[Foundation-l] A letter to Wikipedia collides with the non-free content policies

[Alex]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 27/01/2008, Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> And it's been handled. Tagged and deleted per enwiki's own deletion policy.
>>
>> (CSD I3, for you policy mongers).
>>     
>
> Why would somebody use CSD when the deletion is already under
> discussion and there clearly isn't an overwhelming consensus? CSD is a
> shortcut to take advantage of an already established consensus to
> delete certain general kinds of articles/images - if that consensus
> clearly doesn't apply to a particular case, it should not be
> speedied...
>
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>   
Because the fact that content on Wikipedia must be reusable elsewhere is 
non-negotiable. Wikipedia is not free image hosting either. That IFD 
discussion was hilarious. People that think someone apologizing for 
vandalism is some sort of "moment of Wikipedia history" to treasure 
forever have obviously never handled unblocking requests. "I'm really 
sorry" is about the most common reason after "someone else did it." It 
needs to be under a free license or qualify for fair use. It was not 
under a free license, and what license it was under was unknown. It did 
not fall under en.wp's fair use criteria and I would doubt that it would 
fall under US law fair use either as its use was only "this is mildly 
interesting." but IANAL.

Mike Godwin on the other hand is a lawyer and stated:
"Absent an express grant from the author (either GFDL or a free CC 
license would do), or something similar to what newspapers do for 
letters to the editor (they set up a rule announcing that any submitted 
letter may be reprinted under the newspaper's copyright norms), the 
letter is not freely licensed."

When did Wikimedia's servers become hosting for each and every thing 
related to Wikipedia? Images are supposed to be illustrations for 
articles and we allow a little leeway for personal (non-encyclopedic) 
images released under a free license. Has anyone uploaded it to Flickr 
yet (email me if you need a copy) or are they too busy arguing?

-- 
Alex (en:User:Mr.Z-man)