I can see a problem in making a site that contains non free information freely available to the public. Even if you restricted it to NC and ND licenses, you risk getting flak from both the reusers and the uploaders when there are disputes as to whether a particular use is commercial, or such a poor copy of a work that it counts as derivative. And anything less free than NC or ND licensed material would be a copyright violation to post on the internet.
But there is I think a project sized niche that would be a good fit with the community. A not yet free project. - WikiNotYetFree would hold but not make available, works that are not yet free, list them, categorise them even build metadata for them, and every year a new tranche of them would be migrated to WikiSource or Wikimedia Commons as appropriate. You could even have planned uses or deferred edits "when this image becomes public domain, use it with this caption to replace this image on Wikidata or Wikipedia". One of the key bits of data with each item would be the date or criteria when its copyright lapses and it becomes public domain. OK those who cherish the instant gratification of your edit immediately going live to humanity will probably not be tempted to work on a project where some of the material will be marked "migrate to Commons in 2090". But some of us rather like the idea of leaving a digital legacy that will persist for generations after we have been composted. A commercial organisation could not take on such a project where most of the benefit won't be seen for decades to come. But a charity can think long term. Of course some of these materials will be available in decades to come and could be loaded to Commons as and when they come out of copyright, but just because we can get a digital copy of something now we cannot be certain that digital copies will be available in decades to come - unless of course we have archived them into a repository such as WikiNotYetFree Deletion processes on Wikimedia Commons and elsewhere would be radically changed if one of the options was now "move to WikiNotYetFree until it comes out of copyright". Anyone could access the metadata, but only admins and the individual uploader would be able to access the files that someone had actually uploaded. It also raises the possibility of an outreach campaign to creatives such as photographers, asking them to preserve their legacy by putting a clause in their wills to release their intellectual property under CC-BY-SA once they've died. "You can't take it with you, but you can make sure your work is not forgotten" Now that Wikipedia is almost twenty years old, and the WMF has an endowment fund, we can start to plan and talk long term with a credibility that younger organisations and those that lack an endowment fund lack. I have started a project request at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiNotYetFree WSC > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses (Erik Moeller) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 23:50:57 -0700 > From: Erik Moeller <eloque...@gmail.com> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses > Message-ID: > <CABR1GJvTG0xt4s-U0vuzCD_70N-sS6gYhfXFRxKRp-7= > zvr...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 3:52 PM Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I don't think we should mix NC with free-knowledge licenses . > > I do absolutely think we should maintain an archive, visible to the > public > > with at most a simple hoop to jump through, of material that is offered > to > > us in any legal way but not yet free. > > Such an archive would _unavoidably_ "mix NC with free-knowledge > licenses" -- because all collaborative and transformative work > happening in the archive itself would be released under free knowledge > licenses. Worse, any meaningful transformations of the archived works > would result in derivative works that remain nonfree, directly > enlisting volunteers in the creation of nonfree knowledge. > > In any event, why create an archive for works under borderline terms, > while ignoring more restricted works that could be plausibly released > under a free license tomorrow? Works that are nonfree for simple > economic reasons (e.g., some old but useful textbook) may often be > easier to "set free" than those which are nonfree for reasons of > longstanding policy (e.g, the WHO example). Why amass the latter and > ignore the former? I don't see how this would strengthen Wikimedia's > free knowledge commitment, but I can easily see how it could weaken it > considerably and very quickly, whether or not that's the intent. > > To be clear, I think creating free summaries and descriptions of > nonfree works (from traditional textbooks and scientific papers to > Khan Academy videos) is very much in line with the Wikimedia mission. > I don't think it requires hosting the works. To the extent that there > is concern about losing access to works that are currently available > via public URLs, the use of Internet Archive enabled citation URLs > provides a great example for how to avoid such link rot. > > I'm sure there are also plenty of tech and non-tech ways Wikimedia > could support volunteers and chapters that work on outreach to set > more educational works free, none of which require the creation of a > nonfree archive. > > Warmly, > Erik > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > 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, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > ------------------------------ > > End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 197, Issue 10 > ******************************************** > _______________________________________________ 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, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
