Commons:License information has significant gaps in copyright overviews for
developing countries. This presents real problems for Wikimedians who wish
to upload historic public domain images.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#License_information
The other day I located two panoramas: Havana harbor and the Panama Canal
being built. Both are public domain under United States law where the
images were published, but Commons rules require that they also be verified
public domain in the country where they were photographed. Neither Cuba or
Panama is listed on the license information page, so I've attempted a
translation of the relevant law. My Spanish is not strong, nor am I
qualified to give legal opinions, so if you can help please verify my
tentative translations posted here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requested_Translations#Spanish_t…
This raises another issue: which country's copyright laws prevail for the
former Canal Zone? United States or Panama? Commons currently hosts some
images of the canal's construction and the ones I checked are marked only as
PD-US, which may or may not be adequate. And more generally, whose laws
apply when national jurisdiction changes? I found some other historic
photographs from Africa, but didn't upload them because of these unanswered
questions.
Is there any coordinated effort to fill in the gaps at the Commons:License
information page? If not, there should be.
-Durova
The following mail by Mark did not reach the list. I wasn't able to
locate the problem - here is a forward 'by hand'.
Bye, Tim.
---[snip]---
Message-ID: <4788E32A.5090209(a)comcast.net>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:56:26 -0500
From: Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini(a)comcast.net>
To: commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Fwd: [Wmfcc-l] Photo submission queue]
Originally sent to the Press Committee mailing list. David Gerard
suggested I forward this to commons-l for further comment.
-Mark
From: mapellegrini(a)comcast.net (Mark Pellegrini)
To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:29:44 +0000
Message-Id:
<011020082029.28984.47868038000BAB4E0000713822135396530702079D090A04040A9F0E03(a)comcast.net>
Subject: [Wmfcc-l] Photo submission queue
First, I'd like to say we've had 5 successful uses of the photo
submission service so far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Essentials_%28band%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Goldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Forbeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Condellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Calonne
One very common problem I've been encountering is that people email me
pictures, but don't specify a license. I don't really know how to make
the contact page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission)
more clear on this point - help is welcome.
First, I'd like to request one of the OTRS admins add a form response
along the lines "I'd like to add this photo to our article, but oops!
You didn't specify a license."
Second, I think this idea is working well enough that we should start
doing it on other language wikis and on other projects. (Note - that
will necessitate adding others to the queue, particularly those who
speak languages I don't - namely, everything but English)
-Mark
Hi all,
instead of fixing all the bugs people have submitted about my existing
tools, I wrote a new one (so people can submit Even More Bug
Reports;-)
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/mygallery.php
This one is probably more fun than useful. It takes your (any) user
name and shows, for a project, all the users images. On one page. In a
special category tree, that contains only categories relevant for this
purpose. Nice to see where ones files are clustered in the tree, IMHO.
If you have a hundred images floating around on a project, fine. If
it's a thousand, it will, work, but it almost killed my Firefox for
the ~1600 file I have on commons. Be warned...
(luckily, that's not really stress on the toolserver - it's more your
browser that will die under the tree structure flood)
As this display needs a "base category", which I have to enter
manually, this currently only works for commons, de and en wikipedia.
Cheers,
Magnus