We have a really significant problem here. As with AFD copyright is a
system-wide problem that needs to be addressed.
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>One needs to understand the decision making dynamics around the wikis.
>A lack of responses does not equate to disinterest or agreement. Most
>people don't feel like carrying on discussions ad nauseam when it
>doesn't affect what they are personally doing. Most policy discussions
>are inconclusive and very, very tedious. When you change a "policy"
>page, most people don't notice it.
I fully understand the decision-making processes around the wikis
since I have been an active participant with this project for over two
and half years. In some circumstances, especially when care has been
taken to let people know about what is going on then a lack of
response certainly DOES equate to disinterest. In a decision situation
it can also be interpreted to mean agreement.
This is an immensely serious issue since it exposes Wikipedia,
Wikisource and the Wikimedia Foundation, not to mention the
contributors to the sites, to legal liability. I wanted a definitive
statement over copyright and I did not get that statement.
Consequently I went the wiki way and tried to get a consensus over
what to do. Besides, the opinions of "most" people weren't what I was
after. I was after a policy statement about copyright on a Wikimedia
Foundation project. That concerns the board and they should be (and
for the most part are) directly concerned with matters of high policy
like this.
>>I suggest that you be the one to make the policy clear on Wikisource.
>>I also suggest that you be the one to tag the hundreds of UN
>>resolution copyvios on there for deletion. If this is to be the
>>confirmed policy I will remove work that I have done on starting to
>>put some British legislation online, which is under Crown copyright
>>and hence incompatible with the GFDL. Prepare for a storm of protest,
>>particularly about the UN resolutions (although I happen to agree that
>>they are copyvios in that case).
>>
>>If Wikisource is not to be a repository of works that are freely
>>reproducable, but not compatible with the terms of the GFDL then I
>>think starting something on Wikicities would be in order. I originally
>>intended to use the Wiki format to create copies of the original
>>legislation online and then create amended copies of them as they
>>appeared at various points. Since the promised British Government
>>statute law database is currently mired in developmental purgatory
>>that seemed a very useful thing to do and perfect for Wikisource.
>>
>The copyright status of statutes is highly debatable. The US believes
>that its own statutes should be freely reproducible, but this is not the
>case in many other countries. I am not familiar enough with the case
>law for this in those countries to make an informed comment on how such
>arguments would turn out. Suffice it to say that there is an important
>public policy issue involved that would not be relevant to most other
>allegations of coyright infringement.
You may think that there is something that is highly debateable about
the copyright status of foreign statutes but that does not necessarily
make it so. The status of Federal statutes is clear in USC 17. Case
law deals with state and county statutes in the US. Applying that case
law to foreign statues is very likely incorrect. Remember that in
common law jurisdictions courts very often make distinctions when
ruling on similar cases that, for example, differ in having a private
individual suing a private individual and a private individual suing a
public authority on much the same facts of a case. Such actions can
cause big problems. When talking about foreign and domestic statute
copyright status we are talking about things that would have a strong
chance of being distinguished by a court.
Other countries have public domain laws etc, and some, like the UK,
have essentially waived copyright in statutes. That does not mean that
those countries that do claim copyrights on their laws cannot enforce
those copyrights in the United States. One of the fundamental bases
for the case law on US statutes is to let all people have access to
the law that governs them. When in the United States and talking about
foreign law that basis does not exist.
>>
>To say that these activities are wilfull violations is an improper
>accusation. There can be no wilfull violation when there is significant
>doubt that an action is a violation in the first place.
Yes there can be wilful infringement if the people concerned have been
warned about what they are doing. Someone can believe that there is
significant doubt over their actions when in fact there is no doubt at
all. If that person is warned about their actions and still continues
those actions that takes things to a whole different level. I say
there is wilful infringement because the people concerned have been
warned about their actions likely not being fair use and have still
continued to take those actions. They have also been told why those
actions are likely not fair use.
In the same vein if I were to continue to post Crown copyright
legislation on Wikisource after the clear policy statement of the
board I would be in wilful violation of that policy. I might think
that there was significant doubt over my actions, but there would not
be in reality.
I hope the UN doesn't come after us for posting texts of resolutions.
I don't know how likely to sue they are. If they do come after
Wikisource and those who posted the resolution texts then it cannot be
said that those posting the texts were not warned.
David Newton
They jumped the gun with the release but yes, there is a deal with Babylon pending.
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces(a)wikimedia.org
To: English Wikipedia; foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
Sent: Wed Feb 15 07:58:54 2006
Subject: [Foundation-l] Babylon Ltd using Wikipedia - press release questions
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/uktu013.html?.v=48http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-1…
OR YEHUDA, Israel, February 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Babylon Ltd., the leading
provider of single-click translation and information access software, and
Wikipedia the free-content, user edited encyclopedia, today announced the
launch of the Wikipedia as part of Babylon's solution.
[...]
"Our collaboration with Wikipedia is the first of its kind for Babylon".
said Alon Carmeli, VP Sales and Marketing, Babylon Ltd.
Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
Babylon Ltd?
- d.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Hi all,
Angela, Michael and I met today for discussing the details of the
communication committee. I'm giving here a summary of this meeting, a
second meeting will be held next weekend, open to all interested people
who want to help with the communications committee.
The committee will consist of four initial members
* Angela Beesley
* Michael Snow
* Nicholas Moreau
* David Gerard
Further members are welcome.
The Schwartz PR team who is working pro bono for us and I will act as
advisors. With this email, I am resigning from my job as press officer.
I will still help with the work, but I need a bit of distance from
Wikimedia/Wikipedia at the moment.
The committee will elect a chair as soon as it has a stable membership.
Working tools:
* an internal press wiki (enotif enabled) and a mailing list will be
used to coordinate the work of the communications committee. The mailing
list and the wiki will be open to all people doing PR on an
international or project level.
* the press queues in otrs
* the press release distribution and archive software on wikimedia.de
Main tasks (for the moment):
* The committee is responsible for authorizing and coordinating the
press teams on local projects (list on [[Wikimedia:Press room]])
* The committee will tend to the list of interview contacts
([[Internal:Interview partners]])
* It will draft and distribute the press releases of the Wikimedia
foundation and provide help for local press releases
Areas of work:
>From the structure of the committees, there are quite a lot of work
areas for the communication committee:
* Press
* Promotion
* OTRS
* Translation
* Fundraising
* Internal communication
To address all these areas, probably subcommittees have to be founded,
that's a topic for the open meeting next weekend.
Relevant meta pages:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committeehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees
greetings,
elian
Newspapers from Belgrade, Mikro News, published that German Court
abolished German Wikipedia. I confute that and sent them an email in
which I sad that that information was not true. German Court didn't
and couldn't abolish Wikipedia, because Wikipedia's domen and servers
are in USA. The truth is that German Court took away domen
wikipedia.de which transfers users to the main site de.wikipedia.org.
Jovana Milicevic
Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro
Hello everyone,
As Delphine told you a few days ago, my baby boy born
nearly 7 days ago. His name is Thomas Gabriel Luc.
I was told he would be a big fat boy, but nope !
He born 3,4 kg (plain average weight) and just hit
back the 3 kilos, so I am finally home !
He is quite naturally the prettiest one (though, let's face
it, he's got some white pimples on the face...), and
looks very much like myself (two eyes, one nose, one
mouth and a double chin). Actually, he looks very much
like his older brother, so I keep calling him William
:-)
We are both fine now. The most powerful lesson of my
third child birth would be :
"do not pick up the fruit when it is not ripe yet".
After more than 2 weeks going three times per week to
the hospital for full check up due to preeclampsia
disorder, the docs decided to chemically induce the birth.
2 days in a row, they applied a cervical prostaglandin
gel, which caused very very very frequent contractions.
A more natural way of doing this is referred to as the "italian
technique" (the male sperm does contain this prostaglandin, so having
love moments with partner is often recommanded to gently induce child
birth... Right, I mention this only because it is Valentine's day :-))
In my case, no such delicacy. I had the dubious pleasure to spend two
full days in the childbirth area (not exactly 4 stars
hotel), with basically no food, screaming women all day and night long,
electronic gear on chest, arms, hands and tummy.
I *hated* it.
And hated even more when after two days, nothing was
occuring but painful very frequent contractions.
At that point, I was so tired they gave me something
to actually *slow down* contractions so I could rest a
bit! And decided to rupture the amniotic sac, telling
me I had 12 hours in front of me before the c-section
if nothing was happening.
It may have scared my body badly... in hardly more than 60
mn, I went through the 10 cm dilation, the expulsion
of the child and finally placenta. It was quite
explosive :-)
For the wikicommons addicts, no pictures of the
delivery itself were taken :-) Even if we had wanted
to, there would have been no time to do it. So, no bloody pictures of
delivery will be uploaded ;-) sorry...
I put a few pictures on yahoo to share with family and
friends.
http://fr.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fdevouard/album?.dir=550d&.src=ph&store=&p…
So, everything is fine :-)
I do have hundred of emails pending, not counting RC to check and
mailing lists to go through. And odd sleeping patterns right now. So,
I'll go slowly through all pending issues. If there is something urgent,
please notify it to me specifically.
Also, thank you for all the congrats left on my user talk pages, ml and
private emails.
Cheers
Anthere
PS : Did I mention I was happy ? I am :-)
Kim Bruning wrote:
>On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 04:56:59PM -0800, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>
>>If there is no such complaint, what's the urgency that requires you to
>>unilaterally delete things? Unless you wish to argue, as some people
>>have about the regular deletion process, that it regularly reaches
>>incorrect results, I'm not sure why it's so important to short-circuit
>>the normal procedures for removing copyrighted material that isn't
>>properly licensed.
>>
>>
>That's an interesting question. I suppose if that's the case, we really
>should take things a bit slower. However, it is the case that sometimes
>for instance images for deletion does not delete images that are not
>correctly fair use. It also happens that userpages use "fair use" images.
>
>I'm not sure what should be done about those. I don't do deletions myself
>anymore, so I'm a fairly neutral party just watching the shells fly both ways.
>
>
Dealing with fair use images is slightly different from normal copyright
problems, I would think. Since the fairness depends on the type of use,
it ought to be sorted out where the image is being used. If there's an
inappropriate claim of fair use somewhere, remove the image from the
article (or user page, as the case may be). Acting unilaterally in that
regard is just being bold, doesn't require adminship, and is not
something to punish unless you have an edit war about it.
If the removal of the image holds, then the rest is really quite simple.
Once the image is an orphan, there is no longer any basis for a fair use
claim, and it can be deleted using the normal processes. No need to
punish anyone for unilateral action.
--Michael Snow
sannse wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Dealing with fair use images is slightly different from normal
>> copyright problems, I would think. Since the fairness depends on the
>> type of use, it ought to be sorted out where the image is being used.
>> If there's an inappropriate claim of fair use somewhere, remove the
>> image from the article (or user page, as the case may be). Acting
>> unilaterally in that regard is just being bold, doesn't require
>> adminship, and is not something to punish unless you have an edit war
>> about it.
>>
>> If the removal of the image holds, then the rest is really quite
>> simple. Once the image is an orphan, there is no longer any basis for
>> a fair use claim, and it can be deleted using the normal processes.
>> No need to punish anyone for unilateral action.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
> I guess you haven't seen the recent flaps and fracas over fair-use
> images on user pages. Removing them is highly likely to cause an edit
> war, with a lot of people under the firm impression that "fair use"
> means "I can use it because it's pretty".
Actually, I'm aware of this, and it's a big reason why I recently argued
on another of our lists that people should be more assertive about
editing the user pages of others.
> The sides are sharply divided and are not likely to come to any happy
> resolution any time soon - unless there is a clear statement from
> someone appropriate as to what we should do in such cases.
>
> If one of the legal team could say specifically "fair use images are
> fine on personal user pages" or "fair use images must be removed from
> personal user pages" then maybe the argument will be over and all the
> drama will stop.
The problem with this solution is twofold. The first issue is that just
in terms of the legal analysis, it's difficult to make such categorical
statements about fair use without knowing the nature of the particular
use. The second follows somewhat from the first, in that I'm skeptical
that such a statement from me alone would accomplish this. For now, a
policy declaration of this nature probably still needs to come from Jimmy.
There are also other principles in play here. One is that Wikipedia is
here to write an encyclopedia; another is that we are not here to
provide free personal web hosting. Fair use images on user pages have no
connection to the first principle, and violate the second. Between that
and the legal issues, I certainly do recommend having a policy that fair
use images generally should not appear on user pages. And I'm sure that
people would have the good sense to recognize the rare exception when an
image is, say, part of a draft encyclopedia article being worked on
temporarily in user space. But I can't force people to adopt my
recommendation.
--Michael Snow
Angela wrote:
>Can you please point out where Wikisource agreed to allow CC-BY-NC-ND
>text? I don't recall any mention of it on any of the mailing lists I'm
>on. It really shouldn't be news to anyone using Wikisource that all
>Foundation projects require freely licensed text.
As I said in my previous message I saw that there was an ambiguity in
the Wikisource copyright page back in November. See here:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-November/005050.html
I tried to get a definitive statement, of the type that you just made,
out of people on this very mailing list. I also posted things on the
Scriptorium at Wikisource to get input there. The result was more
confusion. I then got interested parties to chat in IRC (those
interested parties that were actually interested enough at the time to
respond) to see what should be done about this. The copyright page of
the main Wikisource domain was altered with a note making it clear
that this was a trial. Nothing was said about it for a month and so
the page that was referred to earlier in this thread was altered.
It wasn't exactly like this alteration was made in secret and it
wasn't exactly like this alteration was made without trying to get the
opinion of the Foundation on the matter. After all that's precisely
why I posted about it on this very mailing list!
I suggest that you be the one to make the policy clear on Wikisource.
I also suggest that you be the one to tag the hundreds of UN
resolution copyvios on there for deletion. If this is to be the
confirmed policy I will remove work that I have done on starting to
put some British legislation online, which is under Crown copyright
and hence incompatible with the GFDL. Prepare for a storm of protest,
particularly about the UN resolutions (although I happen to agree that
they are copyvios in that case).
If Wikisource is not to be a repository of works that are freely
reproducable, but not compatible with the terms of the GFDL then I
think starting something on Wikicities would be in order. I originally
intended to use the Wiki format to create copies of the original
legislation online and then create amended copies of them as they
appeared at various points. Since the promised British Government
statute law database is currently mired in developmental purgatory
that seemed a very useful thing to do and perfect for Wikisource.
Good luck in implementing (properly this time) the copyright policy of
the Foundation. You'll need it given the number of those willing to
wilfully violate copyright on Wikisource.
David Newton
Kim Bruning wrote:
>On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 12:23:34PM -0500, Patrick, Brad wrote:
>
>
>>To editors on en.wp in particular, don't hesitate to take action on
>>copyvio. It is better to err on the side of caution and aggressively
>>delete. The license problem is as much an educational problem as an
>>actual systemic copyvio problem.
>>
>>
>While I thank you for that statement, it's not yet sufficient.
>
>The english wikipedia community currently does not accept
>"unilaterally deleting out of process" and has severly punished those
>who do so.
>
>
For copyright infringements where we have an actual complaint by an
affected party, nobody has ever given me any difficulty about
unilaterally deleting pages. In some cases I've done so even without a
complaint in hand in order to clean up page history before it gets more
infected, but I try to let the community process do its work otherwise.
--Michael Snow
February 8th:
Dragan Sataric and Filip Maljkovic speaked in the programe at radio Idea.
Jovana Milicevic talked for radio Belgrade.
February 11th:
In Youth center Dom omladine Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro in cooperation
with FSN(Free Software Network) and LUG Belgrade( Linux User Group )
organized speach about free software movement and prehistory of idea of free
software.
Jovana Milicevic