[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
"Fair use" is a construct that exists under the US-American law. It does 
not exist in exactly the same way under another law. In the Netherlands 
for instance there is the more restrictive "citaatrecht". When you 
compare "fair use" with "non commercial", you are comparing two things 
things that cannot be compared as they are so different.

The argument that "NC" is the freest that you can get makes no 
difference really. It puts a restriction to the distribution to our 
content. Distribution of our content is what we aim to do.

To me the argument would be different for "ND" or no deviations. This is 
a restriction that does not prevent distribution of our content. The 
purists will argue that it restricts what you can do with it. That is 
true, however what they ignore is that there is content where it is not 
possible to have it made to us available. Trademarked logos for instance 
cannot be made available under anything but a ND restriction and 
probably some other restrictions as well, doing otherwise would destroy 
the rights of the trademark holder. At this moment logos are published 
under "fair use" or something like this.

Personally I do think that the dogmatic way in which this issue is 
ignored is ridiculous. I know of several organisations including the WMF 
itself that would be helped with a license that would recognise this and 
that would be acceptable on Commons.

Thanks,
     GerardM


Marco Chiesa schreef:
> David Strauss wrote:
>
>   
>> While I think fair use media is more integral to the English Wikipedia's
>> content than you do, I agree with your reasoning. Whether or not we
>> allow fair use, non-commercial media is unjustified.
>>
>> Can everyone here agree that non-commercial media is not a *substitute*
>> for fair-use media?
>>
>>  
>>
>>     
> To be honest, I agree only to a certain point. Fair use means using a 
> copyrighted media without asking the permission to the owner, with the 
> justification that there's not much else you can do. Now, what is the 
> problem if, in order to illustrate the same thing, you use a NC media 
> because that's the freest you can get. You're using a NC material that 
> you think it qualifies as fair use. You put a fair use tag, I put a NC 
> tag because fair use is helpless to me.
>
> I agree that if you can have a free media for something, then you 
> shouldn't use a non-free one. And I can understand the idea that if  you 
> need to illustrate something for which no free media is available, you 
> may consider using a non-free one using a fair use justification. What 
> is the problem if THAT media for which you claim fair use has a licence 
> which is not free enough (i.e. a NC tag)?
>
> Marco