https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201... it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
(A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the consent of the department to the waiver.
(B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says "[EFF]'ll probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items? Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
Thanks. John P. Sadowski
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201... it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
(A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the consent of the department to the waiver.
(B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says "[EFF]'ll probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201... it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
(A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the consent of the department to the waiver.
(B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says "[EFF]'ll probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says that it applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar http://assembly.ca.gov/legislativedeadlines has a deadline listed in June for them to vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then another deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com
wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048
items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
(A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the consent of the department to the waiver.
(B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says
"[EFF]'ll
probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be possible to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good to go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says that it applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar http://assembly.ca.gov/legislativedeadlines has a deadline listed in June for them to vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then another deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com
wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's
Legislature
Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is
one
of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it
won't
be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government
-- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048
items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could
open
the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse)
of
copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech,
stifle
open government, and harm the public domain."
(A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the consent of the department to the waiver.
(B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says
"[EFF]'ll
probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians
can
do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government works in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that interpreted its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to claim copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider these works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a "clarification", because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain in the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've interacted with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions to use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3] http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1... "Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure that California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property, this bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California public entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register intellectual property." [4] Last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7106... and last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7111... ...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be possible to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good to go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says that it applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar http://assembly.ca.gov/legislativedeadlines has a deadline listed in June for them to vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then another deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com
wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's
Legislature
Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is
one
of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it
won't
be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government
-- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048
items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could
open
the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse)
of
copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech,
stifle
open government, and harm the public domain."
(A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the consent of the department to the waiver.
(B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier
to
agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says
"[EFF]'ll
probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians
can
do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Hi,
I think it is worth repeating that fixing this issue can happen on a federal level via https://law.resource.org/pub/edicts.html. It should be within the scope of the mission of WMF and its affiliates to suggest and support such a legislative move.
Mathias
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:32 AM, John Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government works in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that interpreted its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to claim copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider these works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a "clarification", because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain in the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've interacted with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions to use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3] http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1... "Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure that California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property, this bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California public entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register intellectual property." [4] Last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7106... and last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7111... ...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be possible to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good to go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says that it applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar has a deadline listed in June for them to vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then another deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201... it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
> A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, > formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise > acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
> (A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this > article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless > the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the > consent of the department to the waiver. > > (B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights > by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed > void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says "[EFF]'ll probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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FYI-- CC wrote a post about it - https://blog.creativecommons.org/2016/05/19/california-bill/ Also, EFF has an action page up now where California residents can send a message to state reps. https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10331 tvol
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Mathias Schindler < mathias.schindler@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I think it is worth repeating that fixing this issue can happen on a federal level via https://law.resource.org/pub/edicts.html. It should be within the scope of the mission of WMF and its affiliates to suggest and support such a legislative move.
Mathias
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:32 AM, John Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government
works
in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that interpreted its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to
claim
copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider
these
works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a
"clarification",
because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain
in
the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've
interacted
with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions to use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen...
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3]
http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1...
"Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure that California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property,
this
bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California
public
entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register intellectual property." [4] Last paragraph of
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7106...
and last paragraph of
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7111...
...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be
possible
to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good
to
go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people
to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says
that it
applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar has a deadline listed in June for
them to
vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then
another
deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048
items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to
copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l...
to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost
nothing.
I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
> On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com > wrote: > > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's > Legislature > Wants to Copyright All Government Works" > > More background at > >
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
> > According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California
is
> one > of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it > won't > be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law. > > California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under > >
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government
> -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 > items). > > I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be > subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times
of
> their publication. > > Skimming the bill's changes to present law at > >
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
> it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these: > >> A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, >> formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise >> acquires. > > The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could > open > the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say,
abuse)
> of > copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, > stifle > open government, and harm the public domain." > >> (A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this >> article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights
unless
>> the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the >> consent of the department to the waiver. >> >> (B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property
rights
>> by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed >> void as against public policy. > > It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a
barrier
> to > agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the > meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice. > > https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says > "[EFF]'ll > probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state > assembly > member's office & ask them to oppose." > > If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything
Wikimedians
> can > do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling
our
> state assembly members? > > Mike > > _______________________________________________ > Publicpolicy mailing list > Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident,
please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means,
please see
our legal disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Hi all,
This bill passed the California Assembly (one of the two houses of the California State Legislature) yesterday, but it was amended to include the following language [1]:
13988.3 (b) (1) When a state entity creates a work that is otherwise subject to copyright protection, the work shall be released into the public domain unless the state entity reasonably determines any of the following:
(A) The work has commercial value, and the release would jeopardize the integrity of the work.
(B) The release would infringe upon the property interests of a third party.
(C) The release would detrimentally affect the state’s interests in its trademarks, service marks, patents, or trade secrets.
(2) If a state entity reasonably determines that a work meets the criteria described in paragraph (1), the entity shall catalog those works and submit the information to the department for the purpose of tracking intellectual property generated by state employees or with state funding as provided in Section 13998.2.
…
(e) Nothing in this section requires a state entity to own, license, or formally register intellectual property that it creates or otherwise acquires.
(f) This section shall not apply to the use of expressive works created by nonstate employees or without state funding.
…
(c) A public agency that releases a public record that is subject to copyright protection pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (b) of Section 13988.3 shall issue the requesting party a license to use the record in a manner that is consistent with the rights provided under this chapter and that is considered an act of fair use under the federal Copyright Act. The license may restrict the holder from using the record for a commercial use only if such use would result in economic harm to the public agency or to the public’s interest.
Are we happy with this? I suppose that letter I was writing may be moot now…
John
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
From: Publicpolicy [mailto:publicpolicy-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Timothy Vollmer Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:05 PM To: Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia Subject: Re: [Publicpolicy] US/California AB 2880 vs PD-California?
FYI--
CC wrote a post about it - https://blog.creativecommons.org/2016/05/19/california-bill/
Also, EFF has an action page up now where California residents can send a message to state reps.
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10331
tvol
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I think it is worth repeating that fixing this issue can happen on a federal level via https://law.resource.org/pub/edicts.html. It should be within the scope of the mission of WMF and its affiliates to suggest and support such a legislative move.
Mathias
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:32 AM, John Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government works in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that interpreted its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to claim copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider these works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a "clarification", because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain in the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've interacted with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions to use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3] http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1... "Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure that California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property, this bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California public entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register intellectual property." [4] Last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=710660699&oldid=709645905 &diff=710660699&oldid=709645905 and last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=711100671&oldid=710966305 &diff=711100671&oldid=710966305 ...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be possible to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good to go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says that it applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar has a deadline listed in June for them to vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then another deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201... it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
> A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, > formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise > acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
> (A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this > article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless > the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the > consent of the department to the waiver. > > (B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights > by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed > void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says "[EFF]'ll probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
_______________________________________________ Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
EFF's organizing a letter to the California Senate in opposition to this. I'm not sure what the mechanism is for WMF to act on this, but if it is interested in reading it/signing, it should send a note to Ernesto Falcon at EFF (ernesto@eff.org). Several orgs are signing on, including:
Association of Research Libraries Creative Commons Association of College and Research Libraries Sunlight Foundation American Library Association Niskanen Center Californians Aware Creative Commons USA Northern California Association of Law Libraries Data Coalition Open Media and Information Companies Initiative Student Press Law Center Public Knowledge Fight for the Future
timothy
On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 11:03 PM, John P. Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
This bill passed the California Assembly (one of the two houses of the California State Legislature) yesterday, but it was amended to include the following language [1]:
*13988.3 (b) (1) When a state entity creates a work that is otherwise subject to copyright protection, the work shall be released into the public domain unless the state entity reasonably determines any of the following:*
*(A) The work has commercial value, and the release would jeopardize the integrity of the work.*
*(B) The release would infringe upon the property interests of a third party.*
*(C) The release would detrimentally affect the state’s interests in its trademarks, service marks, patents, or trade secrets.*
*(2) If a state entity reasonably determines that a work meets the criteria described in paragraph (1), the entity shall catalog those works and submit the information to the department for the purpose of tracking intellectual property generated by state employees or with state funding as provided in Section 13998.2.*
…
*(e) Nothing in this section requires a state entity to own, license, or formally register intellectual property that it creates or otherwise acquires.*
*(f) This section shall not apply to the use of expressive works created by nonstate employees or without state funding.*
*…*
*(c) A public agency that releases a public record that is subject to copyright protection pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (b) of Section 13988.3 shall issue the requesting party a license to use the record in a manner that is consistent with the rights provided under this chapter and that is considered an act of fair use under the federal Copyright Act. The license may restrict the holder from using the record for a commercial use only if such use would result in economic harm to the public agency or to the public’s interest.*
Are we happy with this? I suppose that letter I was writing may be moot now…
John
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
*From:* Publicpolicy [mailto:publicpolicy-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Timothy Vollmer *Sent:* Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:05 PM *To:* Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia *Subject:* Re: [Publicpolicy] US/California AB 2880 vs PD-California?
FYI--
CC wrote a post about it - https://blog.creativecommons.org/2016/05/19/california-bill/
Also, EFF has an action page up now where California residents can send a message to state reps.
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10331
tvol
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Mathias Schindler < mathias.schindler@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I think it is worth repeating that fixing this issue can happen on a federal level via https://law.resource.org/pub/edicts.html. It should be within the scope of the mission of WMF and its affiliates to suggest and support such a legislative move.
Mathias
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:32 AM, John Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government
works
in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that interpreted its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to
claim
copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider
these
works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a
"clarification",
because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain
in
the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've
interacted
with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions to use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen...
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3]
http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1...
"Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure that California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property,
this
bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California
public
entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register intellectual property." [4] Last paragraph of
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7106...
and last paragraph of
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7111...
...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be
possible
to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good
to
go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people
to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says
that it
applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar has a deadline listed in June for
them to
vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then
another
deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048
items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to
copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l...
to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost
nothing.
I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
> On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com > wrote: > > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's > Legislature > Wants to Copyright All Government Works" > > More background at > >
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
> > According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California
is
> one > of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it > won't > be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law. > > California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under > >
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government
> -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 > items). > > I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be > subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times
of
> their publication. > > Skimming the bill's changes to present law at > >
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
> it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these: > >> A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, >> formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise >> acquires. > > The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could > open > the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say,
abuse)
> of > copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, > stifle > open government, and harm the public domain." > >> (A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this >> article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights
unless
>> the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the >> consent of the department to the waiver. >> >> (B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property
rights
>> by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed >> void as against public policy. > > It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a
barrier
> to > agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the > meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice. > > https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says > "[EFF]'ll > probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state > assembly > member's office & ask them to oppose." > > If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything
Wikimedians
> can > do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling
our
> state assembly members? > > Mike > > _______________________________________________ > Publicpolicy mailing list > Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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Thanks, Tim! I'll reach out to Ernesto about the letter.
On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Timothy Vollmer tvol@creativecommons.org wrote:
EFF's organizing a letter to the California Senate in opposition to this. I'm not sure what the mechanism is for WMF to act on this, but if it is interested in reading it/signing, it should send a note to Ernesto Falcon at EFF (ernesto@eff.org). Several orgs are signing on, including:
Association of Research Libraries Creative Commons Association of College and Research Libraries Sunlight Foundation American Library Association Niskanen Center Californians Aware Creative Commons USA Northern California Association of Law Libraries Data Coalition Open Media and Information Companies Initiative Student Press Law Center Public Knowledge Fight for the Future
timothy
On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 11:03 PM, John P. Sadowski <johnpsadowski@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi all,
This bill passed the California Assembly (one of the two houses of the California State Legislature) yesterday, but it was amended to include the following language [1]:
*13988.3 (b) (1) When a state entity creates a work that is otherwise subject to copyright protection, the work shall be released into the public domain unless the state entity reasonably determines any of the following:*
*(A) The work has commercial value, and the release would jeopardize the integrity of the work.*
*(B) The release would infringe upon the property interests of a third party.*
*(C) The release would detrimentally affect the state’s interests in its trademarks, service marks, patents, or trade secrets.*
*(2) If a state entity reasonably determines that a work meets the criteria described in paragraph (1), the entity shall catalog those works and submit the information to the department for the purpose of tracking intellectual property generated by state employees or with state funding as provided in Section 13998.2.*
…
*(e) Nothing in this section requires a state entity to own, license, or formally register intellectual property that it creates or otherwise acquires.*
*(f) This section shall not apply to the use of expressive works created by nonstate employees or without state funding.*
*…*
*(c) A public agency that releases a public record that is subject to copyright protection pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (b) of Section 13988.3 shall issue the requesting party a license to use the record in a manner that is consistent with the rights provided under this chapter and that is considered an act of fair use under the federal Copyright Act. The license may restrict the holder from using the record for a commercial use only if such use would result in economic harm to the public agency or to the public’s interest.*
Are we happy with this? I suppose that letter I was writing may be moot now…
John
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
*From:* Publicpolicy [mailto:publicpolicy-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Timothy Vollmer *Sent:* Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:05 PM *To:* Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia *Subject:* Re: [Publicpolicy] US/California AB 2880 vs PD-California?
FYI--
CC wrote a post about it - https://blog.creativecommons.org/2016/05/19/california-bill/
Also, EFF has an action page up now where California residents can send a message to state reps.
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10331
tvol
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Mathias Schindler < mathias.schindler@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I think it is worth repeating that fixing this issue can happen on a federal level via https://law.resource.org/pub/edicts.html. It should be within the scope of the mission of WMF and its affiliates to suggest and support such a legislative move.
Mathias
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:32 AM, John Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government
works
in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that
interpreted
its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to
claim
copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider
these
works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a
"clarification",
because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain
in
the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've
interacted
with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions
to
use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen...
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3]
http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1...
"Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure
that
California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property,
this
bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California
public
entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register
intellectual
property." [4] Last paragraph of
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7106...
and last paragraph of
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=7111...
...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be
possible
to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice)
to
alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be
good to
go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people
to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says
that it
applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar has a deadline listed in June for
them to
vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then
another
deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml@gondwanaland.com
wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote: > That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were > near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted > to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048
items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to
copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l...
to no discussion yet.
> Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could > possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific
examples,
> or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost
nothing.
I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government
maven
lurks there and could say.
Mike
>> On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml@gondwanaland.com
>> wrote: >> >> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's >> Legislature >> Wants to Copyright All Government Works" >> >> More background at >> >>
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
>> >> According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California
is
>> one >> of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it >> won't >> be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law. >> >> California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under >> >>
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government
>> -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California
(1048
>> items). >> >> I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would
be
>> subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times
of
>> their publication. >> >> Skimming the bill's changes to present law at >> >>
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
>> it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these: >> >>> A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it
appropriate,
>>> formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise >>> acquires. >> >> The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it
could
>> open >> the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say,
abuse)
>> of >> copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, >> stifle >> open government, and harm the public domain." >> >>> (A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this >>> article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights
unless
>>> the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the >>> consent of the department to the waiver. >>> >>> (B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property
rights
>>> by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed >>> void as against public policy. >> >> It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a
barrier
>> to >> agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the >> meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice. >> >> https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says >> "[EFF]'ll >> probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state >> assembly >> member's office & ask them to oppose." >> >> If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything
Wikimedians
>> can >> do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling
our
>> state assembly members? >> >> Mike >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Publicpolicy mailing list >> Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy > > _______________________________________________ > Publicpolicy mailing list > Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy >
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
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NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident,
please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal
advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means,
please see
our legal disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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Invest in an open future. Support Creative Commons today: http://bit.ly/19IjSKl
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-- Invest in an open future. Support Creative Commons today: http://bit.ly/19IjSKl
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Wait, wait. The bill has changed significantly in the last few days. The new language states that any potentially copyrightable work “shall be released into the public domain” with certain exceptions, and even under the exceptions they “shall issue the requesting party a license to use the record,” though it may be a non-commercial license. Are these exceptions fine or are they too broad? If they are reasonable, the bill would actually affirmatively put government works in the public domain, instead of having to rely on a court decision, which would actually be something we should support.
FWIW I actually did write a draft for a letter for Wikimedia District of Columbia to approve and send out (attached), but the changes to the bill may make it unnecessary, or would require some rewriting if we think the exceptions should be tightened.
Thanks.
John
From: Publicpolicy [mailto:publicpolicy-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Stephen LaPorte Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2016 12:51 PM To: Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia Subject: Re: [Publicpolicy] US/California AB 2880 vs PD-California?
Thanks, Tim! I'll reach out to Ernesto about the letter.
On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Timothy Vollmer tvol@creativecommons.org wrote:
EFF's organizing a letter to the California Senate in opposition to this. I'm not sure what the mechanism is for WMF to act on this, but if it is interested in reading it/signing, it should send a note to Ernesto Falcon at EFF (ernesto@eff.org). Several orgs are signing on, including:
Association of Research Libraries
Creative Commons
Association of College and Research Libraries
Sunlight Foundation
American Library Association
Niskanen Center
Californians Aware
Creative Commons USA
Northern California Association of Law Libraries
Data Coalition
Open Media and Information Companies Initiative
Student Press Law Center
Public Knowledge
Fight for the Future
timothy
On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 11:03 PM, John P. Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
This bill passed the California Assembly (one of the two houses of the California State Legislature) yesterday, but it was amended to include the following language [1]:
13988.3 (b) (1) When a state entity creates a work that is otherwise subject to copyright protection, the work shall be released into the public domain unless the state entity reasonably determines any of the following:
(A) The work has commercial value, and the release would jeopardize the integrity of the work.
(B) The release would infringe upon the property interests of a third party.
(C) The release would detrimentally affect the state’s interests in its trademarks, service marks, patents, or trade secrets.
(2) If a state entity reasonably determines that a work meets the criteria described in paragraph (1), the entity shall catalog those works and submit the information to the department for the purpose of tracking intellectual property generated by state employees or with state funding as provided in Section 13998.2.
…
(e) Nothing in this section requires a state entity to own, license, or formally register intellectual property that it creates or otherwise acquires.
(f) This section shall not apply to the use of expressive works created by nonstate employees or without state funding.
…
(c) A public agency that releases a public record that is subject to copyright protection pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (b) of Section 13988.3 shall issue the requesting party a license to use the record in a manner that is consistent with the rights provided under this chapter and that is considered an act of fair use under the federal Copyright Act. The license may restrict the holder from using the record for a commercial use only if such use would result in economic harm to the public agency or to the public’s interest.
Are we happy with this? I suppose that letter I was writing may be moot now…
John
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201...
From: Publicpolicy [mailto:publicpolicy-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Timothy Vollmer Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:05 PM To: Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia Subject: Re: [Publicpolicy] US/California AB 2880 vs PD-California?
FYI--
CC wrote a post about it - https://blog.creativecommons.org/2016/05/19/california-bill/
Also, EFF has an action page up now where California residents can send a message to state reps.
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10331
tvol
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I think it is worth repeating that fixing this issue can happen on a federal level via https://law.resource.org/pub/edicts.html. It should be within the scope of the mission of WMF and its affiliates to suggest and support such a legislative move.
Mathias
On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:32 AM, John Sadowski johnpsadowski@gmail.com wrote:
The situation is a bit odd. IANAL, but my understanding is that the California Public Records Act doesn't explicitly put state government works in the public domain, but there was a court case in 2009 that interpreted its language as omitting any provision that would allow the state to claim copyright [1]. The people on Commons find this sufficient to consider these works as public domain [2], but the state claims that the courts are misinterpreting the law. That's why they're calling this a "clarification", because they claim that the law never put anything in the public domain in the first place [3]. From the experience of another editor I've interacted with on Wikipedia, the state government is still requiring permissions to use state works even now [4]. Given this, there seems to be uncertainty about the older works would still be considered public domain, and thus whether we could continue to use them should this bill pass.
John P. Sadowski
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Santa_Clara_v._California_First_Amen... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-CAGov [3] http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_2851-2900/ab_2880_cfa_20160416_1... "Although it has always been the intent of the Legislature to ensure that California agencies can own, hold, and acquire intellectual property, this bill clarifies existing law by explicitly providing that a California public entity may own, license, and if deemed appropriate, register intellectual property." [4] Last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=710660699&oldid=709645905 &diff=710660699&oldid=709645905 and last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Antony-22&diff=711100671&oldid=710966305 &diff=711100671&oldid=710966305 ...ignore the bit about the maps :-)
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we can find out when this is coming up for a vote, it would be possible to use Geonotice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice) to alert editors in California to call their legislators. It would be good to go ahead and start working on a Wiki page to direct interested people to.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org wrote:
For what it's worth, typically laws are interpreted against being retroactive. What that means is that unless a law specifically says that it applies retroactively (and doing that can make a law run afoul of constitutional rules sometimes) it usually doesn't. So this is really worrisome, but mostly going forward rather than to existing documents.
Also, for the legislature, I'm not following them closely, but the California State Assembly Calendar has a deadline listed in June for them to vote on bill introduced in that house before the summer recess, then another deadline in August before the fall recess.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On 05/15/2016 08:07 PM, John P. Sadowski wrote:
That is quite troubling, given that the committee approvals were near-unanimous. Is it possible that the bill could be interpreted to apply retroactively, meaning we'd have to remove those 1048 items?
I don't see anything retroactive in the text, but I also don't see anything that would strictly prohibit state agencies and local governments from treating previous publications as subject to copyright.
I see that User:Gazebo has posted at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Proposed_l... to no discussion yet.
Any idea when the bill comes up with a vote? Wikimedia DC could possibly draft and send a letter giving Wikimedia-specific examples, or we could work with the Foundation legal team to do so.
I don't know when it can be expected to come up for a vote. I should know more about California lawmaking than I do, which is almost nothing. I've copied wikimedia-sf; maybe some local California government maven lurks there and could say.
Mike
On May 15, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ab-2880 "California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works"
More background at
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160417/09213934197/california-assembly-l...
According to http://copyright.lib.harvard.edu/states/ California is one of the three most "open" regarding government works. Presumably it won't be anymore if AB 2880 becomes law.
California is one of only two U.S. states with a category under
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_by_government -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD_California (1048 items).
I haven't investigated whether and how many of those items would be subject to copyright had AB 2880 been California law at the times of their publication.
Skimming the bill's changes to present law at
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201... it seems the one or two maybe dangerous additions are these:
> A public entity may own, license, and, if it deems it appropriate, > formally register intellectual property it creates or otherwise > acquires.
The assembly's analysis views this as a clarification, but it could open the door to widespread use (or copyright apologists would say, abuse) of copyright by local government, as the EFF says, "to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain."
> (A) A state agency shall not enter into a contract under this > article that waives the state’s intellectual property rights unless > the state agency, prior to execution of the contract, obtains the > consent of the department to the waiver. > > (B) An attempted waiver of the state’s intellectual property rights > by a state agency that violates subparagraph (A) shall be deemed > void as against public policy.
It is not clear to me whether this addition might serve as a barrier to agencies deciding to publish material under open licenses. In the meantime, I assume it will foster such barriers in practice.
https://twitter.com/mitchstoltz/status/731282363674562560 says "[EFF]'ll probably issue an action alert, but meantime, call your state assembly member's office & ask them to oppose."
If this is indeed a threat, I wonder if there's anything Wikimedians can do to oppose it, in addition to those of us in California calling our state assembly members?
Mike
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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