[Commons-l] An idea to help solve Commons copyright woes

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 6/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests
> frequently sees recurring copyright debates, which I believe is
> basically because we are a bunch of amateurs trying to make decisions
> on complex international copyright law.
>
> This is no slight on the people who take part in these debates (I am
> one of them), but it simply seems to me quite silly. No one can be
> sure who is right, we argue in circles and it's really inefficient. I
> really feel out of my depth trying to argue on copyright cases, but I
> do it because *someone* has to - there just isn't enough attention
> given to these cases.
>
I agree that this tends to be a problem.  I think the only solution
though is to come to a rough consensus on the major issues and then
write them down so that the same work isn't being done over and over
again.

> And yet Wikimedia has a legal department:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_department . Villy
> (Jean-Christophe Chazalette), who is part of it, used to be quite
> active on Commons but hasn't been for some time.
>
> Therefore I propose that we (Commons community) ask the Legal
> department to create and fill a permanent position known as something
> like "Commons liaison officer" (CLO). Their job will be to mediate
> requests for copyright advice between Commons and the juriwiki mailing
> list/Legal department. Hopefully we could have a turn-around of about
> two weeks on any given issue.
>
> I hope this would be considered appropriate for the Legal department,
> because Commons is handling the vast bulk of media copyright issues,
> unlike text copyright issues which are spread almost everywhere else.
>
The main job of the Foundation's legal department is to protect the
Foundation from copyright infringement.  This is a *much* different
task from deciding whether or not content is free enough to exist in
Commons.  Further, the task does not lend itself to an open process,
while the task of deciding what to allow in Commons should be an
extremely open process.

It'd be nice to get some real legal help on the important legal
issues, but the Foundation's legal team is almost surely not the best
way to do it.  Something like having a separate but overlapping group
like the folks over at freedomdefined.org provide this type of help
would be more appropriate.  Of course that group is currently still in
the early stages of development,  so I wouldn't expect a whole lot of
in depth help from them right away.

> Here are some recent issues that I would like resolved:
> * To what extent are we bound by local laws and to what extent are we
> bound by Florida's laws (as the home of our servers). Country
> copyrights vary considerably with regards to duration of copyright,
> "freedom of panorama" (Panoramafreiheit) /whether public objects such
> as statues and even buildings can be freely photographed and there is
> a lot of confusion about this. Should we respect local law always or
> interpret in terms of US law?

Sure, images on commons shouldn't be illegal for the Foundation to
distribute.  And when they are, the Foundation should step in and
delete them.  But being legal for the Foundation to distribute is only
a very basic baseline to whether or not content is free.  It's
necessary, but by no means sufficient.

Anthony