Stephen Streater wrote:
On 18 Sep 2006, at 23:22, Delirium wrote:
While the person filming has to worry about the law regarding filming, anyone redistributing the films in the United States does not---it is not necessarily illegal to redistribute illegally filmed video. This came up a while ago on Commons with World Cup photographs: The stadiums prohibited photography, but given that photographs were taken and uploaded under the GFDL, Wikimedia is violating no law by continuing to host them. The original photographer likely violated the prohibition, but that's a separate matter, not enforceable through copyright, and so not really our problem.
Would the original poster be liable in the UK for each copy made though? I don't have a clear answer on this yet. By releasing something under a free licence, am I saying: "you have the right to copy this" or am I saying "you have the right to copy this subject to applicable laws"? The second seems to make sense, but then why delete copyvio images if the images are subject to the law anyway?
It probably depends specifically on what law was violated in taking the original picture. In the World Cup case, the photographer violated FIFA's "no photographs" policy, but while that may subject him to having his ticket revoked and possibly other FIFA sanctions if they feel like it, there's no legal mechanism for FIFA to revoke his copyright on the photograph---so he may still perfectly well license it under the GFDL.
-Mark