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Stephen Streater wrote:
Given that Fair Use is a US construct, does this
mean
Wikipedia can never have access to England-generated
content which is available under non-commercial terms,
such as shots of a Royal Park?
It would be breaking English law to put it up under
a free licence or under Fair Use, and external linking
of media on Wikipedia is being phased out, so I
couldn't link to an external website hosting it either.
Is there a way around this?
Well, short of allowing noncommercial licences, no. Since Wikipedia
requires that all media is released under a 'free content' licence
(GFDL, CC-Att-SA, whatever), it by definition cannot include content
which cannot be licenced in such a way. In other words, because of the
legal restrictions the author does not have the legal power to grant a
commercial use licence, and therefore Wikipedia can never acquire a
valid commercial use licence.
Doesn't this contradict Wikipedia's goal of
containing all human knowledge?