[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia, a world without borders with borders?

[Eugene van der Pijll]

b m schreef:
> Another strange thing, which has less to do with wikiborders, and more with
> real ones, according to Dutch copyright law it is apparently forbidden to
> display album covers on the Dutch wikipedia (as stated int he Dutch image
> use policy). But the English one shows them just fine. My question is, since
> wikipedia is hosted and founded in the US, what does it matter that a
> Dutch-language article wants to have an album cover. Is it forbidden just
> because the language is different? One click away resides a nice hi-res
> album cover on the English wikipedia. I'm confused about the legal framework
> on this one.

There are three reasons for this:

* Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion of copyrighted works do not follow
the law: they are more strict. We want to be a *free* encyclopedia,
which is why we do not accept certain images which we would be legally
allowed to (for example, those with a non-commercial license). Each
wikipedia makes its own inclusion policies, so it's not strange that the
nl.rules difffer from the en.rules.

* We want our content to be re-used. The English wikipedia will only
be reused by Americans[*], but the Dutch wikipedia will mainly be
re-used by people in the Netherlands and Belgium. Including images that
are not allowed in EU law would make it impossible/more difficult for
their main audience to re-publish our content.

* Wikipedia is not responsible for the individual edits; the
contributors are. Which means that Dutch and Belgian editors are not
allowed to put those album covers into nl.wikipedia. Since 99% of the
contributors are not Americans, it makes sense for nl to include this in
the policy.

Eugene

[*] This argument may be flawed, but I'm not sure.