Thanks Asaf, very true: I can totally see how the copyright issue would remain a big problem, even if you solve the technical challenges...
I can see one solution to that (albeit farfetched): an analogue to a super rigorous referencing approach. I am imagining it's possible to verify in an automated way that an edited video is exclusively constructed out of a list of cited materials. So if we would be able to build a database of freely licensed raw materials that can be sourced from (HUGE if, I know!) I imagine that video editors could possibly limit themselves to that and credibly claim free licensing that way? But I'm guessing that the typical youtuber won't be very excited about that prospect with severe limitations on their creativity. You may still have to deal with a bunch of edge cases, but it would give a starting point.
Another way would be if we force creators to edit their videos all the way from the raw materials on a platform controlled by us, rather than upload the end product - resulting in an edit history that can trace back what materials were used and that they were freely licensed. This is very much in line with our traditional Wikipedia approach, but would be impossible to sell unless we have a pretty awesome video editor. Which brings us back to the start of this conversation :). In a way, the Kaltura editor felt more advanced than what we currently make available.
The downside is, as long as we remain copyright sticklers, it'll not be very 'fun' to develop videos for us, let alone with us. Any solution will have to be a combination of massive technical improvements, a change of attitude and an increased library of free raw materials.
Lodewijk
On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 3:24 PM Asaf Bartov asaf.bartov@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 10:29 PM geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, 27 Jan 2024 at 05:07, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
? Many creators say they are glad to relicense their existing
fantastic work, but don't have time/will to overcome the current obstacles to such reuse that they have to [personally] overcome for each video. So we only get bulk contributions, through a third-party who is familiar with the wikis, once in a while... a modest homegrown example: depthsofwiki has a range of great short videos that are partly educational and mainly inspiring to delve into the wikis and learn things. I suspect none of them are on Commons despite obvious relevance to the movement for outreach, illustration, and the like.
I suspect we are dealing with Stated vs. Revealed Preferences. Saying no to wikipedia has more of a social cost than talking about technical issues. Converting to something wikipedia will accept is fairly straightforward. Handbrake has a GUI and pops up in creator workflows as a convient way to compress B-roll. Uploading presents more of a challange than most areas but that would be because we care more about copyright than most so probably unavoidable,
A bigger issue with a random YouTuber or other individual video creator re-licensing their work is that *very* often, their "own work" is not purely "own work"; rather, they use non-free music as background, incorporate clips or memes in their video, etc., making the video potentially *unacceptable* on Commons, even if the author of the full video represents that they are willing to license their work under a free license.
This is a sticky issue, because there is no easy fix, technological or otherwise, for clearing those copyright concerns. If a video creator has their contributions wait in some review limbo for weeks (or months), and then has, say, four out of five of them rejected on copyright grounds, they would be overwhelmingly unlikely to keep contributing.
(I'm just bringing up this issue that doesn't seem to have been mentioned as a factor. I do agree and wholeheartedly support the need to accept more formats and take on the burden of determining whether videos are usable (what SJ above called "a stickier ingenstion process"); even if it won't attract hordes of YouTubers to contribute, it could allow those of us already involved with and interested in free knowledge/culture to contribute more easily and frequently, and that itself could be transformative, in terms of the presence of video content on the wikis compared to status quo.)
A. (in my volunteer capacity) -- Asaf Bartov asaf.bartov@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org