Hoi. I am talking to a few museums and archives and several of them are interested in considering Commons for their collection. At the same time they are also considering Flickr.
The issue they have with Commons is its restrictions. One of the museums said it like this: "We have done our best to ascertain the copyright status of much of our material. We have not been able to find the original copyright holder or someone who inherited these rights. When we post our material to Flickr, we just remove the material when a copyright holder turns up and asks us to. Doing it in any other way requires much more effort. Effort that we rather spend in more productive endeavours like digitising and annotating."
My question is, will it be acceptable when a museum or archive provides us with their material and when we learn about a request to take down material, we do this when requested by the copyright holder. This is not considered an issue with Flickr !! Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi. I am talking to a few museums and archives and several of them are interested in considering Commons for their collection. At the same time they are also considering Flickr.
The issue they have with Commons is its restrictions. One of the museums said it like this: "We have done our best to ascertain the copyright status of much of our material. We have not been able to find the original copyright holder or someone who inherited these rights. When we post our material to Flickr, we just remove the material when a copyright holder turns up and asks us to. Doing it in any other way requires much more effort. Effort that we rather spend in more productive endeavours like digitising and annotating."
Flickr is what they want then. We can hardly insist that random uploaders must supply copyright holders, licenses, etc, and then make an exception for an institution just because they say they "tried really hard". How many times do we see an uploader say "I couldn't find a copyright holder", then somebody knowledgeable takes 10 seconds to locate a copy with complete documentation showing that it's very much non-free. No museum's holdings are worth so much to me that I'm willing to cast doubts over the legal status of everything else in Commons.
Stan
Hoi, The archives and museums I am talking to have content that will be extremely valuable to us. Your suggestion that archives and museums is based on a comparison to someone who did not do any research. Now when we can get something like 40.000 media files and you compare it to an occasional upload you do not take into account that some of these archives have a systematic coverage of events, places or developments. If you think we can do better at finding copyright holders I am sure that we are welcome to do so.
When museums and archives put their material on Flickr, it often gets a creative commons label. As a consequence we may import it into Commons anyway. Working together with archives and museums gains us more then just low res pictures for now. It gets us appreciations and respectability at the same time.
The big difference between Commons and Flickr is that we put the material to use and consequently the material gets a new lease of life. Flickr is essentially a big stamp collection. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi. I am talking to a few museums and archives and several of them are interested in considering Commons for their collection. At the same time they are also considering Flickr.
The issue they have with Commons is its restrictions. One of the museums said it like this: "We have done our best to ascertain the copyright status of much of our material. We have not been able to find the original copyright holder or someone who inherited these rights. When we post our material to Flickr, we just remove the material when a copyright holder turns up and asks us to. Doing it in any other way requires much more effort. Effort that we rather spend in more productive endeavours like digitising and annotating."
Flickr is what they want then. We can hardly insist that random uploaders must supply copyright holders, licenses, etc, and then make an exception for an institution just because they say they "tried really hard". How many times do we see an uploader say "I couldn't find a copyright holder", then somebody knowledgeable takes 10 seconds to locate a copy with complete documentation showing that it's very much non-free. No museum's holdings are worth so much to me that I'm willing to cast doubts over the legal status of everything else in Commons.
Stan
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The archives and museums I am talking to have content that will be extremely valuable to us. Your suggestion that archives and museums is based on a comparison to someone who did not do any research. Now when we can get something like 40.000 media files and you compare it to an occasional upload you do not take into account that some of these archives have a systematic coverage of events, places or developments. If you think we can do better at finding copyright holders I am sure that we are welcome to do so.
The problem is from the description it is likely that a fair chunk of their author unknown stuff is non free. If you've got a non trivial number of copyright holders finding you and complaining that with regards to items that have been in your archives for years it means you have a lot of non free stuff.
On 3/30/09, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, The archives and museums I am talking to have content that will be extremely valuable to us. Your suggestion that archives and museums is based on a comparison to someone who did not do any research. Now when we can get something like 40.000 media files and you compare it to an occasional upload you do not take into account that some of these archives have a systematic coverage of events, places or developments. If you think we can do better at finding copyright holders I am sure that we are welcome to do so.
When museums and archives put their material on Flickr, it often gets a creative commons label. As a consequence we may import it into Commons anyway. Working together with archives and museums gains us more then just low res pictures for now. It gets us appreciations and respectability at the same time.
The big difference between Commons and Flickr is that we put the material to use and consequently the material gets a new lease of life. Flickr is essentially a big stamp collection. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi. I am talking to a few museums and archives and several of them are interested in considering Commons for their collection. At the same time they are also considering Flickr.
The issue they have with Commons is its restrictions. One of the museums said it like this: "We have done our best to ascertain the copyright status of much of our material. We have not been able to find the original copyright holder or someone who inherited these rights. When we post our material to Flickr, we just remove the material when a copyright holder turns up and asks us to. Doing it in any other way requires much more effort. Effort that we rather spend in more productive endeavours like digitising and annotating."
Flickr is what they want then. We can hardly insist that random uploaders must supply copyright holders, licenses, etc, and then make an exception for an institution just because they say they "tried really hard". How many times do we see an uploader say "I couldn't find a copyright holder", then somebody knowledgeable takes 10 seconds to locate a copy with complete documentation showing that it's very much non-free. No museum's holdings are worth so much to me that I'm willing to cast doubts over the legal status of everything else in Commons.
Stan
I've been talking to Museums/Archives in Australia along the same lines and have heard similar concerns. One of the things that those museums did was to all group together and demand that Flickr introduce a new copyright label called "no known copyright" which many of you have probably already seen. This was done because the archives/museums refused to say outright that the images are Public Domain because they are so risk-averse. They are just so afraid of being sued and see that label as a way out.
So, when these museums say "they've made every effort to find a copyright holder" then they have done far more work than we would be able to do with these photos. Stan, I don't think we would be making any exceptions here or casting doubt on the quality of Commons as we already have a system for checking and deleting images if we uncover more info about their copyright status. This wouldn't be new. Gerard, if all the museums/archives are looking for is re-assurance that we can delete things if someone complains then we CAN give that assurance. So long as they are willing to put the image up with a PD tag then I say GREAT! All they want is someone to confirm for them that we have a way of controlling the system because they need to prove to their management that they are not acting illegally or without care for copyright concerns.
Go for it, I say. -Liam [[witty lama]]
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On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
I am talking to a few museums and archives and several of them are interested in considering Commons for their collection. At the same time they are also considering Flickr.
The issue they have with Commons is its restrictions. One of the museums said it like this: "We have done our best to ascertain the copyright status of much of our material. We have not been able to find the original copyright holder or someone who inherited these rights. When we post our material to Flickr, we just remove the material when a copyright holder turns up and asks us to. Doing it in any other way requires much more effort. Effort that we rather spend in more productive endeavours like digitising and annotating."
My question is, will it be acceptable when a museum or archive provides us with their material and when we learn about a request to take down material, we do this when requested by the copyright holder. This is not considered an issue with Flickr !!
Once again, if we have non-free.wikimedia.org repository, with precise rules, we wouldn't be able to have all kinds of materials which policy of Commons prohibits: * Orphan works. * Somewhat more flexible conditions for the situations like you mentioned. * Logos and other trademarks at one place. * Strictly defined fair use images (like on en.wp) at one place.
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Once again, if we have non-free.wikimedia.org repository, with precise rules, we wouldn't be able to have all kinds of materials which policy of Commons prohibits:
... we would be able to have some kinds...
On 3/30/09, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Once again, if we have non-free.wikimedia.org repository, with precise rules, we [would] be able to have all kinds of materials which policy of Commons prohibits:
- Orphan works.
- Somewhat more flexible conditions for the situations like you mentioned.
- Logos and other trademarks at one place.
- Strictly defined fair use images (like on en.wp) at one place.
Although a "non-free" project might be useful - I have my doubts - the case that Gerard is talking about would not be affected by it. It is just the standard practice of museums to not want to "stick their neck out" and make a legally binding statement that the images are PD. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney) publishes its "Tyrrell photographic collection" on Flickr under the "no known copyright restrictions" license - many of these are now copied into Commons. This is in spite of the fact that every single one of the images was taken before 1929 which makes them definately PD. http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/sets/72157604376512011/ It is just the legal department requirement that they not make a legally-binding statement. It is sad, but true.
I believe these photos are in the same situation as what Gerard is talking about? Is this a reasonable comparison? These Tyrrell collection images definitely belong in commons, despite the Museum not making the legally-binding PD assurances, and therefore I believe that on this basis other museums in similar circumstances should be welcomed with open arms.
-Liam [[witty lama]]
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2009/3/30 Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com:
Although a "non-free" project might be useful - I have my doubts - the case that Gerard is talking about would not be affected by it. It is just the standard practice of museums to not want to "stick their neck out" and make a legally binding statement that the images are PD. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney) publishes its "Tyrrell photographic collection" on Flickr under the "no known copyright restrictions" license - many of these are now copied into Commons. This is in spite of the fact that every single one of the images was taken before 1929 which makes them definately PD. http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/sets/72157604376512011/ It is just the legal department requirement that they not make a legally-binding statement. It is sad, but true.
I believe these photos are in the same situation as what Gerard is talking about? Is this a reasonable comparison? These Tyrrell collection images definitely belong in commons, despite the Museum not making the legally-binding PD assurances, and therefore I believe that on this basis other museums in similar circumstances should be welcomed with open arms.
From Gerard's initial post I understood that the main museum's problem
is dealing with copyright issues strictly. They don't have resources for that and, besides that, it is not rationally to deal with copyright issues strictly in such circumstances.
First, why do they need us or Flickr? One museum in Netherlands should have enough money to pay for servers: for 1000 EUR per month it is possible to rent more than enough servers for them and I am sure that some data center in Amsterdam would rent to them servers under much better conditions. The reason is simple: they don't know how to do that without a help from outside.
Now, if they don't know how to solve something like that logistically, I am sure that they are far away of any useful kind of sorting their materials. I am almost sure that their categorization of photos (inside of hard disk folders or, worse, at CDs, DVDs or Blue Rays) is something like: (1) photographs which we've got from donor X; (2) photographs from 19th century in good condition; (3) photographs which had been made by famous photographer Y and his family; (5) other photographs of buildings; (6) color photographs made before WWII; (7) photographs of Dutch cities; (8) other photographs in good condition... (Note that just condition 2 is useful for us.)
In other words, they are not able to do the query like "select id from photographs where cdate<=1928-12-31". Not to mention other conditions which may raise number of useful photographs. This means that they would have a significant logistic problem if they are willing to deal with Commons.
So, we have three options: * Not to do anything with them directly, but to wait for their cooperation with Flickr and after that to take those images. * To find volunteers to cooperate with them. * To make a generic option for all such cases.
*If* we want to do that, I think that the third options assumes less amount of wasted efforts than the second option.
On 3/30/09, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
2009/3/30 Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com:
Although a "non-free" project might be useful - I have my doubts - the
case
that Gerard is talking about would not be affected by it. It is just the standard practice of museums to not want to "stick their neck out" and
make
a legally binding statement that the images are PD. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney) publishes its "Tyrrell photographic collection" on Flickr under the "no known copyright restrictions" license
many of these are now copied into Commons. This is in spite of the fact
that
every single one of the images was taken before 1929 which makes them definately PD. http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/sets/72157604376512011/ It is just the legal department requirement that they not make a legally-binding statement. It is sad, but true.
I believe these photos are in the same situation as what Gerard is
talking
about? Is this a reasonable comparison? These Tyrrell collection images definitely belong in commons, despite the Museum not making the legally-binding PD assurances, and therefore I believe that on this
basis
other museums in similar circumstances should be welcomed with open arms.
From Gerard's initial post I understood that the main museum's problem is dealing with copyright issues strictly. They don't have resources for that and, besides that, it is not rationally to deal with copyright issues strictly in such circumstances.
I understood from Gerard's initial post that the question was not about their lack of resources but their/our legal concerns about copyright. Gerard: can you please confirm this either way?
First, why do they need us or Flickr? One museum in Netherlands should
have enough money to pay for servers: for 1000 EUR per month it is possible to rent more than enough servers for them and I am sure that some data center in Amsterdam would rent to them servers under much better conditions. The reason is simple: they don't know how to do that without a help from outside.
I do not believe this is a correct understanding. Museums (such as my previous example of the Powerhouse Museum) are not working with Flickr because they don't have the resources to host their own image collection online. They are working with Commons and/or Flickr because the realise that it is in those places where the "audience" can be found. Are you suggesting that the institutions that are involved with "Flickr Commons" (which include the US library of congress) are doing so because they don't have a proper web server of their own?! http://www.flickr.com/commons?PHPSESSID=ea7b4da468f5935f24b65f41dbfc356f
Now, if they don't know how to solve something like that logistically,
I am sure that they are far away of any useful kind of sorting their materials. I am almost sure that their categorization of photos (inside of hard disk folders or, worse, at CDs, DVDs or Blue Rays) is something like: (1) photographs which we've got from donor X; (2) photographs from 19th century in good condition; (3) photographs which had been made by famous photographer Y and his family; (5) other photographs of buildings; (6) color photographs made before WWII; (7) photographs of Dutch cities; (8) other photographs in good condition... (Note that just condition 2 is useful for us.)
In other words, they are not able to do the query like "select id from photographs where cdate<=1928-12-31". Not to mention other conditions which may raise number of useful photographs. This means that they would have a significant logistic problem if they are willing to deal with Commons.
This assumption is based on (what I believe to be) the false conclusion that the institution is technically incapable and "need our help".
So, we have three options:
- Not to do anything with them directly, but to wait for their
cooperation with Flickr and after that to take those images.
- To find volunteers to cooperate with them.
- To make a generic option for all such cases.
*If* we want to do that, I think that the third options assumes less amount of wasted efforts than the second option.
Assuming they didn't know how to categorise/catalogue/host their own collection then perhaps this conclusion would be correct. But working on the assumption that they are a perfectly competent institution then there is no reason not to trust their claim that they have made every effort to discover any underlying copyrights.
Gerard - can you please clarify the question: are we talking about an institution that doesn't know how to host the images themself, or are we talking about an institution that would be working with Flickr:Commons if we don't "catch them" first?
-Liam [[witty lama]]
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Hoi, Dutch museums and archives are well organised. Many of their collections can be found, typically in the jpg format, at http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/
The point for them istalk to us is to give more relevance to their collections. The edge Commons has over Flickr is because we actually use the material. It does however not exclude Flickr. They want to get the material out to the public and give the material its relevance in ths way. There is an archive I am talking to who is the repository of commercial publications many of them who stopped publishing. They would be interested in providing us with low res pictures and expect a referal to their high res pictures that are for sale. There is a museum that can literally not find the copyright holders because they are likely dead and there is no clue who inherited these rights.. orphans indeed.
Current copyright practices do not consider these issues. At the WMF we consider everything that is not clearly Public Domain as Copyrighted and consequently off bound when there is no official grant of a license by the copyright holder. This means that the social value of these works are destroyed. It means that a large part of our subjects do not have proper illustrations. A good example is [[en:wp:Ruud Lubbers]] a former Dutch prime minister with only US archival pictures.
Relatively Dutch archives and museums are well funded. When they say they have done their research, they did. They do put such material on Flickr. The value of the material to a possible copyright holder only grows because of the exposure. Making this material available on a low res would be an option to safe guard the interests of a potential copyright holder. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com
On 3/30/09, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
2009/3/30 Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com:
Although a "non-free" project might be useful - I have my doubts - the
case
that Gerard is talking about would not be affected by it. It is just the standard practice of museums to not want to "stick their neck out" and
make
a legally binding statement that the images are PD. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney) publishes its "Tyrrell photographic collection" on Flickr under the "no known copyright restrictions"
license -
many of these are now copied into Commons. This is in spite of the fact
that
every single one of the images was taken before 1929 which makes them definately PD. http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/sets/72157604376512011/ It is just the legal department requirement that they not make a legally-binding statement. It is sad, but true.
I believe these photos are in the same situation as what Gerard is
talking
about? Is this a reasonable comparison? These Tyrrell collection images definitely belong in commons, despite the Museum not making the legally-binding PD assurances, and therefore I believe that on this
basis
other museums in similar circumstances should be welcomed with open
arms.
From Gerard's initial post I understood that the main museum's problem is dealing with copyright issues strictly. They don't have resources for that and, besides that, it is not rationally to deal with copyright issues strictly in such circumstances.
I understood from Gerard's initial post that the question was not about their lack of resources but their/our legal concerns about copyright. Gerard: can you please confirm this either way?
First, why do they need us or Flickr? One museum in Netherlands should
have enough money to pay for servers: for 1000 EUR per month it is possible to rent more than enough servers for them and I am sure that some data center in Amsterdam would rent to them servers under much better conditions. The reason is simple: they don't know how to do that without a help from outside.
I do not believe this is a correct understanding. Museums (such as my previous example of the Powerhouse Museum) are not working with Flickr because they don't have the resources to host their own image collection online. They are working with Commons and/or Flickr because the realise that it is in those places where the "audience" can be found. Are you suggesting that the institutions that are involved with "Flickr Commons" (which include the US library of congress) are doing so because they don't have a proper web server of their own?! http://www.flickr.com/commons?PHPSESSID=ea7b4da468f5935f24b65f41dbfc356f
Now, if they don't know how to solve something like that logistically,
I am sure that they are far away of any useful kind of sorting their materials. I am almost sure that their categorization of photos (inside of hard disk folders or, worse, at CDs, DVDs or Blue Rays) is something like: (1) photographs which we've got from donor X; (2) photographs from 19th century in good condition; (3) photographs which had been made by famous photographer Y and his family; (5) other photographs of buildings; (6) color photographs made before WWII; (7) photographs of Dutch cities; (8) other photographs in good condition... (Note that just condition 2 is useful for us.)
In other words, they are not able to do the query like "select id from photographs where cdate<=1928-12-31". Not to mention other conditions which may raise number of useful photographs. This means that they would have a significant logistic problem if they are willing to deal with Commons.
This assumption is based on (what I believe to be) the false conclusion that the institution is technically incapable and "need our help".
So, we have three options:
- Not to do anything with them directly, but to wait for their
cooperation with Flickr and after that to take those images.
- To find volunteers to cooperate with them.
- To make a generic option for all such cases.
*If* we want to do that, I think that the third options assumes less amount of wasted efforts than the second option.
Assuming they didn't know how to categorise/catalogue/host their own collection then perhaps this conclusion would be correct. But working on the assumption that they are a perfectly competent institution then there is no reason not to trust their claim that they have made every effort to discover any underlying copyrights.
Gerard - can you please clarify the question: are we talking about an institution that doesn't know how to host the images themself, or are we talking about an institution that would be working with Flickr:Commons if we don't "catch them" first?
-Liam [[witty lama]]
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2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
My question is, will it be acceptable when a museum or archive provides us with their material and when we learn about a request to take down material, we do this when requested by the copyright holder. This is not considered an issue with Flickr !!
A museum should be having no problem providing us with material in these two scenarios:
1. The image is PD 2. The image is subject to copyright and the museum owns all required rights of usage/copyrights to release the image under a free license
If the image is subject to copyright and the museum is unable to provide these rights of usage, it is not suitable for Wikimedia Commons.
Mathias
Hoi, In the way you put it, there is no discussion possible. I do accept your position, I do not agree with it.
What you write is more an article of faith then an argument why this is what we do. Mathias, you can do better. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
My question is, will it be acceptable when a museum or archive provides
us
with their material and when we learn about a request to take down
material,
we do this when requested by the copyright holder. This is not
considered
an issue with Flickr !!
A museum should be having no problem providing us with material in these two scenarios:
- The image is PD
- The image is subject to copyright and the museum owns all required
rights of usage/copyrights to release the image under a free license
If the image is subject to copyright and the museum is unable to provide these rights of usage, it is not suitable for Wikimedia Commons.
Mathias
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
Hoi, In the way you put it, there is no discussion possible. I do accept your position, I do not agree with it.
What you write is more an article of faith then an argument why this is what we do. Mathias, you can do better. Thanks, GerardM
The reason we only allow *known* free material is simple: we promise that you can use anything you find on commons freely. If we had images under "no known copyright", that would no longer be true. And if someone still believed that they can use our material freely, they may be in for a nasty surprise. And would likely try to paqss the hot potato back to us.
Basically, we would undermine our reputation as a repository of free media. We would become just some reporistory of some media. Like Flickr.
-- daniel
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the way you put it, there is no discussion possible. I do accept your position, I do not agree with it.
What you write is more an article of faith then an argument why this is what we do. Mathias, you can do better.
Actually, the museums should do better. There is discussion possible on various topics, including research to identify the proper owners of copyright and rights of usage. If the basic idea of a cooperation with museums and archives is to liberate content, then it is not a matter of faith to ensure that the content is actually liberated and not put into a situation that compromises the whole idea of Wikimedia Commons.
Mathias
I don't think we should say that we delete the material on request when it turns out to be not free...
If start doing that we can get a lot of requested deletions because it isn't free anymore or things like that..
If it is free it can come on Commons. If it isn't it should stay away.
2009/3/30, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com:
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the way you put it, there is no discussion possible. I do accept your position, I do not agree with it.
What you write is more an article of faith then an argument why this is what we do. Mathias, you can do better.
Actually, the museums should do better. There is discussion possible on various topics, including research to identify the proper owners of copyright and rights of usage. If the basic idea of a cooperation with museums and archives is to liberate content, then it is not a matter of faith to ensure that the content is actually liberated and not put into a situation that compromises the whole idea of Wikimedia Commons.
Mathias
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On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Huib Laurens abigorwikimedia@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think we should say that we delete the material on request when it turns out to be not free...
If images on Wikimedia Commons turn out to be non-free, we shoot them on sight. If the person uploading those images acted in bad faith, we also shoot him.
Uploading images on Wikimedia Commons requires the uploader to ensure that the image is actually free under the specified free license and not to be "let's see who is going to complain"-tagged.
Mathias
Hoi, <grin> you indeed can do better </grin> Often the person who did the photography is known, but it is not possible to contact him. Often the material does not have a known photographer but the material was donated by the organisation that commissioned the work. When you talk about "liberating", it is the wish of museums and archives to do exactly that.
The idea of Commons is to have a repository of material that can be used in the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation and that is freely licensed as such. The notion of "fair use" is open in many jurisdictions and it is for this reason that the English Wikipedia insists on using this. When we are talking about copyright orphans, orphans where serious effort has gone into finding a copyright holder by a reputable organisation, we are talking about prime candidates for liberating this material.
If Commons does not want this material we might want to have a second repository for such material. It would then be for individual projects to accept this material or not. The appreciation of what Commons is about seems also open for interpretation :)
NB I do make a distinction between organisations like museums and archives and what people contribute. What I find is that there is a need for a resource where material of museums and archives are registered. There are often mulitple repositories for the same material and research only needs to be done once. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the way you put it, there is no discussion possible. I do accept your position, I do not agree with it.
What you write is more an article of faith then an argument why this is
what
we do. Mathias, you can do better.
Actually, the museums should do better. There is discussion possible on various topics, including research to identify the proper owners of copyright and rights of usage. If the basic idea of a cooperation with museums and archives is to liberate content, then it is not a matter of faith to ensure that the content is actually liberated and not put into a situation that compromises the whole idea of Wikimedia Commons.
Mathias
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, <grin> you indeed can do better </grin> Often the person who did the photography is known, but it is not possible to contact him.
If the permission is cleared properly, there is no need to contact him.
Often the material does not have a known photographer but the material was donated by the organisation that commissioned the work.
If the permission is cleared properly, there should be documentation and it should be possible to provide a complete chain of transfer of rights of usage.
When you talk about "liberating", it is the wish of museums and archives to do exactly that.
I am not disputing that our interest overlap.
Mathias
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern. Licensing is also quite modern. It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
There have been Wikimedians who explicitly stated that material that predated the oldest free licenses were unfree because they did not state their preferred license. The analogy is true in that many people made pictures and they were bought and sold and re-use of the material was not considered, let alone re-use in our current digital scenarios.
Historic situations are ambiguous from our perspective of what makes a "proper clearance". Often the photographers is likely to be dead. It is impossible to ask him, it is almost impossible to learn who the current right holder may be. It is exactly to prevent the material to be lost forever that this material ended up in archives and museums. It is exactly to prevent this material to be lost and remain lost that museums and archives want to share this material with us. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, <grin> you indeed can do better </grin> Often the person who did the photography is known, but it is not possible to contact him.
If the permission is cleared properly, there is no need to contact him.
Often the material does not have a known photographer but the material was donated
by
the organisation that commissioned the work.
If the permission is cleared properly, there should be documentation and it should be possible to provide a complete chain of transfer of rights of usage.
When you talk about "liberating", it is the wish of museums and archives to do exactly that.
I am not disputing that our interest overlap.
Mathias
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern. Licensing is also quite modern. It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
Indeed. The laws should account for that. But they don't. So let's try to make politicians see the problem. It's the law. We can't just ignore it because it's stupid.
-- daniel
Hoi, There is also our interpretation of that same law. By taking an absolute point of view we take a position that is at odds with what the WMF stands for; informing all people. In my opinion this position trumps the need for always free material. At the moment we have material in Commons that is said to be free and it is not. People lie about this or they give assurances they should not make. I have been explicitly given pictures to use in Commons. The whole rigmarole of proving this point is such that the people who gave me the picture would not be part of it. They wanted me to deal with it and, that is what I did.
Obviously my lie is a white lie. My point is that Commons has this black and white approach and even within Commons there is grey. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de
Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern. Licensing is also quite modern. It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
Indeed. The laws should account for that. But they don't. So let's try to make politicians see the problem. It's the law. We can't just ignore it because it's stupid.
-- daniel
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern. Licensing is also quite modern. It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
Truly historic images are not a problem, as they should be PD. The more recent the images get, the more sensible the agencies, museums and other institutions get to properly record the rights issue. It is not an unreasonable expection but a necassary one.
Mathias
Mathias Schindler schrieb:
Truly historic images are not a problem, as they should be PD. The more recent the images get, the more sensible the agencies, museums and other institutions get to properly record the rights issue. It is not an unreasonable expection but a necassary one.
Mathias
Beware the false friend... they do get more *sensitive* but often less *sensible* :)
-- daniel
Hoi, Historic has the meaning of old and it has the meaning of relevance. For archives and museums the rights issue is not really their concern they are interested in who produced what material. This is more relevant to them based on what their core function is. The fact that a photographer may also be the right holder is seen as a bonus.
This is best demonstrated with the excitement when a work is discovered to be of a master like Rembrandt or Leonardo da Vinci. Thanks. GerardM
2009/3/30 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern. Licensing is also quite modern. It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
Truly historic images are not a problem, as they should be PD. The more recent the images get, the more sensible the agencies, museums and other institutions get to properly record the rights issue. It is not an unreasonable expection but a necassary one.
Mathias
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, Historic has the meaning of old and it has the meaning of relevance. For archives and museums the rights issue is not really their concern they are interested in who produced what material. This is more relevant to them based on what their core function is. The fact that a photographer may also be the right holder is seen as a bonus.
I think you are talking about a non-issue here. A photo from a PD painting is not subject to copyright. Which would fall under the first option I mentioned.
Mathias
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern.
1709 is modern?
Licensing is also quite modern.
I'm pretty sure the romans had the concept. There are certain types of business transactions that are rather hard to do without them (for example you might give someone license to mine part of your land or move something across it) and government granted monopolies frequently sub-license.
It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
Not really. Sorting images into "almost certainly safe" and "everything else" is fairly easy.
There have been Wikimedians who explicitly stated that material that predated the oldest free licenses were unfree because they did not state their preferred license.
Links?
The analogy is true in that many people made pictures and they were bought and sold and re-use of the material was not considered, let alone re-use in our current digital scenarios.
Fortunately such situations are trivial to deal with. Since IP rights are separate from the physical object unless the image was commissioned the copyright states with the initial author.
Historic situations are ambiguous from our perspective of what makes a "proper clearance". Often the photographers is likely to be dead. It is impossible to ask him, it is almost impossible to learn who the current right holder may be.
None of that is of any significance. Without a positive release statement no release exists therefor copyright remains locked down and in possession of the heirs
It is exactly to prevent the material to be lost forever that this material ended up in archives and museums. It is exactly to prevent this material to be lost and remain lost that museums and archives want to share this material with us.
Forever? Outside of Mexico anything over 170 years old can be assumed to be in the public domain.
Hoi, The Romans and whoever in 1709 did not have photography nor did they have Internet. The practice of considering digital re-use is definitely a recent invention. Our current best practices were not in place until recently. The notion that this can be expected of our recent past is interesting to say the least it is not realistic.
The notion that a commissioned work means a transfer of copyright is not necessarily right. This has been considered in court in several countries and this is not necessarily how it can be safely understood. There are collections that have been given to museums and archives with the express understanding that the works would be preserved. Current best practice has it that part of such preservation is the digitisation and the publication on the Internet.
When we cooperate with museums and archives in this, we will find that it is extremely unlikely to get problems with their material. There are all kinds of measures that can be taken to lessen the impact of an unlikely copyright holder to object. One of them is the release only in a low resolution.
In some of the responses in this thread I find that people take a position where a museum or archive is the "opposition". This may be true for some museums or archives, but in this context we are talking about organisations that want to partner with us. They want to partner with us because we provide a platform that makes this material relevant again. Thanks, GerardM
2009/3/30 geni geniice@gmail.com
2009/3/30 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, When you talk about clearing properly you are applying modern notions to historic situations. The notion of copyright and clearing copyrights is quite modern.
1709 is modern?
Licensing is also quite modern.
I'm pretty sure the romans had the concept. There are certain types of business transactions that are rather hard to do without them (for example you might give someone license to mine part of your land or move something across it) and government granted monopolies frequently sub-license.
It is easy to expect the clearing of copyright to be done properly it is however an unreasonalbe expectation.
Not really. Sorting images into "almost certainly safe" and "everything else" is fairly easy.
There have been Wikimedians who explicitly stated that material that predated the oldest free licenses were unfree because they did not state their preferred license.
Links?
The analogy is true in that many people made pictures and they were bought and sold and re-use of the material was not considered, let alone re-use in our current digital scenarios.
Fortunately such situations are trivial to deal with. Since IP rights are separate from the physical object unless the image was commissioned the copyright states with the initial author.
Historic situations are ambiguous from our perspective of what makes a "proper clearance". Often the photographers is likely to be dead. It is impossible to ask him, it is almost impossible to learn who the current right holder may be.
None of that is of any significance. Without a positive release statement no release exists therefor copyright remains locked down and in possession of the heirs
It is exactly to prevent the material to be lost forever that this material ended up in archives and museums. It is
exactly
to prevent this material to be lost and remain lost that museums and archives want to share this material with us.
Forever? Outside of Mexico anything over 170 years old can be assumed to be in the public domain.
-- geni
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
2009/3/31 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The Romans and whoever in 1709 did not have photography nor did they have Internet. The practice of considering digital re-use is definitely a recent invention. Our current best practices were not in place until recently. The notion that this can be expected of our recent past is interesting to say the least it is not realistic.
It's the same legal concepts.
The notion that a commissioned work means a transfer of copyright is not necessarily right. This has been considered in court in several countries and this is not necessarily how it can be safely understood.
Commissioned works thing can be messy yes but that is nothing new. Superboy for example.
There are collections that have been given to museums and archives with the express understanding that the works would be preserved. Current best practice has it that part of such preservation is the digitisation and the publication on the Internet.
When we cooperate with museums and archives in this, we will find that it is extremely unlikely to get problems with their material.
That entirely misses the point.
There are all kinds of measures that can be taken to lessen the impact of an unlikely copyright holder to object. One of them is the release only in a low resolution.
Either a work is free in which case we go for the highest resolution possible or it is unfree and not our concern.
In some of the responses in this thread I find that people take a position where a museum or archive is the "opposition". This may be true for some museums or archives, but in this context we are talking about organisations that want to partner with us. They want to partner with us because we provide a platform that makes this material relevant again.
If it is unfree material making it relevant is a bit outside our mandate. There are many archives containing solidly free material that we do not yet have useful access to. Far better to focus on those.
On 01/04/2009, at 8:55, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/3/31 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The Romans and whoever in 1709 did not have photography nor did they have Internet. The practice of considering digital re-use is definitely a recent invention. Our current best practices were not in place until recently. The notion that this can be expected of our recent past is interesting to say the least it is not realistic.
It's the same legal concepts.
That is disengenuius. To say that the Romans and we have "the same legal concepts" of copyright is as relevant as saying that [[Galen]] and us have the same concepts of medecine! They are our origins but completely irrelevant to our practical discussions now.
The notion that a commissioned work means a transfer of copyright is not necessarily right. This has been considered in court in several countries and this is not necessarily how it can be safely understood.
Commissioned works thing can be messy yes but that is nothing new. Superboy for example.
There are collections that have been given to museums and archives with the express understanding that the works would be preserved. Current best practice has it that part of such preservation is the digitisation and the publication on the Internet.
When we cooperate with museums and archives in this, we will find that it is extremely unlikely to get problems with their material.
That entirely misses the point.
Best practice in preservation does now involve digitizarion but it does not *necessarily* mean placing that digisation on the Internet. I believe geni's point is that our concern is copyright status rather than preservation practice.
There are all kinds of measures that can be taken to lessen the impact of an unlikely copyright holder to object. One of them is the release only in a low resolution.
Either a work is free in which case we go for the highest resolution possible or it is unfree and not our concern.
You are both right. We are making Commons in a way that people can be black/white about their ability to use it's content. However in practice copyright is simply not black and white - no matter how easy it is to talk about death dates of the Author etc. If we hope to build relationships with cultural institutions for the long term it is simply not productive to say to them "we only take things that you have specific release forms for and give us your highest resolution". Museums will often work with us if we don't make absolutist demands about image resolution for example. That eat, in a year or two we can return to them and demonstrate qualitatively and quantitatively our value and *then* ask for a higher resolution. Showing them our features pictures (and their pageview stats) is another good way of doing this.
I don't agree with using Commons on a seemingly 'temporary' basis - use it till someone complains. In practice we can delete images but it wouldnt be a good thing to be relying on that. In practice whem dealing with museums do like this fact as it fives them aome assuramces we have systems in place. If the museum is willing to place the images on flickr with the "no known copyright" tag, then we should be welcoming of the files too.
In some of the responses in this thread I find that people take a position where a museum or archive is the "opposition".
I find this often, and many museums find us to be the enemy, so I beleve it is up to us to make the gesture of friendship since we are the 'new kids' and we have much to learn from them.
This may be true for some museums or archives, but in this context we are talking about organisations that want to partner with us. They want to partner with us because we provide a platform that makes this material relevant again.
If it is unfree material making it relevant is a bit outside our mandate.
I agree this is very true. But I don't necessarily agree it is unfree material. As I said a while ago, museums are very hesitant to make a legally binding statement of black/white copyright status. We should be working with them to help them make that judgement.
There are many archives containing solidly free material that we do not yet have useful access to. Far better to focus on those.
-Liam [[witty lama]]
-- geni
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
The idea of Commons is to have a repository of material that can be used in the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation and that is freely licensed as such. The notion of "fair use" is open in many jurisdictions and it is for this reason that the English Wikipedia insists on using this.
Fair use has nothing to do with this. And it's not applicable to commons.
If Commons does not want this material we might want to have a second repository for such material. It would then be for individual projects to accept this material or not. The appreciation of what Commons is about seems also open for interpretation :)
We might as well allow "for wikipedia only" material. because that's what this basically is: "safe enough for us, but we can't promis it's really free". We would no longer be a free-content-only project.
What we should lobby for is more sensible laws about orphan works. Museums would be great allies in this. Until now, they don't care much, because they don't get sued. Perhaps we can make them care a little more.
-- daniel
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On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de wrote:
What we should lobby for is more sensible laws about orphan works. Museums would be great allies in this. Until now, they don't care much, because they don't get sued. Perhaps we can make them care a little more.
Libraries would in theory make greate allies in this, too. However, they seem to prefer some "temporaray orphanage" situation which can be reversed. I would prefer permanent solutions, even if they raise the treshold on when and how a creative work becomes officially declared orphan. And yes, we should lobby on this topic.
Mathias
2009/3/30 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com:
Libraries would in theory make greate allies in this, too. However, they seem to prefer some "temporaray orphanage" situation which can be reversed. I would prefer permanent solutions, even if they raise the treshold on when and how a creative work becomes officially declared orphan. And yes, we should lobby on this topic.
Mathias
No we should not. The whole orphan works thing has the potential to be rather damaging since it allows copyrights to effectively stripped from the general population while keeping big business copyrights intact.