On 9/18/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster(a)davidarussell.co.uk> wrote: ... ... All the videos they posted to Google Video have a watermark in the corner pointing to www.forbidden-places.be ; that should provide free promotion. Personally, I would prefer it if the video's author shortened the watermark; such a watermark need not last for more than five or ten seconds. I believe all watermarks are annoying and detract from video. --[[User:Unforgettableid]]

On 9/18/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater(a)mac.com> wrote: Why would that be? Can a tree, a river, or a building be copyrighted? You claim that there "may" be rights issues but you have not cited any American law which back up your claim. Recently, a lot of [[Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt]] has been spread regarding these issues: Popular Photography magazine discussed them recently. In reality, a building, a park, or such _cannot_ be trademarked. Cheers, [[User:Unforgettableid]]

On 9/18/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater(a)mac.com> wrote: OK, point taken. However, it seems to me the UK has stricter copyright laws than other countries. For example, in the UK, modern skillfully-made photos of two-hundred-year-old paintings are automatically copyrighted to the author. On the other hand, I do not know of any other country with such strict laws regarding old paintings. Likewise, I assume France, where is not as strict regarding filming. Cheers, Jason

On 18/09/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: It may be relevant that Jimbo has told the National Portrait Gallery "sue or be damned" and they've stopped sending vague legal threats. i.e., if someone does bring a case directly affecting Wikipedia then they should be very sure they want to do that. - d.

[[User:Unforgettableid]] wrote: I have just reviewed the pamphlet, and it seems that Stephen has done an excellent job of mireading and distorting the material. The question of old paintings has often been discussed before, so I don't need to go into that. The restrictions relating to Royal Parks, British Rail or Trafalgar Square have nothing to do with copyright. In the case of British Rail the pamphlet declares it a trespass to enter such property without permission. This alone does not make the pictures that you take while there illegal. For the Royal Parks and Trafalgar Square the pamphlet speaks of restrictions of photography for business or commercial purposes. It does not restrict amateur or personal photography. Overtly commercial photographic activities are not the same as amateur photographs that are subsequently used for commercial purposes. The restriction applies to the activity, not to the product. Ec

Stephen Streater wrote: There are two aspects to your request from British Rail - entering the property and filming. If the real issue was whether you could enter the property, and you were forbidden entry, the permission to film would be moot. Exactly. Intention is indeed hard to prove, but the burden of proof is on the person making the accusation. Possible ways for them to prove that would be to prove that you are in some kind of photography business in which you normally sell that kind of photo. Technically they could probably convict you if you were a wedding photographer who was fulfilling a contract to take pictures of the newlyweds in the Royal Park. Yes. It's not a copyright issue. Filming and uploading are two different acts. Whenever a statute proclaims an act to be somehow worthy of punishment it needs to be read perfectly literally sometimes even when the logical consequences of such a reading are ridiculous. One should never impute to parliament anything more than what is actually said. Actual statutes are preferable, but can be difficult to read. Ec

On 20/09/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater(a)mac.com> wrote: So I'm not allowed to take photos or video out the window of a train? They can sue and be damned, then. - d.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Akash Mehta wrote: This is about the law of trespass - someone asked British Rail if they could enter their property for the purposes of filming, and were denied. Permission to enter the property for the purposes of catching a train is entirely separate. The solution is that taking a picture of private property from a public place is perfectly legal, so there's nothing to stop someone (for example) taking a picture of the outside of a train station or (as is the case with many stations near where I live) taking a picture of the platform from a nearby bridge over the railway line. In other words, just because we can't film on British Rail property doesn't mean Wikipedia can't have photos or video footage of stations or trains. Cynical

On 20 Sep 2006, at 10:13, David Gerard wrote: It's a big issue for TV programmes, who don't want to be sued. Having said that, the 7/7 mobile footage in the tunnel, which reputedly went for £80,000, did not have prior consent.

On 20 Sep 2006, at 10:45, David Alexander Russell wrote: Good point. Unfortunately, my local underground station (Wimbledon) is also a British Rail station.

Stephen Streater wrote: Loopholes are a normal part of the legal game, but I don't think that that is the case here. Professional shoots do bring in a lot more equipent and staff than one tourist and his family can ever imsagine. Disruption could be even more significant at Trafalgar Square. Smetimes it helps to look at the reasoning behind a law, and in this case it copyright is not a factor. Pictures of Trafalgar Square probably already exist from every conceivable angle. Ec

G'day geni, But if you're in the USA, as we see again and again, you can blithely pretend that the US's POV is all that matters and shamelessly flaunt your ignorance of the rest of the world. Honestly, a UK person talking about UK law receives a response of "you failed to cite US law there". Promise me the OP[0] is currently in a state in which it's inadvisable to operate heavy machinery; he can almost be excused, then. [0] Offending Poster -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

Delirium wrote: If you claim that on Commons, you'll be laughed off the project. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

On 9/19/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: Cite up or shut up. Your claim that the intersection of permitted works is the empty set is ridiculous and disruptive. If you're going to make claims like that, please substantiate them. Although your statement is a ridiculous overstatement, it's not that relevant any case: The long term practice of Wikipedia is to follow the laws that we must follow and adopt additional practices that further our goal of creating a encyclopedia which is free for all forms of use, redistribution, and modification anywhere, for any reason, and in any medium for all time. There is no movement to limit wikipedia to least common denominator of all jurisdictions. However, we do choose to respect the copyrights of Iran... which have copyright terms quite similar to the rest of the industrialized world, but which lack enforcement in the US because Iran is not currently a party to the Berne Convention. This is a sound policy: Not only does it preserve the legality of our work in Iran (which is part of anywhere), but it preserves the legality of our work in the US and Europe when a some point in the future Iran's copyrights become more generally enforceable.

On 9/19/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: It's rather impolite of you to make sweeping and inaccurate generalizations. There are people here who may not know that you were full of crap. Yes. No argument that we currently distribute works that we could not distribute if we attempted to follow all laws, but your claim was that the project would fail because "nearly nothing is permissible to distribute" under a policy of expansive conformance. A nit: only in cases where the mechanical reproducer tries to claim a non-free copyright. [snip] Yes, its a lot of material but it's far less than all. In particual content *we* create is not copyright encoumbered. Since our text is mostly submitter authored there is no reason to believe that our project would fail if our images had to be submitter authored as well.

On 19/09/06, Delirium &lt;delirium(a)hackish.org&gt; wrote: <rant - sorry, this isn't particularly directed at you, it's been simmering for a while> The issue is that a British author entered into a contract made legally under British law to do something in Britain. This is by no means a bizzare or inhuman contract - "I will let you into private property, and let you take photographs, on the condition you don't use them commercially". Art galleries everywhere do much the same thing; it's nothing to do with copyright or draconian privacy laws, it's just a matter of a contract between an individual and an organisation. So regardless of any legal situation in the US, it is a breach of contract *on the part of the author* to release those images for commercial use, even if he does it outside the UK. US copyright law doesn't come into it, US freedom of speech doesn't come into it, because it isn't about either - it's about the fact that the author has made a contract which is legally binding and *he personally* would be breaking it if he released the work under a free license. Wikimedia is fine - we're not a party to the contract, and it's an open question as to what on earth the other party can do to us if the photographer decides to break his contract. But we should never be pretending we can get people out of their local legal constraints, unrelated to copyright, just because publishing in Florida gives us funky copyright possibilities. It's fair to say "we publish in Florida and aren't bound by German laws on reproducing swastikas", because that's a German law binding on German publications. It's (usually) fair to say "we publish in Florida and aren't bound by overseas copyrights on PD-US work", because we're looking at a US law binding on US publications. It's not fair to say that publishing in Florida means editors can escape any restrictions they have fairly entered into or had placed on them, especially when those have nothing to do with copyright, because we're looking at local laws binding *on our editors*. Even if the end result is an encyclopedia that breaks no laws in Florida, we should not be expecting or encouraging our editors to break their own laws to get there. </rant> -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 19/09/06, Delirium &lt;delirium(a)hackish.org&gt; wrote: Yeah. But there's a difference between "we're not going to ask" and "we're going to actively promote that you can do this quasi-legally", and we often seem to be slipping towards the latter, by assuming copyright is the only relevant factor. We've quite the collection of illegally-produced material - most of the illustrations of revolutionary propaganda, for a start... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Andrew Gray 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. -Mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Stephen Streater wrote: I'm not entirely sure (IANAL etc.) but surely there is a chance that, if the person taking the photo/film was legally restrained from offering it under a particular licence (in this case, one that allowed commercial use), then any such licencing would be invalid. Cynical

On 19 Sep 2006, at 12:58, Andrew Gray wrote: Given that Fair Use is a US construct, does this mean Wikipedia can never have access to England-generated content which is available under non-commercial terms, such as shots of a Royal Park? It would be breaking English law to put it up under a free licence or under Fair Use, and external linking of media on Wikipedia is being phased out, so I couldn't link to an external website hosting it either. Is there a way around this?

On 19 Sep 2006, at 18:24, David Alexander Russell wrote: Doesn't this contradict Wikipedia's goal of containing all human knowledge?

On 19 Sep 2006, at 18:43, David Alexander Russell wrote: True. But by insisting that Wikipedia be self-contained, there is knowledge that Wikipedia has chosen to exclude, even though links to it can be released freely.

On 19 Sep 2006, at 21:52, [[User:Unforgettableid]] wrote: The idea is that content should be included within Wikipedia. Apart from anything else, CD ROMs of WIkipedia would then be self-contained, but also content could not be altered or withdrawn by third parties.

On 20 Sep 2006, at 10:12, David Gerard wrote: Have a look at my RfA. It's full of other stuff too, but once you take out the usual RfA storms, this was one of the points people tended to agree on. Also look at the Gmaxwell talk page. There are several discussions there as he has removed external media links from several articles, and given explanations when asked. In fact, Gregory Maxwell is probably the best person to explain this, and he is on the list.

On 9/18/06, Andrew Gray &lt;shimgray(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: ... Andrew, points taken. Also, Stephen, I did not mean any personal attacks against you. I apologize.

G'day UnforgettableID, American law can go to Hell. It's not a matter of copyright or trademark law[0]. If I wanted to restrict the things you could do with photographs you take of the interior of my house, I wouldn't claim copyright. Oh, no! I would simply make it a condition of entry to my house that, if you wish to enter and take photographs, you do not use the photographs in a commercial manner or release it under a licence that permits others to do so. If you took a photograph of my bedroom (planning to reveal the dead sexy secrets within), and released it under the GFDL, I couldn't claim copyright on my rose-petal-strewn bed[1] ... but I could say you breached our contract. [0] Rumour has it, in France, it's no longer possible to claim copyright over a photograph of the Eiffel Tower at night? [1] Or, as I like to call it, "the groove-maker". -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [[User:Unforgettableid]] wrote: Who are you to say that we won't edit the video? Maybe you won't, but maybe someone else will, in a way that makes it more useful, and then link that on Wikipedia. That's the point of viral licensing and ShareAlikes. I'm afraid "you're not allowed to edit it" is a deal-breaker. - -- Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys") ~ Ubi olim vita, nunc vita ~

On 19 Sep 2006, at 05:51, Sean Barrett wrote: Also, remember that in Belgium, the architect can have some rights over a photograph containing his work. This may apply here - I'm not an expert on Belgian law.

On 9/19/06, Sean Barrett &lt;sean(a)epoptic.com&gt; wrote: Hi Sylvain, I was incorrect about editing. The video will be edited. I believe that if the video is edited, the person doing the editing must label it as a "derivative work" of your video and provide full credit when they publish the edited work. I do not know the full set of rules for the licenses; those are available at www.creativecommons.org for the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and www.gnu.org for the GNU Free Documentation License. Is this a problem? Cheers, Jason

Hi, On 9/19/06, Forbidden-Places &lt;postmaster(a)forbidden-places.be&gt; wrote: Great! (I like the old music: I personally think it's worth it for us to request GFDL and/or CC-licensing for it, but if you plan to redo the music, that's fine too. Just have him post a note on his webpage or to permissions(a)wikipedia.org saying that the music in the video is dual-licensed under the current GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Deed or any later version.) No, the process of adding videos to Wikipedia is a gradual one. :-) I wish we had more but it's very hard to find free-licensed videos. When the video is done editing, though, we would appreciate it if you export to Ogg Theora format (maximum filesize 20 MB) for us to upload to Wikipedia. Let us know, we will help you. Best regards, Jason

On 9/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) &lt;alphasigmax(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Thank you for the tip. I am starting to regret CC'ing the main wikien list. I wanted to get permissions from the video's author, not to start a legal debate. :-) Oh well, I guess there's nothing I can do to close the thread now that it's on wikien-l now...