[Wikipedia-l] What would Richard Stallman say?

[Abigail Brady]

On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 15:50, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> If that means less images for now, then it means less images for now.
> It also means that we have a very strong incentive to develop free
> alternatives.

I am torn on this issue - I can see the arguments for both sides. 
However, what certainly needs to happen, regardless of whether we keep
fair use images in the long term, is for the existing image database to
be thoroughly categorised by licence, coupled with a policy to prevent
the problem of unknown image status, from getting any worse.  In the
meantime, let us keep with the status quo.

I have no intention of trying to get fair use images removed per se, but
I do want downstream users to be able to separate out images they can't
use easily.  msg:fairuse, msg:noncommercial and friends were designed to
do this.

With the respect to photos of politicians, which Caroline had been
negotiating for, I doubt very much the parties would have agreed to put
them into the public domain or licence them under the GFDL, but I
suspect the main reason there is not fear of loss of revenue, but fear
of the images being used in a derogatory way.  Perhaps a standard
semi-free image release would be useful?  I would regret not having such
images on Wikipedia.

-- 
Abi