[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

[Lars Aronsson]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> The point is: suppose someone wanted to buy $100,000,000 of existing 
> copyrighted material and set it free.  What should it be?

Wikipedia could certainly use that kind of money, and it would be 
a shame to turn the offer down.  But apparently the WMF isn't 
going to get the money anyway, because it will be paid to some 
alredy wealthy rights holder.  This is a waste, even if it is the 
rights holder we're pointing at.  Should we cooperate in this?  
Not me.  But then again, I'm not speaking for the foundation.

If the WMF had the money without any restrictions, would it really 
buy copyrights for it?  I strongly doubt that.  I can come up with 
half a dozen better ideas for how to spend money.

Somebody has wasted their life, and all they have left now is a 
big bag of money.  Poor souls!  And now they want to attach the 
name of Wikipedia to a "big donation" in their name, as if this 
was something Wikipedia just couldn't do without. If this donation 
is accepted, it is inevitable that it will make headlines, not 
because of how useful it is to Wikipedia, but because of the huge 
sum of money.

Or are they going to make this effort even if Wikipedia's name 
isn't attached to it?  Could this donation be made towards the far 
less glorious Internet Archive?  Then Wikipedia could nod and say: 
Yeah, we might be able to use parts of that.

If you want to make copyrighted contents free, I think you should 
avoid to involve money, because Wikipedia's moral argument is far 
stronger than its financial assets will ever be. But is that the 
problem addressed here?  It sounds a lot more as if the real 
problem is how to spend this money that somebody happens to have, 
while at the same time pushing the idea that copyrights are worth 
paying for, and thus shouldn't be given up for nothing.

The whole scheme reeks of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 
where so-called "money" is spent to help schools, when in fact 
that money is paid to Microsoft Corporation for software licenses, 
that the school could have for free if they used free software.

Even though US$ 0.1 bn is a lot, it is just 1/16 of what Google 
bought Youtube for, and Wikipedia's name will be remembered a lot 
longer than Youtube's.  You might say, yes, that was $1.6 bn in 
Google shares, that could be worthless any week.  But here we're 
talking $0.1 bn not in cash but in "copyright vouchers", which 
could lose value far sooner than Google shares.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se