On 9/19/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Wikipedia is sunk if it must use the *intersection* of all copyright laws in the world, under which nearly nothing is permissible to distribute.
Cite up or shut up.
Your claim that the intersection of permitted works is the empty set is ridiculous and disruptive. If you're going to make claims like that, please substantiate them.
Although your statement is a ridiculous overstatement, it's not that relevant any case: The long term practice of Wikipedia is to follow the laws that we must follow and adopt additional practices that further our goal of creating a encyclopedia which is free for all forms of use, redistribution, and modification anywhere, for any reason, and in any medium for all time.
There is no movement to limit wikipedia to least common denominator of all jurisdictions.
However, we do choose to respect the copyrights of Iran... which have copyright terms quite similar to the rest of the industrialized world, but which lack enforcement in the US because Iran is not currently a party to the Berne Convention. This is a sound policy: Not only does it preserve the legality of our work in Iran (which is part of anywhere), but it preserves the legality of our work in the US and Europe when a some point in the future Iran's copyrights become more generally enforceable.