[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, Dec 2007)

[Ray Saintonge]

cohesion wrote:
> Do people honestly think that you have to get permission from the
> subject of a book before you write about it? What weird
> intellectual-property brainwashing must have gone on there.
>
> ...
>
> Trademark means other people can't start an encyclopedia and call it
> Wikipedia, or use the logo to imply the foundation supports something
> they don't etc. It doesn't mean you need permission from the
> foundation to utter the phrase, or write it down. This is a good
> thing. Freedom of speech, expression etc.
>
> I'm a little frightened by some of the views in this thread... Seems
> like people, given a tiny pretense of ownership of IP will immediately
> take on the most extreme views. We aren't the foundation, and
> trademark law does not allow people to stop a open discourse about a
> topic. Thank goodness.
Indeed.  Copyright law is bad enough, but it would be worse to live 
under a copyright law the way some people around here describe it.

Ec