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 comply
with 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) 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.)
On Tuesday, 14 July 2015 1:47 PM, Shyamal Lakshminarayanan <lshyamal@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/13588This 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