for example, is perfectly redistributable, allows for possible
commercial use, and poses no issues for forks or other downstream use, right? 

We would, obviously, rather have everything under one license. But we allow
incompatible media copylefts, like CC-BY-SA and GFDL, even though it means we
can't, say, make a derivative image based on two images with incompatible
copylefts. We even allow "fair use" under some restricted circumstances. This
does not allow for derivative works either, and in fact poses downstream
problems. (Again, we, english Wikipedia. The Commons does not allow fair use.) 

So it's obvious why we would rather not have no-derivative media licenses, but
it's not obvious to me why we would absolutely insist upon it, the way we
absolutely insist upon allowing commercial use or what have you. 

At least, we could use some better documentation on this point.

Regards,
Dan Mehkeri