[Foundation-l] Resolution:Licensing policy and the projects' autonomy

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Kjetil Ree

15 Apr 2007 15 Apr '07

7:42 p.m.

In a discussion at the Norwegian (bokmål) Village Pump, a nowiki bureaucrat and meta admin claims that Resolution:Licensing policy is not binding. The reason is that we are supposed to reach consensus through discussions at Wikipedia. He further says that when it comes to images, a small group is forcing through its will without reaching consensus, and that the licensing policy is totally not settled. He is also saying that the Foundation can not dictate our editorial policy. I personally find such arguments puzzling, as it seems pretty clear to me that the resolution is binding, and that the board indeed can decide that we aren't allowed to use NC- and ND licenses. Is he right? A somewhat related discussion: nowiki has a couple of hundred images uploaded back in 2004 and early 2005 without proper sources or attribution of the author. We take such matters very seriously now, but back then, nowiki's image use policy wasn't especially strict on such matters. I have suggested a cleanup project, where every user should check his uploads from 2004-05 during the next couple of months, and give them proper source information. The same user is opposing this proposal, claiming that our current image use policy and rules about sources do not apply retroactively, and that starting to mass-delete images without a source will be disrespectful to the users active back then, who were following the rules at the time (well, actually the lack of rules). I claim that it is the uploaders' responsibility to make sure that their uploads are ok, but he claims that it is the users who want to delete (or points out that a image is unsourced) who need to prove that the image is a likely copyvio. Who is right? Kjetil (User:Kjetil r)

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Kat Walsh

15 Apr 15 Apr

8:37 p.m.

On 4/15/07, Kjetil Ree <kjetil_r(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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No, he isn't; you're correct. For most community matters individual projects have autonomy. However, the licensing of text and media is part of the mission of the Foundation, and so this policy is binding on all projects; all Board-level decisions are.

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A somewhat related discussion: nowiki has a couple of hundred images uploaded back in 2004 and early 2005 without proper sources or attribution of the author. We take such matters very seriously now, but back then, nowiki's image use policy wasn't especially strict on such matters. I have suggested a cleanup project, where every user should check his uploads from 2004-05 during the next couple of months, and give them proper source information. The same user is opposing this proposal, claiming that our current image use policy and rules about sources do not apply retroactively, and that starting to mass-delete images without a source will be disrespectful to the users active back then, who were following the rules at the time (well, actually the lack of rules). I claim that it is the uploaders' responsibility to make sure that their uploads are ok, but he claims that it is the users who want to delete (or points out that a image is unsourced) who need to prove that the image is a likely copyvio. Who is right?

You're still correct. A similar thing happened on English Wikipedia when Jimbo issued a statement tightening up policies on what images would be accepted. The policies do apply retroactively, because the purpose is to be certain that we know all the media uploaded as free really is free. If you can't check the information, you can't be certain. A cleanup project where you search for authors and source information first and then delete the ones where you can't find it is a good idea; there are plenty of people who run bots to notify users of deletions on other projects so they have a chance to provide missing information, which might be something you'd want to do. However, it is the uploader's responsibility to provide source information; it is the people who want to keep an image who need to show that it really is allowed. Unfortunately this may mean that a lot of images that would actually have been OK get deleted in the short term. That's not something that anyone really likes to see happen! But if we don't have the information, we can't know; certainly plenty of people have made good-faith mistakes about images. Better to clean it up in one large effort than have to deal with the problem for the rest of the life of the project. This might also be a good time for no: users to start putting free images on Commons as you check them, search for Commons images to fill in articles missing images, and help translate messages and policies that haven't been translated yet. :-) Hope this is of help. Cheers, Kat -- Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone

Erik Moeller

9:20 p.m.

On 4/15/07, Kjetil Ree <kjetil_r(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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I personally find such arguments puzzling, as it seems pretty clear to me that the resolution is binding, and that the board indeed can decide that we aren't allowed to use NC- and ND licenses.

Specifically, the licensing policy means that the "NC" or "ND" status of an image simply does not matter; if the image is not freely licensed (PD, CC-BY, BY-SA, FDL, GPL, etc.), then it may only be used if no freely licensed replacement can realistically be found & it satisfies any other criteria set by a project-local Exemption Doctrine Policy. -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

Platonides

9:22 p.m.

Kjetil Ree wrote:

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It's a pity, but things change. You can't expect to pay the same tax amount as 20 years ago, just because when you payed that tax for first time was 20 or 30 years ago.

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I claim that it is the uploaders' responsibility to make sure that their uploads are ok, but he claims that it is the users who want to delete (or points out that a image is unsourced) who need to prove that the image is a likely copyvio. Who is right? Kjetil (User:Kjetil r)

As everybody knows, all those photos belong to me and were stolen by the really-bad-guy, which posted them on the net, where they were caught by the poor wikipedians. If he doesn't want me to sue him for illegally use of my IP, he must delete all of my images uploaded there, for he can't prove they're not mine. ;-)

Gregory Maxwell

9:28 p.m.

On 4/15/07, Kjetil Ree <kjetil_r(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

...

In a discussion at the Norwegian (bokmål) Village Pump, a nowiki bureaucrat and meta admin claims that Resolution:Licensing policy is not binding.

Lets add some context to understand the scale of the issue here: Since the 2007-01-01 nowiki has had 30 images uploaded locally which are still around. http://no.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spesial:Log&limit=100&off… [snip]

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He is also saying that the Foundation can not dictate our editorial policy.

I believe that foundation does not have much interest in dictating the nowikipedia's policy. However, the Foundation in it's role as the steward of the no.wikipedia.org domain name and as the non-profit sponsoring the Wikipedias does have certain responsibilities. I would hope that no one in the nowiki community would expect that the foundation would sit idly by if the nowiki community voted to delete the encyclopedia and only distribute pornography. :) An extreme example... The chartered mission of the Wikimedia foundation includes the production and promotion of free content, so the foundation is still obligated to act to make sure it is fulfilling it's mission in that space. The foundation has spent a lot of times thinking about these issues. You can learn more about the reasoning behind the board licensing policy from Kat's February post on the foundation's behalf: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027547.html I highly suggest pointing people to this.

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I personally find such arguments puzzling, as it seems pretty clear to me that the resolution is binding, and that the board indeed can decide that we aren't allowed to use NC- and ND licenses. Is he right?

As the legal owners of the equipment which provides the service the foundation can certainly establish such rules. Directly dictating the behavior of the projects will not scale, however, so what the Foundation has directed the projects to do is establish a local policy which conforms with both the letter of the foundation's directive and with the spirit of their decision making. If a community is unable to come to an agreement around such a policy in a reasonable span of time, the Foundation will probably disable local uploads on that project. Given the small number of local uploads on nowiki already, I don't think much argument for harm could be made for disabling local uploads... and in fact, disabling local uploads might be a pretty good step forward for the project.

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Enwiki and, to a much lesser extent, commons have gone through things like this as well.

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I have suggested a cleanup project, where every user should check his uploads from 2004-05 during the next couple of months, and give them proper source information.

This is similar what other projects have done. It has been reasonably successful. I'd be glad to help you find some folks who could run bots to automatically notify uploaders.

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The same user is opposing this proposal, claiming that our current image use policy and rules about sources do not apply retroactively, and that starting to mass-delete images without a source will be disrespectful to the users active back then, who were following the rules at the time (well, actually the lack of rules).

The line of reasoning I would suggest is: If at one time policy did not require articles to be spelled correctly, would it be disrespectful to go and spell check previous articles? It is important that the Wikipedia legal content and in conformance with the free-content mission to the greatest extent possible. Obtaining source information is one way most projects achieve that.

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It is the *project's* responsibility to make sure the content it distributes is okay. Without the source information the project can not reasonably satisfy its responsibility without deleting the media. Only the uploader has a reasonable chance of having this information... so we ask the uploader. If they are unwilling or unable, we should give the images a little time so that people who know about the subjects can make a determination or find replacements... but at the end such images must go away. I think that the nowiki community should decide how to conduct its own cleanup. As long as the end result is within the overall mission, no one who isn't directly involved should care too much about the means.

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Erik Moeller
Gregory Maxwell
Kat Walsh
Kjetil Ree
Platonides