Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[Pete Forsyth]

Erik, thanks for posting the essay here. Glad to see the interest in this
topic.

I wrote this because I have found that when somebody asks me about the NC
provision, I often want to point them to a simple webpage (rather than
"reinventing the wheel" every time it comes up). There are some pages out
there (I listed some in the "See also" section), but I have yet to find
somewhere this particular point -- the need of a general license to issue
clear guidance -- articulated anywhere in a concise, accessible way.

I'm surprised (and a little disappointed) to see that the possibility of
Wikimedia generally accepting NC-licensed work is being discussed. But
apart from that discussion, I think many of you in this discussion have, at
one time or another, wanted to help guide someone toward using a more
permissive license, rather than a NC license.

For those who have, do you have favorite webpages you find helpful to
share? Does this one seem like a useful addition? I'd appreciate any
feedback or constructive edits to this essay; I also think it would be
useful to have some of the other arguments, currently collected in longer
documents, expressed in more "bite-sized" pieces like this, which could be
linked together. Do others agree, and if so, are you inclined to help draft
some complementary pages?

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 3:23 PM effe iets anders 
wrote:

> The question is however as well: how many open licensed content creators
> would switch to NC if they were aware that this would be 'good enough' for
> Wikipedia - even if that means in reality only English Wikipedia (but who
> cares about other languages) and without actually allowing to build on top
> of it?
>
> I have found the argument 'don't use NC because then it can't be used on
> Wikipedia' rather convincing in the past. It will not always work, and I
> also wish it would convince /more/ organizations. But then, I would also
> wish that enwiki wouldn't use fair use exceptions - so maybe I'm not the
> benchmark you'd be looking at anyway.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 5:32 PM James Heilman  wrote:
>
> > Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is
> that
> > it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open
> > licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more
> > organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
> > already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.
> >
> > James
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller 
> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi James :)
> > >
> > > (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit
> > > on this list.)
> > >
> > > > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons
> > > > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy
> > > videos)
> > > > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use.
> > >
> > > I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF
> > > or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new
> > > initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could
> > > perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy,
> > > and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default
> > > license.
> > >
> > > > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism.
> > >
> > > I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to
> > > want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it
> > > can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about
> > > altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now,
> > > Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive
> > > licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly
> > > poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a
> > > nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how
> > > is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in
> > > some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to
> > > Wikimedia projects?
> > >
> > > If a license is "exceedingly poor" and harmful to the goals of the
> > > free culture movement, incorporating more information under such terms
> > > strikes me as neither idealistic nor pragmatic -- it would just be
> > > short-sighted.
> > >
> > > Warmly,
> > > Erik
> > >
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > James Heilman
> > MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
> > _

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[effe iets anders]

The question is however as well: how many open licensed content creators
would switch to NC if they were aware that this would be 'good enough' for
Wikipedia - even if that means in reality only English Wikipedia (but who
cares about other languages) and without actually allowing to build on top
of it?

I have found the argument 'don't use NC because then it can't be used on
Wikipedia' rather convincing in the past. It will not always work, and I
also wish it would convince /more/ organizations. But then, I would also
wish that enwiki wouldn't use fair use exceptions - so maybe I'm not the
benchmark you'd be looking at anyway.

Lodewijk

On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 5:32 PM James Heilman  wrote:

> Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is that
> it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open
> licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more
> organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
> already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.
>
> James
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> > Hi James :)
> >
> > (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit
> > on this list.)
> >
> > > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons
> > > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy
> > videos)
> > > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use.
> >
> > I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF
> > or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new
> > initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could
> > perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy,
> > and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default
> > license.
> >
> > > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism.
> >
> > I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to
> > want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it
> > can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about
> > altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now,
> > Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive
> > licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly
> > poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a
> > nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how
> > is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in
> > some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to
> > Wikimedia projects?
> >
> > If a license is "exceedingly poor" and harmful to the goals of the
> > free culture movement, incorporating more information under such terms
> > strikes me as neither idealistic nor pragmatic -- it would just be
> > short-sighted.
> >
> > Warmly,
> > Erik
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
>
>
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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[Wikimedia-l] Affiliations Committee 2020 Mid-Term Election results

[Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight]

Subject line: Affiliations Committee 2020 Mid-Term Election results

Dear everyone,

We are happy to share that Başak Tosun, Bunty Avieson, Jeffery Keefer,
Ravan Al-Taie, and Suyash Dwivedi are new members who have been appointed
to the Affiliations Committee, while Camelia Boban has been re-appointed.

Here are Başak Tosun, Bunty Avieson, Jeffery Keefer, Ravan Al-Taie, and
Suyash Dwivedi, in their own words:


   1.

   Başak Tosun:
   I have been a contributor to Wikimedia projects since 2005. I mainly
   contribute to Turkish Wikipedia. For a long time, I was only an online
   contributor; I discovered that contributions to free knowledge could go
   beyond editing after I joined an international WikiCamp in 2015. Then I
   contacted fellow wikipedians to form a user group in Turkey and became one
   of the founder members of Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey. I took the
   responsibility of Wikipedia Education Programs in the group and organised
   Education Programs in several courses at 8 different universities.
   Additionally, I take part in organising edit-a-thons, partnership search,
   organising local contests.



   1.

   Bunty Avieson:
   I am a media academic at University of Sydney and a member of Wikimedia
   Australia. I learned to edit at an Art & Feminism event in March 2017 and
   immediately followed up with an online course. I have since hosted
   edit-a-thons in Sydney and Bhutan, but my interest goes beyond editing to
   the larger goals of the Wikimedia movement, particularly around knowledge
   equity and diversity. I’m currently leading two research projects to build
   smaller language Wikipedias. One is a collaboration with Tata Institute of
   Social Sciences in Mumbai to train two groups of retired Tamils, in both
   Sydney and Mumbai, to edit Tamil Wikipedia. The other is a three-year
   project funded by the Australian Research Council, to train Bhutanese to
   publish on both English Wikipedia and also develop their Dzongkha site. I'm
   an active member of Women Write Wiki and Women In Red.



   1.

   Jeffery Keefer:
   I serve as a Wikimedian in Residence for the Patient-Centered Outcomes
   Research Institute (PCORI). I started editing Wikipedia three years ago
   while attending an open education conference in London where I went to a
   workshop and was challenged to learn to try editing Wikipedia. Between then
   and now Wikimedia has become my online home, where I edit and teach
   students how to use our Wikimedia projects, am active across all three
   types of Affiliates, and was one of the writers of the Movement Strategy
   Recommendations. I have a PhD in educational research. I am or have been
   involved in a number of Wikipedia + Wikimedia projects across the Movement:
   Wikimedia Movement Strategy: Integrator, Writer, and Co-Coordinator of the
   Capacity Building Working Group; Election Facilitator for the
   Affiliate-Selected Board Seats (ASBS) election, 2019; Member of the Board,
   Wikimedia New York City; Member, Project Grants Committee; AffCom Reporting
   Representative, LGBT+ User Group; Member, Editorial Board of the
   WikiJournal of Humanities; Member, Wikimedians in Residence Exchange
   Network; Member, Wiki Project Med Foundation Member; WikiConference
   North America User Group.



   1.

   Ravan Al-Taie:
   I am Ravan Al-Taie. I'm the founder of Iraqi Wikimedians User Group. I
   am an engineer, working as a professional in the Oil industry. I started
   editing Wikipedia in 2008, edited Arabic wikipedia and became an admin in
   2013 for more than 6 years. In 2015, My mother language is Arabic, but I
   speak Kurdish language fluently as well, that's why I helped in Kurdish
   Wikipedia and currently helping other colleagues to correctly start Kurdish
   Wikipidian user group as per the foundation process because I strongly
   believe the more diverse we are the best to be in representing the global
   knowledge heritage. I've led several offline activities such as organizing
   WLM for 3 years in Iraq, as well as starting the first editathon and
   learning workshop in all Iraq with great success. After that, I've focused
   on bringing more women to the movement in order to decrease the big gender
   gap that we have in Arabic Wikipedia.



   1.

   Suyash Dwivedi:
   I have done my graduation in Electronics Engineering and have been a
   Wikimedian since 2013. Mostly I edit on Commons, Hindi, English, Wikidata,
   GLAM, Wikivoyage and sometimes on other Wikipedia projects. I have
   organized many outreach activities, including conferences and edit-a-thons.
   I am the founder member of Hindi Wikimedians User Group. Apart from Hindi,
   I also contribute to English Sanskrit, Marathi, and Punjabi language
   Wikimedia projects. I was the Lead Organizer of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017
   in India, hosted Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy Salon in Bhopal,
   organized Wikipedia Asian Month for Hindi and Sanskrit languages in
   2

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l]

 People are not conscious of NC module also because we don't take a clear 
approach about it. Centralizing the storage of NC files is probably one of the 
clear step to make the community and third parties more conscious. 

One of the causes of the current confusion is precisely because we treat them 
is as something marginal while they are already structural in our ecosystem.
Alessandro
Il domenica 12 luglio 2020, 10:52:04 CEST, Ziko van Dijk 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hello,
Thank you for the link, Erik, I am going to read Pete Forsyth‘s text
carefully. My thinking about the module was influenced by some WMD
publications, by Till Kreutzer and also this one:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Free_Knowledge_thanks_to_Creative_Commons_Licenses.pdf
So I learned about the problems of the module. In general I find it most
unfortunate when a reuser has to evaluate a larger work for its elements
and its different licenses - often you do not only reuse one monolithic
piece but something consisting of smaller elements, or a larger group of
elements (e.g. dozens of pictures about a topic).
The more I was surprised when in the Strategy 2030 discussions and then
recommendations the modules ND and NC were called necessary for the needs
of the Global South. Though I am not a absolute or ideological opponent of
any module, I wondered about the reasons and I never got an answer. In the
meanwhile, the modules disappeared from the recommendations, and that is
just good so.
So the problem of the NC module remains that many who apply it are not
always conscious about undesired consequences,  while some who apply it use
the module very consciously for a specific reason - e.g. in a hybrid model,
to distribute content but not to share it, to reserve commercial use
exclusively for oneself. I do not want to judge about this intention, but I
imagine that it can become problematic when your goal is to build a
knowledge *commons*.
Kind regards
Ziko





Benjamin Lees  schrieb am So. 12. Juli 2020 um 09:31:

> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not
> > provide such options?
> >
>
> It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of
> individuals.  Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are *only*
> willing to submit material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose
> out on material from them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some
> people who submit material to us under a free license but would choose an
> NC license if it were available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of
> their work being freely licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter
> pool is far larger than the former.
>
> When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having
> any image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us
> to use that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is
> available right now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be
> much less incentive to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such
> stopgaps would likely become permanent.
>
> Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly
> confidently say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by
> edge cases; we must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion,
> and unfairness that we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of
> the additional headache we would create for reusers).
>
> Emufarmers
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l]

 look, I have spoken with dozen of artists so far, the missing opportunity in 
almost zero. The cost of the confusion and the waste of time is still a lot. I 
have stopped even trying, I simply say immediately "of course you would like to 
give NC, you can't, because there are strong ideological positions. Plus OTRS 
is far from efficient, so let's just focus on something else". They appreciate 
my pragmatism and I use the credit to upload more content on other issues. Fine 
with me, I like to have good credit with competent people. Sorry for Wiki.
   Il domenica 12 luglio 2020, 09:31:12 CEST, Benjamin Lees 
 ha scritto:  
 
 On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not 
provide such options?


It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of individuals.  
Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are only willing to submit 
material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose out on material from 
them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some people who submit 
material to us under a free license but would choose an NC license if it were 
available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of their work being freely 
licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter pool is far larger than the 
former.
When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having any 
image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us to use 
that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is available right 
now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be much less incentive 
to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such stopgaps would likely 
become permanent.
Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly confidently 
say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by edge cases; we 
must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion, and unfairness that 
we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of the additional headache 
we would create for reusers).
Emufarmers
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[WereSpielChequers]

Doc James raised the issue of pragmatism v idealism and that essay is
indeed rather focussed on the idealistic arguments against NC.

EmuFarmers has touched on the pragmatic side of the debate, and I think it
worth reminding ourselves about that dimension as well. So here are some
pragmatic arguments against us hosting NC content:

1 For some users NC content and the ambiguity about it is a commercial
opportunity. There is minimal cost to distributing emails threatening
takedown notices and other legal sanction, and for many small resusers the
cost of checking their case with a lawyer is less than the cost of paying
to use what they thought was free to use and maybe writing a letter of
complaint to the media library that let them down. Few of our volunteers
are going to be keen to volunteer to handle such complaints, whether or not
the use was clearly NC, clearly commercial or down right ambiguous.

2 We have been hosting openly licensed material for nearly two decades and
we now have a lot of it. If we now change to allowing NC on Commons, some
of our contributors, institutional or individual, will want to shift their
material  from an open licence to NC. Whether or not we allow this, the
disruption and complications are not something that the Commons volunteer
community is geared up to handle.

3 Ideally when we choose an image to illustrate a Wikipedia article we are
choosing the best image available to us on Commons. OK there are people
whose ego gets in the way and prefer to use the images they have taken, and
occasionally there are other arguments, but it is rare for anyone to have a
commercial incentive to choose one image over another. Once you allow NC
imagery you make Wikipedia a shop window for content from image libraries
and others who are prepared to forego the genuinely non commercial uses,
and the uses in parts of the world where copyright is hard to enforce, in
return for revenue from the unwary in parts of the world where they can
charge for any use they can argue is "commercial". Wikipedia has enough on
its hands combatting spammers and reputation managers who want our content
to promote their business, Opening up a whole new front in that conflict,
against a group of editors "upgrading" images to ones they strongly assert
are "better quality" without necessarily disclosing their conflict of
interest re those images is not something that the Wikipedia volunteer
community is geared up to handle.


Those are three pragmatic reasons why it would be a mistake for us to allow
NC images on Commons and the English Wikipedia. This is one of those areas
where pragmatism and idealism both push us in the same direction.

Regards

WereSpielChequers

>
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 18:31:54 -0600
> From: James Heilman 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses
> Message-ID:
>  zv8xsa4kfkngpbwrtymapcmpkcg1b69m0xdp...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is that
> it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open
> licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more
> organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
> already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.
>
> James
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> > Hi James :)
> >
> > (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit
> > on this list.)
> >
> > > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons
> > > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy
> > videos)
> > > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use.
> >
> > I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF
> > or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new
> > initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could
> > perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy,
> > and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default
> > license.
> >
> > > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism.
> >
> > I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to
> > want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it
> > can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about
> > altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now,
> > Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive
> > licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly
> > poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a
> > nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how
> > is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in
> > some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to
> > Wikimedia projects?
> >
> > If a license

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,
Thank you for the link, Erik, I am going to read Pete Forsyth‘s text
carefully. My thinking about the module was influenced by some WMD
publications, by Till Kreutzer and also this one:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Free_Knowledge_thanks_to_Creative_Commons_Licenses.pdf
So I learned about the problems of the module. In general I find it most
unfortunate when a reuser has to evaluate a larger work for its elements
and its different licenses - often you do not only reuse one monolithic
piece but something consisting of smaller elements, or a larger group of
elements (e.g. dozens of pictures about a topic).
The more I was surprised when in the Strategy 2030 discussions and then
recommendations the modules ND and NC were called necessary for the needs
of the Global South. Though I am not a absolute or ideological opponent of
any module, I wondered about the reasons and I never got an answer. In the
meanwhile, the modules disappeared from the recommendations, and that is
just good so.
So the problem of the NC module remains that many who apply it are not
always conscious about undesired consequences,  while some who apply it use
the module very consciously for a specific reason - e.g. in a hybrid model,
to distribute content but not to share it, to reserve commercial use
exclusively for oneself. I do not want to judge about this intention, but I
imagine that it can become problematic when your goal is to build a
knowledge *commons*.
Kind regards
Ziko





Benjamin Lees  schrieb am So. 12. Juli 2020 um 09:31:

> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not
> > provide such options?
> >
>
> It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of
> individuals.  Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are *only*
> willing to submit material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose
> out on material from them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some
> people who submit material to us under a free license but would choose an
> NC license if it were available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of
> their work being freely licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter
> pool is far larger than the former.
>
> When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having
> any image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us
> to use that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is
> available right now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be
> much less incentive to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such
> stopgaps would likely become permanent.
>
> Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly
> confidently say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by
> edge cases; we must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion,
> and unfairness that we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of
> the additional headache we would create for reusers).
>
> Emufarmers
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

[Benjamin Lees]

On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not
> provide such options?
>

It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of
individuals.  Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are *only*
willing to submit material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose
out on material from them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some
people who submit material to us under a free license but would choose an
NC license if it were available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of
their work being freely licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter
pool is far larger than the former.

When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having
any image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us
to use that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is
available right now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be
much less incentive to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such
stopgaps would likely become permanent.

Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly
confidently say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by
edge cases; we must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion,
and unfairness that we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of
the additional headache we would create for reusers).

Emufarmers
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