Hi,
As some of you know, images are been deleted in the past month from
WikiCommons due to a change in the ruling of the United States Supreme
Court. (The case of Golan v. Holder, confirming the legality of the URAA,
has restored copyright status to foreign works that were placed in the
public domain after January 1, 1996). Court ruling brought WikiCommons
volunteers to delete images that do not meet the new guideline.
Consequently, Israeli images were deleted even though the Israeli law
releases them into the public domain.
We wrote to the legal department of the Foundation to alert about the
situation. The department has posted a legal
opinion<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Use_of_Foreign_Works_R…
on
the subject following our inquiry.
WMIL is going to turn to the Minister of Justice and seek for written
statement that confirm that images released by the State of Israel to the
public domain may be used freely around the world. We hope that WikiCommons
operators rely on the letter and will not delete more images.
It will be great if other chapters will update if they encountered the
problem and what you intend to do.
All the best
Michal
--
Michal Lester
Executive Director
Wikimedia Israel
http://www.wikimedia.org.il/ 050-8996046
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. **That's our commitment.*