---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com Date: Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:39 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] International Olympic Committee tells Flickr user to change license To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Fajro faigos@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:02 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/10/9 Risker risker.wp@gmail.com:
Interesting article about how the International Olympic Committee is cracking down even on CC-SA licenses:
The blog of the photographer:
http://richardgiles.com/2009/10/09/the-olympics-and-creative-commons-photogr...
That clears things up a lot, and brings up a lot of new questions. Wikipedia is actually at the center of this whole thing: Richard Giles changed the license on this photo of Usain Bolt (first to CC-BY-ND to CC-BY-SA) http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgiles/2767537621/
at the request of a Wikipedian so that it could be added to Wikipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Usain_Bolt_Olympics_Celebration.jpg
And Wikipedia is probably where the British merchant found the photo, which he used to promote a book. And that commercial use is what drew the attention of the International Olympics Committee. So now the IOC, it seems, wants Giles to put the CC-BY-SA genie back in the bottle.
What are the legal implications here? Does the contract (private use only for photos) implicitly agreed to by Giles when he bought a ticket to the Olympics invalidate the CC-BY-SA license, despite that downstream re-users (like us) weren't a party to the original contract?
-Sage
"Does the contract (private use only for photos) implicitly agreed to by Giles when he bought a ticket to the Olympics invalidate the CC-BY-SA license" -- In my recollection, the answer is no. It is similar to someone taking a picture where it says "NO PHOTOGRAPHY". They might be breaking someones rules, and could risk getting thrown out, but the picture is still theirs to keep. The IOC could sue the photographer for breach of contract (which would be hilarious to watch the PR beating they get for that), but once again, that doesn't effect us. In short, contracts can be broken, laws can't.
And not that I need to remind this crew, but the CC license is non-revocable, so the IOC is too late. The photographer licensed his image under CC, and that is the end of it. You can change the license back on Flickr, but that doesn't mean it isn't still legally available under CC. That is the _entire_ reason we have the Flickr Reviewer bot.
-Jon
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 19:41, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.comragesoss%2Bwikipedia@gmail.com
wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.comragesoss%2Bwikipedia@gmail.com
Date: Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:39 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] International Olympic Committee tells Flickr user to change license To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Fajro faigos@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:02 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/10/9 Risker risker.wp@gmail.com:
Interesting article about how the International Olympic Committee is cracking down even on CC-SA licenses:
The blog of the photographer:
http://richardgiles.com/2009/10/09/the-olympics-and-creative-commons-photogr...
That clears things up a lot, and brings up a lot of new questions. Wikipedia is actually at the center of this whole thing: Richard Giles changed the license on this photo of Usain Bolt (first to CC-BY-ND to CC-BY-SA) http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgiles/2767537621/
at the request of a Wikipedian so that it could be added to Wikipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Usain_Bolt_Olympics_Celebration.jpg
And Wikipedia is probably where the British merchant found the photo, which he used to promote a book. And that commercial use is what drew the attention of the International Olympics Committee. So now the IOC, it seems, wants Giles to put the CC-BY-SA genie back in the bottle.
What are the legal implications here? Does the contract (private use only for photos) implicitly agreed to by Giles when he bought a ticket to the Olympics invalidate the CC-BY-SA license, despite that downstream re-users (like us) weren't a party to the original contract?
-Sage
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com wrote:
"Does the contract (private use only for photos) implicitly agreed to by Giles when he bought a ticket to the Olympics invalidate the CC-BY-SA license" -- In my recollection, the answer is no. It is similar to someone taking a picture where it says "NO PHOTOGRAPHY". They might be breaking someones rules, and could risk getting thrown out, but the picture is still theirs to keep. The IOC could sue the photographer for breach of contract (which would be hilarious to watch the PR beating they get for that), but once again, that doesn't effect us. In short, contracts can be broken, laws can't.
Yes, but the CC-BY-SA license is also (usually understood as) a contract. I don't think the IOC is arguing that Giles doesn't own the copyright to his photos. But agreeing to terms and conditions is different from walking past a "no photos" sign. Contracts can be broken, but contracts can also affect other contracts.
And not that I need to remind this crew, but the CC license is non-revocable, so the IOC is too late. The photographer licensed his image under CC, and that is the end of it. You can change the license back on Flickr, but that doesn't mean it isn't still legally available under CC. That is the _entire_ reason we have the Flickr Reviewer bot.
The IOC's argument, I imagine, would not be that the CC license should be revoked, but that it was never valid in the first place since, by agreeing to a prior contract, Giles had given up the right to enter into certain other kinds of contracts for the photos he took. I don't think that's right, but it seems more complicated than typical cases of against-the-rules photography and attempts to revoke licenses.
-Sage
Sage Ross schreef:
Yes, but the CC-BY-SA license is also (usually understood as) a contract. I don't think the IOC is arguing that Giles doesn't own the copyright to his photos. But agreeing to terms and conditions is different from walking past a "no photos" sign. Contracts can be broken, but contracts can also affect other contracts.
You might want to read http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Non-copyright_restrictions
Maarten
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 6:33 AM, Maarten Dammers maarten@mdammers.nl wrote:
Sage Ross schreef:
Yes, but the CC-BY-SA license is also (usually understood as) a contract. I don't think the IOC is arguing that Giles doesn't own the copyright to his photos. But agreeing to terms and conditions is different from walking past a "no photos" sign. Contracts can be broken, but contracts can also affect other contracts.
You might want to read http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Non-copyright_restrictions
I know this is our standard procedure, to ignore most typical non-copyright restrictions that involve contracts rather than laws. But this seems different from typical cases we deal with (and different from any of the examples on that page). It seems like an intermediate case between ignoring a no photos sign or agreeing to a no photos contract, on the one hand, and contract like what Burning Man uses (which actually does prevent us from using photos of that event by people who signed it: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/08/snatching-rights-playa ).
I *think* the IOC terms and conditions are irrelevant to whether someone can use free licenses if they want to, but the waters seem muddier than in the cases I'm familiar with.
-Sage