It's disgusting that a megacorporation which has a predatory, legalistic attitude towards "intellectual property" doesn't play by its own rules.

They can always edit the article ;) xD

It was mentioned on the Wikimedia Foundation Communications Committee Mailing List in September. Regards, Ole On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Mike Dupont <jamesmikedupont(a)googlemail.com> wrote: http://rdfintrospector2.blogspot.com/2011/12/smurfs-movie-wikipedia-copylef… -- http://palnatoke.org * @palnatoke * +4522934588 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I found a clip with the wikipedia lifting being shown : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJxqFMPe95c

Is that screenshot actually from Wikipedia? It looks like the name is File:Blue Moon.JPG (though it is hard to tell from the video), but we have no such image under that name. The article [[blue moon]] actually uses a different image, and as far as I can see from browsing the history it always has. So, it seems like it might not even be a real screenshot of Wikipedia, but rather a page that had been further edited for their purposes. For example, they easily could have swapped in a public domain image of the moon from NASA. -Robert Rohde On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Kim Bruning <kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote: _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hi folks - I can confirm that this is not an infringement of the WIkipedia marks. Sony approached us almost 2 years ago to seek permission to use the Wikipedia marks in the film. As with almost every film production company, they are meticulous and incredibly careful about use of trademarks and brands.  You can appreciate they are particularly careful about this because films actually derive lots of revenue from selling the placement of other marks (coke, pepsi etc) in the films for millions of dollars. We approved their use of the marks, and at that time we were asking official trademark re-users to provide us with a small amount of money (under $1K) to help us cover the non-trivial amount of legal work to draft or re-draft an agreement, then to carefully monitor the use of the mark for the period of time its permitted.  As far as I'm aware, we don't permit 'terminal' or infinite reuse of our marks for marketing of films - something that would severely limit our protection of the brand and our identity. Some notes on this whole process: in the coming year the legal/trademark team hopes to make the application system much simpler, and also we expect to start publishing a public list of those orgs who have permission to reuse the marks in a public setting.  Thereby minimizing the surprise factor to someone who just sees our mark being used in a film.  We're also moving away from this payment system (although not necessarily completely) and instead looking to increase the number of permitted reusers, but also to ensure clearly labeled permissions and reuse, and particularly important, to clearly label appropriate use of CC works. In this case Sony's general offer is to provide compensation or to provide a credit like "Wikipedia used with permission of the Wikimedia Foundation."  We opted for the compensation in this case, but in future we're going to require the clear indication of permission.  This is pretty standard in the industry (one way or another).  For example, films often use mastheads like the New York Times in movies but never credit the paper.  They've either paid the paper or the paper has permitted it because it enhances the visibility of their work.  A blanket trademark statement in the credits usually implies that all marks belong to their owners. Not everything is approved when we ask.  We ensure a couple of basic points before proceeding with an agreement: * does the reuser intend to mock or parody Wikipedia? * does the reuser position Wikipedia or our other brands in a manner inconsistent with the most obvious use? Do they show Wikipedia showing ads? Do they use the brand in advertisements or other places we'd never approve? * do we reusers radically change the information or article in a Wikipedia page in a film (not the actual article itself)?  In general we see this as being potentially acceptable, provided they completely change the information so as to not violate the terms of CC. For example, often they'll ask to create a completely new article (for the film only) on a fictional topic. * does the reuser intend to actually edit Wikipedia (for real) in the film or production?  Or to put it another way, do they actually break Wikipedia in the intended reuse? * is the film extremely violent or sexual such that inclusion of our brand would be adversely affected? We also review script segments, film synopses, marketing material etc to make sure the project is real and that any efforts we make are going to be worthwhile.  We take this proces pretty seriously, and though it looks larger than it is, our legal team has done an amazing job of optimizing these requests so we can quickly approve or deny requests.  We approve the majority of requests, I'm happy to say, because ultimately if the intended use of our project name or marks is benign within the film (or it casts us in an accurate, good light - most of them do) then we see this as a net positive effect.  Wikipedia is used every day by millions of people around the world.  It's part of our regular life, and it's not surprising to us that the media and creative world want to include it to support accurate story telling. One final note: we treat commercial requests differently from the classic media requests.  If Coke or Google or Nike want to use our brand, we engage in a different conversation. Arguably both Hollywood and Coke are in the same business: making money, but film, TV, documentary projects can often tell a bigger and more important story.  Also, we continue to encourage lawful, fair use of our marks in journalistic efforts.  Though fair use is different around the world (or non-existent) we regularly tell permission-seekers they can use our marks for what we'd consider to be fair-use media requests here in the US. Hope that sheds some light - I know it's a lot of info to digest!  Btw, I'm kind of sorry you had to sit through The Smurfs Movie... jay On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Jay Walsh Head of Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 17 December 2011 23:09, Mike  Dupont <jamesmikedupont(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Well we do have quite a collection of public domain images where you can do precisely that. Realistically I think we have to accept that most films are not going to include extended scenes covering copyright and free licenses. -- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I guess, this is just one of the times where things in Hollywood are a bit different than in real life. The students and kids will just have to realize that things in films are not always true to life... (Without having seen the movie, I guess a long sequence on proper licensing would have been very boring, and ad agencies in real life would have a legal team making sure the licences are alright and who would be sued if they aren't – it's not like they would take their cues from a short scene in a Smurfs movie.)

On 18 December 2011 12:38, Mike Dupont <jamesmikedupont(a)googlemail.com> wrote: It would be interesting for press coverage. "Well, in real life of course, they'd check with legal. But you can in fact reuse many images because of free licensing etc NASA public domain blah blah." Might provide a useful educational hook.