quiddity wrote:
On 7/21/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/21/07, quiddity <blanketfort(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I've read through these 2 threads again, and I
think Durin's initial
post (
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-July/077358.html)
and George Herbert's reply
(
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-July/077966.html)
are excellent summations of the issue.
(I'm a reductionist by nature, so, to synopsize even further...)
This seems to be a fundamental disagreement between 2 philosophies:
*The "open-content-first" folks (idealists), and the immediatists
(
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Immediatism)
and
*The "encyclopedia-first" folks (utilitarians?), and the eventualists
(
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Eventualism)
Does that sound about right?
Sadly not quite.
There are eventualists who want us to be *eventually* strictly open
content, and eventualists who don't really care as long as we are
eventually a quality encyclopaedia, under what ever IP Regime.
There are also people who are in an unsconcionable hurry to make sure
nothing that is of low quality *at the moment* remain on wikipedia,
but who don't really
register IP issues on their radar.
I don't really don't think you can make a case for such alignments.
Wikiphilosophical attitudes are very much pick and choose. You won't
be able to make "two parties" of wikipedians no matter how hard you
try to massage the statistics.
some thoughts:
1) I realize that nobody *is* an archetype, I'm just trying to reframe
the problem from another perspective (using
over-generalizations/meta-labels/abstract archetypes (simply because
my thought patterns gravitate towards point-form taxonomies)).
There doesn't seem to be a consensus forming, and from what I
understand of the issues, consensus isn't likely to form, as the two
viewpoints are fundamentally opposed.
While I make no secret about which polarity I prefer, I recognize the
danger of defining them too clearly. It makes rallying about one's
preference too easy, and the finding of compromises more difficult.
Reductionism has the unfortunate tendency of sandpapering over the very
flaws in each side that might be the start of some future life-line.
2) I was specifically thinking of [[Image:Einstein
tongue.jpg]] as an
example. The immediatists/idealists wanted it gone or fixed instantly;
whereas the eventualists were happy with the initial short description
under the assumption that it would get expanded at some point in the
future. (with many other factors, disclaimer disclaimer, but that was
the gist)
There are very few images that have the "iconic" associations of that
Einstein image. That makes them bad examples upon which to base
policy. As much as I support our use of this image, I do not accept
that being "iconic" is the best argument upon which to base our stand.
The apparent abandonment of rights, and the doctrine of laches strike me
as more effective when we are dealing with an image that is ubiquitous.
A little search has led me to find out that the image is claimed by
Corbis, and that they in turn acquired it when they bought out the
rights of the Bettman Archive. Now there's a can of worms!! Does one
believe everything that Corbis says? Does one believe everything that
the man who ultimately pulls Corbis's strings says? :-$
Corbis aggregates archives. Bettman acquired the UPI archive. UPI
acquired the picture from Albert Sasse. Someone has claimed that he was
an employee, but can we be sure of that? Can Corbis trace its ownership
of the rights with documentation? Do they even want to go there?
3) I was going to suggest what Bryan Derkson wrote:
I'm suggesting that there's a _balance_ to
be found here. Since we keep
everything non-free tagged with explicit non-free labels, people who
wish to create derivative works that can't make use of fair use
exemptions the way we do can easily strip out the content that they
can't use.
(much like the {{selfref}} template does)
though it does get more complicated when one takes into account the
non-free images that *are* explicitly discussed within an article.
Those sections wouldn't make sense if the images were stripped out.
Using all non-free images would be as absurd as using none of them.
4) My unhappiness/interest in the issue is primarily
due to the harm
that it's causing - Good editors are being
discouraged/disgruntled/dismayed, on a wide scale.
Both sides have intelligent, rational, and positive positions, and
we're an idealistic project to begin with, so it's always going to be
more complex than a summary can do justice. But the more
clearly/simply we define the legal/philosophical/opinion based
stances, the easier it might be (for me at least) to discuss them.
(Though I'm leaning towards agreeing that we need an official policy
"from above", whatever that might be.)
It won't happen, because there is no simple solution that fits all
circumstances, or even most of them. Some very broad policy can be
developed "from above", but as these become more detailed the dynamics
between the WMF and the projects can be radically altered.
Ec