This would be shockingly inappropriate, to the point that I would urge intervention at the Foundation level if this were to happen.
The Wikimedia communities' approaches to copyright and related issues often reflect what I consider a bewildering contradiction. On the one hand, even when it damages the encyclopedias, we are often careful to uphold intellectual property rights that hypertechnically might conceivably exist, even where it is blindingly obvious that no real person or entity has any existing interest in the intellectual property and there is no prospect that any claim will ever be asserted.
On the other hand, we sometimes are just as strongly willing to disregard actual assertions of rights by bona-fide creators and rightsholders on the basis of the slightest arguable legal defect in the rights claim, without regard to any other considerations. The position you describe below would be an example of the latter, and in my view a well-nigh indefensible one.
Newyorkbrad
On 2/23/12, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Newyorkbrad newyorkbrad@gmail.com wrote:
Can we agree that if the creator of a (reasonably recent) work from one of these countries were ACTUALLY to request that the file be deleted due to a copyright issue, we would grant the request rather than rely on an omission or incompatibility in the copyright treaty regime?
One of the most vocal commenters at w:Talk:Copyrights, would almost certainly say no.
For example:
"... [T]hey have the opportunity to obtain copyrights elsewhere and chose not to do so. That is their responsibility."
"The rights of copyright for the individuals end at the border of Iran, period."
At least some of the Wikipedia commenters seem prepared to draw a hard line on this issue with no exceptions.
Personally, I'd like to believe that we as a community are more reasonable than that.
-Robert Rohde
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