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

Tue Jan 18 19:21:09 UTC 2011

I have not used any of the terms Gisle has tried to add,
nor have they played any real role in our discussions so
I will simply leave them as footnotes, they do not apply
to the subject at hand, which is still simple:

If someone does copyrighted work that they still give us
permission to use in a non-commercial manner, why should
we not include it in our various libraries/collections--
presuming that is the only criterion keeping it out???

All the rest of the stories included below are yet again
just more attempts to muddy this clear question.

No one here has attempted such things and I do not think
we should be distracted by all of these red herrings our
obfuscators have dragged into this discussion.

The question is still simple:

"Why not include items with non-commercial permissions?"

Yes, copyright is complex, I know hundreds of times more
about copyright than I ever wanted to know.

However, once permission is given that point is moot, as
are each and every other point raised here.

What is the REASON to avoid non-commercial permission???

The more and more people here try to cloud the isssue, I
am more and more convinced they have their own agenda we
are not privy to, or else they would come to the point.

I think, after such a lengthy period of discussion, that
it has become obvious there is no point, no reason, thus
it must be concluded that these people are not going for
any kind of rational discussion or reasoning here, but a
closed minded approach to something they already decided
long before this question was raised by others.

What you are doing is what is warned against on the very
first day of problem solving classes around the world:

"Don't put limits on the solution that are not there."

or

"Don't add more limits to the problem."

I am afraid this discussion has been quite intentionally
degraded to address nothings by those who do not want it
to be clearly stated and solved by inclusion, and not by
exclusion, as is too often the case.

Why people, you particularly, should feel the same needs
to exclude rather than include, is beyond me, and unless
someone else, even the original author of this question,
raises these points again, I am content to let you go to
your chosen muddied solution, and leave out so much from
your collection that could be legally included.

While Project Gutenberg and other such collections would
be only a few percent smaller without copyrighted items,
for which permission is given, the effectiveness of such
projects, the value of such collections, is more than an
extremely few more percent with the added materials.

Enough said:

All you have to do to not hear from me again is silence,
and you are free to go on your limited way rather than a
less limited way is is also available to all.

Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg,
Inventor of eBooks
and of a philosophy
"Unlimited Distribution"

On Tue, 18 Jan 2011, Gisle Hannemyr wrote:

> On 16.01.2011 18:20, Michael S. Hart wrote:
> > On Sun, 16 Jan 2011, Mathias Schindler wrote:
> >> On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Michael S. Hart <hart at pglaf.org> wrote:
>
> Dear Mr. Hart,
> excuse me for jumping into this discussion at this late point.
>
> I am the public lead of Creative Commons Norway. And since I think
> I've seen this  discussion before, I hope you will indulge me when
> I try to provide some background.
>
> > You are taking something very simple and trying to making it not so,
> > which has been my point all along.
> >
> > If you are running a non-profit operation, as it sounds this one is,
> > and I asked back at the beginning of this, then there is no reason a
> > vast number of "OK for general uses other than commercial" items are
> > available for inclusion.
>
> This may not be as simple as you think, because in what can loosely
> be called the "free culture movement", terms such as "free" and
> "open" are highly contested.
>
> For instance, some people argue that the GFDL and the its brother,
> the CC BY-SA, are inherently non-free because a *free* licence must
> also guarantee anyone the freedom to *not* attribute, and to *not*
> share derivatives.  I think these people would object to *any*
> licensing scheme because licensing inherently rests on copyright,
> which they want to abolish as a matter of principle.
>
> Some are very sweet about this, like the "copyheart" people:
>
>   http://copyheart.org/
>
> And some are less sweet, as the anti-IP anarchist lobby:
>
>  "Creative Commons is really an anti-commons that peddles a capitalist
>   logic of privatization under a deliberately misleading name. Its
>   purpose is to help the owners of intellectual property catch up
>   with the fast pace of information exchange, not by freeing
>   information, but by providing more sophisticated definitions for
>   various shades of ownership and producer-control.
>  "What began as a movement for the abolition of intellectual property
>   has become a movement of customizing owners' licenses. Almost
>   without notice, what was once a very threatening movement of
>   radicals, hackers and pirates is now the domain of reformists,
>   revisionists, and apologists for capitalism."
>   Source: http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Copyright-Copyleft-and-the.html
>
> Other critics of Creative Commons have no problem with the concept of
> licensing, or captitalism, but still think that it was a *really* bad
> idea on the part of  Creative Commons to include the "non-commercial"
> option in the suite of licensing terms.  For instance, the CBC
> (Canadian Broadcasting  Corporation, a not-for-profit public service
> broadcaster) recently prohibited the use of Creative Commons-licensed
> music in any of its podcasts.  The cause, apparently, was that the
> "non-commercial" clause proved unmanageable for CBC.  Chris Meadows
> commented:
>
>  "This ... highlights a major problem with the Creative Commons
>   licensing scheme — it fails to take into account the increasing
>   manner in which non-commercial and commercial uses intermingle,
>   and how hard it is to tell one from the other. If a noncommercial
>   podcast or blog enters into a redistribution agreement with a
>   commercial entity, CC-licensed content that was formerly
>   perfectly kosher for it to use suddenly and magically becomes
>   verboten." (for full story, see
> http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/cbc-decision-highlights-creative-commons-drawbacks/
> )
>
> My point my saying all this, I guess, is that when stuff it is not
> completely free to use and share, things are *not* simple.
>
> > If you don't include them, it's your own fault, not the fault of the
> > people who create them and make them available to the general public
> > and you should stand up and take complete responsibility for choices
> > of this nature, without any pretense.
> >
> > The Project Gutenberg collection is copied and reposted all the time
> > all over the world, even though it contains copyrighted materials.
> >
> > The collection being considered here could be the same way.
> >
> > SHOULD be the same way if you are trying to bring the most materials
> > to the most people.
> >
> > Why rule out all of those works on which people claim copyright, and
> > are also willing to have shared by billions of people worldwide on a
> > non-commercial basis???
> >
> > I can't think of a good reason.
> >
> > That's why I've been asking.
> >
> > However, some seem to be adamant about keeping all of such materials
> > out of the proposed distribution channels.
> >
> > Why?
>
> As a veteran of these debates, I have come to realize that people
> simply disagree about these things.  There may be as many reasons
> for this disagreement as there are people.
>
> If we return to the issue at hand, i.e. the "Open Knowledge Foundation"
> and their Public Domain Review ( publicdomainreview.okfn.org )
> - whose question about the licensing terms of the Wellcome Trust
> image collections sparked this thread - I can think of at least
> several good  reasons for them to *not* feature works with
> licenses that forbids commercial use.
>
> To just give you one:  The site's name happens to be "Public Domain
> Review". As a member of the public, what I expect to find when I
> visit this site are reviews of works in the public domain.  I
> would be very confused, and even wonder what charlatans were
> running the site, if a site called "Public Domain Review" featured
> reviews of works *not* in the public domain.
>
> Copyright is complex, and most people, unfortunately, do not
> understand it well.  I think the last thing the world needs
> is someone compounding the general confusion surrounding
> copyright by applying the legal term "public domain" to
> something that isn't.
>
> Btw: I would think wonderful it if someone created a website named
> freefornoncommercialusereview.org, to provide a similar review service
> for works that are free for non-commercial use.  But if the good
> people of the "Open Knowledge Foundation" instead want to dedicate
> their time and effort to promoting works that is in the public
> domain, I think we should understand and respect their choice.
>