Sage Ross writes:
>
> What case(s) settled this issue? I haven't been able to find anything
> credible one way or the other, but a number of organizations without
> an obvious financial interest in the issue seem to assume that
> restorations do create new copyrights.
The issue of whether originality is required to create a new copyright was
addressed in the United States Supreme Court case Feist v. Rural Telephone
(1991). There's a pretty good Wikipedia article on the case. The essence
of the ruling is that some degree of creativity and originality is required
to create a copyright interest.
In general, organizations that believe "restorations" create new copyrights
either don't accept Feist's reasoning (perhaps because they operate in a
non-U.S. jurisdiction that honors "sweat of the brow" theory, as some
believe the U.K. does), or they misunderstand what can count as creativity
and originality.
The problem for restorations is a philosophical one but also a
straightforward one. If you are *restoring* something, you are doing
something precisely the opposite of being "creative" or "original." Indeed,
the more creative and original you are, the less your work counts as a
restoration. (It may count as a derivative work, which qualifies for
copyright protection, but museums and archives normally take their mission
to be essentially preservationist, not essentially creative.)
There are few arguments as confused as the ones I've seen that argue that
restoration in itself ought to qualify as original or creative under Feist
doctrine. At least the "sweat of the brow" theory doesn't suffer from that
sort of philosophical confusion. Instead, it's simply bad copyright policy.
--Mike
Domas says about Anthony:
++++++++++++++++
How was that budgeted? Which year? Can you point me at that unspent
software development budget number?
...
You are trolling and you're piggy-backing.
We have dedicated resources for that, paid out of donations, yes.
++++++++++++++++
I would consider it equally "trolling" to assume or pretend that an
unfortunate financial situation did not happen, just because you haven't
taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been
discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet. Here are at least
a dozen for you, Domas:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22%241.7+million%22+technolo…
Greg
--
Gregory Kohs
Lars,
I think we agree on what needs to happen. The only thing I am not
sure of is where you would like to see the work take place. I have
raised versions of this issue with the Open Library list, which I copy
again here (along with the people I know who work on that fine project
- hello, Peter and Rebecca). This is why I listed it below as a good
group to collaborate with.
However, the project I have in mind for OCR cleaning and translation needs to
- accept public comments and annotation about the substance or use of
a work (the wiki covering their millions of metadata entries is very
low traffic and used mainly to address metadata issues in their
records)
- handle OCR as editable content, or translations of same
- provide a universal ID for a work, with which comments and
translations can be associated (see
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/openlibrary/+spec/global-work-ids)
- handle citations, with the possibility of developing something like WikiCite
Let's take a practical example. A classics professor I know (Greg
Crane, copied here) has scans of primary source materials, some with
approximate or hand-polished OCR, waiting to be uploaded and converted
into a useful online resource for editors, translators, and
classicists around the world.
Where should he and his students post that material?
Wherever they end up, the primary article about each article would
surely link out to the OL and WS pages for each work (where one
exists).
> (Plus you would have to motivate why a copy of OpenLibrary should
> go into the English Wikisource and not the German or French one.)
I don't understand what you mean -- English source materials and
metadata go on en:ws, German on de:ws, &c. How is this different from
what happens today?
SJ
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Lars Aronsson<lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
> Samuel Klein wrote (in two messages):
>
>> >> *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published
>> >> work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion
>> >> about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with
>> >> OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas)
>
>> I could see this happening on Wikisource.
>
> Why could you not see this happening within the existing
> OpenLibrary? Is there anything wrong with that project? It sounds
> to me as you would just copy (fork) all their book data, but for
> what gain?
>
> (Plus you would have to motivate why a copy of OpenLibrary should
> go into the English Wikisource and not the German or French one.)
>
>
> --
> Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
Sorry,
But my question is not if we as a wikimedia group is violating the license,
but if they as users are.
I would like a professional opinion on the question :
Is wikipedia non commercial or commercial non profit?
thanks,
mike
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk(a)eunet.yu> wrote:
> jamesmikedupont(a)googlemail.com wrote:
>> It is my opinion that we should be careful of people who are using
>> restricted software
>> for contributions because it might be in violation of some licenses.
>
> No, we should not. Whatever licenses they are violating, we are not a
> party to these licenses and we are not violating them.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
So, let me just get this straight.
Someone here bemoaned the fact that a full history dump of the English
Wikipedia has been sought for 3 years, but is still forthcoming. That
person mentioned, factually, that $1.7 million of budgeted money for
"technology" was left unspent, with the suggestion that perhaps a portion of
this money could have been directed to a contractor who would have been
charged with crafting a successful full history dump. This budgetary fact
was disdainfully questioned and the "troll" insult was whipped out with
haste. The financial fact was then supported with a report from this very
Foundation's Executive Director. The response then was that one "could care
less" about what Sue Gardner has to say about budget. Then, the initial
person offered that minimum wage plus $80 daily child care would buy his
solution to a full history dump.
Now, assuming this might mean 8 working weeks of labor for this guy, that
would be ($400 child-care + $280 wage) x 8 weeks = $5,440.
This sum is approximately three-tenths of ONE PERCENT of the budgeted money
that was instead stored in the bank and set aside for some future staffing
and technology needs.
But the person(s) making the factual statements, backing them up with
referenced sources, and offering a potential eight-week solution to a
three-year-old problem, at a cost of 3/10th of 1% of the allocated budget to
problems exactly like this... IS REWARDED WITH THE "TROLL" epithet?
Do I have that correct? Because if I do, then I am beginning to see why so
many people suggest that there is a serious freakin' PROBLEM with the tone
of discourse on this mailing list.
Let me recommend something. Pay Anthony Dipierro the sum of $5,500, give
him server access, give him eight weeks, and if he doesn't produce a full
history dump of the English Wikipedia, then perhaps his penance could be a
one-year ban from Wikimedia mailing lists? That would make a lot of "troll
spotters" here quite happy, I'm sure. What do you have to lose? (Other
than three-tenths of one percent of the 2007 technology budget, that is.)
--
Gregory Kohs
Recently, a participant on this list said, "I could really care less about
what Sue has to say about the budget".
Didn't we have some sort of moderation plan, to give time-outs to people
when they step over a line into hostile, disparaging commentary that adds no
value to the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list? Sue Gardner deserves more
respect than that.
--
Gregory Kohs
On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:51:48 -0400, Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure a lot of this has been fixed (I vaguely remember Tim
doing
> some cleanup to the installer for XSS issues), but I can't say for sure.
> Forwarding to wikitech-l, this is more of a tech issue than Foundation
> one.
Please don't bother wikitech-l with such things; that's just a reference
to a list of patched vulnerabilities culled from our own security releases.
-- brion
Andrew Whitworth opined:
++++++++++
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>> wrote:
>* I would consider it equally "trolling" to assume or pretend that an
*>* unfortunate financial situation did not happen, just because you haven't
*>* taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been
*>* discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet. Here are at least
*>* a dozen for you, Domas:
*>*
*>* http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22%241.7+million%22+technolo…
*
I wouldn't consider any of those dozen to be credible or reliable
sources. Nobody has a responsibility to monitor the entirety of the
internet to follow various discussion minutia or unfounded rumors, and
it's not trolling to not assume that responsibility for oneself.
--Andrew Whitworth
++++++++++
Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to click the first returned result:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_report_to_the_Board,_May_2008
...Where Sue Gardner (you may not know or trust her credibility or
reliability, but she is the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,
which is the subject of this mailing list) herself says:
The biggest departmental underspend was in the technology budget
(-$1,673). We attribute this underspending to general conservatism and
caution on the part of the tech team, a desire to defer equipment purchases
while various donations and sponsorship deals were under negotiation, and
delays in hiring.
Is it just me, or is there a significant amount of cotton stuffed in many
ears around here?
Sorry to sound so rude in reply, but you really do turn some of these
would-be contested lay-ups into backboard-shattering slam dunks.
Greg
--
Gregory Kohs
This might interest some of you:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Defining_Noncommercial
This is the long-awaited study on a large survey on how people
interpret the terms "non-commercial" and "commercial", like in the
NC-licenses from Creative Commons. Pretty interesting stuff for people
interested in free culture in general, although with its 255 pages
this might be something that you would rather like to skim through
instead of fully read :)
For a summary of the findings read:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127
-- Hay
