On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: No, I didn't read the deletion discussions. It sounds like a good case for Deletion Review. Ryan

Commons is supposed to host images that we can guarantee are Free. It is by hosting images that we wish were free, or images that we could imagine to be Free, or images that we don't know to be copyrighted, that we harm the project. An image for which there is a reasonable doubt is an image that does not belong on Commons, period. As for the question of consensus, it is perfectly proper to ignore opinions based on wishful thinking or ignorance. This is a technical issue, and knowledgeable technocrats rightfully have precedence over dilettantes and militants. To conclude, I fully sympathise and concur with those of us who find national laws and copyright durations to be excessively tilted against users. I bring to their attention that by twisting and ignoring these laws, we play into the hand of their defenders: firstly by offering them the argument that their regulations do not in fact stifle expression; and secondly by exposing ourselves to legal action that can be brought to bear whenever convenient to their interests. -- Rama On 17 June 2014 08:17, Neel Gupta <freedom.ne0(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hoi, Given the investment in so many data centres in the USA and the lack of investment in cache servers around the world this is highly unlikely to be even feasible. Thanks, GerardM On 18 June 2014 14:33, Neel Gupta <freedom.ne0(a)gmail.com> wrote:

The concept of an "Uncommons" as defined as either a new set of rules, or as an alternate to WMF-hosted websites is not going to solve our current problem of lacking images to support our educational goals. We should be discussing how we can continue our mission to disseminate the sum of all knowledge when we are handicapped by copyright laws, period. Fruitful discussions deteriorated when the issue of the "URAA-restored copyrights" [1] launched the Commons discussion in 2012 [2] which led to mass deletions. Since then we have seen some undeletions, but in general the whole drama of it has become too complicated to explain to the people we care most about, which is our dwindling body of contributors across projects. I tend to contribute well within our current Commons hosting parameters, but every now and then I step out of my comfort zone and feel as Fae has described in his mail above. I really like Gerard's idea of somehow linking images on WikiData, which will help significantly with discovery by readers and also serve as self-explanatory templates for multi-language users. However, though I firmly agree that we should proceed along those lines, this still won't solve the core problem, because even on WikiData we cannot make interwiki links to *all* images we need and I personally believe we shouldn't try. I think that the only real solution for our educational mission going forward is to let WikiData take a similar approach to what Europeana is doing for European museums. There are lots of specific organizations on the internet working on exactly the same copyright problems we are, but they have a huge advantage that we don't have, which is that they are focussed on a finite set of images. We often end up talking in circles because we want locally hosted images for "everything". If we take a collaborative approach, we can either include a link to a file, serve our readers a reduced preview of a file or serve a full-fledged image-viewer-enabled version of a file, all depending on whether the physical location of the file is in the Wikiverse or not. If we set this up, we might make it possible to "cross-load" individual files from Wikipedia and vetted external projects via WikiData to Commons rather than force people to upload with the default Commons uploader. What I think we need is a good illustration of the scale of the problem, which admittedly is hard to show. Personally I was very upset when images of artworks by Leo Gestel were deleted last year [3], even though I was not the uploader who put all the work into all of those artwork templates on those files. My niche interest on Wikipedia is 17th-century painters, but I have also worked on colleagues of Leo Gestel whose works cannot be shown at all in their Wikipedia articles, just because they "forgot" to date their paintings. I have noticed a "copyright gap" occurring when Wikipedians give up trying to illustrate such articles. When that happens, we all lose. Not only are we missing the Commons images, we are missing work on the corresponding Wikipedia articles. I made a comparison of Wikipedia artists matched against a dataset of painters which illustrates a small piece of this "copyright gap".[4] Another interesting gap occurs when you look at the work of painters vs. artists who ventured beyond two dimensions, such as sculptors, furniture makers, porcelain artists, and instrument makers. We cover painters and printmakers so much better, thanks to Bridgeman vs. Corel, as long as we ignore the fine print.[5] The OTRS system for image release by an artist's direct heirs is the only alternate route, and there is no alternate available for orphan works that I know of.[6] In general, Wikipedia has much better coverage of "really dead" people as opposed to "not so dead" people. Discussion regarding the problems of BLP's is often made without realizing that they are actually edge cases compared to the large group of people born after 1800 and who died before Wikipedia began. This is a combination of the copyright gap and the frustrations of experienced contributors who have had their hands slapped on Commons and other projects. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:URAA-restored_copyrights [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/All_files_copy… [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Post-1923_work… [4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WP_entities_for_artists_vs_PCF_Marc… [5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009/01#Bri… [6] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OTRS On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:

2014-06-21 2:27 GMT+05:30 Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de>de>: Commons is here to serve Wikipedia projects, not to antagonize them, like it is the case. I think users of the Hebrew Wikipedia has the right to know and to say what they think about what affects them. Yann

Hoi. Blocking because people do not agree with you is very much antagonising. The intention is that Commons serves other projects so why is someone blocked when they make sure people take notice of what is happening at Commons? I fins it is rather offensive all these !@#$%%. It gives the impression that there is no conversation possible and that it has degenerated into a power play. Thanks, Gerard On 20 June 2014 23:23, Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de> wrote:

Hoi, Canvassing was the word used.. and did I not follow up the sentence you quoted with informing other communities what is happening at Commons? That is why I understand this block happened. Thanks, Gerard On 20 June 2014 23:36, Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de> wrote:

Commons is not there to serve other projects. Commons is a project of its own standing, and the other projects are there to serve it just as much as it is there to serve other projects. It is really dispiriting to see how certain people see Commonists as some sort of second-class contributors. That is wrong in every sense of the word -- it is an error and an injustice. -- Rama On 20 June 2014 23:45, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 21 June 2014 05:34, Rama Neko <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote: This further supports the proposal that an actual service project is needed. - d.

On 21 June 2014 07:46, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: In the case of the Israeli stuff not really. They've got a specific problem that doesn't really need a full blown service project to address. Specifically we appear to suffer from a lack of Israeli editors able to write to the Israeli government asking what the Israeli government's position is on overseas copyrights on government works is. On paper Wikimedia Israel would be ideally suited for the task. -- geni

It makes as much sense to say that Commons is a repository for other Wikimedia projects, than to say that Wikipedia is here to provide encyclopedic context to the media of Wikimedia Commons. Where the real asymetry lies is in the feeling of superiority of certain users of others projects who see Commons as a "service project", and from there construct the notion that jackbooting in and ordering people around is remotely legitimate (and, to be practical, has a chance to work). There is a small number of users, always the same, who regularly attempt to push an agenda of lax copyright standards for Commons; when this fails they try to impose their proposed policies by drumming up support from people with vested interests from other projects, and notorious authoritarians. Has anybody ever seen an influx of Commonists flocking to wp.he to "treat it as a problem"? That is where the real problem is. The issue is not hosting these media, they can be hosted locally on the projects that use them as "Free-but-not-on-Commons", or as "Fair use". The issue is beating Commons into submission, as an aim in itself. Well, pardon us if we object. -- Rama On 21 June 2014 19:19, Yann Forget <yannfo(a)gmail.com> wrote:

The image isnt directly lost to the other projects Commons has a policy of allowing temporary restoration for transfer to another project under fair use provisions, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests#Temporary_und… as Gerard kind of identifies the issue is in the communication when deletions occurs to project whos contributors may not be active on Commons and are therefore unable to contribute to the deletion discussion process. So the question then is how can we improve this communitcation between projects, my thoughts are; - notification on article talk pages of articles where the media is in use, with a link to the discussion so they can participate - when a discussion is closed then a notification to the talk page giving the result and advising of options of delreview or transfer locally. Personally I wouldnt like to see the communication of Commons activities put in the hands of a third project(WikiData) thats only going to make more points of arguments On 22 June 2014 14:59, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- GN. Vice President Wikimedia Australia WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com

PS: my last rely to GerardM, not to Gnangarra. On 22 June 2014 09:52, Rama Neko <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 22 June 2014 07:59, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: ... My understanding is that a "wikidatafication" of Commons is highly unlikely to happen in 2014, and no plan current gives a date for when this would be implemented. Happy to be corrected, preferably by linking to a committed schedule. Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

Back to topic: The purpose of commons is to be an *Exhibition *for public domain digital media, & the purpose of Wikipedia is to be an *Encyclopedia*. The problem arises when commons can't keep the donated digital media, because US laws prohibit it. This problem is enlarged because every Wikipedia regional site uses commons as a digital media library, and moves all the PD works to commons, which then deletes half of them due to copyright incompatibility. On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Rama Neko <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hoi, HELL NO Commons is not an exhibition.. that implies that things can be found by people looking for "i. Anyway according to the main page "a database of 21,617,796 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute". Thanks, GerardM On 24 June 2014 16:24, Neel Gupta <freedom.ne0(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jun 2014, Magnus Manske wrote: The problem is that people from other projects are uploading files in a good faith understanding that Commons will look after them, as they work on the principle that unless something is provably unfree then it is acceptable to host. Unfortunately, Commons actually operates on the principle that if there a possibility that someone somewhere may in future claim that a file is unfree, with or without proof, and with or without merit to the claim, then it cannot be held unless we have proof (of a higher standard than required by professional copyright lawyers) that the file is completely free in the US and the source country, now and at all conceivable future times, then it must be deleted. There is also a great reluctance to engage with anyone who has a lesser understanding of copyright than the self-educated and self-appointed experts on Commons, and with anyone who has a lesser grasp of English than they do. There is an equal reluctance to let anyone using the images know that there are questions about a file. Until this attitude changes, Commons is not and cannot be a reliable host of media for other projects, and usage as such must be deprecated and an alternative, reliable service project initiated. ---- Chris McKenna cmckenna(a)sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart Antoine de Saint Exupery

Commons isnt damaged that needs to be routed around, the laws are an ass and problems will follow where ever, except to maybe a handful of countries who don't give a fluffy duck about copyright. the problem is communication between projects, thats fixable On 25 June 2014 00:29, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- GN. Vice President Wikimedia Australia WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com

On 24 June 2014 20:24, Rama Neko <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote: Rather than making personal attacks, please explain your understanding of what the actual issue is here, and why it keeps coming up and coming up. - d.

There could be other similar questions, for instance the issue of what "anonymous work" means (a naive understanding will equate that to not knowing who the author is, which is wrong, there have been lawsuits brought by right holders on such matters). In general, copyright law is complicated, and international copyright law is very complicated. In some cases there will be material deleted, and it will be frustrating, and I sympathise, but that's life for you. The issue keeps coming up because of a culture of seeing Commons as a second-rate project subordinated to the interests of other projects, and culture of forum shopping when not satisfied with the answers received in the usual fora on Commons. It will stop occurring when everybody will have accepted that it is not Commons that causes these questions, and that a certain amount of frustration is unavoidable given the context. -- Rama On 24 June 2014 22:44, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 26 June 2014 05:31, Neel Gupta <freedom.ne0(a)gmail.com> wrote: There is no reluctance, all that is needed is a credible release statement from the copyright holder. If no human creativity was involved, then there can be no copyright on the works, however one rarely sees publishers who actually do claim to be publishing the 'word of God', or similar, in a rush to legally waive all copyright for their publications. One can starkly see this apparent double standard when it comes to the writings (or "teachings") of spiritualists who claim that their words (or recorded performances) are directly controlled by entities such as the long dead, or extra-terrestrial "masters", for which there can be no legal copyright, were they to instruct their lawyers to take the same claims as literally true; it seems odd that their publishers still claim copyright and are keen to take money on behalf of named copyright holders that claim to not own the very same works. In these situations it would be unfair to expect Commons administrators to ignore copyright claims of publishers, when the courts do not. Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

On 26 June 2014 07:02, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: Gerard, I have said nothing about the Israeli government, neither has anyone else in this thread. Your chosen wording ("you INSIST") makes it appear like I have said something, somewhere, against the Israeli government. Please provide a diff or kindly stop trolling by posting chaff like this. You have a significant track record over the last two months of making completely unnecessary aggressive personal comments about me on Wikimedia-L, and now you have followed me to this list. Stop. Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

On 26 June 2014 07:02, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: The Israeli government has denied no such thing. All it has stated is that it doesn't hold the copyrights within Israel. We have no documentation of it expressing a position on its overseas copyrights. Is there any part of this you don't understand? -- geni

On 26 June 2014 11:22, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: Can you provide any statute or caselaw to support that assertion? -- geni

On 26 June 2014 12:22, Chris McKenna <cmckenna(a)sucs.org> wrote: You? Geni is not King/Queen of Commons. No. Please supply a link to WMF Legal's published statement saying this. There was an RFC, this was not the closing statement, in fact nothing like it. Commons is not ruled by "people complaining about Commons", this would not be consensus, it would be a complainer-ocracy that would certainly run the project straight into the ground, probably being led by the "hasten the day" lobbyists. No, "Commons admins" have made no such statement. No, "Reasonable people" is a bizarre polarizing statement. It divides the world into the "right thinking good people" and makes everyone else unreasonable Satanists, or something similar. I don't see how fiction that seems intended to polarize or unfairly parody the entire Commons community is a good use of this list. Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

I'm a it.wikisource user, and I followed and read this interesting talk; Commons data repository is extremely important in our work roadmap as you know. I reported too this talk into our village pump. In brief: the more other projects users are encouraged/forced to use Commons as the main/exclusive media repository, the more Commons has to be seen as a service for other projects, and local upload can be discouraged; the more Commons is considered an indipendent project, the more users should be encouraged to choose freely between Commons or local upload. Alex 2014-06-26 16:15 GMT+02:00 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>:

On 26 June 2014 12:22, Chris McKenna <cmckenna(a)sucs.org> wrote: The obvious problem with the ah "Reasonable people's" argument is that the British government has done exactly that so "can't" clearly isn't correct. That aside the position is based on a falsehood. There is no real question that the isreali does in fact hold certian copyrights in countries that don't follow the rule of the shorter term. Claiming otherwise mostly indicates a lack of familularity with copyright. What we need is a statement that they either surrender those copyrights or that they won't enforce them. Personally I think the problem is that the Israeli government hasn't been asked (I'm more than happy to provide help with the wording of the question if that's the problem for our Israeli wikipedians) but given the complexity of Israeli politics it would be impossible to rule out other possibilities until the question is asked. -- geni

Hoi Fae, Please indicate where I claim that you have said anything against the Israeli government. I have not as far as I am aware. You assume that I have something against you personally. I do not know you except for the arguments that you use. I observe that you easily find offence and it is becoming obvious that you believe that I try to victimise you.. Now why would I? What is there for me to gain? I try and stay on subject and argue my points. Some of the points I made, particularly the ones where I pointed out to you that you do not move on and away from your former office I will agree that they address you personally. However, I do argue that you can and should do better .. I even pointed out how you could do that and why. Fae, please look at the way you have been arguing. You have indicated several times now that you want me to shut up. Going so far that I should not come back unless I came up with a project showing and proving my point.. I did exactly that. Where you assume that I am trolling and victimising you, I would like for you to consider your behaviour towards me. Thanks, GerardM On 26 June 2014 12:29, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I know this may sound like a rather silly question to ask but arent all WMF projects regardless of language hosted on US servers and therefore subject to US copyright On 27 June 2014 07:30, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: -- GN. Vice President Wikimedia Australia WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com

Which is why I suggested... "...At this point, I think it would be a good idea to start a discussion on whether to move the Wikimedia servers out of US jurisdiction." On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 5:13 AM, Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hoi, Thanks for using understandable English. GerardM On 24 June 2014 21:24, Rama Neko <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I don't quite know what it means to say that the more Commons is used by other projects the more it becomes a service project (*), but it certainly make its responsibility heavier for stating that a document is under a Free licence. Hence the more Commons is used, the more rigourous it should be. -- Rama (*) Wikipedia is more and more used as a quick reference in society; should it make it more subordinate to the interests of governments and corporations? On 27 June 2014 08:14, Yann Forget <yannfo(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 27 June 2014 18:02, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: Gerard, Rama made a general and impersonal statement, your comment makes it a personal ad hominim one ("*you*"), and attempts to marginalize Rama's point while putting yourself in superior position of speaking for the community ("we"). Please don't do that, it's appears pointlessly aggressive and inflamatory. Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

Hi, 2014-06-24 22:04 GMT+05:30 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>: No, that's not fine. I am for encouraging upload to Commons, not locally, but at the same time, because people take time and resources to upload these files, Commons review should ensure that these files are not deleted for spurious reasons, like it happens some times. FYI, I am one oldest contributor to Commons, and I have been admin there for about 9 years (I don't remember exactly). Yann

There is no denying that Commons does provide a significant service to other WMF projects, regardless of the definition and perception of what Commons is meant to be What we keep coming back to are 1. That when a file is deleted on Commons if there is an option for it to be transferred to another project then we should be doing it, but this isnt happening automatically and very rarely manually. 1. the reason being is Commons admins dont know they can, 2. think that its not their responsibility to find out if there are alternative options 3. arent language proficient to upload or seek help on other projects to ensure its a valid action 2. When Commons does discuss the status of a file people who are using the file aren't necessarily being adequately made aware of the discussions 1. there is no notification that causes watchlist activity on other projects when listing a file 2. the first time they find out about the discussion is either a dead link in an article, or a bot edit removing the file link. This just creates a hostile environment before meaningful discussion starts which further worsened by being responded to with "take it to delreview if you dont like it" 3. If a contributor from another WMF project does comment they feel as if they are being dismissed as an SPA, and not being heard because they arent active participants at Commons. 1. unfortunately they also experience being bitten, 2. discussion being tagged as not vote or some other "if you came from outside commons go away we'll deal with it" What we need to be looking at is fixing this communication problem, both before a decision is reached to encourage input and after its occurred to ensure best possible outcomes for all parties. We have been here before and will continue to keep coming back to this until we take steps to improve communication which results in meaningful success when and where possible One of the first things on Commons we could do is assume the deletion reason is valid ie URAA, fairuse etcso lets bypass Delreview and have a page for deleted file transfers requests. Where a simple request could be placed with just the file:name, destination, licensing on project and a tag to indicate it has been deleted on Commons and transferred on request with relevant links. Additionally when bots remove the links to a deleted file they could place a boiler notice on the article talk page directing them to the discussion and that page so they can understand what has occurred and what they do next. or we can........ suggestions, thoughts, speak up lets fix this and start discussing important things like which pub to meet at in London On 24 June 2014 23:27, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- GN. Vice President Wikimedia Australia WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com