>> Such works belong to our global knowledge. > You can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture.
Clearly, you can copyright knowledge, for a time. True, you can't copyright facts or scientific laws (yet)-- but some forms of knowledge absolutely get copyrighted, and they're lobbying for even greater powers over what people can read, write, and share. In the past, for example, some entities have even claimed 'copyright' to try to limit distribution of knowledge of the specific 'special whole numbers-- since those numbers were the ones they picked as "keys" when setting up their content encryption system. To bring things full circle, I think what we, collectively, are asserting is that culture is, in fact, a very essential type of educational knowledge. There are two big myths I wish I could debunk: One is "The Myth of Non-Educational Knowledge"-- all information is educational, but some sets of information are certainly more educational than others; it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. The secomd myth is what I'd call 'The Myth of the Superiority of High Culture"-- basically the idea that operas and classical music are somehow a 'more important' culture to document than, say, anime or jazz. In practice, 'high culture' usually means 'the culture of the most affluent'. All culture, whether scientific, encyclopedic, high art, low art, pop culture, kitsch, criminal, idiosyncratic, or even literally hunter-gather tribal culture-- all cultures are important to document so we can understand our fellow humans. Our species has important work to do. The more that binds us together, the better. Perhaps the things that bind us will simple cultural artifacts just like this-- things like a common love of the images of M.C. Escher, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, or the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Culture is knowledge. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l