Hi
Jumping in on this discussion, a few of us met with a group of linguists in
Tunisia who are revising the language codes to create a far more complex and
inclusive system that will include dialects, spoken and written forms, etc.
These linguists represent academic institutions in Europe and Japan, and are
acutely aware of the issues that come under discussion here.
I'll start by saying how pleased they were with the multilingualism of
Wikipedia. In fact, their study proved that we are the most linguistically diverse
site on the Internet. They want to work with us, and are developing a new
coding system for languages that will cover approx. 25,000 languages and
dialects. With their advice and support, I believe that in a short time we will be
able to resolve many of these issues once and for all. And they are extremely
interested in cooperating with us.
I will be communicating with them next week, and will report further.
Danny
Hi
I was asked yesterday if it was mandatory that during votes for new
languages creation, the editor
* has an account on meta
* has an account on any already existing project
I do not know what the current policy is.
I am hesitant to be in favor of one or another.
I would rather say the voter should be at least a participant to another
language, because this would imply he at least know the concept.
However, I am not sure this should be mandatory... except that....
Someone raised a complaint about the current vote here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Murcian_.28Murcia…
On this new languages, we have
* anon ips voting
* accounts on meta with no edits voting
* accounts on meta with just a user page on meta voting
* accounts on other projects voting.
Fact is, I made a bunch of quick semi-random checks (in short, on red
meta accounts in particular), and admittedly, many of them are probably
sharing the same living-room...
I fear the editor who complained is probably right in mentionning sock
puppetry... though we can not entirely prove it of course.
Which raise the question of how fair is a vote on a controversial
language, when half voters are not current participants and may not even
be different poeple ?
What should we do ?
Ant
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>>
>> Actually Jean-Baptiste is incorrect about those terms of use. They
>> allow people to download the material on the website for their own
>> personal, non-commercial use. The UN terms and conditions do not allow
>> redistribution or compliation of the material on their website.
>Actually they allow to "download and copy". I interpret this as an
>authorization to get and copy them.
>It is true that they also forbid to "resell or redistribute" them, but I
>understand it as the interdiction to commercially use them. Not the
>interdiction to copy them for third parties because it would be
>otherwise contradictory with authorizing people to copy them.
>This seems to make sense given the current applications of these terms
>of use by people on Internet.
Those terms of use talk about personal, non-commercial use and they
explicitly prohibit redistribution and the creation of compilations of
them or derivative works of them. I interpret those terms as allowing
a person to download materials from the UN website and use them on
their own computer but, beyond fair use/fair dealing, not to
distribute them further or do anything else with them at all. What
that means is that merely sticking lots of the resolutions up on
Wikisource violates two of those terms, ie the ones about creation of
compilation works and prohibiting further distribution.
Since the use that the resolution texts has been put to on Wikisource
is prohibited by the terms and conditions of the UN copyright licence
then the only defence that is available against copyright infringement
is fair use. Given that the whole of the work is being used on
Wikisource then I am not confident of that defence at all. I have also
expressed my view that fair use should be banned on Wikisource so far
as the text of articles is concerned.
I feel that we are treading on thin legal ice here to say the least,
David Newton
Hi, I'ld like to know if there is a project to create a new space in
the wiki foundation "Wikitree" for creating a genealogic tree based on
this technology.
Thanks
Diego A. Meretta
"Santicluke"
Argentina
Hi,
Le Wednesday 16 November 2005 23:48, David Newton a Ã(c)crit :
>It is clear that most of the documents in Wikisource are under public domain,
>because their copyright has expired. A few new documents are under free
>licences (GFDLÂor CC) or public domain when the author decided to release
>them in that way.
So it sounds to me that documents do not have to be under the GFDL or
a GFDL-compatible licence, just a licence that allows their
reproduction on the website. Is that what you are saying?
>>I think fair use doesn't apply to any document in Wikisource because these are
>>published in their entirety.
>> >When considering the copyrightability of UN resolutions, or all UN
>> >documents for that matter, what law do you apply? Is there a UN
>> >Copyright Act? In the absence of such a law can any UN document be
>> >copyright?
[cut]
>> As for fair use, I have posted in the Scriptorium and the response has
>> disappointed me to say the least. The responses that I have received
>> have been contrary to the policy of Wikisource as set out at
>> [[Wikisource: Copyright]] and they indicate to me that the people
>> concerned do not have a deep understanding of copyright law, or if
>> they do they choose to ignore those bits of copyright law that they do
>> not like. The argument for fair use applying to entire documents in
>> incredibly weak, and no account seems to be take of that fact.
>Agreed.
Given the above what do we do about it? If, as you seem to be saying,
that licences allowing reproduction on the website other than the GFDL
can be used, then we need to get a copyright notice at the bottom of
each copyrighted work on the site setting out the terms under which
they can be reproduced.
>I copy the answer from JB Soufron below:
>"Actually, the texts on the website of the UN are copyrighted by the UN as
>mentionned on [the copyright notice]. It is forbidden to reproduce these
>texts except in the limit mentioned in their [terms of use]. To put it
>simply, this basic license allow people to reproduce the texts but not to
>modify them, which seems normal since these are legal texts and that
>distributing modified versions could induce people in error. I think that
>wikisource could make a good use of these texts if they come with a proper
>disclaimer. --Soufron 11:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)"
>Personally, I don't see anything useful in copying UNÂresolutions on
>Wikisource. The UN web site is certainly as much as available Wikisource, so
>I don't understand why we should copy anything from it, since we can't modify
>anything in these texts anyway.
Actually Jean-Baptiste is incorrect about those terms of use. They
allow people to download the material on the website for their own
personal, non-commercial use. The UN terms and conditions do not allow
redistribution or compliation of the material on their website.
http://www.un.org/terms.htm
That rules out the resolutions being put on Wikisource, which is
exactly why I posted this thread in the first place, particularly the
questions about fair use. The results of the discussion seem to be
that I am correct in my interpretation of fair use at Wikisource and
that the UN resolutions on the site need to go as they are copyright
violations.
I think we also need to reinforce the terms and conditions on the site
to make it clear that fair use is completely banned for the text
itself. At the moment users are wilfully misinterpreting ambigous
terms and conditions. The problem with sites like Wikipedia and
Wikisource is that many of the users of them do not understand
copyright law. Where there is a grey area like fair use then we have
people using wishful thinking to stretch the concept way beyond its
limits. Particularly with the whole texts reproduced at Wikisource we
are exposed to potential legal liability with greater risk than at
Wikipedia.
>Regards,
>Yann
David Newton
On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
> Would it be useful to separate discussion of new projects (incl.
> languages) to a separate mailing list? It's currently taking a
I would like that. In fact, I would go so far as to say that
proliferation of mailing lists is a positive thing, when done the
right way... but that we do not currently do it the right way.
One model which has been successful for other large online communities
is to spin off smaller topical lists when an active topic arises
(especially when the same set of people are always responding to
threads on that topic), with some simple structure that passes
summaries back to a parent list.
Example : the list carries out initial discussing, produces summaries
of fixed-time topics, and periodically summarizes ongoing threads.
Someone is responsible for passing summaries onto a parent list, and
for bringing discussions back to the parent list when they are more
relevant there -- e.g., when ther eis some discussion being made that
the whole community should take part in..
> disproportionate amount of general mailing list traffic (particularly
> wikipedia-l and foundation-l), so discussion of improving existing
> Wikipedias tends to get lost in the mess. It's also a frequently
Right. It would be useful to have a new- and minority-languages list.
The people who chime in on those
> Of course, there is a danger that only a self-selecting and
> non-representative group would subscribe to such a mailing list, but
There is already that dnager -- only a self-selecting group bothers to
read the relevant threads, and sometimes people delete even important
new-language announceemnts or ideas because the occasional floods of
debate make them trigger happy.
> (I don't pretend this is an ideal solution either, especially since it
> adds to the proliferation of mailing lists, but the benefits seem to me
Starting discussions on a small, focused mailing lists can be
efficient; especially when there is at the same time too much traffic
on large lists (a common reason for unsubscribing), and too little
serious discussion of important topics (another common reason for
unsubscribing).
SJ
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Wikibooks and what should and should not be there. In particular, Jimbo
> also changed the wording of an official policy from:
>
> "As a general rule, any book you might expect to find in the non-fiction
> section of your local library or bookshop is acceptable."
>
> to become instead:
>
> "As a general rule, most books you might expect to find in the
> non-fiction section of your local library or bookshop are not
> acceptable. This is for textbooks."
>
This definition is not only , in my opinion, not only cumbersome,
but also open a serious question: What is a textbook?
Just as an example why a cookbook is not a textbook? In many school
cookbook are used as a textbook. Morover they are used in some small
lecture course about cooking. What should be consider as a textbook?
Just what is normally used in American High school?
And should the subject only be limited to normal subject textbook are
written about?
For instance there exist a lot of book about chess (and many of them
not only dealt about chess, but are even organized in lesson). Anyway
I have never seen a textbook about chess (because chess is not taught
at school).
Thank you
AnyFile
Ray Santionage wrote:
>>I've recently been in a discussion on the Wikisource website and I
>>would like some definitive answers about the licence that the text of
>>Wikisource is under and also about the policy with respect to fair use
>>on Wikisource. I've posted this question here as there is no dedicated
>>Wikisource mailing list that I can find.
>>
>In law there is seldom a definitive answer. If you are looking for a
>simple solution it's not going to happen. If somebody gives you one it
>is no solution. Applying GFDL depends on whether that application is
>necessary. Public domain, fair use and licenses are applied
>cumulatively, and not in a mutually exclusive fashion. When someone
>puts a copyright notice on a web page or a book it really only means
>copyright to the extent that it is copyrightable; it clearly does not
>mean that everything on that page or book is copyright. It may very
>well be that the only thing copyright about a page is its general layout
>and format, and that would be reason enough to add a copyright notice.
>The public domain or fair use nature of material is not modified by the
>application of a GFDL statement. Being in the public domain obviates
>fair use claims.
I'm not asking for a definitive answer under law of the implications
that the licence that Wikisource is under entails. I'm asking for a
definitive answer about what licence the text of Wikisource is under.
The text of the Wikipedia is under the GFDL, there is no question of
that. There is a question as to whether Wikisource text must be GFDL,
GFDL-compatible or public domain, ie the same conditions as apply to
text posted to the Wikipedia, or whether those restrictions are not in
place. It is a straightforward question and if there is not a
straightforward answer we have a serious problem with Wikisource's
copyright situation.
>When considering the copyrightability of UN resolutions, or all UN
>documents for that matter, what law do you apply? Is there a UN
>Copyright Act? In the absence of such a law can any UN document be
>copyright?
In the United States I apply the US Code for the copyrightability of
UN documents. To quote from Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 104(b)(4), "the
work is first published by the United Nations or any of its
specialized agencies, or by the Organization of American States; or".
Therefore works of UN origin certainly can be copyrighted under US
law.
>>The British Act of Parliament is under Crown
>>copyright as it was passed in 2004. There is a waiver on copyright of
>>British statutes allowing them to be reproduced pretty freely, but it
>>does have conditions that are incompatible with the GFDL. On
>>Wikisource the rather dubious claim is also made that foreign statutes
>>and court decisions are not subject to copyright at all in the United
>>States.
>
>Why dubious? Uncopyrightable in the interests of public policy is not a
>dubious claim
It is dubious because neither statute law nor case law support the
contention that foreign statutes and court decisions are automatically
public domain in the United States. Statute law, ie the US Code Title
17 Chapter 1 Section 105 is the relevant here for federal works,
"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work
of the United States Government, but the United States Government is
not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it
by assignment, bequest, or otherwise." Case law supports the
contention that state and local laws and court decisions are also in
the public domain. However, the arguements that apply that case law to
local and state laws and decisions, ie those about having public
access to the laws of the land, do not apply to foreign statutes and
decisions. Consequently to claim that such laws and decisions are
automatically public domain in the United States is unwise I would
say. There is no US law to apply to foreign statutes in this case
other than the ordinary rules of copyright law.
Your answer to my question about the licence for Wikisource implies
that it is subject to the GFDL for copyrighted works posted there in
the same way that the Wikipedia is. What is relevant in the particular
circumstances is that if copyrighted works must be covered by the GFDL
then copyrighted works that have licences incompatible with the GFDL
cannot be published on Wikisource. That means that British statutes
from 1955 and later cannot be published and UN resolutions cannot be
published as both are copyrighted works with licences that are
incompatible with the GFDL.
As for fair use, I have posted in the Scriptorium and the response has
disappointed me to say the least. The responses that I have received
have been contrary to the policy of Wikisource as set out at
[[Wikisource: Copyright]] and they indicate to me that the people
concerned do not have a deep understanding of copyright law, or if
they do they choose to ignore those bits of copyright law that they do
not like. The argument for fair use applying to entire documents in
incredibly weak, and no account seems to be take of that fact.
David Newton
Dear all,
The second global IRC chat about Wikimania '06 will be this Saturday,
at 1600 UTC, lasting around an hour. We will have an update on
conference dates and deadlines, and further discussion of goals.
Please add to the agenda, and add your name if you plan to attend,
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Planning#Meetings
You may also see on that page that a program meeting is planned for
next Tues or Wed; date pending a bit more feedback from last year's
planners (this will be an open meeting, but scheduled to make it easy
for programme planners from last year to attend, as programmes and
programs have much in common).
-- Sj
Other ways to get involved :
1. Volunteer your time, language skills, and enthusiasm:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Teams
2. Sign up for yet another mailing list (wikimania-l). It is
currently low-traffic and primarily English-language; two things you
can help change.
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
3. Sign up to attend, plan carpools or offer crash space for the
event. (harder to do
before the date is fixed, of course)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Attendees