Of tangential interest: http://bayimg.com/
Apparently "completely uncensored". ("We will not remove any pictures
that are just immoral or in any way legal to host under Swedish law."
- well, still seems like they'll have a lot of removing to do, to me.)
They use a tag system - e.g. http://bayimg.com/tag/background .
uploading is ultra quick.
cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
Hi!
Issue with Wikimedia logos violating Commons policies re-appeared
again on Commons Village Pump.
But logos should be shared across Wikimedia projects. Otherwise
everybody will have headache with supporting multiple copies of same
images of different projects.
I think MediaWiki contain technical ability to solve this problem. As
far as I remember SVN comments, new file storage class allow to
support several shared file servers like Commons. So Wikimedia logos
could be moved to dedicated server. Access to this server could be
restricted for avoiding vandalism/unapproved logos changes (for
example to stewards/board memebers).
Just thoughts,
Eugene.
Last week I met with John Killy, the COO of the Mozilla Corporation,
and with Brewster Kahle, ED of the Internet Archive. Mozilla intends
to support video playback in Firefox using the new <video> tag [1],
but such support is not likely to arrive before late 2008 according to
John.
The Internet Archive currently does not transcode to Ogg Theora, but
has a transcoding pipeline in place for other codecs. They have
recently started embedding the Flash-based open source "Flow Player"
for playing back FLV files directly in the browser, and have added FLV
to their transcoding pipeline.
The Archive is happy to support us with video hosting in any way. If
we can find a useful hosting arrangement with them, they would also be
willing to add Ogg Theora to their transcoding pipeline.
Imagine that we could easily embed any currently hosted video from the
Internet Archive into Wikimedia projects, but also make use of their
immense hosting capacity for future video uploads beyond the current
20 MB upload size limit.
Video has tremendous potential educational use, and we should not let
the Wikimedia projects fall behind when it comes to hosting video
content. One should not underestimate the big role that ease of use
played in the success of YouTube: thanks to embedded Flash video,
users no longer had to worry about some plugin possibly hosing their
Windows installation, or about Real Networks' eternal "Buffering ..."
message showing up. It just worked [tm].
We must achieve the same ease of use in Wikimedia projects. In my
opinion, inconveniencing users is the worst possible way to raise
awareness of free content & free software. I therefore propose that
1) we immediately begin serious discussions with the Internet Archive
about hosting some or all of our video content on their servers;
2) All uploaded videos should be transcoded to at least Ogg Theora & a
Flash-compatible codec.
3) we add video support to MediaWiki that will, as intelligently as
possible, fall back to any of the following methods
- embedded open source Flash player
- Java player
- VLC plugin
- (in the future) <video> support.
4) We support the open source Flash project Gnash to ensure that it
can be used for video playback on Wikimedia servers.
Having an open source Flash implementation & an open source Flash
player does not address the patent issues with Flash video, but those
who are concerned about violating software patents (which are not
universally applicable anyway) could still use the provided Theora
files. We could also add a clear message to this effect at the bottom
of every embedded Flash video.
Such a solution would be a reasonable compromise between trying to
provide "free as in speech" video wherever possible, but also
minimizing hassle and maximizing ease of use for typical Windows users
looking for free educational content. We should continue to evangelize
& use Ogg Theora, but not at the expense of usability.
[1] http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-video.h…
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
I have updated the GalleryDetails script (try it at [1], if you don't
have it already:-):
* It now switches Special:Newimages into "details mode" automatically
* Every image details box now has links to add {{nsd}} or {{nld}}, and
to notify the uploader
The latter is remarkable insofar as each link, once clicked, is
replaced with a tiny frame (iframe) in which the page is loaded, the
edit performed, and saved. No typing, no leaving the page, no new tabs
opening.
For those technically inclined: I have encapsulated that functionality
in MediaWiki:InstantAppendLink.js, so that it can be used by other
scripts in the future, avoiding code duplication.
Cheers,
Magnus
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Newimages&withJS=Med…
Some people (especially Flickr users) may well have heard of this
story already; an Australian ad campaign for Virgin Mobile Australia
has been using photos (mainly CC licenced ones) from Flickr. It's
causing some consternation not only because of the somewhat offensive
content of some of the ads, but because the people behind the ad
campaign didn't ask permission from the photographers - or perhaps
more importantly, the subjects - before using the photos.
I just blogged about it if anyone's interested:
http://thoughtsfordeletion.blogspot.com/2007/07/free-culture-clash.html
--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain(a)gmail.com
I am working on a new JavaScript tool to ease patrolling of images. It
can rearrange galleries (or gallery structures, including categories
and some Special: pages) to show one thumbnail per row, and data
(text, size, categories) of the images next to it. Try
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Newimages?withJS=MediaWiki:Galler…
and click on "GalleryDetails" in the sidebar toolbox. Note that it
might take a few seconds to get all the information (via API), during
which nothing appears to happen.
Please have a look, tell me if you like it, and make suggestions. I
was thinking of adding "no source"/"no license" links next.
Cheers,
Magnus
Let me see if I can keep this short and to the point. The subject is
complex, and it took me several readings and discussions with
lawyers to make sure I grasped it fully.
The intention behind the mentions of moral rights in CC 3.0 is
absolutely NOT to introduce moral rights, but rather to ensure that
the licenses are not invalidated in moral rights jurisdictions.
The dustup is mostly about the "unported" version. The language in
question does not appear in the US version. And it is REALLY
important to understand that people can reuse works
IN the US under the US version, even when they are released under the
"unported" version.
There's a clever bit of legal judo here, see?
The only jurisdiction where the unported clause would seem to matter
is jurisdictions in where there are no moral rights (basically, only
within the US, the only jurisdiction without this concept).
And in the US, you can reuse works using the US license.
See?
--Jimbo
Hi,
At first let me point out that I appreciate the hard work of people that want
to improve our projects. Please let us acknowledge the work of Erik, even if
you think like me that his proposal is _definitely_ not the way to go. It's
all about AGF. ;-) So please let us brainstorm how to turn this into a good
opportunity for all of us without sacrificing parts of our goals and
independence.
Two different things were not made clear in Eriks proposal and consequently
were mixed in follow up mails:
a) Allowed media formats for _uploading_ files.
b) Provided media formats for _downloading_ files.
Allowing Flash Video for _upload_ is not acceptable in our projects for the
named reasons of patent problems and (at least partly) proprietary software.
Providing Flash Video additionally for _download_ does not conflict with the
GFDL or whatever (as you provide along side this copy as well a free format
copy of the same content). This is as well the reason why e.g. providing
TomeRaider _downloads_ of Wikipedia is in agreement with our understanding of
digital freedom.
As pointed out by various people providing Flash Video for download means
transcoding. As all relevant video formats are lossy you cannot transcode
Ogg-Theora to let's say Mpeg (or any other particular codec used by Flash
Video) without quality loss.
So Flash Video is a nice to have _second class_ alternative - a mere
convenience for our users. But who wants to get the best quality will always
use the original OGG-Theora files.
Philosophy aside here an analysis of current technical problems:
1. Wikimedia Commons badly needs a download service for the whole media file
repository.
2. The media repository of Comons is so overwhelmingly large that it would
need a lot of bandwith and download time even with broad band internet
access.
3. Audio and Video streaming requires a lot of bandwith but it doesn't require
sophisticated CPU intensive database queries and special designed software
(aka MediaWiki).
4. Many organisations especially universities (I could name you at least one
concrete example) want to support us with technical infrastructure but it is
very complicated to integrate these kind donations into our technical
infrastructure. Thus we are wasting a lot of donation potential beside money.
Proposed solution:
1. We provide an Rsync download of our media files for selected third party
mirror servers. Rsync is specifically designed for such a purpose and is
exeptionally bandwith saving on mirroring files where parts are constantly
changing.
2. These selected third party mirrors are collected in a Round-Robin-Queue.
Everytime a user directly wants to download the original file (and not a
thumbnail, preview or the image page in the wiki) in Wikipedia (or another
Wikimedia project) he is being redirected to this very file on a mirror out
of this queue and downloads it there as usual via HTTP (just the download
link changes, he even won't realise in most cases that he has been redirected
for this download).
3. In case mirrors don't want to host the whole database we could provide them
some filters for mirroring, e.g. Ogg files only. Ogg mirroring would make the
most benefit for our infrastructure and audio/video streaming, as full images
are downloaded relatively seldom.
This would make all these things possible:
* Download of Wikimedia Commons media database via mirrors.
* Saves us quite some bandwith especially at audio and video (you need to
download the real file for streaming).
* Easy drop in and drop out of single third party supporters.
* Not dependent from one exclusive partner. We maintain our independence and
increase technical failure resitance by reducing the single point of failure
problem.
In case you fear the problem of license issues (providing the copyright infos
alongside the files) this can be solved without troubles, too. There is
static.wikipedia.org Just transfer the static html image wiki pages of
Commons as well to the single mirrors and we're perfectly done (and third
party mirrors can create their own software interface around that thing if
they want).
Cheers, Arnomane
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com wrote:
>On Jul 14, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Delphine Ménard wrote:
>> I believe you are completely mistaken. The way *i* understand it, the
>> CC 3.0 licence simply states clearly in the text of the licence rights
>> that exist and can't be waived in those countries where they exist
>> anyway.
>>
>> In clear, the licence does not *add* any restriction that is not there
>> in the first place.
>
>This is correct, but I have great sympathy for those who find it
>confusing. I am pushing to have some kind of
>clarification as quickly as possible.
>
>But everyone important assures me that there is NO intention to
>include moral rights as a part of CC 3.0 attribution.
Then surely you can, as a board member of the Creative Commons, get an
official statement on this matter.
I am fairly sure I was told otherwise by Lessig some time ago: that
the CC-3.0 licenses are designed to increase the ability for authors
to enforce their moral rights by making the free license grant
contingent on moral rights being honored.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but I've seen CC criticized by those
who believe that free licenses are bad because they allow a creator's
work to be used in a manner which is against the creator's wishes. I
believed that the words "nothing in this license impairs or restricts
the author's moral rights" were added to '"human readable text" for
all of them (including the US form, which lacks the objectionable
clause in the license proper) along with the new clause (for non-US)
with the explicit intent of ending that criticism.
There is a fundamental conflict between the notion of protecting all
"moral rights" and distributing under a free content licenses. While
the moral right of attribution has no serious interaction with Free
Content, all other forms of moral rights do... and in the locations
where moral rights are functional they are part of copyright law, and
addressed in copyright related contracts.
It shouldn't be a shock to find Creative Commons in the center of a
dispute between "freedom from the perspective of the public" and
"freedom from the perspective of a content creator", since their
alignment on that front has brought them under fire many times over
again.
When we say "free license" we are specifically talking about a work
which has been so freed by an author that he can't stop your use even
if he finds it distasteful. To accept any less would be leaving a
great liability in the hands of reusers: they can only use the "free"
work until the author demands otherwise, and then they must either
stop or spend a lot of time and money in court.
Frankly, that sounds a lot like the situation around the use of most
unlicensed works today (free to use until you're told NO) ... and it
doesn't sound like free content at all.
At a minimum, I think Creative Commons needs to make an official
statement clarifying its intentions. However, this isn't sufficient.
The intent of the license author is going to have minimal sway in
court; what will be material is the *exact text*, the understanding of
the licensee, and the understanding of the licensor.
A really good free content license would clearly state that it is the
intention of the licensor to release the work under conditions which
allow recipients to reuse it without fear of a legal attack from the
licensor just because he has found the reuse personally or politically
distasteful. In other words, to the greatest extent possible the
license should express a general intention to release "moral
rights"-related restrictions which conflict with the explicit goals of
free content.
I don't think that we need to demand that our accepted licenses all be
ideal ones. A license which failed to mention this sort of intent
explicitly would be neutral from this perspective.
But cc-by-sa-3.0's language is worse than neutral. It explicitly
brings up these "moral rights" restrictions. The full purpose of
bringing them up is unclear, but it is clearly not intended to release
anyone from anything. At best this term has no effect, but at worst it
compromises the free status of the license.
Our ability to be confident in the freedom of a work is actually more
important than the freedom itself. People who can't be found, who
have nothing to lose, who employ many attorneys, or for whom a
copyright battle would be good PR are already fully ignoring copyright
law today. They don't need free licenses, much less good ones.
But the rest of the world does.
We are one of the largest repositories of liberally-licensed content
in the world. We are almost certainly the largest repository of
content which is Free Content in the strong sense (enabling
derivatives, no discrimination against natures of use), and we are a
budding content creation powerhouse.
As such, we have a *social responsibility* to make sure that our
mission is effective, that freedom is provided, and that the licenses
are done right. The -3.0 licenses clearly have problems. Even if I am
incorrect about the extent to which a court would conclude that they
impose moral rights, they do inarguably have a significant
confidence-damaging problem with their clarity.
Jimmy, I have a lot of trust in your judgment, but I think I need to
specifically ask you to sit back and consider this subject carefully
under each of the several hats you wear. You are visionary about the
importance of content which isn't merely no-cost but which provides
freedom. You are a board member for the Wikimedia Foundation,
responsible for its long term well-being. You are an internet
entrepreneur whose companies profit from content creation communities.
You are a board member for Creative Commons with the expected
responsibilities. And you are the father to a child who will inherit
the social and informational legacy we are all creating.
It's my view that the only benefit from anything less than a slow and
careful handling of these license matters is a minor increase the
short-term popularity of the Creative Commons brand. I don't think
that haste on the subject of licensing is beneficial in any of the
hats you wear.
Cheers.
Greg.
Here is Mike Godwin's (WMF counsel) take on the moral rights language in CC 3.0.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com>
Date: Jul 20, 2007 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: CC 3.0 licenses
To: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Cc: Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com>
Dear Erik,
Please feel free to forward this note to the list regarding CC 3.0
In the United States, where "applicable law" is now generally
understood by American courts to include the right to parody and the
right to engage in fair use, the clause "Except ... as may be
otherwise permitted by applicable law" (let's call it the "Except"
clause) does much to undercut the seemingly broad scope of the
moral-rights language that some take to be mandated by the Berne
copyright convention. The same is true for other nations (notably the
United Kingdom and Switzerland) that take nonstandard views about how
to enforce claims that other nations would interpret as moral-rights
claims.
My understanding is that there is not any universal international
consensus, even under Berne, about how moral rights should be
enforced. What seems to me to be the case is that the drafters of CC
3.0 are attempting to accommodate the differences in national-level
enforcement of moral rights with the "Except" clause. In effect, CC
3.0 seems to me to be written NOT to *enforce* a restrictive vision of
moral rights but INSTEAD to *dodge* or *avoid* the question of whether
and how moral rights should be enforced under a particular nation's
laws. The clear aim, it seems to me, is to allow the same CC 3.0
language to be used generally, whether in a nation like Japan that
(apparently) has strong enforcement of moral-rights claims or in a
nation like the United States, where moral rights claims are weakly
enforced if at all, and where moral-rights claims are severely
constrained by national legal norms.
The preceding can be interpreted as restating what CC's counsel has
said on the subject.
There's a pretty good law-review article about this subject available
at <http://www.harvardilj.org/print/58?sn=0>.
--Mike Godwin
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
On Jul 19, 2007, at 11:28 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
Mike -
there's a hot thread on the "Wikimedia Commons" list about the CC 3.0
licenses, specifically, the "moral rights" clauses therein, which some
consider an unacceptable restriction of freedom. In practice, users
uploading CC 3.0 files are currently getting a "license disputed"
warning, which I think is a very unfortunate state of affairs. See the
"thread view" of:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2007-July/002117.html
The relevant section from CC-BY-SA 3.0 is:
Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be
otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or
Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any
Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or
take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be
prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation. Licensor
agrees that in those jurisdictions (e.g. Japan), in which any exercise
of the right granted in Section 3(b) of this License (the right to
make Adaptations) would be deemed to be a distortion, mutilation,
modification or other derogatory action prejudicial to the Original
Author's honor and reputation, the Licensor will waive or not assert,
as appropriate, this Section, to the fullest extent permitted by the
applicable national law, to enable You to reasonably exercise Your
right under Section 3(b) of this License (right to make Adaptations)
but not otherwise.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
The official response from CCi's legal counsel is here:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2007-July/002151.html
I'm not convinced there's any substantial issue with the wording, but
it would be good at this point, I think, to get a response from you.
You may wish to subscribe to the Wikimedia Commons mailing list at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
or I can forward any comments you would like to make.
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.