Mike Godwin is conducting a multi-part discussion on his Public Knowledge blog on the Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, he defends it:

The question ought not to be whether you should trust Wikipedia (for whatever value of "trust" you want to use), but why you should give your trust to traditional publications (where errors and distortions persist, when they occur, for decades and even centuries).

I am continually amused by the fuss caused by Wikipedia. Opponents are threatened by its lack of accountability, proponents (like Mike) reveal their deep-seated mistruct for traditional voices of authority.

From my free-market perspective, I welcome Wikipedia as yet another choice in my pursuit of knowledge. I apply skepticism to everything I read (a throwback to my many years as a journalist, I guess) so the more sources to examine the better.

The hostility by Wikipedia proponents to traditional top-down scholarship, however, reminds me of the cheerleaders for Creative Commons licenses. Again, I think CC is a great addition to the landscape. Many authors and artists have embraced various versions of CC. To me, this is again a free-market choice issue.

My concern, however, is that just as some Wikipedia proponents feel the bottom-up repository should be embraced at the expense of traditional scholarship, some believe in a digital age a CC license is the only way to ensure fair use and public access to knowledge (thus the name of Mike and Gigi's group).

That makes no sense to me. An artist can write and record a song and never play it to anyone but her dog. That's silly, but that's her right. Another artist can take a photograph, put it on the web and invite the world to duplicate and manipulate it. That's his right. Just because the digital age has enabled tremendous flexibility in content manipulation does not mean such manipulation should be forced on a wary rights-holder. Nor should that skeptical rights-holder be labeled an obstructionist to a "free culture."

posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:59 PM | Free Culture Movement

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