Michael Maggs writes:
> Could I just check, please, whether you were just replying to an
> out-of-the-blue email from Klaus or whether you have replied after a
> review of
>
> [[Commons:Deletion requests/National Portrait Gallery images (first
> set)]] where your email has now been publicly quoted.
Are these my only two choices?
I'm aware, generally, of the ongoing discussion in Commons and
elsewhere about about how to respond to the National Portrait
Gallery's efforts to assert copyright interests in works that are
otherwise public domain. I don't normally "review" such discussions
(if you consider the volume of policy discussions on the projects
generally, you can see why).
> The policy we at Commons have been working to is that images must be
> free in both the US and in the source country. I assume that is still
> the WMF general position?
I'm not sure I understand the question, at least the way it's framed
here. WMF doesn't administer Commons policy to any great degree --
that's done by the community members at Commons.
> If it's official WMF policy that Bridgeman is assumed to apply in all
> countries....
I'm not trying to say this, or even to tell the Commons community how
to apply Bridgeman at all. What I'm saying is that there seems to be
an effort to address a problem that, for the Foundation at least,
hasn't yet been shown to exist. (Believe me, I'd know it if we were
getting lots of takedown notices or copyright lawsuits from the
National Portrait Gallery.)
My strong belief is that there is no compelling reason to remove the
National Portrait Gallery-associated images unless there's some kind
of evidence of a legal problem for the Foundation. Thus far, there has
not been such evidence.
--Mike
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A recent posting on the blog!
As many of you may know, Wikimedia is working with Kaltura, Inc. to
explore collaborative video editing in the Wikimedia projects. I’m very
happy to announce that Kaltura has decided to support the further
development of a 100% open source video editing solution integrated into
MediaWiki. To this end...
Read more and comment:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/23/kaltura-sponsors-michael-dale-open-sou…
- --
Best,
Jon
[User:NonvocalScream]
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Klaus - You already have a reply to that point on Wiki.
Unfortunately, Moeller's comment does not help even if he was in fact
intending (which I doubt) to override longstanding Commons policy that
images must be PD in both the US and the source country.
Firstly, if you read the thread you will see that the comment was made
in response to the closure of
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Images_from_Dar…
a DR relating to Darwin Online images] as "delete". That DR has since
been re-opened and closed as "keep", and Commons policy has been changed
accordingly.
Secondly, the previous posting to which he was replying quoted Lord
Oliver in ''Interlego'' as saying "But copying, per se, however much
skill and labour may be devoted to the process cannot make an original
work". As explained at [[Commons talk:When to use the PD-Art tag#Reply
to call for revision]], that quote has since been explicitly disapproved
by the Court of Appeal in the later Sawkin case. It is not wrong, but
it applies in narrow circumstances only such as where an engineering
line-drawing has been copied. The Court of Appeal has held that it does
not apply in cases such as the present where the photographer has to
apply significant skill and labour in setting up lighting, filters and
so on.
Nobody wants to delete these images but Commons policy is that the image
must be PD in both the and the UK. According to this recent case law,
these are clearly copyright images in the UK.
Michael
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/National_Portra…
The following was never revoced in this list:
"[W]e've consistently held that faithful reproductions of
two-dimensional public domain works which are nothing more than
reproductions should be considered public domain for licensing
purposes"
Erik Moeller at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-February/038394.html
foundation-l
May I also remember Jimbo Wales' Manifesto:
"5. Free the Art!
Show two 400 year old paintings. Routinely get complaints from
museums saying there is copyright infringements. National Portrait
Gallery of England threatens to sue, a chilling effect, but they have
no grounds."
http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/jimbos_problems_1.html
For years there was no doubt that Bridgeman v. Corel was accepted on
Commons. It is said that British courts would'nt accept Bridgeman v.
Corel but there is no proof for this. It is true, in the contrary,
that the NY US judge has diligently discussed UK law with the result
that also according UK copyright law mere reproductions are NOT
protected.
Bridgeman vs. Corel is an essential point for Commons and for all
Wikimedia projects. This is not an issue some Commons pseudo-experts
could decide. Before 500+ pictures of PUBLIC DOMAIN PAINTINGS are to
be deleted the board of the Foundation should decide if Moeller's
quote above is still its position.
Klaus Graf
Looking through the messages on this list, it was quickly pointed out
that our press release had one fact wrong, I started The Wikipedia
Signpost in 2005, not 2006. The announcement was drafted and issued in a
very short time (we went directly from the meeting where we elected
officers to the press conference), so there wasn't much opportunity for
proofreading. But nobody should blame Jay for this error anyway - he
asked me when I had created the Signpost, and not being online to look
it up, I attempted to calculate backward from memory. I got it wrong,
which I realized not long afterward, but by then the press release had
already gone out.
It's an interesting illustration of the challenges in verifying
information, and how collaboration can be useful. Erroneous statements,
whether in a news story or a Wikipedia article, often happen because the
writer thought he knew something, but his understanding was flawed or
his memory of it inadequate. This applies even to people who specialize
in that area, who ought to be well placed to know such things. For
example, you would think that I'd be just about the best person possible
to ask when I started the Signpost. As it turns out, you're even better
off asking people who read it and know where to look up the answer.
This is still something we need to work on, though. I think we're decent
at quick copy-editing, less strong at fact-checking. Sometimes we manage
to at least identify what needs to be checked - [citation needed] - but
there's still a whole lot of checking out there to be done.
--Michael Snow
I've arrived home from Wikimania and am now starting to settle back into
things. Thank you to everyone, whether on this list, privately, or the
many people I spoke with at Wikimania, for your good wishes. I'm sorry I
could not express my appreciation earlier, but as one of the few people
in this world without a laptop it seems, I'm hardly ever online while
traveling.
I'm excited about the future of our projects and that of the Wikimedia
Foundation as an organization, and look forward to seeing what I can do
to help with that as chair of the Board of Trustees. Florence has been a
wonderful example of dedication and commitment in that role. She's a
tough act to follow, and I probably can never match the amount of time
she put into it.
Fortunately, the idea is that I shouldn't have to. By building a strong
staff, the foundation makes it more feasible for board members to
fulfill their responsibilities and still remain volunteers. We're slowly
getting there, even though it will always remain more demanding than
your average board.
The close to two years with Florence as chair involved a lot of changes,
many of them dramatic. The foundation went from having a temporary ED
who also held a separate position, to having no ED at all, then to a
manager without the title, and finally to a full-fledged dedicated ED.
There have been times when the board had to run the organization
directly, which did not work well (no fault of Florence, since without
her effort things would not even have worked as well as they did), while
now we are moving much more toward strategy and oversight, and things
are working significantly better. Hopefully we can continue the
transition in this direction.
--Michael Snow
Dears,
Greetings from Alex!
Some Wikimania2008 sessions are now available on-line. Thanks for Bibalex
ICT team for recording all session, and thanks to Kaltura team that was
on-site for uploading material and setting the page layout, here:
http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Wikimania_Sessions
To review keynote and invited session, kindly go to
http://webcast.bibalex.org/home/home.aspx, a hint for Firefox on lunix
users, is found here: http://linuxawy.org/node/28
more to come on WikiCommons..
Enjoy,
Moushira
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As many of you know, Wikimedia is working with Kaltura, Inc. to
explore collaborative video editing in the Wikimedia projects. I'm
very happy to announce that Kaltura has decided to support the further
development of a 100% open source video editing solution integrated
into MediaWiki. To this end, Kaltura is sponsoring Michael Dale, lead
developer of the MetaVid project, to work in the Wikimedia Foundation
offices in San Francisco beginning in early August.
Michael will work on adding support for video editing operations and
other video-related functionality to MediaWiki, with a rich user
interface built entirely on open standards like Ogg Theora. Michael's
work priorities will be coordinated between Kaltura and WMF. I am
hoping that we can make incremental improvements to Wikimedia's video
capabilities that will start to become visible to users soon. :-)
Michael Dale is currently a Research Associate at the University of
California Santa Cruz and the lead developer for the MetaVid
project. MetaVid is a community archive project for public domain
US legislative footage. The MetaVidWiki software (which runs
the archive) is a free software extension to MediaWiki that enables
community engagement with audio/visual media assets and
associative temporal metadata. Michael has been involved free & open
media adoption on the web in collaboration with the xiph.org and
annodex organizations.
Please join me in welcoming Michael!
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate