Hi everyone,
things are getting hot here in Brussels (saucy Monitoring Report and spicy blog post coming later this week) and we're working on full speed to convince decision-makers that FoP is an actual issue.
What would greatly help are any examples of infringement procedures, take down notices or someone getting sued because of lack of FoP in a jurisdiction. I've - thanks to WMFR - found a few timid examples from France, but in general it is still a slim file.
Thanks for thinking hard about this one.
Dimi
On Wed, 28 Jan 2015, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov wrote:
Hi everyone,
things are getting hot here in Brussels (saucy Monitoring Report and spicy blog post coming later this week) and we're working on full speed to convince decision-makers that FoP is an actual issue.
Hello Dimitar,
During Chaos Communications Congress I've had a few conversations with various stakeholders (including Julia Reda, pirate MEP) and I expressed my concern about proposed harmonisation of the copyright directive.
At the end of Julia's speech I have asked a question, whether harmonisation of copyright would mean "harmonizing down" all the copyright exceptions:
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6350_-_en_-_saal_2_-_2014122...
Your email raises another concern to me: whether we have to fight a new battle for every single one copyright exception (like freedom of panorama, no copyright for official documents, etc. etc.)?
What do you think?
Marcin Cieślak
Hi Marcin,
Harmonising down ia real concern we have. For now the conservative powers are focused on not letting anything change, but they might change tactics.
About fighting for every single exception, here's my take: Right now we have just a few exceptions harmonised and most optional. In the end we'll get a few more harmonised. Question is which and what they'll look like. So, yes, there is a meta-narrative but in the end it will be about single paragraphs in the text being kicked out or written in.
Dimi
2015-01-28 10:41 GMT+01:00 Marcin Cieslak saper@saper.info:
On Wed, 28 Jan 2015, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov wrote:
Hi everyone,
things are getting hot here in Brussels (saucy Monitoring Report and
spicy
blog post coming later this week) and we're working on full speed to convince decision-makers that FoP is an actual issue.
Hello Dimitar,
During Chaos Communications Congress I've had a few conversations with various stakeholders (including Julia Reda, pirate MEP) and I expressed my concern about proposed harmonisation of the copyright directive.
At the end of Julia's speech I have asked a question, whether harmonisation of copyright would mean "harmonizing down" all the copyright exceptions:
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6350_-_en_-_saal_2_-_2014122...
Your email raises another concern to me: whether we have to fight a new battle for every single one copyright exception (like freedom of panorama, no copyright for official documents, etc. etc.)?
What do you think?
Marcin Cieślak
Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors
I cannot give you a good answer to your specific question - I'm sorry, I don't know of any examples of people actually trying to enforce sanctions for a FoP violation.
However, I do have a related idea for what might be possible if we get to the more 'public lobbying' and 'public awareness' stage of fighting for unified FoP...
On the English wikipedia, we used to have a placeholder-image on biography page infoboxes without a photo - encouraging people to submit their own image if they had one. (this practice is now stopped for a variety of reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_placeholders )
I have often wondered - could we have a similar "placeholder image" on articles where FoP restricts us from displaying an image? That is, in the size and location where there SHOULD be an image, we have display a graphic that says: "We are not allowed to show you this building, *click here* to learn why" Clicking the link would take you to a documentation page describing FoP, what we're fighting for, contact details for the local politician, whatever...
That way, when the public on the French wikipedia visit "Atomium" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium they immediately understand that it is NOT our fault that we don't have an image of the sculpture, but the fault of the law.
I realise, it would be both technically and organisationally a little difficult to achieve this: - Technically it would require some coding or clever use of categories to identify which articles should have this placeholder image. Also it would require technical considerations to decide who receives this message - perhaps only people visiting the wikipedia article who are in an IP address from a country without FoP? - Organisationally, it would require careful negotiation with the relevant wiki communities to get consensus that this form of overt political lobbying is acceptable. It would be a similar (but not so drastic) question to the debate about SOPA.
A simpler idea, of course, would be simply to show a banner, once, to all non-logged-in readers from European IP addresses, but the organisation questions would still remain.
I think one of the reasons that FoP is not standard across more countries is that it is just such an obscure law, and something that most people would never even imagine has any restrictions on it - "but I just saw a photo of the Eiffel Tower on Facebook" would be a common reply. Using our massive visibility (like we did for SOPA) would be a way to get people to be aware of the problems of the lack of FoP exceptions in a circumstance that they have personal/direct relationship to. They would see the specific implications of the law if they were informed that WP is not allowed to show them a photo of what they just came looking to learn about.
Just an idea... -Liam
wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata
On 28 January 2015 at 10:34, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov < dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
things are getting hot here in Brussels (saucy Monitoring Report and spicy blog post coming later this week) and we're working on full speed to convince decision-makers that FoP is an actual issue.
What would greatly help are any examples of infringement procedures, take down notices or someone getting sued because of lack of FoP in a jurisdiction. I've - thanks to WMFR - found a few timid examples from France, but in general it is still a slim file.
Thanks for thinking hard about this one.
Dimi
Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors
One case of course was the Claes Oldenburg takedown against Wikimedia Commons, in November 2012, for images of some of his large-scale public outdoor sculptures: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2012/11#DMCA...
However, the case is complicated because the take-down was under U.S. law, even though some of the sculptures were in the UK and other jurisdictions with more permissive rules.
Under the Berne Convention, freedom of panorama is a territorial copyright exception which applies to the territory where the *infringement* is alleged, not where the photograph was taken. So a photograph can be taken in the UK, and okay in the UK, but not okay in the United States (nor perhaps even France). Of course this directly runs against the freedom for the same document to be accessible right across the EU.
At the end of the day, it's not just about whether there have been legal cases or not. It's also about the chilling effect that there could be legal cases.
Wikimedia Commons takes the view that it's not good enough to sat "Okay, it's not legal, but we probably won't get sued" -- that is not a good approach to encourage, not for a highly visible organisation like WP, nor if people are to be encouraged to have a proper respect for copyright laws.
-- James.
On 28/01/2015 09:34, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov wrote:
Hi everyone,
things are getting hot here in Brussels (saucy Monitoring Report and spicy blog post coming later this week) and we're working on full speed to convince decision-makers that FoP is an actual issue.
What would greatly help are any examples of infringement procedures, take down notices or someone getting sued because of lack of FoP in a jurisdiction. I've - thanks to WMFR - found a few timid examples from France, but in general it is still a slim file.
Thanks for thinking hard about this one.
Dimi
Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors
On 28 January 2015 at 14:20, James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk wrote:
Wikimedia Commons takes the view that it's not good enough to sat "Okay, it's not legal, but we probably won't get sued" -- that is not a good approach to encourage, not for a highly visible organisation like WP, nor if people are to be encouraged to have a proper respect for copyright laws.
It is also highly unusual for our community to take that stance, since in EVERY OTHER domain of copyright we go to extraordinary lengths to comply with every possible variation on copyright law absurdities. Actually, there is one other area where we "push back" against some copyright claims which could be valid in some juristictions: faithful scans of 2dimensional PD works (e.g. Google Art Project).
I wonder why it is that we are SO INCREDIBLY CONSERVATIVE in applying every and all copyright laws (including former-countries) but we are activitst in the specific areas of FoP and 2D scans?
-Liam
publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org