Commons-l July 2012

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

21 participants
15 discussions

Re: [Commons-l] Does Commons have a policy of violating UK copyright?
by Harry Burt 09 Jul '12

09 Jul '12

Geni wrote: > > On 8 July 2012 22:31, Adam Cuerden <cuerden(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Geni wrote: > > > >>I know all this but at the present time the US courts seem to judge by > >>intentions. > > > > Commons does not let us upload a pre-1923 work by a British artist who > > died in 1960, even though the US courts would say it's out of > > copyright. Commons attempts to follow all relevant international > > copyright laws, > > Nope. Commons has decided that this is one area where it isn't going > to pay attention to non US law. Are you suggesting that Commons *does* let us upload a pre-1923 work by a British artist who died in 1960? Because that is very much not the case on the Wikimedia Commons to which I contribute. Likewise, Cary's suggestion that Commons takes a view on "bad law" is clearly not correct, as can be seen over the PD-1996 discussions. Gaurav Vaidya's suggestion sounds like a good one to me. Regards, Harry -- Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250).

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Re: [Commons-l] Moving forwards (Was "Does Commons have a policy of violating UK copyright?")
by WereSpielChequers 09 Jul '12

09 Jul '12

------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 10:42:25 +0100 > From: Adam Cuerden <cuerden(a)gmail.com> > To: commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Moving forwards (Was "Does Commons have a > policy of violating UK copyright?") > Message-ID: > <CADQwQSNLGYYYGteQdTTyg_-w= > PndjUr6+KcB7ws9GQ32-+TMww(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > So, Cary, the end of discussion is that Commons *does* have a policy > of violating UK copyright? > > Seriously? > > > > > That's a rather provocative and over simplistic way of putting it. The servers are in the US so any upload anywhere in the world has to comply with US law. Individual editors are personally responsible for their actions being compliant with the law where they upload images and where they take photos; These could be very different legal jurisdictions. Any of our users worldwide should be confident that the images which we hold comply with US law; If they have stricter laws in their country then that is between them and the law where they live. We could try to do things very differently: 1. We could relocate Wikimedia Commons from the US to UK so that UK not US copyright was the relevant law. 2. We could adopt a policy of trying to comply with multiple sometimes conflicting copyright laws, and only hosting it in Commons if it complied with some complex hybrid set of rules that included the laws of Afghanistan Zimbabwe and a couple of hundred others. 3. We could give up on this globalisation fad and have a separate Commons in each legal jurisdiction which only had to comply with that country's laws and was only usable in that country. Somehow I can't see any of those options getting consensus on commons, and the latter two wouldn't work very smoothly either. WSC

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Re: [Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 86, Issue 6
by Harry Burt 08 Jul '12

08 Jul '12

> The issue people have is that you are asserting a copyright that > doesn't exist. A lot of people have a serious problem with that. They > consider it an attempt at enclosure of the public domain. > > > - d. Rather, this is a complex issue, based on matters of jurisdiction. IANAL, but Adam's argument is entirely consistent with my understanding of international IP law, with which I have significant experience: to wit, a British reuser who failed to attribute him upon request would have a real case to answer in court. An American reuser would not. Therefore, rather than edit-war over one-size-fits-all tags, the most sensible thing to do is surely to explain the licensing details on the page in question. This fits perfectly with Commons' requirement for legal reuse in country (countries) of origin to be clearly established. Regards, Harry -- Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250)

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Does Commons have a policy of violating UK copyright?
by Adam Cuerden 08 Jul '12

08 Jul '12

I used to do a lot of restoration work for Wikipedia and Commons. When I left, I still did restorations as a hobby, and recently gave permission to have these coied over, under a CC-by license. I live in the UK, so have a right to claim copyright on restorations, under the Sweat of the brow doctrine. (indeed, I believe UK copyright law technically doesn't actually allow me to release into the public domain as such). I want my work to be widely used, but am concerned that a lot of it was being used by unscrupulous poster companies to sell posters at vastly inflated prices by using my work, and, as such, wanted to use minimal possible protections, and CC-by is very much a minimum protection that still allows all usages, just gets them to note that what they're using is, indeed free to use and not done by them. However, I am told - at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/First_co… that Wikimedia has a policy that coyrights *must* be violated. If this is true, I would like to know, as it would mean I want to no longer make the large versions of my work available for general download. Cheers, Adam Cuerden, Upset Copyright Holder

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My current favorite Commons remix: using Commons offline
by Samuel Klein 03 Jul '12

03 Jul '12

This is from the volcanic island of Nosy Komba, Madagascar. The French chapter of OLPC has supported the island's school for 4 years, and shares updates from there every summer. The community there lives offline; to get a cell connection (say, to blog about their work) they sometimes have to travel to the nearest small town, Hell-Ville. http://olpc-france.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/xoenfant_10.png The boy laughing is showing off his work with a program that lets you make stories with a series of images. The image being drawn on is a composite of the Sombrero Galaxy, from an offline library of awesome images from Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M104_ngc4594_sombrero_galaxy_hi-res.… Thanks to Commonsists everywhere for your beautiful work and curation. It is appreciated far beyond the 'Net! SJ * More background: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosy_Komba http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell-Ville http://olpc-france.org/blog/2012/07/nosy-komba-des-enfants-et-des-xo/

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Commons-l July 2012