[Foundation-l] Copyright issues and how we handle them

The lack of copyright advice forcing us to rely on ourselves (namely amateurs) being a problem is old news. But this is situation where I believe amateur copyright enforcer has gone too far. Contributors never like to hear that they misjudged copyright and must remove their work. However we must try to handle such issues with tact. At the extreme end of this problem, I believe someone from the foundation must intervene with those who claim false authority. Such as an editor who believes he knows better than others on copyright issues and implies he has the approval of the Jimbo and the ability to see that the foundation shuts down a project if the contributors do not submit to his opinion. This is an extreme case where action is needed. Background: The most distressing part of a Russian copyright dispute regards rehabilitated prisoners, including the men and women who died in Soviet Gulags. A new Russian law, which becomes active Jan 1, 2008, will apparently restore IP rights on their works for 70 years + the date of their most recent postmortem rehabilitation. As many of these authors, such Osip Mandelstam have no heirs (the gulag authorities seems to have failed to have prisoners create wills before seeing to their early deaths) so everything will be inherited by the Union of Russian Writers and the Russian State which killed him in a concentration camp in 1938. This is obviously distressing to ex-pat contributors. They would like further opinions but are instead threatened that further delay in deleting these works will lead to the project being shut down. Alex Spade[1]: This information and other copyright info comes from Alex Spade who delivers such information as if he has authority on copyright interpretations. He leads the contributors at ru.WS to believe he is in communication with the WMF about this matter and his rulings have WMF approval. Whether he meant to foster such a belief or simply neglected to correct it, I cannot say. From my time spent with babelfish and the community discussion page of ru.WS [2] I find the following examples to a fair representation of his tone. He did give a breakdown of why he believes the copyright issue exists, but was not open to discussion or requests for further opinions. Is it truly such an air-tight case? I am not sure. However with restorations that apparently go into effect *next* year, but are not valid now, I would be looking for other opinions as well. Even if his opinion tuns out to be correct, it cannot excuse the way he is handling this issue. Translations by Dmitrismirnov: «Уважаемые участники, и в особенности, администраторы русской Викитеки. Даже без грядущих изменений законодательства об АП в России, вы вообще соблюдать текущее то законодательство собираетесь? Или вы добиваетесь, чтобы фонд по чьей-нибуть заявке (ну, например, моей) закрыл проект, также: как в своё время француский викицитатник? Alex Spade 11:56, 8 сентября 2007 (UTC)» Translation: “Respected participants and in particular the administrators of the Russian Wikisourse, Even without the future changes of the copyright law in Russia, are you going to keep the current law? Or you strive that the Wiki-fundation would shut project by somebody’s claim (for example, by mine), like it was with the French Wiki-Quote sometime ago?” And later: Вижу, что всё сложно, и слишком много ограничений, которые разрушают всё лучшее, что есть в Викитеке. Jimbo должен знать о наших проблемах и понять наше недовольство. Надеюсь, Вы ему передадите это Dmitrismirnov 12:46, 17 сентября 2007 (UTC)] Translation:[Dmitr Simirnov: I see that all this is complicated, and there are too many limitations, which destroy all best part of the Wikisourse. Jimbo must know about our problems and understand our dissatisfaction. I hope, you will communicate this to him. Dmitrismirnov 12:46, 17 сентября 2007 (UTC)] Он об это и так знает, но лицензию GFDL никто менять не будет - видимо решили жить под не самой удачной лицензией, чем нарваться на необходимость перелицензирования миллионов страниц и изображений, созданных миллионами участников. Alex Spade 19:41, 17 сентября 2007 (UTC) Translation: [Alex Spade: He knows about this definitely. But nobody will change the license GFDL – so they probably decided to live with not the most successful license, which is better than to change of millions of pages and images, created by million participants. Alex Spade 19:41, 17 сентября 2007 (UTC)] Such heavy-handiness and false authority shown here are damage to the reputation of WMF. Dmitrismirnov [3] is not only a notable composer and therefore has real-world appreciation of IP rights, but he also is a valued Wikimedian as a literary translator. He is truly creating free works we would not otherwise have in the world by releasing his translations under the GFDL. We all create free work in some way, but I have a special appreciation for those who participate in the more skilled endeavors. And it especially offends me to see what I feel to be deception used to close this discussion possibly driving away a contributor I value. Birgitte SB [1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alex_Spade [2]http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BA%… [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Nikolayevich_Smirnov_%28composer%29 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com