>From a "New York Times" blog post about the use of the word "foundation"
versus the use of the word "charity":
> Some charities, however, have the word "Foundation" in their official
> names. Examples of these are the Yele Haiti Foundation, the New York
> Foundation for the Arts, the William J. Clinton Foundation and the
> Wikimedia Foundation. Despite their names, all of them are charities;
> they rely on donations from others to sustain themselves and the programs
> and services they offer. On second reference, any one of them should be
> referred to as a "charity," not a "foundation."
Source: http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/phrases-gone-astray-2/
It appears that nobody appears to actually follow this rule (including the
"New York Times"), but I find the nuance interesting. I imagine one would
perform better than the other during fundraising; perhaps there's hard data
on that.
MZMcBride
On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 10:50 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net>
>> wrote:
>>> Foundation is not a legal term
>>
>> "Private foundation" is one, though, and it is one that is contrasted
>> with "public charity".
>>
>> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_00000509----000-…
>> http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=137894,00.html
>>
>
> Yeh, I think we'd have to look up more than that to actually clarify all
> this.
I'm not sure there's anything to clarify. The author of that article
was obviously referencing the IRS distinction of "private foundation"
vs. "public charity", in which the WMF clearly fits under "public
charity" (at least, according to their tax filings and determination
letter they do, see for instance
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-April/016265.html).
If you asked anyone who is familiar with US tax law for tax-exempt
organizations what the difference is "between a foundation and a
charity", that's what they're going to think of. However, I think
it's nearly equally clear that the definitions of these terms in the
US Code do not coincide exactly (or even very much at all) with common
usage.
Furthermore, as far as I can tell, "public charity" is a term invented
by (or at least popularized by) the IRS, which doesn't appear in the
actual tax code. It could just as well be "private foundation" vs.
"public foundation", and in fact the term "public foundation" does
have quite a fair bit of use.
Anyway, my purpose in pointing out that section of IRS code was to
explain what the author was talking about. I don't think it shows
that the author was right. In fact, I think the author was putting
far too much emphasis on some relatively obscure portions of the
Internal Revenue Code, instead of plain language meanings, on which
the status of the WMF is much more ambiguous. To the extent the
phrases "foundation" and "charity" have gone astray, they have gone
astray due to the non-plain-language definitions given by the Internal
Revenue Code and the Internal Revenue Service.
In a message dated 4/26/2011 4:42:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
waihorace(a)yahoo.com.hk writes:
> Baidu do not translate anything copy from English Wikipedia or Japanese
> Wikipedia, but just keep the full content without attribution and changing
>
> anything. There are totally about 50 articles copy from Eng & Japanese WP.
> HW
>
How bout just tell them, "please add this line of attribution...."
If they've only copied 50 articles, it sounds to me more like what we
routinely encounter, people just don't understand the license.
Hi everyone,
Just a quick heads up that Sue will be having one of her regular IRC office
hours in #wikimedia-office this Thursday, April 28th at 17:00 UTC.
Instructions about how to join etc. are on Meta.[1]
As for topics, we were thinking that it might be nice to talk about our
continuing research at the Foundation on new editor retention. Other topics
(Perhaps Wikimania submissions since the deadline is impending?) are welcome
too. We look forward to chatting!
Thanks,
--
Steven Walling
Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
In a message dated 4/26/2011 12:08:42 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
smolensk(a)eunet.rs writes:
> Translation is not "sweat of the brow". Copyright law of Germany, for
> example, explicitly states that translations are copyrighted:
> http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__3.html . Copyright law of Serbia, for
> another example, does the same.
>
This doesn't exactly address the point.
A work is copyright, a translation enjoys that *same* copyright. It
doesn't create an additional independent copyright.
This was the situation when Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to sue for people
translating her work. That's why the US law changed IIRC.
A translation, under US law, as I understand it, is a derivative work, and
thus can be made, under the same copyright protection, but does not create
an additional copyright distinct from the original work.
I always thought that translations were considered "wholely derivative",
that is that a new copyright is *not* created, by translating.
In a message dated 4/25/2011 1:57:34 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
On 04/25/11 9:33 AM, Joan Goma wrote:
> My interest in a legal opinion is not to know if what they do is legal or
> not.
>
> My interest is to know for example what can they do if I copy the content
> they previously have translated from an English Wikipedia article I have
> previously written.
The translation would give rise to a new copyright *in addition* to
yours. You would be infringing their copyright. This all assumes that it
was a human translation. If it was a machine translation the argument
could be made that as a mechanical process it lacked the originality
needed to acquire copyright.
> How do they put a dollar figure on the damages suffered if the income
they
> get from that content is obtained from my work they have translated
without
> my permission?
In principle damages are evaluated on the basis of market activity. If
the quantum of damages is the issue the burden of proof is on the person
seeking damages.
> They only have my permission to publish derived works under same license.
> Then I have the right to copy the derived works back. So any damage they
> could claim is exactly the same damage I suffer for not being able to do
> those copies.
No, because the translation is not identical to the work you produced.
This still does not account for how different jurisdictions will handle
the matter. At first glance it would seem more convenient for them to
have the case heard in a Chinese court and for you in a Spanish court.
Ray
>> Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 01:11:25 -0700
>> From: Ray Saintonge<saintonge(a)telus.net>
>>
>> On 04/24/11 11:45 PM, Joan Goma wrote:
>>> As Ray saids legal prosecution to claim for formal accomplishing of the
>>> copyright terms is expensive and difficult. But the same happens the
>> other
>>> way around.
>>>
>>> I would like to have a clear legal opinion about applying the terms
>> without
>>> going to court.
>>>
>>> They have copied articles from Chinese Wikipedia and translated
articles
>>> from English and Japanese Wikipedia so in my opinion their work is a
>>> derivative one and according to the CCSA terms it is also CCSA no mater
>> what
>>> they say.
>>>
>>> What about creating a bot to copy from Baidu all the articles not yet
>>> existing in Chinese wikipedia.
>>>
>>> Could Geoff Brigham provide us his legal advice?
>> Getting a legal opinion that what they are doing is illegal would be the
>> easy part. The challenge is what can you do with that opinion once you
>> have it.
>>
>> Copyright, and least in common law countries, is primarily an economic
>> right. In that context courts would be more concerned with the measure
>> of economic damage. How do you put a dollar figure on the damages
>> suffered when the original authors weren't seeking to make money from
>> it? Whoever starts the fight still needs to fund prosecuting the
>> battle, and that could be very expensive.
>>
>> Ray
>>
>>
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:46:41 -0700
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 85, Issue 52
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4DB66A51.8090209(a)telus.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
>
>
> Assuming that your analysis is perfectly correct what then? Informal
> opinions from lawyers are still nothing more than opinions. Even a fully
> researched legal opinion won't help much; that kind of legal research
> may be too subtle for the average Wikipedian's simplistic conception of
> law. The court's opinion is the only one that matters, and even then
> only in that court's country.
>
> Who is going to test the law? Who is going to bear the expense of taking
> all this to court when the damages are so very small? What is the
> pragmatic solution?
>
> Ray
>
>
I don’t know but I only see two possibilities:
A) We find a way to enforce the re-licensing of the derivative works under
the same license.
B) We change the license to a none-commercial one and issue a commercial
license only to WMF.
I don’t feel very happy by releasing my works under a free license if in
practice everybody can reuse my work and exploit it in under a privative
license.
It's my understanding that "sweat of the brown" does not create a copyright
at all.
That was the entire argument behind the claim that phonebooks had no
copyright protection.
Similarly pure indexes have no copyright protection since they exhibit no
creativity at all.
Bad news for indexers.
In a message dated 4/25/2011 10:58:23 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com writes:
I would expect that to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For
example, jurisdictions that includes some kind of "sweat of the brow"
doctrine would probably protect translations. What jurisdiction are
you referring to?
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:57:23 -0700
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 85, Issue 52
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4DB5E033.4080609(a)telus.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> > They only have my permission to publish derived works under same license.
> > Then I have the right to copy the derived works back. So any damage they
> > could claim is exactly the same damage I suffer for not being able to do
> > those copies.
> No, because the translation is not identical to the work you produced.
> This still does not account for how different jurisdictions will handle
> the matter. At first glance it would seem more convenient for them to
> have the case heard in a Chinese court and for you in a Spanish court.
>
> Ray
>
But If I licensed the work under a free license They only can make the
derivative work under the condition of releasing it under the same license.
If they fail to do it they must talk to me and ask for a new license. Then
I have the right to ask for a fair share of their profits.
And it seems very reasonable that the share of the profits I ask must be
higher than the cost of the activities I can't do because of they releasing
the derivative work under a more restrictive license. If I copy back their
derivative work and distribute it under a free license there is a loss of
profits that can be measured by their fall of income. But they still may
have some profits coming partially from their additional right and partially
from mine.
So I see the things this way
Situation a) They use my work, do a derivative work and release it under
free license: I copy their derivative work back to wikipedia and their
ability to make profits is highly limited because of the existence of the
copy in wikipedia and because of the free license they are releasing the
work.
Situation b) They use my work, do a derivative work and release it under a
privative license. The free license doesn't apply because they don't
accomplish with the conditions of the license. I can sue them and ask for a
fair share of their incomes. No mater the original license because they are
not using it. Here the problem is in supporting the cost of the legal
process and being heard in a Chinese court.
Situation c) They use my work, do a derivative work, release it under a
privative license and I copy their work and distribute it under a free
license. In this case They can claim for the loses of profits but they also
have to compensate me for the fair share of their income I have the right to
receive. I think is is not difficult to sustain that the second is higher
than the first. And I also have the advantage that the case has to be heard
in my country and if I don't have income or I am a none for profit entity
accomplishing certain rules I have the right to free justice.
I think situation is more difficult if I am not the author of the original
work but only a distributor or a licensee. But if we could find a way to
force any derivative work to enter under free license no mater what the
author of the derivative work says then this would be the best protection
for the free knowledge. If necessary changing again the license and
explicitly saying: By using Wikipedia you are accepting that any copy or
distribution or derivative work you may do will be also a free work. If you
don't agree with this don't use Wikipedia and don't do any derivative work
from it.
MZMcBride's email about emails reminded me that every automated email
from Wikimedia servers looks like a bunch of programming code.
The first idea was that it would be better to have some better formatted
emails with some more information (for example, I would like to see diff
inside of my email when I get notification about changing my talk page).
But, then I've realized that we don't have a designer. By "designer" I
mean a person who is employed by WMF and who is constantly working on
improving MediaWiki look and feel.
While a lot of us may be completely fine with reading Wikipedia articles
through links, there are people who care about look and feel.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Foundation-l] Better user experience and retention through
e-mail notifications
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:55:10 -0500
From: MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi.
I'm not sure about other people, but one of the primary reasons I get on
Facebook is that Facebook reminds me to get on. It sends notification
e-mails about a Wall post or a comment or whatever. Without these, I
wouldn't check it more than once every few days.
There's been a lot of talk about getting new editors and keeping them. I
would think something like working e-mail notifications would be a high
priority. There are plenty of features and enhancements that could improve
the user experience and user retention/return, but this piece of fruit seems
particularly low-hanging.
Even on some Wikimedia wikis, it's the e-mail notifications that get me to
go back to the site. I only ever visit strategy.wikimedia.org when someone
edits my talk page, as it triggers an e-mail notification to me. The smaller
sites have had these types of notifications for a long time. The
notification system is built in to MediaWiki, it's just not enabled on
larger sites such as the English Wikipedia. It's being tracked by bug
<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5220>.
MZMcBride
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