On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Rama Neko <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This is a very good example of the prevailing mentality of the commons.
Excuse me, but either we respect the law, or we do
not. Our policy it to do so.
Mostly, except you can find swastikas, and images that insult Turkey,
and probably images people would say are pedophilia etc. "Commons
follows a consensus of laws that the commons community thinks are
good" is more accurate. It's probably more accurate to say that
commons follows a group of laws that are the most fun to apply to a
given set of images, because at this point I really feel like it's
devolved into a copyright game. (The awesome contributions of original
content notwithstanding)
I do not know what you call being "helpful",
but I think that removing
content that people publish illegally because they are not aware of
their local laws would rather be a service that we render to them.
Sure, a service they don't want and didn't ask for, but I agree with
probably 99% of the deletions, that's not what I'm arguing. I am not
some crazy copyright hater, believe me. I've deleted thousands of
images from enwiki.
I think the idea of the commons as an absolutely free repository of
images is great, and useful, but probably at odds with being a service
wiki to the other projects and newcomer usability.
That the laws be "ridiculous" is a matter of personal taste, and
certainly none of our competence. If such is your judgment, you are
free to write letters to officials or run for office.
I doubt the Armenian government would be much interested in my views
on their freedom of panorama (as a random example
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Armenian_Genociā¦)
To answer your question, the SVG is in the public domain because its
author though it to be an implementation of an image that would be in
the public domain because either
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-textlogo
or
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-text
The accuracy of this idea is debatable because of the yellow shape
which surrounds "21".
Debatable and a half :)
Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion