I agree with Angela completely. The real problem I see with 3 years is just that experience shows that many arbcom members will not stick around that long -- the job is just too exhausting. On the other hand, elections are quite stressful for the candidates as well. My plan is to watch the caseload and possibly expand the committee with new appointments fairly quickly if it seems warranted. Angela wrote: -- "La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org

Actually I don't think memory is good enough. To be consistant the Arbcom should formulate guidlines for rulings: Repetedly breaking the 3RR on certain pages ----> Ban from editing those pages for 3 month Repeated personal attacks -----> Personal attack parole (like irisimeisters) Abuse of admin powers (!st instance) ------> instruced not to use admin powers for 3 months And so on. Obviously each case is different and so the punishments can't be rigid, but having a guidline will keep the process fair, and will make formulating a ruling easier. Theresa

The copyright laws of the United States, which require actual creativity, would seem to argue that photographs of paintings are not derivative works in themselves - no new copyright is created, and the only copyright in question is that of the original work. After all, the aim of the copier is to reproduce the painting as accurately as possible. A perfect copy should have no changes whatsoever; such change as there is are undesirable errors, not creativity. There is some, but not much, case law in this area. The Corel Corporation was involved in a lawsuit that established some precedent here, where it was decided that copying digital images of out of copyright works was not a violation. Some argue that this is not a good precedent since the plaintiff admitted that the digitization was "slavish"; they argue that this admission should not have been made. However, others argue that the slavishness of the reproduction was self-evident and indeed the precise intention of the reproduction of the painting. The laws in other nations differ in what qualifies for copyright protection. In this matter, treaties like the Berne Convention offer little help, since US courts have ruled that the scope of what is copyrightable as it applies in the US even for works of foreign origin is entirely defined by US law. -Matt (User:Morven) who is entirely not a lawyer. As with all free advice, this may be worth only what you paid for it.

Thanks for the clarification, but what about outside of the US (eg. for the purposes of the mandrake distro, or for wikireaders etc.). Does anyone know of any precedents esp. in commonwealth countries and in the EU? paz y amor, [[User:The bellman]] -- hit me: robin.shannon.id.au jab me: saudade(a)jabber.zim.net.au This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

As far as I know, certainly in some jurisdictions very little modification of public domain or out of copyright work may be required to create a new copyrighted work. While we don't want to be too fussy, as it's unlikely an uncertain case will be challenged, we should keep an eye on photos of such objects (to pick a contrived copyrighted example, an inspired photo of a row of old paintings - i.e. an original work to some extent despite the paintings not being the work of the photographer) My two eurocent anyways. Zoney On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 04:36:49 -0700, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: -- ~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...

Charles Fulton wrote: Well the beauty is if enough people don't think we need that many arbitrators, then people can vote oppose to people who put their name forward unless they are very much exceptional candidates. Think of it as being closer to Requests for bereaucratship rather than adminship in that respect. As far as consistency goes, I think it's more important that it's effective. If having lots of available arbitrators means decisions can be turned around faster, I'm all for it. If that comes at a cost to consistency, then I think that's a fair price to pay. The people who punishments are currently being delt to are more than fully deserving of a good kick in the bum. I don't mind whether the size of kick varies a bit from case to case, so long as the kick happens before they cause even more damage. Shane.