WRT this issue, there has recently been an interesting court decision in
Australia, while certainly not *legally* binding on Wikipedia, should
give some insight into the matter.
Basically, there is a panel talk show here in Australia called,
imaginatively enough, "The Panel", where a team of well-known comedians
sit around and ramble about the week's news events, chat with a guest or
two, and so on. In the process, they use short clips of vision from
other programs as a basis to comment on.
One of the other networks sued and lost, on the basis that in Australia,
copyright of a "cinematograph film" or "TV broadcast" only extends to a
"substantial part" of that film or broadcast. They appealed this all
the way up to the High Court and lost, on a split decision. The
(probably quite strong) fair dealing defence was never tested, in the
end. The dissenting High Court judges thought that the majority was
deliberately misinterpreting the law to achieve a victory for common
sense.
More generally, it seems to me that there is a tendancy round here to
assume laws are written the same way as programming language definitions.
>From my layperson's perspective, that seems to be quite wrong - there's a
lot of fudging and playing around with ambiguities to get the "right"
outcome, and screw the pedantry.
So my gut feeling is that the common sense aspect of using film stills to
illustrate an encyclopedia article makes it very, very unlikely we'll
ever get challenged on it, and that if we ever were we'd be highly
likely to win any court case.
Of course, I could be completely wrong :)
For what it's worth, a former film professor at BU told me a story once about
how he had found it difficult to impossible to get permission to use actual
film frames to illustrate a more-or-less scholarly book. He said that the
movie studios want everyone to use "production stills" instead, which are
high-quality conventional still photographs taken more or less concurrently
with the actual production. I'm not sure exactly why they want this, but
apparently most photographs "from films" that appear in traditional print
media are production stills rather than actual frames.
In his case, it was very annoying because he wanted to point out some
lighting and compositional details which were quite different in the
production stills and the actual film.
He eventually shrugged his shoulders and decided to risk using the frame
grabs without permission. This was a while ago and he never received any
lawyer letters about it.
His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable about this--was that
_nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters, absent an
actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that intellectual properly laws
are deliberately vague and ambiguous, because that insures power remains in
the hands of companies big enough to retain lawyers.
People have been saying that I'm good at telling stories. Well, I've
finally figured out why.
I'm a long-lost descendant of Edgar Allen Poe (author of "The Raven",
etc.)
And that explains why I'm an "ode pro".
Rod Poe
I'm chiming in a bit late on this one, but I think the name for this is
"[[degree completion]]" - a program for professionals and others who
have done a lot of learning on their own and want official academic
credit for it.
There are CLEP tests and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). My church's
seminary has had a degree completion program for the last 15 years or
so; when you finish the tests, you get a Regents Diploma which is pretty
much accepted by any graduate school as a bona fide bachelor's degree.
A "diploma mill" is a non-accredited program which awards a degree which
is NOT generally accepted.
Ed Poor
Hi,
Is there some trick to help reading table source in wiki syntax like
this one ?
(Note: this is not a valid MediaWiki parsed syntax)
| '''Heading1'''| Heading2 | Heading3 |
=====================================================================
| I went to the | 7 | * Bullet lists |
| barber today | | * Can be in here too |
| and he gave me | | |
| a shave and a | | |
| haircut. | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently I've only some ugly trick. Is there are simple short way to
disable the space indenting rendering as preformated text ?
http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Sandbox#more_section
A simple cell continuous markup would be ok for now:
{|
! '''Heading1'''!! Heading2 !! Heading3
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|I went to the
barber today
and he gave me
a shave and a
haircut.
|| 7
|| * Bullet lists
> * Can be in here too
|---------------------------------------------------------------------
|}
The > sign at in the first column disable the preformating by removing
the indentation and means line continuation. Any other wiki syntax can
be parsed after.
--
Regards,
Sylvain Viart (France)
See http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2003-09-28-fakedegrees_x.htm
In particular, "The state of Oregon keeps a list of some of the
institutions whose degrees cannot legally be used in the state because
they're not accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department
of Education or the state (www.osac.state.or.us/oda). The list includes
Columbia State University in Louisiana, which was closed by court order
(not affiliated with Columbia University in New York or any other
accredited colleges and universities that use the Columbia name),
Hamilton University in Wyoming, Great Britain's Hartley University,
Stanton University in Hawaii, Vancouver University Worldwide and
University of Wexford in Great Britain."
See also
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf :
"This is a listing of colleges and universities which are not currently
accredited by an accrediting body of the Council on Higher Education
Accreditation. Degrees from these institutions will not be accepted
by the Department of Civil Service as satisfying any educational
requirements indicated on job specifications." This is admittedly
quite a long list; Vancouver University Worldwide appears on page 12.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
I got this list of British Columbian universities off the University of Waterloo (Ontario) website. We should stay by the Canadian government's term of "University", with all the accreditation tests that are involved with it.
British Columbia Institute of Technology
British Columbia Open University*
Century College
Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design*
Institute of Indigenous Government
Kingston College
Kwantlen University College
Malaspina University-College*
Okanagan University College*
Royal Roads University*
Sea to Sky University
Seminary of Christ the King
Simon Fraser University*
Trinity Western University*
Associated Canadian Theological Schools
University College of the Cariboo*
University College of the Fraser Valley*
University of British Columbia*
University of Northern British Columbia*
University of Phoenix, Vancouver campus
University of Victoria*
Vancouver School of Theology
Colleges with university transfer courses:
Camosun College
Capilano College
College of the Rockies
Columbia College
Coquitlam College
Douglas College
Langara College
North Island College
Northern Lights College
Selkirk College
wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org wrote:
> From: Jeff Bonham
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 01:21:45 -0400
> To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University
> -----
>
> X-Original-To: silsor@localhost
> To: jbonham(a)mail.utm.utoronto.ca
> From: Infotech - Vancouver University
> Subject: List of fake universities
>
> Hi,
> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
> universities.
> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
> and note how inappropriate to so list us
> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>
> Thanks for any help in this matter,
> Derrick
---------------------------------
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
I have posted two or three times to [[WP:RFC]] (a few months apart),
twice to [[WP:VP]] (two or three weeks apart), and once on [[WP:PR]]
(regarding [[Anwar Ibrahim]]'s potential to become a featured article)
for help on addressing this, but since there's still no response, I have
no choice but to ask for help on the mailing list.
Several Malaysian editors have expressed doubts about the (N)POVness of
several articles related to Malaysian politics. Since I arrived last
year, things have only deteriorated. Even [[Malaysia]] has not been
spared - the second half doesn't mince its words in showing its open
criticism of the government, declaring the court that judged Anwar to be
a kangaroo court (the least that could have been done was to explain
that the justice involved was unknown and inexperienced and other such
reasons for accusing the government of unfair manipulation), and at one
point, makes the blanket statement that "almost anything to do with the
government involves corruption". I'm in the process of NPOVing this.
[[Anwar Ibrahim]] and [[Bumiputra]] both have NPOV notices on them, and
there's been a furious discussion on both Talks where much has been
hashed out but little has come out to improve the NPOV value of both
articles, beyond the effort of those who originally complained. (An
excellent deal of other work was done on [[Anwar Ibrahim]], though.) A
storm is brewing in [[Malaysian New Economic Policy]] which is overtly
pro-NEP in the beginning and suddenly switches to full-blown opposition
with completely inappropriate wording, directly stating the Malays are
"robbing" the Chinese and Indians.
The main issue here is that several editors have been doing great work
expanding these articles, but are not wording their edits in accord with
our NPOV policy. Sometimes crucial facts and opinions of those
supporting the government are not available at all, creating an
unbalanced impression, such as in [[Anwar Ibrahim]] (I NPOVed the last
section as a lot of material was available on it before complaining on
the Talk, whereupon it just degraded into all hot air and no actual work
done on NPOVing the article).
Another issue is that [[User:Malbear]], one of the few users other than
me actively involved in these articles has accused me of deleting
material that I don't agree with, such as on [[Education on Malaysia]].
Malaysian politics is highly impassioned, so I would really appreciate
if someone could tell me and [[User:Jpatokal]] that we're just paranoid
and overreacting, or that there really is an issue with how NPOV
Malaysian political articles are.
Thanks very much,
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])
Hi all,
I noticed, the other day, that someone was uploading a bunch of frame
grabs from episodes of Star Trek to illustrate the articles on said
episodes. There were no copyright tags on the images. So, I was going to
jump in and say "hey, can you put copyright tags on those images?", when
it occurred to me that if he said "OK, what do I put?", that I had no
idea.
I've seen a few people ask about whether frame grabs from movies, TV
shows, etc. may be used as "fair use", the most recent discussion being
on the Help Desk a couple of weeks back
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#Images_.26_Copyrights)
, but I'm still not sure what the definitive answer is. Or, indeed, if
there can even BE a definitive answer.
Looking over the 4 factors for "fair use", it seems quite positive:
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is
of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
In the case of Wikipedia, for nonprofit educational purposes
(but what of selling a CD or paper distribution?)
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
OK, these are creative works, but they are published to a
non-restricted audience
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole
A single frame, a fraction of a second (without audio!) out of a
half hour TV episode or 2 hour movie.
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
copyrighted work
Certainly no harm done to the copyright holders ability to sell
their work
..but from whence can a decision come as to whether such things are
desirable on Wikipedia? I know that a Free image is always to be
preferred over a "fair use" one, but it's hard to see how a movie or TV
show might be provided with a Free image.
Other questions include what such an image could be used to illustrate?
Is a frame from a movie OK in an article about:
* The movie?
* The actor depicted in the scene?
* The fictional character depicted in the scene?
* The historical figure being portrayed by an actor in the scene?
* The director of the movie?
* The author of the book the movie is based on?
* A concept depicted in the movie (e.g. a scene from that crappy Heath
Ledger movie in the article on "Jousting")?
Any thoughts?
Cheers!
David... (aka Stormie)
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
This email and its attachments are for the sole use of the addressee and may contain information which is confidential and/or
legally privileged. This email and its attachments are subject to copyright and should not be partly or wholly reproduced without
the consent of the copyright owner. Any unauthorised use of disclosure of this email or its attachments is prohibited. If you receive
this email in error, please immediately delete it from your system and notify the sender by return email.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149(a)yahoo.com>
> --- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wouldnt like it if someone took a frame grab from one of my movies,
> > but then you do see a lot of them on movie review sites.
>
> Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. ;)
>
> What matters is the amount of the work that is used and the use of that
> subset. Since a feature-length movie has over 150,000 frames in it, a
> single low resolution frame grab is an utterly tiny part of the whole
work.
> Add in the educational use and we have an *extremely* firm fair
> use/dealing/practice defense; far stronger than any claim of fair use
> over what was from the start a still photo.
Hum... If I understand you well, you are slicing a movie in frames and you
suggest that one frame would represent 1/150,000 of a movie's copyright.
Movies aren't homogenic chocolate bars you can slice and get pieces of the
same substantial chocolate in result. If I had made a suspense movie, the
last "slice" showing who is the murderer would weight a lot more than other
ones and I would hate a web-site to display it. What is copyrighted is the
work of the director (and co.), so a single frame could theorically be the
result of months of creative work, with never-seen dispositions of colors,
shapes, etc., and be as creative as, say,
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/PT/cranach-apollo-diana.gif
That's theory. In practice, most of today's movies are all made on the same
few prototypes, and creation skills are used the same way as the salt is
added by mcbots on bigmacs to give a little bit of a taste to oily cotton,
therefore taking the full movie in full resolution is hardly stealing the
work of someone' brain, but a simple copy of a copy of something already
done, already seen, alr...
(gbog)
