[WikiEN-l] There are no pictures in Wikipedia any more

[Steve Summit]

geni wrote:
>On 24/09/2007, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based
>> not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring*
>> certain licenses over others.
>
> That is already the case as far is allowed within US law.

Based on one reading of our various policies and guidelines, maybe.
But in practice, certainly not.

It is widely acknowledged that our policy on fair use is
considerably stricter than required by U.S. law.  And we have
several editors whose self-proclaimed goal is to eradicate every
last fair-use image, no matter what.  There seem to be two
underlying motives.

One is that we have to be nice to the downstream feeds; we have
to make it maximally easy for them to use our content under their
own perhaps even-stricter policies.  Why it's our job to help
them do this is never adequately explained.  It's also never
explained why we have to keep doing this in spite of our
comprehensively fine-grained image licensing tags, which ought to
allow any given downstream to filter out anything and everything
they don't like.  But that motive *does* keep getting mentioned,
despite the existence of the tags.  But it probably doesn't even
matter in the end, given the existence of the second motive.

I'll be roundly condemned for saying this, but I believe that the
second and stronger motive for being so rampantly anti-fair-use,
for deleting all fair-use images now (instead of leaving them
around until truly-free alternatives can be found), is that it
helps push a POV agenda that the world's copyright laws and
attitudes about copyright are wrong and need to be changed.
Wikipedia is now influential enough, and its GFDL ideals are
already consonant enough with those which the anti-copyright
brigade wants to pursue, that it's an extremely attractive venue
for this agenda.  In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration
to say that the anti-copyright brigade has effectively hijacked
Wikipedia for this purpose.  Which is pretty interesting,
because we're normally extremely resistant to that kind of abuse.
When someone tries to use Wikipedia to push the agenda that,
say, Turkey did or didn't commit genocide against the Armenians,
we swiftly and firmly show them the exit.  But if you declare
that fair-use images have to go, in defiance of U.S. law, common
sense, and the needs of the readers, you're pretty widely hailed
as a hero.

But I really shouldn't have said this, because besides the fact
that I'll be roundly condemned for it, it makes me sound like
one of those paranoid conspiracy theorists.  So here's an olive
branch: to all the tireless free-image defenders who I've
unfairly labeled as being part of an "anti-copyright brigade",
you can have the last word here: follow up to say how badly
I've misinterpreted and wronged you, and I'll spare everyone
any further response from me on this subject.