Well, I suppose I should thank you for letting me know before you downloaded my works. All my things are now not available for download in their full-size versions, until this is sorted. (and have told people exactly why: http://adamcuerden.deviantart.com/art/Oscar-Wilde-s-The-Duchess-of-Padua-re… ) If, at some point in the future, you decide people actually deserve credit for their work, do let me know.

Got it. You're going to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend there's no possibility of sweat-of-the-brow copyright - because if you think a law *might* be invalid, you can break it with impunity. I'm sure that works really well, and never ends with you getting arrested.

Dear David, I'm commenting here because I honestly didn't think Commons could be acting in a manner that required them to actively ignore laws, and thought it highly unlikely that Commons would be actively removing mere requests for credit from works. That Commons apparently is doing both of those is pretty much my limit for trying to engage with Commons. -Adam

Geni, I am a UK citizen. I don't live in Côte d'Ivoire. The UK is thus a relevant country, and if I may point you tio the actual Commons policy, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing "For example, if a person in the UK uploads a picture that has been saved off a French website to the Commons server, the upload must be covered by UK, French and US copyright law." The actual commons *policy* is that UK law applies. It even says it applies if the only interaction with the UK is that someone from the UK uploaded the thing. To argue anything else is to rewrite Commons policy. _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

So, let's look at that page. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:When_to_use_the_PD-scan_tag "The situation is more complex where the original raw scan has been enhanced on a selective basis, for example by means of some careful work in Photoshop to bring out certain details. This type of enhancement, although of course computer-assisted, may require a significant level of personal creative input, and as a result may generate a new copyright for the person doing the work. "Clearly, where the work done is sufficiently extensive that the result has to be treated as a new artistic work (eg where a black and white original is ‘hand-coloured’), the image cannot be uploaded to Commons without a licence from the new copyright owner."

With all respect, Geni, it's clear you've never done a restoration. In cases where information is missing, it's necessary to fill it in. While this may not have been the most major restoration I've done, there were still many areas where information had to be recreated: one man had a long scratch through his eye, which meant I had to recreate the area in the scratch; there were blank areas on the legs of one person, which meant fixing the wrinkles over them, and so on. It's a lot of small, little artistic decisions, which are necessary in order to make things look right. Would other decisions work just as well? Possibly. But the very act of restoration necessarily means making such decisions. On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 5:59 PM, Adam Cuerden <cuerden(a)gmail.com> wrote: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#Interaction_of_United_S… _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

The argument you are making are focused on copyright, but when you are more specific, you seem to be desiring attribution, and want to ensure that that attribution is legally enforceable. Please forgive me if I am putting words in your mouth. --Seth

In short, restoration is not a mechanical process. It requires a great deal of judgement and artistry. This judgement and artistry is used to try and repair things in a way that fits in with what existed. This is why restoration is generally *not* done on one-off, deliberative works like paintings for commons, but lithographs are a semi-randomly created process, where etching by acid creates random pits, and the amount of these pits determines the darkness of that part of the image, and there will be some variation between copies due to amount of inking and paper variations. In these gaps, you have enough freedom to do a restoration, but, outside of the basic stuff like "remove ink blotches from the white space", there's a necessary level of creative decision making to decide how to repair. To give obvious, easy-to-understand examples:in my restoration of Left Hand Bear, where the corners had been irregularly cut off to round them, in a very uneven, untidy way. I had to reconstruct those areas, including fixing some damaged text (Luckily, the LoC notes told me what it should say), and, on one corner, I actually had to fake some water damage to avoid misleading the reader by providing fine details about the sleeve that didn't exist. Another good one was my Women's Suffrage restoration, where a big chunk was simply missing, and I had to recreate the shoulder of a dress and other incidental details, without which the eye would be immediately drawn to the damage, and away from the actual image. I try to be fair with this. If I've done very little, I explicitly note this. If you want to say that my Quick and Easy restorations folder should be considered PD, I'd probably agree with you, in fact, I believe I've said to consider them PD. But there's a logical fallacy called the False Continuum: the idea that because there's a fuzzy area in the middle, there can't be clearcut cases on either end. That seems to be getting used to argue that no amount of work can ever gain a copyright (in explicit violation of the text of the PD-scan policy). Note that that policy also points out that the amount of artistic decision is very low in the UK. Commons can deal with ambiguity. For instance, very simple logos can't gain copyright? How simple? We don't know, so the bar of how simple is simply set at a point sufficiently low (text, geometric shapes) that it's clear cut, which lets Commons benefit from the policy, while still staying well away from anything that can get us in trouble. -Adam Cuerden

While that's a fair point, it's irrelevant. I realise there are limitations to how far the CC-by license will apply. However, I don't see how on earth that means I should have to give up my rights to it, or are all the photographers on this list going to give up their CC licenses because companies in countries where copyright is poorly enforced - China, say - could ignore the CC license and happily reuse it, violating the license, and they would have to assert their copyright (in order to enforce the license) in the court? No, people are smart enough to recognise that making their things available means that their licenses might get violated, and that, in some cases, they may not be able to enforce the licenses. That doesn't mean that we say that Commons should only accept releases into the public domain. -Adam Cuerden.

Adam, I am unclear exactly what rights and protections you would like on your work. I am not qualified to comment on the legalities of the matter, especially regarding international copyright law.

Setting aside the law for a moment, are you looking for exclusive commercial rights for your restoration work? are you looking for legally enforceable authorship citation rights? Are you happy/unhappy with having your work appear on WikiCommons? Are you interested in derivative works?

I know all this but at the present time the US courts seem to judge by intentions.

Geni wrote: 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,

Do forgive me if the threading is a bit messed up on this, but Seth asks a question that I feel I should answer: In order: * No, I am not looking for exclusive commercial rights. If I was, I would hardly be putting them under a CC-by license. * While I recognise that it may not apply in the United states, and that such power should be used carefully, yes, I would like legally eenforcable authorship citation rights. * If Commons stops trying to change a CC-by license to a PD one, I'm fine with Commons having the works. I don't actually *like* Commons much, but at the same time, I do think that the resources should be available to students/teachers/historians/etc, etc, and that a part of making these resources easily usable is waiving the right to commercial gain on my part. * If people want to further edit them, they can feel free.

With all respect, Geni, it's clear you've never done a restoration.

In cases where information is missing, it's necessary to fill it in. While this may not have been the most major restoration I've done, there were still many areas where information had to be recreated: one man had a long scratch through his eye, which meant I had to recreate the area in the scratch; there were blank areas on the legs of one person, which meant fixing the wrinkles over them, and so on. It's a lot of small, little artistic decisions, which are necessary in order to make things look right. Would other decisions work just as well? Possibly. But the very act of restoration necessarily means making such decisions.