[pd-discuss] Contact between Wikimedia Foundation and Wellcome Trust regarding image collections?

Thu Jan 13 20:44:30 UTC 2011

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Michael S. Hart <hart at pglaf.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, Rob Myers wrote:
>
> > On 01/13/2011 07:47 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote:
> > >
> > > Is there some reason for this that you haven't stated?
> >
> > Plagiarism is not a licencing issue, and banning commercial use is
> > inconsistent with the concepts of the public domain and of free use.
>
>
> I think something was missed here:
>
> The point -I- am arguing with is that they are not considering works
> that are given for all but commercial use. . .which is pretty much as
> close as you can get to completely public domain without letting them
> make money from selling your files.
>

Which isn't all that close.

> What is the reason for NOT including work that is freely distributable
> other than for commercial purposes???
>

As Wikimedia was brought up, see
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Licensing/Justificationsand
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC (their licensing policy requires
meeting the definition of free culture works; link explains why NC only
licenses don't).

However, even free licenses are non-exciting for mere digitizations of
public domain works -- they ought be in the public domain! If one can
usefully offer under a free license, one can also retain all rights. The
pejorative term is https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyfraud

Holders of public domain works ought instead be clearly stating the works
are in the public domain. To facilitate this Creative Commons recently
developed http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ ... however
experience the last few years has also shown being gentle with institutional
holders can lead to good results long term ... but being gentle may not
include featuring "their" works in a "public domain review". :-)

Mike

-- 
https://creativecommons.net/ml
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