In the latest installment of the WMF fund raising blog, there is one more "Free culture" pitch, this time from the point of view of Wikipedia commons. I've already commented extensively about the last "free culture" pitch here, pointing out why I think that this line of reasoning is essentially the same as going into someone's house and telling them to move out because it's yours now.

The current poster, who is a active image contributor on Commons, suggests that we all read Larry Lessing's book "Free Culture" which is available for "free" as in "beer" at this link. I won't comment on the contents of this book yet, as I'm currently reading it, but I can say at this point that Mr. Lessing does not seem to understand that US copyright law, especially as it concerns individual creators, has changed profoundly since the 1978 implementation of the Bern convention and most of his examples are simply no longer true. I will comment on this book in detail on a further post, once I have time to digest this (it's a pretty easy read, though...I would suggest that everyone read this, just to get a handle on these issues).

In order to express Mr. Lessing's relationship with Wikipedia, there's probably no better way of doing so than presenting this video:



A picture is worth a thousand words, huh? In bed with Jimbo comes to mind...

The writer here however is honest enough to give us her own point of view: she's actively against copyrights, especially something which she refers to as "copyright expansion". I suppose that she's not aware of some of the situations which caused this law to change (making protection be "life of the creator plus seventy years" instead of a fixed number of years), which involved composers such as Eubie Blake who became destitute when the protection of their works ran out during their own lifetimes. I don't think that these anti-copyright activist people ever consider for one minute that these laws can and do affects people's lives in an extremely direct way, ie whether an older composer has money to live or not.

Her comments are quite direct :



This notion of making works available for the common good, and actively working against the rights of individual creators and their families is rather....provocative in its Soviet-era implications. One wonders what Ayn Rand would have thought of this, as this doesn't really fit into what I perceive to be an Objectivist line of reasoning.

It would seem however that although Commons does not actively promote the kind of "free culture" promoted by the writer here, it does passively promote copyright violations through not enforcing copyright laws when content is perceived as being necessary for the common good as defined by the editors in that project and through a rather vague implementation of "fair use", which amounts to we need to use it, so the use is fair.

The evidence is to be found in the comments section of this post:

Here is a deletion request on Commons which has been in place since September 2007. Out of the eight files listed, four are clearly copyright violations. The evidence collected on the other four would seem to indicate that they are protected in the US (they are on the ASCAP database, so somebody's getting money for their public performance) and a discussion of the new Russian Copyright law right on Commons has indicated that after midnight tonight, these files will no longer be public domain in Russia. Commons administrators in this discussion clearly have no idea what the difference is between the rights which the recording company had and the rights which the original creator/publisher contained. Easy solutions to this would be

1. to make thirty second low quality clips of each of the movements and claim fair use,
2. contacting the publishers and trying to get a "free license" (which they sometimes will do...it never hurts to ask--they don't bite if you ask nicely), or
3. deleting the files pending confirmation of the copyright status of the works.

The Commons solution is to do nothing because we need these for the good of the project, implying that the good of the project is above the rights of creators and international law in general. And this in spite of having contact information about who the copyright holders are and how to contact them. It seems to me that if EMI Music Publishing and Boosey and Hawks decided to start an infringement case, they'd have a pretty good chance of proving malicious intent. And I wonder how long it is going to be before they find out about this...

Secondly, in the article proper, the author gives an example of a photo which can't be used because of copyright issues:



She then whines about the fact that this isn't a free work because the photographer's copyright won't run out until seventy years after his death (when people complain to me about how long seventy years is, I always ask them if they have a family house that been in their family for longer than seventy years and how they would feel if the government took it away because "they'd had it for too long").

However, in the comments section, it was pointed out that the Wikipedia article for Phan Thị Kim Phúc does indeed use this image, which is claimed under "fair use". Further more, Wikipedia uses this image because the Associated Press gave them permission to do so. What happens to the entire argument that the MEDIA PTB are against "free culture" given this? Could it be that the big guys aren't so bad after all, if you ask them nicely? Of course, the letter very clearly states that they are only granting specific rights, and also that they do not agree that use of their photos constitutes "fair use". But they did agree to grant specific rights. Why is this unreasonable?

The point is this: Wikipedia enthusiasts and "Free Culture" promoters need a reality check. Laws, in the form of international treaties, exist to protect the property of creators: not just for big business, but for individuals and their families. The perceived importance of the project cannot and will never supersede the rights granted to creators under these treaties and conventions. If Wikimedia foundation projects do not respect these laws which their own TOS agreements require them to follow, then sooner or later, there will be a problem.

For WMF to allow an individual to spout this kind of rhetoric on their official blog is the equivalent of waving a red flag under the nose of a bull. I don't think that they can even imagine what it is they've done here.

Fieryangel, you are wise beyond me. Your words are appreciated, and I hope that some additional copyright specialists will eventually find their way to the WR and join the discussion.

Well, I think the arguments in the first post are mostly off-base. I'm a long time opponent of expansionist intellectual property, going back well before my involvement in Wikipedia, and I think your argument is full of straw men, mistaken facts, and opinions masquerading as fact.

Wikimedia Commons, in fact, does not allow fair use of any sort, and does not knowingly violate any copyright; its whole purpose is to be free of copyright restriction. That doesn't mean that errors don't sometimes get made; the process of determining whether a particular work is in the public domain is very complex, and can vary by country. In the US, due to various changes in copyright law (some made retroactive, some not), there's a complex tangle of expiration dates depending on the original publication date, and only some things actually have the life+70 term. In particular, anything published before 1923 is in the public domain in the US regardless of the author's death date, although some such works might still be under copyright in other countries.

Naturally, those who profit from intellectual property (often companies with no direct connnection with the original authors) take the most expansionist view they can, and will list things as copyrighted and try to collect royalties on them worldwide even if they may actually be public domain in some countries. This is probably the status of some of the musical works you mentioned.

You try for sympathy by mentioning authors and composers dying in poverty with their copyright expired, but going from there to life + 70 years is a stretch; is it actually necessary to prevent the grandchildren, or the corporation the author sold the rights to, from losing revenue long after the author died?

You also sound like you regard the very existence of a project designed to accumulate a set of freely licensed works to be "stealing" from authors, even if all authors in that project voluntarily licensed their works.

Copyright law doesn't resemble what Lessig says it does, and Lessig knows better. The Supreme Court told him so after his incompetent oral argument in Eldred.

My all-time favorite Lessig moment is when a Forbes writer gave Free Culture a bad review. Lessig said it was unfortunate that the reviewer, Stephen Manes, didn't understand his book. Manes replied with a vitriolic attack which--possibly for the first time--pointed out that the emperor of free culture has no clothes. From the first chapter, "Steamboat Willie" did not rip of "Steamboat Bill," and Disney did pay royalties. Lessig's much-acclaimed powerpoint presentation was bullshit that neither he nor his publisher ever bothered to fact check.

Of course, Lessig also thinks he lost Eldred 7-2 because he was too much of an academic. Not, y'know, because he was wrong on the law.

Great post and link. I hesitate to weigh in on a criticism of Lessig without extensive homework because of his (perhaps unearned) reputation. You have encouraged me to make the effort.

What just stuns me is the Lessig's strange celebration of a shell game in which, Presto-Change-O, a CC license replaces GFDL. This is based on an obscure term in GFDL that let's a licensee opt for a latter revision of GFDL.




This term is itself problematic and probably unenforceable as it undermines subsequent licensees' expectations and amount as reservation of part of the interests affected by the license to neither grantor nor licensee, but to Stallman and FSF. Now Lessig supports a deal under which FSF allows a CC license to be such a "revision." This distorts expectations beyond all recognition. I can only imagine that Lessig has come to see GDFL as hopeless in the context of a collaborative encyclopedia. This deal is simply an act of desperation and intellectual dishonesty.

I should be quick to add that I don't think Lessig is all bad. CC has been a good thing. Open licenses are great for the way they allow people to opt out of the otherwise-mandatory Berne copyright regime.

If Lessig's proposals were implemented, on the other hand, there would be no way for anyone to opt into more protection. Such policies have enormous economic and international implications, but Lessig pretends as if their desirability is self-evident.

It's a really nuanced question, and most law professors treat it as such (although many also acknowledge that some copyright legislation is basically pork).

I agree that CC, and it's wide variety of licenses, are valuable to free and collaborative projects. A CC/Share-Alike license would have been a better choice from the outset for WP than GFDL. GFDL is better suited for software than an encyclopedia.

Wikimedia commons currently and regularly has files on it that violate its own policy of "no copyright materials" and "no free use".

Concerning the "life plus seventy years" rule being too long, I'll buy that when people agree to give up any family money and property seventy years after the person who earned it has died. Do you see that happening any time soon?

Regardless of what you believe to be right and good (and I believe that you are sincere), you do not have the right to dispose of other people's property as you see fit.



That's absolutely right, but how many people really understand exactly what they are opting out of? Do the people who use these licenses actually explain to people what this means?

I don't see that happening currently. I also believe that if people understood exactly what it was they were giving up, that they wouldn't.

Anyone of believes that "copyright legislation is mostly pork" has never been sued for infringement. It's very easy to prove and very expensive. I don't recommend anyone experimenting with this.

In the European Union, it's "life or publication if later", so for example Lewis Carroll's diaries, first published in I think 1953, are still copyright although he died in 1898.

Actually, the Bern convention was implemented about 1898 (give or take a year) as was the Paris convention on printed circuits. Both were precursors to the foundation of the World Intellectual Proporty Organization.


Jimbo just happens upon the most bizarre people.

All with his totally selfish point of view.

Yes, that's true. But you're forgetting that somebody had to locate the diaries, transcribe them, correct them, arrange for their publication, probably get a grant from some foundation to do so etc etc etc. So, this person, as critical editor, did a whole lot of work that deserves protection. The heirs didn't profit before, so there's no reason why they shouldn't profit now.

It's all perfectly logical and reasonable, if you consider all of the aspects.






All completely correct, but until the revised version of said convention in 1971 (which was largely adopted by the US in 1978) the idea of copyright was imposed and completely controlled by the US copyright office, making copyright a concept which was completely administered by US law. What changed in 1978 was that the idea of copyright was replaced by the concept of "intellectual property" and one no longer had to register to have protection. It became completely automatic once you say a work is "finished".

This is the profound change of which I was speaking. Sorry not to be more clear.

Then remove them?



Then even the "+ 70" stuff is an outrage. But as soon as you say that, effective production of new materials becomes almost impossible as everything -- even this message I type -- are little more than derivatives.

The basic problem is that the word "property" is being mis-used. But if you wish to use the word, then how about this: why I should have any onus to protect your property? If you own some land somewhere, do I need to pay for the walls you want to build around it? The security guard salary, more or less forever? It strikes me as a more tenable position, especially if you wish to retain the use of the word "property" with all its normal connotations, that should you wish to profit on some information for "life + 70", then maybe you shouldn't go around telling people all about it?



What? Short of the public domain no one can "opt out" of the copyright regime. Indeed, the GFDL, CC, and the like all work because of the "copyright regime". These aren't the copyright, but simply the license.



Infringement lawsuits are not things the "low people" who are the bulk of the contributors to WP and other projects are capable of prosecuting. Those that "give up" these rights fully understand this simple reality. The economic situation from their perspective is this: either they sit on their data, and receive nothing for it, or they can share it, and receive, perhaps, just maybe, a tiny bit of recognition. While at the same time, they do not wish to simply hand very large entities the ability to make even more money from their labor (hence the GFDL, CC).



You must mean "has never sued for infringement"? Because the current copyright stuff is pork, top to bottom. Had it not been for the prospect of Mickey Mouse staring in animated porn movies, current law likely wouldn't exist at all. The truth of the situation is that Disney wasn't (and isn't and never will be) interested, not in the slightest, about your "property".

That's the whole point. In the example I point out above, four of the eight files are clearly copyright violations. In the other four files, the evidence points towards a copyright violation. However, the files are not being removed because administrators on commons won't delete them until further evidence is brought forward on the entire list of eight files.

Unless you're an admin, you can't delete things on commons. And the admins are the one drinking the koolaid...



Schoenberg said it much better than I, more than a hundred years ago:

There still plenty of good music to be written in C major.

The point being that it's impossible for someone who is truly creative to make an exact copy without changing it enough to be his or her own work. Just look at copies that artists make of works of the past and it's never the same.

It's almost impossible not to create an original work, but echoes of past works to provide context are both normal and acceptable. I know of very few cases in which this did not involve blatant copying of someone else's work, without any changes what so ever : The Lambada song is one instance that immediately comes to mind...



You are not paying for the system which protects my intellectual property. That system pays for itself. Every royalty check that I receive has a percentage taken out which goes towards paying for the system which collects and distributes the monies which are paid for use of my work. No tax monies are involved.

However, things that I have created are indeed my property in every sense of the word, as are yours. There is no misuse of the term at all.



Yes, but these licenses limit the rights of individuals to profit from their work, so they affect the copyright status. The problem is that people do not understand exactly what these licenses mean and you can never back out of them. I encourage artists not to use these licenses and make agreements on a case by case basis, limiting the rights granted to specific, well-defined uses.

What these licenses do is to re-enforce the idea that music, art, literature and other art forms has no value, because there is no exchange of money involved in their distribution. To create value for artistic content in Western society, an exchange of money is not only a normal expectation (you pay your plumber, don't you?) but also an important way of defining the importance of Art in Society.



By doing so, the "low people" (as you choose to call them) re-enforce the idea that their work is without value and that it is normal to expect that they work for nothing.

I fail to see how having such licenses as the GFDL or the CC prevents "very large entities" from profiting from this free content in the same way that other smaller entities do. Indeed, is it not clear that all of these low people are handing a very large slice of ability to make even more money for WMF and indirectly for the for-profit Wikia, as well as for numerous "scrapers" such as "Answers.com" and many other commercial ventures directly through their use of these "free content" licenses? Clearly, there is a fallacy in your thinking, as the evidence points out that this is exactly what is happening.




No, I meant exactly what I wrote. I see examples every day of the work of individual creators being protected, and the majority of these cases do not involve either directly or indirectly any sort of large entity. Living in Europe might have something to do with that, but seeing the very good work done by BMI and ASCAP in the US to lobby the US congress for legislation to protect the rights of independant composers makes me think that this work is also being done in the US as well.

So, please forgive me if I maintain that this insistence on "Free culture" is creating exactly the type of situation that you believe that you are fighting against by working under these types of licenses.

Is the following a copyright violation... ?

You can claim fair use for a parody. I would think that this would probably qualify as "parody".

In fairness to Prof. Lessig, I cannot say I entirely agree with Manes' views on copyright law, most particularly on the new "life + 70" rule. Still, I found this part of his article most interesting:



If Jimbo has indeed drank deep from Lessing's well, and keeping in mind the WMF's strong aversion to lawsuits and even to legal threats, this explains a great deal. A great deal.

Moulton: No worries, mate. Clearly parody.

Sorry, Moulton, I didn't realize at first that was your site. I believe that you would have a pretty good chance of falling into the "parody" category here, but I'm a musicologist/musician and not a lawyer. You might want to read this to get a better understanding.

At this point in time, all they're going to go is to send you a "take it down now" letter....but I don't think that Bob Dylan would mind this "parody" at all, so I think that you're pretty safe here....

I'm going to focus on one paragraph of your response, as I think it sits at the crux of the matter. If you wish, I can revisit other sections as well, but I really think this one is the key:



The licenses speak nothing about value: they simply restrict downstream users of the content, like any other license does. That there are many who believe no money can be made within the framework of these licenses is, as they say, a failure of imagination on the part of the so-called "mafiaa". In fact, the creator can still profit from his work in a regime where copyright simply doesn't exist at all. The usual example is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_performer_protocol

In essence, you create your work, and auction it off at whatever price the market will bear. It is true that this does not support the business model of a royalty dribble in perpetuity, but that, and your ability to create further works in the future can be factored into your minimum price, if you wish.

If the SPP becomes more common, it is likely initial licenses will be GFDL/CC style things, because why hand market-demonstrated value to "very large entities" by bequeathing the work to the public domain? At the least, if Disney decides to screw you over, you have bragging rights at the end of the day, as there is little chance you could pay for the prosecution. (Look at the utterly disgusting shenanigans of big companies ripping off small-time inventors/artists. All by the book.)

I am rather fond of the SPP myself, because it renders moot an entire section of the law library and legislative code, puts a whole generation of intellectual "property" lawyers out of business, tends to attract true talent that can reliably create over time (since artists need to, in order to generate income), the artist keeps almost all of the money (or at least the contract with the escrow agency will be much simpler).

The problem with SPP is that it relies on you already having some reputation, so that people are willing to pay for something they can't see beforehand. That's perfectly fine for established creators of course, but what about those who are just starting? There is little incentive for someone to spend a lot of time creating things and distributing the things freely, just so that they might end up getting paid for subsequent works later.

You're drinking the koolaid, obviously. The whole thing is bait and switch .

First of all, who is telling you this stuff? Do you really believe that Lessing and Wales of I've got you, babe fame really have the interests of all of the writers, composers, artists and others (not to mention all of the poor Bomis girls who had to be exploited to allow Jimbo to get himself to this point) at heart? Not to mention all of the free slave labour they've managed to capture into their cult because of the whole idea of freeing knowledge....Freedom through Slavery. Isn't that an interesting concept?

You haven't got a clue here. We're not talking about something that's been going on since last Thursday, but rather a social struggle which has been going on for hundreds of years.

You see, before, back in the bad old days, creators were thought of as (best case scenario) servants (composers, visual artists, poets to some extent) or (worst case scenario) thieves (actors, circus artists, traveling musicians). Artists were not paid at all for their creative work, but only for services rendered (performances of music) or for objects they produced. There was no question of paying people for creative work. A lot of people in the past have fought for this and just because some of you don't feel that this valid doesn't mean that artists have not won the rights to be paid for their creative work.

So what is this SPP concept?: it's the old royal patronage system. Such progress! We have to go back to begging people to give us money. Thank you for letting us in on this wonderful secret. (I already do enough begging as it is, in the form of grant writing, trying to get rich old ladies to write checks to pay for things and the like....It's not fun and someone would have to be terribly naïve to suggest this as a possible solution...)

By insisting on payment for their creative vision, artists fall outside of society's expectations about what a "productive individual" is and what is acceptable for a "productive" life within society. But one can easily gauge their value within society by looking at...revenues generated by their work. Every quarterly report, billions of dollars in royalties are distributed to...individual composers and artists. We have value because....we generate money.

A recent advertising campaign in Europe for an remedial afterschool service used a photo of a teenager playing a mean rock guitar and used the caption "If only he were as good in mathematics....". This implies that music is not a socially viable occupation and is not an honorable profession.

The point is: a World without music, without art, without theatre, without literature is probably a World which many of us would find greatly diminished at the least...and perhaps would be a life not worth living, at worst.

Is this really what you want? Because this is what these licenses imply.

These licenses imply that 1. this is not work because it's creative: it's simply "fun things that peole do" and 2. they do not have value because they aren't really "work".

The protection is there for a reason: the protection generates value within the society, simply because generation of money is involved. I'm sorry that this is so, but until somebody comes up with something else (and believe me, they've been trying for a long, long time), the only way to generate value is to generate revenue.

The only way to generate revenue is to insist on full value, because you're never going to be paid all of the royalties that you should. I personally receive royalties for only about 10% of the performances which I personally document. From time to time, I get a surprise by getting royalties for something that I didn't even know happened, but this is the exception.

So, no, I am not going to give away any of the protection that the law entitles me to and I do not see anyone encouraging artists to do so as doing anything other than working against the cause of individual artists in general, through a misguided support of big business mascarading as "the friend of the low people."

However, if you prefer to keep drinking the koolaid, go right ahead. You can sign all of your rights away if you like: that's your business.

Of course, none of this does anything about the fact that there are four, if not eight, files on WM commons which are under copyright against the TOS of that site and no one has done anything at all to change this fact since this was posted on the fund-raising blog....

Yes, insofar that the licenses work, their constraints are possible because of copyright law. What I'm getting at is that they represent a license open to all comers, where copying otherwise requires permission from the moment expression was fixed. These licenses also work because they remove doubt for future use. Simply ceding something to the public domain offers no guarantee that future users will know it's public domain.

the fieryangel: I think it's possible that some people don't know what they're giving away. The first CC one-hit-wonder might be badly burned, but the law should not treat people like children. If I understand your argument, you simply think that free culture advocates spend too much time railing against copyright, without fully explaining what they're irrevocably giving up. That might be true, but most people frankly don't create anything of value, so it's only a tragedy for the rare exception.

All of this is very good discussion, but I'm interested in why no one is discussing the real issue, which is :

Why do these licenses exist in the first place and who benefits from them?

It's certainly not creators: they already possess these rights and can allow all of the derivative and collaborative works that they wish, even issuing royalty-free licenses, without jeopardizing any of their future control over their own work. So creators receive no benefit at all: they already have all of the flexibility.

It's not the "general public" either, since most people aren't interested in creating derivative works: they only want the right to experience the works themselves. In most cases, people are not interested in creating derivative works. In many cases, they are able to procure content for a reasonable price off of commercial services or through royalty-free licenses from individual artists. They aren't interested whether these works are going to be "usable" for other purposes: they just want to hear "that song" or see "that film". "Licensing" is not part of the equation at all.

So, who benefits?

Those who benefit directly from these licenses are not creators, but are those who profit off of other people's content. It may be the "scrapers" who use search engines to generate traffic by creating pages of links to information, or who copyright WP (and other "free" content sites) in order to draw people to see their ads. It's big business, who are now able to create huge sites with no work simply by copying all of the "free work" done by the WP worker bees. Why pay someone to write notes for that knockoff Tchaikovsky CD that you're giving away at the gas station when you can just copy Wikipedia's article and call that notes? Why pay for a photo when you can just download one off of Commons and use that?

The best part is that they've created this folklore that all of you "free culture" types are fighting against the very thing that you're helping to create. You're working for "them" but you think that you're working for some sort of Utopia where everything will be "free". What is already free and what will remain free as long as you continue to believe in this mistaken idea is all of the work that you're doing to help further this agenda. What they really want is for all content to be free so they can benefit from it without paying anyone....and make even more money simply by using it ....for free.

Is this really what you had in mind?

I might be "clarifying" something you already perfectly well know but the use of the word "license" makes me think this is worth going into. "Licenses" do not refer to only non- commercial/proprietary types such as CC/NC and GFDL. They also refer to rapacious documents of adhesion such as the classic EULA that comes with most commercial software. Generally licenses do exist to benefit the creators of IP. They are a means of outlining the terms of use (including payment) that they permit others to access their creations. Because they are licenses, and not contracts, they are not "bargained for." The grantor of the license has complete and unilateral power to define the terms.

Free licenses, when granted by informed creators of IP, open up access to the work-product (source) in a manner that is acceptable to the creator. They are saying that they want other to extend and build upon their work. It is perfectly possible for a creator of IP to intelligently intend that his IP be licensed in this manner. They may or may not also be interested in securing payment for their work.

The problem is that GFDL, CC etc when imposed as a condition of participation in collaborative projects is that a license, which is typically a unilateral document that completely permits the creator to define the terms acceptable for access their work, becomes just the opposite. It becomes a document of adhesion in which the creator now has no voice or power in defining the terms. These powers have been transfered away from the creator and given to the Stallmans and Lessigs who author the licenses.

Yes, that's exactly the point. Creators already use licenses to allow others to use their work. It's actually quite easy to simply state what is acceptable and what is not. Creators do not need these licenses at all. They can already grant (or refuse) any of these rights on a case by case basis.

These imposed licenses create a state of less freedom, not more. They also give powers to people who should have no part in such a transaction. This is about people taking over cultural power within Society, and the end result is going to involve a pile of cash, none of which is going to people who actually created this content in the first place.

When Wales and Lessig made their agreement to change the Wikipedia license to CC, were any of the rightsholders (ie anybody who's ever written part of an article) consulted? You all know the answer to that one. Was this legal? I'm no lawyer, but I've never heard of anyone being able to change a license without informing the parties involved. Actually, in Europe, this would make the initial agreement null and void.

This is one of the most blatant confidence schemes that I have ever seen and most people are buying it; hook, line and sinker. Not just that, the people responsible are being painted as saints who are doing this for the good of all mankind and the poor child in Africa.

Would any of you be interested in buying that bridge over there?

There is an applicable policy here: WP:HELL (Hounding Evasive Licentious Libertines).

Okay, I'm going to play Jimbo's Advocate here.

I thought that what Lessig and Wales announced was that the Wikimedia Foundation was going to work aggressively with the FSF people who maintain the GFDL license, to encourage them to change GFDL so that it is essentially more compliant with Creative Commons licenses.

The GFDL itself states:



So, it would appear that all those contributors who have been hoodwinked into ever writing Wikipedia for the Wikimedia Foundation (which is not responsible as a publisher, remember), were releasing their work under the terms of a license that could be changed in the future by "any later version".

Presumably, the FSF would be within its rights to modify a later version of the GFDL to say that all modifications to a GFDL-licensed document must include the text, "Donate $5 to the Ron Paul campaign today, Bert is evil, and God hates shrimp!" And the previous authors under that malleable license would have no recourse.

Greg

Jimbo's Advocate as in: "Many have claimed Mr. Wales eats shit sandwiches. I know for a fact Mr. Wales does not care for bread."

If the FSF people are willing to adopt a license irrelevant to the GFDL as a later version, just because Wikipedia wishes to revoke its current license and use a new one, then that would work. But I highly doubt that's going to happen.

The only people who benefit from the laissez-faire view of copyrights are those who make money without any compunction about paying the creators.

The most striking thing I find about Wikipedia is, despite the Objectivist leanings of its God-King, Wikipedia is solidly in anarchist territory when it comes to intellectual property or indeed any property - "your property is mine and mine is mine until the mob finds it"

Here's an example of Wikipedia's two faced nature on intellectual property: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Safety_Last%21.jpg

And here's the blurb justifying ripping off a copyrighted picture of a still from the film:



O RLY?

Wikipedia is doing it for identification purposes, and believes that it has the right to do so because its a non-profit in the US?

I've yet to see case law that permits non-profits some special dispensation to ignore copyright but maybe its out there somewhere...

What is web resolution? That picture looks pretty hi-res to me.

Well, commercial gain and non-profit educational use is one of the subfactors of fair use, so it's not totally crazy.

You're right that the description is legal BS and doesn't conform to the site's supposed fair use policy, but that's about the best you can hope for with all volunteers (including many editors who think that copyright is some sort of tyranny).

Copyright is an evil tyrannic regime, and it's our moral responsibility to liberate knowledge from its clutches. Isn't that why Wikipedia and the Foundation exist?

NEWSFLASH: Copyright as everyone describes it in these kinds of tirades effectively ended in 1978 when the US implemented the greater part of the 1971 version of the Bern Convention. It's called "intellectual property" now and has very little to do with "copyright" as it was practiced before.

Wikipedia and WMF (and many other of the these "copyleft" organizations) exist to profit off of other people's work, giving themselves rights and importance that they shouldn't have and certainly don't deserve.

Wikipedia is part of the problem, not the solution.

Lay off that koolaid for awhile, will ya?

Thinking wikipedia is for educational use is a mistake a lot of people make. It is founded on the libertarian principle of being free for anyone to use for any purpose, including commercial purposes. Answers.com uses wikipedia content for profit.

Indeed. Upload an image marked as freely available for educational purposes and see how long it lasts.

This article in the Register confirms FieryAngel's points in regard to Larry Lessig. The below paragraph is about right - and even links to their article on Wikipedia's Overstock scandal.

Wow, Lessig--who happens to lecture on the purported beneficence of YouTube and Google Books, which happens to pay his foundation millions of dollars--will now teach us on how to spot corruption. Perhaps he can also help detect COI on Wikipedia!

Assuming the Republicans lose, we'll probably be calling him "Judge Lessig" in a few years, and the Ninth Circuit will be just a little bit more activist.