Shyamal, :) Now its my turn to say sorry (Because I was putting forward all the points
with the consideration that Indian law remains applicable directly or indirectly - In any
case thanks atleast you responded a legal issue discussion usualy people are afraid of).
(Disclaimers mentioned in email are applicable: This eMail does not constitute legal
advice, and no action should be taken or omitted on the basis of its contents. )
If you are your self a lawayer or already had discussion on subject of 'choice of
law' with any legal expert then please let me know such reference or background, since
I am not regular visitor to this email list.
1) Even before putting up case for direct applicability of Indian law, Whether it is
definition of free cultural work or most of the free licences expect free redistribution
should be possible through any media such as print or say a cd; Now if some one wants to
print some media from wikimedia wiki and redistribute in India, which law the fellow is
going to face U.S. law or the Indian law ? I wish believers of this theory sincerely
revisit spirit of free cultural work definition before coming to the conclusion that
Indian law does not have.
2) Now we come to the 'choice of law'
2A) Before I began my study to put forward rfc, one Indian legal expert (with her
disclaimer) had replied to my query that, " I believe that online content accessible
in India should complywith Indian law including with the Indian Copyright Act. ....
" and my query was "Many (most) Indian wikipedians usually tend to believe
that Fair usage clause under US laws only will be applicable event to Indian content or
images since wikimedia servers are in USA and they do not need to bother about Indian
copyright act position. Whether those people are correct to believe so;"
2B) When you say "As far as I know, the servers of the mr.wikipedia as well as
commons are hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation out of USA and is entirely under US
copyright jurisdiction; and all content on the servers only need to fulfill the
requirements of US law." probably you are representing the partial truth, rather than
the word "only" what I would make bold is "...all content on the servers
only need to fulfill the requirements of US law." This sentence is probably talking
only about servers only and missing the affected Users who are human being, the network
and aparatus used in India, and the place of cause of action etc. is being forgotten.
2C) "..........Second, the mere fact that a host server is located in Country B,
without more, does not give Country B jurisdiction.....It is increasingly common in the
global marketplace that two or more countries have jurisdiction to hear the
dispute........... " ~ by Sarah Bird - Reference : International Copyright on the
Web: What Rules Apply to Me and What Court Will Apply Them?
2C) I had raised the same RFC issue with the WMF legal team member and replying person
discussed about their research effort on the subject, but uptil now in none of the emails
to me he never said that Indian law need not be considered.
2D) Wikimedia foundation Resolution:Licensing_policy is clear enough on this issue and it
expects every individual language wikipedia project to have indipendent Exemption Doctrine
Policy (EDP) it states "A project-specific policy, in accordance with United States
law and the law of countries where the project content is predominantly accessed (if any),
that recognizes the limitations of copyright law (including case law) as applicable to the
project, and permits the upload of copyrighted materials that can be legally used in the
context of the project, regardless of their licensing status"
I believe that there is scope to revisit and challange our own long held perceptions. And
hope that we are not in denial or we are not looking for a face saver because Indian
law seems to put forwards some challanges to our perceptions and we are afraid to face
them, I suppose we should not be.
(Please do not take this as a personal criticism every one is free to hold his or her own
openions and perceptions after all and face the law on their own end of the day.)
Disclaimer
These are my personal perceptions and not a legal advice. For formal advice please always
consult to your own professional leagal adivisor . Legal disclaimers: 1,User:Mahitgar -
Meta , Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , उत्तरदायकत्वास
नकार (माहितगारकृत) | मिसळपाव
Thanks Rgds
Mahitgar
On Tuesday, 14 July 2015 1:47 PM, Shyamal Lakshminarayanan <lshyamal(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Mahitgar, sorry but I still do not get the context. As far as I know, the servers of the
mr.wikipedia as well as commons are hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation out of USA and is
entirely under US copyright jurisdiction; and all content on the servers only need to
fulfill the requirements of US law.
In any case I think CC0 and PD represent the extreme of freedom that, based on my personal
interactions with artists and photographers, few private individuals in India would
consider. Most individuals seem to prefer a cc-by-nc-nd. A 2009 study by Creative Commons
shows that on Flickr, the restrictive licenses are more popular (less than a quarter are
Commons compatible) -
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13588
This does however raise an interesting question on whether Indian/Indic users make an
intelligent choice of licenses when uploading on Commons. For a general idea of the break
up of files by license-type - see the figures in
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_Creative_Commons_licenses - the numbers
indicated here are tricky as a single file can be under multiple licenses. However this
should give some sense on license popularity and tell us where educational efforts are
needed. PD and CC0 represent under 5% of the files.
CC-BY-1.0 6912 0.04
CC-BY-2.0 1530362 8.69
CC-BY-2.5 277995 1.58
CC-BY-3.0 1094029 6.21
CC-BY-4.0 157993 0.90
CC-BY-SA-1.0 27496 0.16
CC-BY-SA-2.0 2956920 16.79
CC-BY-SA-2.5 309394 1.76
CC-BY-SA-3.0 7586634 43.08
CC-BY-SA-3.0-mig 1087942 6.18
CC-BY-SA-3.0-migd 66639 0.38
CC-BY-SA-4.0 1750361 9.94
CC-PD 4315 0.02
CC-SA-1.0 3842 0.02
CC-Zero 749656 4.26
TOTAL LICENSES 17610490
CC-BY variants 17.42 %
CC-BY-SA variants 78.28 %
CC0/PD 4.28 %
best wishes
en.user:Shyamal