The WMF licensing policy puts the burden on being able to declare a work to be "free content" or else use an EDP. Unless something is *really* old you have to know who held the copyright in order to show that their rights have expired. Not being able to determine the copyright holder, or even being able to prove the copyright holder is 100% unknown and always was, does not release the work into the Public Domain. Orphaned works are still copyrighted in the US. There is no provision for a work to be declared "free content" unless it a) released under a free license or b) in the Public Domain. *Many* works do not fit either of those criteria and still have 0% chance of anyone being awarded damages for copyright infringement.
But we are limited by the WMF licensing resolustion, which has a very high standard for "free content" and what is allowed to be hosted as such on WMF servers. I don't particularly like the licensing resolution for a number of reasons, but we can't just ignore that it exists and decide use a different standard that is more appealing.
Birgitte SB
--- Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Would the copyright holders of said images ever be able to reasonably make a claim to copyright? How could they prove that? They can't, probably, assuming they are still alive.
Mark
On 23/03/2008, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
"Freely usable in any practical sense" was not the standard adopted by WMF in the licensing
resolution.
They adopted a very stringent standard for what
the
can be considered free content and hosted on the
WMF
servers outside of EDPs. Perhaps the board
should
revisit this resolution. But I don't think
following
a different standard in practice then has been outlined by the WMF is a good idea.
BirgitteSB
(Wikipedia)" newyorkbrad@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that common sense should be used
in
this as in all other matters. A 60-year-old photograph that
has
never been the subject of any claim of ownership and which has
been
repeatly used in multiple media around the world without
challenge is
freely usable in any practical sense.
Newyorkbrad
On 3/23/08, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com
wrote:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 5:42 PM, Delirium
delirium@hackish.org wrote:
This came up in the discussion, but since
the
German occupation during
WW2 is considered illegitimate under
international law, Polish law
applies, even in areas where the de jure
Polish
government didn't have
de facto control. The discussion is here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Stroop_...
Does this mean that the images taken inside
Auschwitz can be marked
PD, either as PD in Poland or PD in the U.S.
because seized enemy
property? We've been told by several
Wikipedians
who specialize in
images that we could only claim fair use for
them,
which has meant the
images have been challenged quite a few times
by
people who say we
can't claim fair use unless we know the name
of
the copyright holder.
We've had several attempts to delete some of
them
on that basis.
Sarah
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