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

[William Pietri]

Rich Holton wrote:
> Your question could just as easily be "What group or groups of people 
> are prevented from learning from Wikipedia when blatant copyright 
> violations are included?" Many authors would not care, and can always 
> issue a take-down notice if they do.
>   

Again, you haven't answered my question. This time you responded with a 
straw man. I don't think any serious participant is proposing we accept 
blatant copyright violations. I'm sure not.

If you can't name the group of people currently unable to benefit from 
Wikipedia content because it contains non-GFDL images, could you please 
just say so?

> We are also here to encourage the use of free licenses in the process of 
> building a free encyclopedia.
>   

I accept that you're here for that. I just don't think most people are, 
and from the limited amount I've seen so far, it seems like people with 
that agenda are trying to force other people to comply with their 
desires by making the encyclopedia worse.

Personally, I don't have any problem with the agenda of promoting 
GNU-style freedom. Wikipedia aside, I've contributed to GPL projects and 
will continue to do so. I'm a fan of and contributor to various 
free-culture efforts. Free licenses are great. But not so great that 
it's worth harming Wikipedia articles.

And now that I think about it, I'm not sure that this current approach 
is really doing much to encourage people to get excited about free 
licenses. The people who were very excited about them are pleased, I'm 
sure. But from the comments I've seen, it doesn't sound like the image 
deletions are making anybody say, "Wow, now I see why GNU-style freedom 
is so great!"

> The Mission Statement of the Wikimedia Foundation 
> (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement) states:
>
> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people 
> around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free 
> license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and 
> globally.
>
> When we allow people to use non-free images where a free option exists, 
> we are "preventing" them from using Wikipedia in the way that the 
> mission of the foundation explicitly states is a goal. We are not 
> educating our editors in the use of free materials.
>   

Again, this seems consistent with my view that the GFDL is a mechanism 
to achieve an end, not an end in itself. Even if promoting the GFDL 
license were a major goal, it would still be a goal, like the goal of 
collecting all of human knowledge. I'm not seeing the case for harming 
the primary goal (development and distribution of educational content) 
in pursuit of a temporary boost to another goal.

> I am not educated in all the legal issues, but I understand that "fair 
> use" images creates more legal issues than free licensed images, 
> especially when you go to distributing to those who do not have access 
> to the internet. Is distributing to non-internet connected users not 
> also part of our goal?
>   

Well, you're getting closer to naming some actual real-world harm. Can 
you name people who have not received Wikipedia content because somebody 
was unable to filter out the images tagged as "fair use" while making an 
offline distribution?

And yes, I understand the theoretical issue. I'm just saying that I've 
not heard of any real-world impact to balance against the real-world 
impact of making articles worse.


William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri