[Wikipedia-l] Re: What would Richard Stallman say?

[Michael Snow]

(Ach, getting sloppy about intelligible subject lines. Sorry for the 
repeat.)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>  quotation
>      n 1: a short note recognizing a source of information or of a
>           quoted passage; "the student's essay failed to list
>           several important citations"; "the acknowledgments are
>           usually printed at the front of a book"; "the article
>           includes mention of similar clinical cases" [syn:
>           {citation}, {acknowledgment}, {credit}, {reference},
>           {mention}]
>      2: a passage or expression that is quoted or cited [syn:
>         {quote}, {citation}]
>      3: a statement of the current market price of a security or
>         commodity
>      4: the practice of quoting from books or plays etc.; "since he
>         lacks originality he must rely on quotation"
>
> I don't have any reasons to believe that Berne Convention meant 
> "quotation"
> in any wider meaning.
>
The intention of the drafters of a law is often ignored by the courts. 
They read the law itself and apply generally accepted, sensible 
meanings. I'm not saying my interpretation of Article 10 is definitely 
correct; I'm saying it's a reasonable argument we can use in our favor.

>
> And it's more likely that we'll see peace in the Middle East, than 
> WTO/WIPO
> limiting scope of the copyright.
>
It may be unlikely, but I don't think it's quite that unlikely. If the 
free content movement becomes influential enough, we may be able to push 
these institutions to recognize legitimate free uses.

--Michael Snow