I am having a problem with several Iran-related articles and photos. Someone ([[User:Zereshk]]), who has posted a lot of text and pictures copyrighted in Iran to the Wikipedia is claiming that:
"Iranian websites are not legally protected under International copyright laws. Iran is not a member of WTO, nor a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and correspondingly does not adhere to International Copyright laws itself. [...] Wikipedia (an American company) is not legally responsible for anything even if something was copied from a website from Iran." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Roozbeh#Copyright_tags_are_unwarrante...]
For the record, there are copyright laws in Iran, and it protects art, literature, and software first distributed in Iran. There is no restriction about material produced by the government either. The government can claim copyright on things. I have a few books copyrighted by the Iranian government and several websites of the government claim copyright protection.
I seriously believe that the Wikimedia foundation should either: a) refrain from using copyrighted material from Iran, or, b) stop providing its content to readers in Iran.
Otherwise, it would be infringing the Iranian copyright law.
I wanted to ask here for any advice on where to pursue the matter, a list, a wiki page, or with the foundation authorities. I need an answer about this. If the Wikimedia foundation thinks it can copy material copyrighted in Iran freely and provide them to Iranian readers freely, I would want to know that. (It will also help us in the Persian Wikipedia if that is the case, we will have a vast source of free information that way.)
Roozbeh
On 8/4/05, Roozbeh Pournader roozbeh@gmail.com wrote:
I am having a problem with several Iran-related articles and photos. Someone ([[User:Zereshk]]), who has posted a lot of text and pictures copyrighted in Iran to the Wikipedia is claiming that:
"Iranian websites are not legally protected under International copyright laws. Iran is not a member of WTO, nor a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and correspondingly does not adhere to International Copyright laws itself. [...] Wikipedia (an American company) is not legally responsible for anything even if something was copied from a website from Iran." [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Roozbeh#Copyright_tags_are_unwarrante... ]
I think this is a good question for the Juriwiki-l mailing list (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_list).
This has come up before on the copyright problems page. Even if we are legally able (at the moment) to violate Iran's copyright laws, I don't think that we should.
On 8/5/05, Puddl Duk puddlduk@gmail.com wrote:
This has come up before on the copyright problems page. Even if we are legally able (at the moment) to violate Iran's copyright laws, I don't think that we should.
What advantage would there be in doing so? Surely there's nothing in any Iran-related article that HAS to be sourced this way.
If Iran joins international copyright treaties, and we haven't respected their copyrights, major changes would have to be made all at once. It is simpler to respect their copyrights now, so it can't come up as an issue later. -Measure
On 8/4/05, Skyring skyring@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/5/05, Puddl Duk puddlduk@gmail.com wrote:
This has come up before on the copyright problems page. Even if we are legally able (at the moment) to violate Iran's copyright laws, I don't
think
that we should.
What advantage would there be in doing so? Surely there's nothing in any Iran-related article that HAS to be sourced this way.
-- Peter in Canberra _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 8/5/05, Karl Butcher measure@gmail.com wrote:
If Iran joins international copyright treaties, and we haven't respected their copyrights, major changes would have to be made all at once. It is simpler to respect their copyrights now, so it can't come up as an issue later.
I agree. BTW, for the record, Iran is now an observing member of WTO, and is planning to join as a full member, which would require implementation of international copyrights.
roozbeh
Why not make a special tag template for this? Something along the lines of:
"This image, produced by the current government of Iran, are believed to not fall under U.S. copyright laws as Iran is not a member of WIPO. Should this change, though, the usage of this image is still believed to fall under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law. Use in mediums other than on the servers of the English-language Wikipedia, hosted in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, may not be exempt from either of these requirements."
Then we will also at least have them all marked easily *should* we want to mass delete them all. (I find it also very unlikely that the government of Iran would ever sue Wikipedia for use of its images, so I think this should fall under "low-threat fair use" in our thinking about it, rather than worrying about WIPO membership)
FF
On 8/4/05, Karl Butcher measure@gmail.com wrote:
If Iran joins international copyright treaties, and we haven't respected their copyrights, major changes would have to be made all at once. It is simpler to respect their copyrights now, so it can't come up as an issue later. -Measure
On 8/4/05, Skyring skyring@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/5/05, Puddl Duk puddlduk@gmail.com wrote:
This has come up before on the copyright problems page. Even if we are legally able (at the moment) to violate Iran's copyright laws, I don't
think
that we should.
What advantage would there be in doing so? Surely there's nothing in any Iran-related article that HAS to be sourced this way.
-- Peter in Canberra _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- For every 12 seconds you've spent reading this email, Another person has died due to environmental activism. http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.htm _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 8/7/05, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
Then we will also at least have them all marked easily *should* we want to mass delete them all. (I find it also very unlikely that the government of Iran would ever sue Wikipedia for use of its images, so I think this should fall under "low-threat fair use" in our thinking about it, rather than worrying about WIPO membership)
I don't think it's just the government of Iran, but all Iranians, just as US copyright law protects more than just US government material.
Unless there is something particularly strange about the copyright situation in Iran, we should generally respect Iranian copyright law as best we can, the same as we do for other countries around the world.
The situation with respect to treaties or non-treaties with the US seems to me to have very little impact on this. As always, we have to balance various factors in thoughtful ways. Simply saying "Well, this is legal under US law, so let's do it" is not a very compelling argument.
A similar situation exists with "fair use". Fair use doctrine is significantly better in the US than in other jurisdictions, which is a fine thing, but German Wikipedia, for example, follows more restrictive German law on this point. Why? Because part of our goal is re-use in Germany.
--Jimbo