On 8/23/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: I hacked a MediaWiki option $wgAllowExternalImagesFrom a while ago that makes it possible to use MediaWiki's URL-to-image translation with a defined basepath URL. So it would theoretically at least be easy to allow basic image usage by putting the logos in a protected path somewhere and referencing them as URLs. That limits the usage possibilities though. Personally I feel that the real answer is to figure out what "free/libre" truly means in the context of identifying works such as logos. I don't believe existing free content licenses are appropriate for such works. The main purpose of a logo is to identify something. To "liberate" it in the sense of permitting completely unrestricted use is to render it useless. But perhaps "liberation" here should mean something different. For example: - a free/libre logo could be one which can be used in a list of defined scenarios without permission. - a free/libre logo could be one which always has a corresponding, freely licensed "community" logo (Debian style). - a free/libre logo could be one which makes the frictionless model of "don't ask for permission but respect requests for removal" explicit. The problem is not unique to us, and conflicts over the meaning of freedom in the context of trademarks/logos have led to counterproductive infighting in the free culture movement (such as the renaming of Firefox to Iceweasel in Debian GNU/Linux for trademark reasons). To me, it sounds like a job for a workgroup of interested people who would bring both a legal and an ethical perspective to the subject. Is anyone interested in pursuing this line of reasoning further? -- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

On Fri, 24 Aug 2007, Erik Moeller wrote: Copyright and trademark are distinct. I don't know of a reason to impose copyright restrictions on logos. You still retain the right to protect the use of the logo in a way that might be confusing (with respect to identifying something). It should be possible in a copyright sense to use an image in a variety of ways as long as the result isn't confusing in the trademark sense. A combination of these two would be great. Clear permission scenarios, and some fuzzy ones in which the 'dont ask but respect requests' kicks in. This would be a mistake. Who in the Debian community thinks this was a good idea? Nowadays noone uses the non-community logo. Yes. SJ

On 8/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Don't blame me for bringing this to your attention. I did not initiate the request.

Hoi, The problem has been identified many times; a logo is part of a trademark and consequently an organisation is limited in what it can allow to be done with the materials that make up their trademark. It is a general problem not restricted to the Wikimedia Foundation or Debian. Based on the notion of "fair use" it is possible to use logos in many Wikipedias. Based on the notion of "insufficient creativity" there is another creative solution to the same problem. The issue is that Commons does not allow fair use and the "insufficient creativity" notion is also considered to be problematic. What is needed is the acceptance that logos instil specific restrictions. These restrictions will not go away. What these restrictions do is limit the freedoms associated with this material. In essence they prohibit you from using it to represent the organisation whose trademarked material it is. Given what the purpose of a logo is and given why we want to use these logos in the first place, this is reasonable. It is for this reason that we need something like a CC-tm license. A license that is considered free but restricts what is implied by being part of a trademark. Thanks, GerardM On 8/24/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

I am a little bit resignated about the whole of this issue and I have to say few words about it. - Personally, I am at the line of de.wiki decision: I would always vote for leaving all non free content, including logos. Yes, we are enough powerful to dictate what is possible to treat as free and what is not. (The best solution in that course is to move all WMF trademarked logos to meta.wiki or to WMF site. This is one of the examples where we and WMF should be fair enough and say if something is not applied for others, it should be applied to us, too.) - However, I completely support creation of nonfree.wikimedia.org repository. Because it is the only solution which is according to the Board resolution. If Board said the same as de.wiki, then such proposition would be meaningless. bring free licenses in Serbia. At April (or May) of 2006 I finally find a lawyer who were willing to work on introducing CC licenses into the Serbian law system (actually, she found me). With her colleague from the Institute for Law (I think that this is the name), we had two best creative copyright lawyers from Serbia. And the story related to one of the subjects of this thread begins here. Unlike a lot of other projects with similar size (of number of contributors and articles), projects in Serbian language had the best possible lawyer support (for one country of something more then 7 millions of inhabitants). But it wasn't enough. To deal with any kind of copyright problems which are not so obvious, I had to spend hours of talks with them without *any* conclusion because it was simply not possible to do anything. Then I realized that the best thing is not to do anything except if WM Serbia is explicitly in danger. (Thanks to good circumstances, nothing was happened.) And, of course, to leave her to finish CC localization. So, let's summarize: - Serbian language projects are relatively small. - Unlikely the most other projects of similar size, it has supporting local chapter. - Unlikely the most other projects of similar size, it has good lawyers. - Unlikely the most other projects of similar size, it had at least three persons (one of others is a doctor of mathematics from Princeton; the second one is an important member of the community who is working in a municipal court) from the community who hardly worked on copyright issues with relevant lawyers. - We worked on this issue for at least 6 months. - And we did nothing. (Yes, we did categorization of images and similar project related things, but we did nothing in relation to possible usage or prohibited usage by Serbian laws.) For example, Serbian (and Montenegrin) fair use is much more permissive then US (in general it stays: "Use it while your usage is reasonable"). And when the Board resolution came, we had a serious problem: I didn't want to take care about copyrighted works and the most interested person in free use issue is living in USA. So, even we had much more possibilities to deal with fair use on Serbian language projects then the most of other language projects (actually, all except English, French, German, Italian and Polish), we simply were not able to deal with fair use problem. De.wiki decided not to keep non free images; en.wiki decided to keep. The most predictable decision of sr.wiki would be to keep fair use image (I would vote against, but it was not a dominant opinion). How much other projects voted about this issue? And how much of them simply realized that they are not able to deal with law issues and didn't want to vote? At the end, the only conclusion is that it is possible to have something only if your project is big enough to keep this. And I think that this is very problematic situation for Wikimedian aims. BTW, I completely understand Board's decision. While I would insist not to make half-decision, it is completely reasonable to say: OK, we don't support this, but if you are willing to do such things, you have to take care about it. However, such decision is unfair toward small projects. And about nonfree.wikimedia: Of course, it shouldn't be a place for every free use image. It should something like Debian's non-free repository (there is no even Adobe Acrobat there). And policy on en.wiki seems to me very reasonable as a basis of nonfree.wikimedia project. On 8/24/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: