On 21 Aug 2007 at 16:58:41 +0000 (UTC), Benjamin Esham
<bdesham(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently sent an e-mail to the Livingston County (New York) government,
> inquiring about the possible misuse of one of my Commons images, a picture
> of the Livingston County seal [1]. They use a very similar image on their
> website, but it was scaled down too small for me to tell whether or not it
> was my image. If it was my image they were using, then they would be in
> violation of the cc-by-sa license on the image.
It seems a bit of a WP:DICKish move on your part to try to enforce
whatever copyright you might have to a picture of a seal against the
actual owners of the seal itself, and that seems to have prompted
them to retaliate by being dickish right back to you.
> | Your email to Livingston County has been referred to me for response. I
> | would refer you to section 30-e of the Judiciary Law of the State of New
> | York. The use of Livingston County's seal or any replica or simulation
> | thereof, in form or substance, by any unauthorized person, is prohibited.
> | A violation of this prohibition constitutes a misdemeanor and is
> | punishable as such. Since you are not authorized to use our seal, I would
> | suggest you remove it at once.
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I know, it's highly questionable
under U.S. precedent that you have any protectible rights to your
image that merely reproduces an existing work. Whether the county or
anybody else has protectible rights, copyright-wise, to this seal
depends on a lot of things such as how old it is and who created it.
However, the rights they're asserting are based on a separate, non-
copyright law.
If it were to go to court, it's quite possible a court would carve
out a fair-use exception for reproduction of the seal for the purpose
of commentary when it's clear that you're not using it to represent
yourself or your works as being official county documents, based on
the constitutional principle that free press may only be limited for
sharply delineated compelling interests of the government. However,
it could take many levels of appellate courts to reach this point,
which would be pretty expensive. However, an out-of-state entity
such as the Wikimedia Foundation might prove to be harder for the
state to reach to enforce their laws, though people have sometimes
been successfully dragged long distances into court over things
posted to the Internet.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
http://uthcode.sarovar.org/wpcd/
- free for schools, copies for sale to those who can't download it - a
sort of Linux distribution model. (link courtesy Andrew Cates)
Compare to the German language Encarta, which is no longer doing a
physical product: http://uthcode.sarovar.org/wpcd/ (link courtesy
Mathias Schindler)
- d.
There's a new tool and it's called Wikipedia scanner
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
I just can't see how it can ever be helpful to editors, but it might help a
few journalists think up a story on a slow newsday. It even has a feature
that lets you look up what has been edited in a particular IP range block.
Test it out, if you seriously have nothing better to do.
http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/
mike
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/arti…
Stable versions would help with answering some of that criticism. Plenty of
what he says is fair enough, IMO, particularly the point about the loudest
voices winning purely by virtue of obnoxious trolling.
C More schi
_________________________________________________________________
The next generation of Hotmail is here! http://www.newhotmail.co.uk
There is a lot of talk about getting free alternatives to restricted Fair
Use images, and how this is actually a priority of the Wikimedia Foundation.
That said, I want to point out one specific area where the Foundation is
failing. The United States consists of 50 states, each of which has a state
seal, but to date, only twenty of the state seal images are free, i.e., 60
percent are fair use images, when a free alternative should be easily available. In
fact, what possible justification is there for using a fair use image?
Free State Seal images are available for:
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida Hawaii, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa,
Kentucky, Maine Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York,
North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Washington State.
Fair use State Seal images are used for:
Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho,
Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire,
New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South
Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia,
Wisconsin, Wyoming.
As you can see, there is no why or wherefore to these lists. I hope that
rectifying this becomes a priority.
Danny
************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
On 17/08/07, Luna <lunasantin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> For clarification, does this mean that discussion regarding AB in
> particular, or discussion on proxies in general? I'm of the opinion that the
> former issue was distracting from productive resolution of the greater
> matter at hand: trying to find a better working solution to the proxies
> problem. I'd say more, but want to wait for that clarification.
Go for it :-)
- d.
Are there any plans to adopt the forced preview for IPs, like on the
German WP? It seems like a good method to curb IP enthusiasm just a
little bit.
Also, in my opinion, the undo function should be disabled for IPs, it's
not needed to edit and may seduce new IP editors into avoidable edit wars.
Adrian
Bored? Get to work illustrating things!
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cary Bass <cbass(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 15-Aug-2007 15:29
Subject: [Commons-l] Pearson Scott Foresman illustrations
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_Scott_Foresman>
We've had a substantial number of illustrations donated to the
Wikimedia Foundation under Public Domain that are presently being
uploaded by interns in the office. These illustrations may be found
at <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD-ScottForesman>.
I'd also like to point out that a great many of these scans require
cleanup (cropping, rotation, inversion, levels adjustment, grayscale
conversion, conversion to PNG) and/or categorization, and have been
added to <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_for_cleanup>.
These illustrations are a great resource, and many Commons users
have already begun to help out in the cleanup process, but I wanted to
offer the cleanup opportunity to a greater number of users with
graphics skills.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Phone: 727.231.0101
Fax: 727.258.0207
E-Mail: cbass(a)wikimedia.org
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