People trying to withdraw their released images

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Joe Szilagyi

4 Aug 2008 4 Aug '08

6:16 p.m.

Posting here as sometimes the admin noticeboard seems a bit too quiet... I've seen comments that this is happening more frequently now, where [[User:Foo]] will suddenly say, "I withdraw release/copyrights/permission/I just want all these 20-100+ images removed from Commons". I had one that I reverted on 10 or so images the other day where the uploader wanted images--good ones at that--from 2006 deleted because Google was indexing them on Commons. They were all images of random streets in another country. Should the upload forms be more clear/explicit and politely in-your-face that once material is released under copyleft/GFDL, you can't technically undo that? - Joe

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Judson Dunn

4 Aug 4 Aug

6:37 p.m.

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 11:16 AM, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Should the upload forms be more clear/explicit and politely in-your-face that once material is released under copyleft/GFDL, you can't technically undo that? - Joe

I think so. I had a request similar to that a couple days ago. The images were just so-so, and there were some other issues, but the person clearly thought that would be fine to revoke. PD, even. Maybe the wording could be more clear that you are licensing your images to multiple projects, rather than some action akin to uploading them to flickr. Not sure about the details, but anything that will get people to at least realize that under our licenses revocation isn't really possible, and in some cases even if we want to be nice and remove them from wikimedia servers, removal of the images from other places (say from downstream users) isn't very likely. Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion

Codeispoetry

6:46 p.m.

Take a look at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Steschke/licence&ac… while talking about this topic. I'm not willing to revert Steschke again, may some other sysop do so.

Daniel Schwen

6:57 p.m.

On Monday 04 August 2008 11:46:05 am Codeispoetry wrote:

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Take a look at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Steschke/licence&ac… =history while talking about this topic. I'm not willing to revert Steschke again, may some other sysop do so.

This should be reverted and protected, as every user-license template. -- [[en:User:Dschwen]] [[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]] [[commons:User:Dschwen]]

Robert Rohde

7:08 p.m.

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 9:57 AM, Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de> wrote:

...

On Monday 04 August 2008 11:46:05 am Codeispoetry wrote:

Take a look at

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Steschke/licence&ac…

=history while talking about this topic. I'm not willing to revert

Steschke

again, may some other sysop do so.

This should be reverted and protected, as every user-license template.

While protection may make sense when there is a problem, pre-emptive protection of all user-license templates is both rude and unnecessary. -Robert Rohde

Daniel Schwen

7:49 p.m.

...

While protection may make sense when there is a problem, pre-emptive protection of all user-license templates is both rude and unnecessary.

Yeah, that came out wrong. There are two options. Either the user subst his templates, or they get protected. We've had both before.

Cecil

11:46 p.m.

I've just subst-ed all images Steschkes uploaded before his licence change (and he definitely was aware about the licence when he uploaded the images). So with the rest of the images the new version of his licence is valid. Sadly Steschke immediately started with insults and then began to revert the substing. Now your opinion is needed: I have blocked him for now to stop him reverting to the stricter licence (his insults I can ignore, it's his typcial behaviour), but he uploaded several good images until May. Tthat's about when it was noticed that he changes cc-by-sa and GDFL-self to GFDL1.2 and the whole fight started. Should we just protect the images from him or accept that he probably never will be a productive user anymore. If you think that there is still hope please unblock him and protect the 124 images in my contributions list from beginning with Image:DE Manfred Maier 2007-10-09 by Steschke.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:DE_Manfred_Maier_20… ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&of… ) Cecil 2008/8/4 Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de>

...

While protection may make sense when there is a problem, pre-emptive protection of all user-license templates is both rude and unnecessary.

Yeah, that came out wrong. There are two options. Either the user subst his templates, or they get protected. We've had both before. _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Robert Rohde

5 Aug 5 Aug

12:58 a.m.

Perhaps I am missing something, but we seem to be fighting over the hypothetical difference between GFDL-1.2 and GFDL-self. I say "hypothetical" because unless or until there is a new version of the GFDL beyond 1.2 there is no functional difference at all. Any chance people can take a breather and perhaps talk this out? Getting to a 3 month block on Commons for a DE-wiki admin seems to be a remarkable degree of escalation for a problem that has no immediate consequences. (I don't want to single out either Cecil or Steschke here, since escalation clearly happened on both sides.) More talking, and less reverting, surely would have helped here. Sadly, I don't speak German, but perhaps someone who does can help sort this out? -Robert Rohde 2008/8/4 Cecil <cecilatwp(a)gmail.com>

...

While protection may make sense when there is a problem, pre-emptive

protection of all user-license templates is both rude and unnecessary.

_______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Daniel Schwen

12:59 a.m.

...

That's about when it was noticed that he changes cc-by-sa and GDFL-self to GFDL1.2 and the whole fight started. Should we just protect the images from him or accept that he probably never will be a productive user anymore. If

Hm, it seem like Steschke is using the "temporary insanity" defense that Cary outlined in his last post ;-). His first license change had a comment in the edit summary that roughly says that he was not aware of some specific properties of the GFDL (the "or later versions" thing). On one hand it shouldn't be our mission to make people miserable. On the other hand, we owe the users and re-users of the images at commons fighting for a dependable licensing. It would degrade the reliability of commons if we make room for precedents like this IMO. Tough one. -- [[en:User:Dschwen]] [[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]] [[commons:User:Dschwen]]

Cecil

1:19 a.m.

Steschke knows excactly what he is doing. Only a few weeks before we were on a workshop for pictures (organized by German Wikipedia users), where a lot of those things were discussed. I also offered Stescke to reduce/remove his block if he stops escalating and revoking his licences for the old images. Let's see how it is tomorrow, because since a few minutes Stescke is also blocked on de (not by me). Cecil 2008/8/5 Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de>

...

That's about when it was noticed that he changes cc-by-sa and GDFL-self

GFDL1.2 and the whole fight started. Should we just protect the images

from

him or accept that he probably never will be a productive user anymore.

If Hm, it seem like Steschke is using the "temporary insanity" defense that Cary outlined in his last post ;-). His first license change had a comment in the edit summary that roughly says that he was not aware of some specific properties of the GFDL (the "or later versions" thing). On one hand it shouldn't be our mission to make people miserable. On the other hand, we owe the users and re-users of the images at commons fighting for a dependable licensing. It would degrade the reliability of commons if we make room for precedents like this IMO. Tough one. -- [[en:User:Dschwen]] [[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]] [[commons:User:Dschwen]] _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Cary Bass

4 Aug 4 Aug

8:46 p.m.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Joe Szilagyi wrote: | Posting here as sometimes the admin noticeboard seems a bit too quiet... | | I've seen comments that this is happening more frequently now, where | [[User:Foo]] will suddenly say, "I withdraw | release/copyrights/permission/I just want all these 20-100+ images | removed from Commons". I had one that I reverted on 10 or so images the | other day where the uploader wanted images--good ones at that--from 2006 | deleted because Google was indexing them on Commons. They were all | images of random streets in another country. | | Should the upload forms be more clear/explicit and politely in-your-face | that once material is released under copyleft/GFDL, you can't | technically undo that? | | - Joe | And before we get too hard-nosed about this, there are instances where we want to grant the individual the right to withdraw protection--believe it or not there are instances where people are actually not aware of the full implication of what free licensing means when they uploaded (yes, it takes some stupidity, but we are nice people, believe it or not). There are other possible reasons that are good faith rationale. We should make every attempt to address their concerns of course, and explain that if something has already been reused there's nothing we can do about it on that end, but we should be willing to remove their media in order to maintain good relations, which has a great potential to spread and evangelize to our free media culture in the future. Of course, if their work has already been distributed widely across our projects, we'll certainly have to take that under consideration. I might also add that it is pretty darn easy to distinguish when someone is withdrawing their license in a good faith manner and when it's "I'm taking my toys and bringing them elsewhere." "Do no harm" is the operating principal. - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 x 601 Fax: 415.882.0495 E-Mail: cary(a)wikimedia.org

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Robin Schwab

5 Aug 5 Aug

10:50 p.m.

Cary Bass schrieb:

...

people, believe it or not). There are other possible reasons that are good faith rationale. We should make every attempt to address their concerns of course, and explain that if something has already been reused there's nothing we can do about it on that end, but we should be willing to remove their media in order to maintain good relations, which has a great potential to spread and evangelize to our free media culture in the future.

I think this is a good thought. We have so few to give why not give the users a right to delete their own images? Just because you can't revoke a license that does not /force/ us to keep and display the images forever. Currently the situation seems unfair to me: The contributor has to give an irrevocable license but he does not get the right that we keep his images. Specially when you send a OTRS request this affronts potential contributors. Myself I'd like to delete some of my worst early images or upload a newer version and delete the older. Why not make Commons sexier with a little effort? Yours sincerly Robin

Stan Shebs

6 Aug 6 Aug

12:53 a.m.

Robin Schwab wrote:

...

Cary Bass schrieb:

One of our selling points is that people can reuse our images with confidence that they will continue to be freely licensed. If uploaders can start randomly pulling images, perhaps for no deeper reason that their beloved image isn't the featured picture in an article or whatever, it does not give any confidence to reusers that they won't be gone after as well; for one thing, the statement of license is on commons, and itself disappears when the image is deleted. We need uploaders to make a commitment that the material will be free in perpetuity. If an uploader isn't willing to make that commitment, then the supposed free license is meaningless, and the image might as well be proprietary - I don't want that kind of material and I don't want that kind of contributor participating, ever. Stan

Henning Schlottmann

5 Aug 5 Aug

11:37 a.m.

Joe Szilagyi wrote:

...

I've seen comments that this is happening more frequently now, where [[User:Foo]] will suddenly say, "I withdraw release/copyrights/permission/I just want all these 20-100+ images removed from Commons". I had one that I reverted on 10 or so images the other day where the uploader wanted images--good ones at that--from 2006 deleted because Google was indexing them on Commons. They were all images of random streets in another country.

I'd like to raise a similar question. How do we deal with disgruntled contributors, who deliberately edit out the license tag of their own images? The result is, that the images are found by the bot on the next run and, because our contributor does not react to notification, deleted without discussion. We even had a commons sysop doing this on his way out, and lost a number of high quality and even awarded images that way. Ciao Henning

Artur Fijałkowski

12:01 p.m.

I don't know how it's in other countries, but in Poland copyright act says that author ALWAYS can withdraw license. AJF/WarX

Henning Schlottmann

2:03 p.m.

Artur Fijałkowski wrote:

...

I don't know how it's in other countries, but in Poland copyright act says that author ALWAYS can withdraw license.

Are you really sure about that? Because it would be a violation of every principle of copyright. Licenses can be limited upfront to terms, but an unlimited license - such as our GFDL or our cc-licenses, are irrevocable. Everywhere, including Poland. There might be a special provision in Polish copyright law, that licenses may be repealed under very limited conditions regarding political or social convictions. But in that case the author has to pay damages to any legitimate publisher of the work. A revocation on the spur of the moment because someone doesn't like the project anymore is not a legal right and we should decide how to deal with those cases. Ciao Henning

Artur Fijałkowski

2:14 p.m.

2008/8/5 Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann(a)gmx.net>et>:

...

Artur Fijałkowski wrote:

I don't know how it's in other countries, but in Poland copyright act says that author ALWAYS can withdraw license.

The problem is, that only exclusive license cannot be withdrawned, but this type of license must be written on paper. If I good remember there are people in Poland who know that this mean, that all copyleft licenses aren't 100% compatible with polish law. But for now the problem is ignored. AJF/WarX

Robert Rohde

4:52 p.m.

If you get right down there are a lot of things about copyleft that are untested in most legal regimes around the world. A related issue to the one Artur raises is that many legal systems have an absolute right to withdraw contractual offers if they have not already been mutually agreed upon. If you believe that a copyright license is a form of contract (which is probably true in at least some jurisdictions), then it is likely that the licensor can stop offering a copyleft license to new parties, even though they can't revoke it from any existing users. If a jurisdiction allows the license to be removed from future uses (all the language about "perpetual" notwithstanding), then that opens the door for all kinds of headaches for downstream users that weren't already using the image prior to the license withdrawal. Obviously, this is just one kind of ugly scenario, but issues like this will eventually have to be confronted as the copyleft movement continues to stretch copyright law beyond the limits at which it was originally conceived. Personally, I'm optimistic that the letter of copyright law will ultimately be able to play amicably with the concept of copyleft, but we will have to see. -Robert Rohde On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 5:03 AM, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann(a)gmx.net>wrote;wrote:

...

Artur Fijałkowski wrote:

I don't know how it's in other countries, but in Poland copyright act says that author ALWAYS can withdraw license.

Stephen Bain

5:10 p.m.

2008/8/6 Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

A related issue to the one Artur raises is that many legal systems have an absolute right to withdraw contractual offers if they have not already been mutually agreed upon. If you believe that a copyright license is a form of contract (which is probably true in at least some jurisdictions), then it is likely that the licensor can stop offering a copyleft license to new parties, even though they can't revoke it from any existing users.

There are two issues here. The question of whether a copyright licence is revocable depends (at least in the common law jurisdictions, not sure whether civil law approaches this differently) on whether it is a bare licence or a contractual one. Bare licences can be revoked at will (unless there is an estoppel at play, for example) but contractual licences can only be revoked as provided for under the contract or under general principles of contract law. On the second issue you're absolutely right, a person can simply stop making copies available under whatever licence, without affecting the rights of those who are already using a copy under the licence. It's rendered somewhat meaningless in the digital context, however. -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

Daniel Schwen

5:13 p.m.

IANAL, but...

...

Let's assume mutual agreement between the uploader and the commons project (i.e. Wikimedia)

...

[..] parties, even though they can't revoke it from any existing users. If a jurisdiction allows the license to be removed from future uses (all the

Pedro Sanchez

5:18 p.m.

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de> wrote:

...

IANAL, but...

Let's assume mutual agreement between the uploader and the commons project (i.e. Wikimedia)

[..] parties, even though they can't revoke it from any existing users. If a jurisdiction allows the license to be removed from future uses (all the

The existing user would thus be the commons project, which effectively has been granted the license to redistribute under the same license. So commons would act as a proxy between the original uploader and the reusers of the content, shielding the reusers from the whims of the original uploader. -- [[en:User:Dschwen]] [[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]] [[commons:User:Dschwen]] _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

But wouldn't that make commons more vulnerable by the same argument?

Daniel Schwen

5:25 p.m.

...

has been granted the license to redistribute under the same license. So commons would act as a proxy between the original uploader and the reusers of the content, shielding the reusers from the whims of the original uploader.

But wouldn't that make commons more vulnerable by the same argument?

In what respect? Liability for copyright violations? We are taking those pretty seriouly in any case. It boils down to the question whether commons is a) just a marketplace, a technological means which only facilitates a transaction between the original uploader and the reuser b) a third and equal party in the transaction, standing between original uploader and reuser And I think we are kidding ourselves if we just assume a) is the case. Commons hosts, displays the images. It effectively 'uses' them. We couldn't afford to leave copyright violations on the site in any case. The vulnerability is already there (just as vulnerable as any entity on the internet, ignoring this doesn't make you bulletproof ;-) ) -- [[en:User:Dschwen]] [[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]] [[commons:User:Dschwen]]

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13 participants

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participants (13)

Artur Fijałkowski
Cary Bass
Cecil
Codeispoetry
Daniel Schwen
Henning Schlottmann
Joe Szilagyi
Judson Dunn
Pedro Sanchez
Robert Rohde
Robin Schwab
Stan Shebs
Stephen Bain