[WikiEN-l] Our content gets *everywhere*

[Anthony]

On 8/18/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/18/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > No court has ever held that to be an exclusive list.
>
> I made this point before, but I think I need to make it again: are we
> actually discussing whether or not this is ok and what we should do
> about it?
>
Not at all.  We're just engaging in a fun debate over an issue which
doesn't make any difference about anything at all, and hopefully
learning a little bit about copyright law in the process.

> We're wikipedia! We're the people that look at the culture of
> ownership and lawsuits and say "No! Free content can be as good as
> non-free!" We're supposed to stand for something profound. The
> policies could have been created so that every contributor licenses
> his contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation to do with what they
> wish and it would probably not have hurt wikipedia one bit (it
> certainly works well for YouTube). But we didn't! Because we're not
> those kind of people, that's not what we believe!
>
> Seriously, are we really discussing this? There are times when I read
> this list and I just can't believe what some people are saying.
>
There are a multitude of opinions among Wikipedians on copyright law,
litigiousness, ownership, etc.  There's also a multitude of levels of
knowledge among Wikipedians on the applicable laws.

Personally I'm pretty much of the opinion that copyright law is evil
and should be repealed.  I've had conversations with other Wikipedians
who fall nearly on the opposite end of that spectrum.  And the vast
majority fall somewhere in between.  And yet, I think it's possible
for us all to get along, so long as we can agree that Wikipedia is
going to A) be a free work; and B) work within the law.