Re-users are free to redistribute media, with or without modifications
Must not forbid re-use for profit
Licenses must not require notification of the authors
Media must be both free in both the United States and, if different, the country of origin or publication
Because of the licenses, anyone can use any media - and many do
No fair use
"Fair use", even within the relatively liberal United States law, is an extremely complex body of case law, and whether a re-use is illegal depends entirely on the context and the nature of the work; making a compilation of such images would be legally impossible, and reusability would be highly limited, as opposed to obeying the relatively simple restrictions of free licenses
Fair use-type legal doctrines differ from country to country
Active policing of copyright violations and non-free material
No one user "controls" the content, though there are community traditions on this matter; for example, they frown upon overwriting someone else's upload unless it's an indisputable quality improvement
Copyright (legal ownership) still belongs with the author, unless explicitly put into the public domain
Legal ownership over derivative works is usually held by both the original author and the author of the derivative work
The core community value of being mellow
Wikipedia-style drama is frowned upon
Rudeness and bombast is among the worst of vices
Wikipedians coming into the community are called "mellowified"
Less arguments on commons. Legal status & usability are the only care
(2008-05-10 21:57:01) Dvortygirl: what got me started recording pronunciations was hearing a recording of a word in Dutch, and realizing that I would have had no chance of getting that sound out of those letters without actually hearing it.
