[Wikipedia-l] no derivative work? was: Creative Commons Licence

[Marco Krohn]

On Sunday 07 March 2004 17:17, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Maybe, but there's another side. I've just tried to get permission to use  
> some example webcomics on Wikipedia in the respective articles. I received  
> one positive and three negative replies. The main problem was that people  
> are worried about third parties modifying their work.
>
> And I can understand that concern. If you have an example comic which
> features the main characters, someone else can easily rip off these
> characters and create their "fork" of the strip, even market it
> commercially, as long as it's copylefted.
>
> What does it do for us to have it modifiable though? We're an
> encyclopedia, our purpose is not the creation of new artwork but the
> improvement of encyclopedia articles. The purpose of the comics is to
> illustrate these articles. Modifying them does not further that purpose
> (except for resizing, converting etc. which are probably allowed anyway).
>
> I think there's an argument to be made to allow something like "no
> derivative works" for *some* images. It doesn't really hurt our purpose as
> a "free encyclopedia", IMHO.

Of course I understand the concerns of companies being afraid of "forks". I 
also agree with you that, in order to build the best "encyclopedia", we 
should be fine with restricting the rights of some images, e.g., using more 
fair use, no-derivatives and so on. This surely allows much more content and 
a better encyclopedia.

What I don't agree with is the focus or better the change of focus that is 
taking place. Our top priority shouldn't be to become the best 
"encyclopedia"--we should become the best "free encyclopedia". 

Where "free" is meant to be in the spirit of science and scientific work: 
everyone builds on the works from others and everyone let others build on 
your own work -- "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders 
of giants" -- Newton (btw: the quote itself is another nice example for 
derivative work [1])

Sure, Disney would lose millions if they would allow us to use Mickey Mouse 
under GFDL. And every other company producing comic strips might lose money 
too. On the other hand one should not forget that Mickey Mouse is a 
derivative work and the only thing that has changed since 1928--when Walt 
Disney "stole" Willie (ancestor of Mickey Mouse) from Buster Keaton's 
"Steamboat Bill"--is that Walt Disney and Co. now have the power to buy the 
law (Mickey Mouse protection act, see [[Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension 
Act]]).

These are just three randomly choosen examples: science, quote and Mickey 
Mouse and they all have in common that they build on past work. And even this 
text is partially based on work from others, in particular on Lawrence Lessig 
talk about "Free Culture" [2]. In this talk he made some very important 
points:

<quote>

* Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
* The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
* Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
* Ours is less and less a free society.

</quote>

We as a _free_ encyclopedia project should support those who produce free 
content and not those which give us their content under some non-free license 
only. As I said in the beginning I agree with Erik that it's the best for us 
as an encyclopedia (at least mid-term) to use more works even if they are not 
free. But for a _free_ encyclopedia this is unacceptable in my humble 
opinion. 

Coming from science I have seen how important derivative work is and I have 
benefited from that principle very much--I love standing on the shoulders of 
giants :-)

best regards,
  Marco



[1] http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0162b.shtml
[2] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/lessig.html

-- 
Marco Krohn
Theoretical Physics 
University of Hannover