[Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff - Wikimedia-l

Robert Scott Horning

25 Jan 25 Jan

2:10 p.m.

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

Hello, There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents signed by Pope. According to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright. We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals and http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican, asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete all these documents? -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html

As an independent soverign nation, the Vatican is free to do many things in regard to copyright law that would normally not be acceptable in most other countries, including retroactive copyright and other weird issues as well. The problem here is to see what sort of copyright enforcement would generally be enforced through international treaties (is the Vatican a member of the international copyright convention?) and general common sense on things like this. Common sense would seem to indicate that the older encyclicals from the 19th Century and earlier would be reasonable to keep on Wikisource, although I could see the Vatican even trying to assert copyright on that as well. As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are trying to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try and keep them in context as well. In addition, point out that by having this documentation available on Wikisource that we are making this content available to people in not just wealthy countries, but some of the poorer countries of the world including to people who don't necessarily even have internet access and through multiple languages. There are many other points I'm sure you could come up with to really hit the point home, and I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter. The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians. It is likely that the Vatican is simply going to reply that they have their own website, and internet users can download the content from there instead if they really want to get network access to the documents. It is worth a try to ask somebody from the Vatican however. -- Robert Scott Horning

Reply

Chris Jenkinson

2:30 p.m.

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

...

As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are trying to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try and keep them in context as well. In addition, point out that by having this documentation available on Wikisource that we are making this content available to people in not just wealthy countries, but some of the poorer countries of the world including to people who don't necessarily even have internet access and through multiple languages. There are many other points I'm sure you could come up with to really hit the point home, and I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter. The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.

Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a great person to get in touch with: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay Chris -- Chris Jenkinson chris(a)starglade.org "Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Robert Scott Horning

2:58 p.m.

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

...

2006/1/25, Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org>rg>:

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter. The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.

Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a great person to get in touch with: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay

OK. I will contact him - but I guess if it make sence to send a letter to the Vatican it should be done officialy by Foundation? -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html

This doesn't have to be an "official" contact. Simply write the letter as a group of interested Wikimedia users who are interested in adding original content that comes from official Vatican sources. That just keeps the legal hassles of writing a formal letter representing the foundation and lets the Vatican know that this is a volunteer project as well. -- Robert Scott Horning

Reply

Anthere

5:37 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright of Vatican stuff

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

...

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

2006/1/25, Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org>rg>:

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter. The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.

Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a great person to get in touch with: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay

OK. I will contact him - but I guess if it make sence to send a letter to the Vatican it should be done officialy by Foundation? -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html

This doesn't have to be an "official" contact. Simply write the letter as a group of interested Wikimedia users who are interested in adding original content that comes from official Vatican sources. That just keeps the legal hassles of writing a formal letter representing the foundation and lets the Vatican know that this is a volunteer project as well.

If I remember well, Sabine, from itwiki, has been in contact with the Vatican some time ago. Might be interesting to involve her. I put her in copy of this mail. Ant

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- Essjay -

10:32 p.m.

Thanks for thinking of me guys, but this one is way over my head. True, my specialty is canon law, but there is a big difference between canon law and Vatican law; assuming they plan to enforce it, the Vatican isn't going to be issuing excommunications for violation of the new rules, it's going to be suing. What you need is a copyright attorney (Soufron?), not a canon lawyer. That said, if anyone gets excommunicated over it, I'm your man. By the way, if we're worried about the implications of the Vatican's rules under US law (and we usually hear "it's US law that matters, since the servers are in the US") the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) would be a good place to contact; they should be able to offer guidance. The Office of the General Counsel can be reached at ogc(a)usccb.orgor by phone/mail at (202) 541-3000 / Office of the General Counsel, 3211 4th Street N.E., Washington DC 20017-1194. If there is anything else I can do, let me know. Essjay On 1/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:

...

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

Hello, There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents signed by Pope. According to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright. We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals and http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican, asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete all these documents? -- Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html

As an independent soverign nation, the Vatican is free to do many things in regard to copyright law that would normally not be acceptable in most other countries, including retroactive copyright and other weird issues as well. The problem here is to see what sort of copyright enforcement would generally be enforced through international treaties (is the Vatican a member of the international copyright convention?) and general common sense on things like this. Common sense would seem to indicate that the older encyclicals from the 19th Century and earlier would be reasonable to keep on Wikisource, although I could see the Vatican even trying to assert copyright on that as well. As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are trying to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try and keep them in context as well. In addition, point out that by having this documentation available on Wikisource that we are making this content available to people in not just wealthy countries, but some of the poorer countries of the world including to people who don't necessarily even have internet access and through multiple languages. There are many other points I'm sure you could come up with to really hit the point home, and I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter. The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians. It is likely that the Vatican is simply going to reply that they have their own website, and internet users can download the content from there instead if they really want to get network access to the documents. It is worth a try to ask somebody from the Vatican however.

_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

-- Essjay ----- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org/

Reply

Paweł Dembowski

5:49 p.m.

...

Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we obey anyways. Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years. ciao, tom

Polish Wikisource has more. -- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org

Reply

valdelli＠bluemail.ch

7:08 p.m.

Sorry I made a mistake: If someone needs to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the Libreria Editrice Vaticana "in the future". Ilario

...

-- Messaggio originale -- Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:02:11 +0100 From: valdelli(a)bluemail.ch Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Sorry, the copyright will be applied only to NEW Vatican's documents. Please, read this: http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/topnews/news/2006-01-22_2439593.html it's in italian but it's the more importante italian information bureau. If someone need to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Ilario

-- Messaggio originale -- Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:49:45 +0100 From: Pawe? Dembowski <fallout(a)lexx.eu.org> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>

Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we obey anyways. Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years. ciao, tom

Polish Wikisource has more. -- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Sabine Cretella

9:57 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright of Vatican stuff

First of all: Thank you Anthere for having copied the mail to me privately - when I have plenty of work, the lists I receive sometimes are not read. What Ilario writes is right considering the Italian link he gave - there is nothing that states "retroactive". And then thre's the link from Anthere of the Times ... and that seems to be retroactive, but I suppose they cannot apply it to pubblications that were done before. So if the contents in wikibooks was there before that changes they may be there ... or not? And I am not sure if the times is right/if Ansa reported only a part of it. It would make sense to write the Vatican and ask ... and of course refer to the fact that not allowing for the publication (at least on Internet) they preclude many people from reading the Pope's writings and that it does not at all help to spread the word, but that it prevents it from being spread and that basically is against everything written in the Bible. This means they give more space to whatever "strange" organisation and will have less possibilities to communicate with people showing additionally that maybe religion is more about business than about "credo" ... hmmm ... Isn't it funny that the Pope is from the city where I come from? When I contacted the Radio Vaticana for the Cristmas wishes of Giovanni Paolo II they immediately gave me the OK and sent me the file. Through a priest who is also member of the Italian discussion group I got addresses for terminology, but there is that problem that this terminology is not wanted to be included in the actual Wiktionary since it does not allow to underline that it is "terminology of the Roman Catholic Church" we are dealing with and that therefore no changes should apply. Well WiktionaryZ will help since there we can assure this and people can edit and add further information as well. An example on how this works is the GEMET data (http://epov.org/wd-gemet/index.php/Main_Page) - also that glossary is an official one that shows which terminology is to be used. And there are "fixed glossaries and thesauri" that should not be changed indeliberately, but there we should have proposals for changes and additions where one can see "that is original data and that are the changes/additions" and "that is accepted" etc. So I know the Vatican institutions (besides one of the priests here in Maiori) as a group of helpful people - we should simply ask them to get things right. My 2 cts. Best, Sabine Anthere wrote:

...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html here it says The edict covers Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, which is to be issued this week amid huge international interest. The edict is retroactive, covering not only the writings of the present pontiff — as Pope and as cardinal — but also those of his predecessors over the past 50 years. It therefore includes anything written by John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI and John XXIII. Is it again incorrect press report ? ant valdelli(a)bluemail.ch wrote:

Sorry, the copyright will be applied only to NEW Vatican's documents. Please, read this: http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/topnews/news/2006-01-22_2439593.html it's in italian but it's the more importante italian information bureau. If someone need to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Ilario

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valdelli＠bluemail.ch

12:43 a.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright of Vatican stuff

Sorry, but the Vatican's web site is written in six languages, but the part concerning the LEV is only in italian. Ilario

...

-- Messaggio originale -- Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 01:40:39 +0100 From: valdelli(a)bluemail.ch Subject: RE: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright of Vatican stuff To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Here the decree: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/2005/documents/rc_seg-s… with this notice: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/2005/documents/rc_seg-s… There is no references to 50 years period or retroaction. Ok, but there is this another decree issued in the 1978!!! http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/lev/docs_lev/decre… The decree of Benedetto XVI draws on the oldest 1978's decree which safeguard the works of Giovanni Paolo II and generally of members of Vatican: "...the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, in his capacity as official publisher of the Holy See, over the traditional obligation to safeguard written texts and speeches of the sovereign Pontiffs and the publications concerning Acts of the Holy See, has received the assignment of protect also the written ones of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. Cannot be made publications, translations or reproductions in whichever

graphical

...

or phonical typology of Its written texts and speeches without the explicit authorization of the aforesaid Libreria Editrice Vaticana, following the international agreements and the laws on the Copyrights... (L'O.R. 27-28 Novembre 1978)". In this case the decree of previous may don't say anything about the copyright on the Joannis Paulus II, but there was already another decree, the new

decree

...

seems to be a confirmation. But it's better to ask. Ilario

-- Messaggio originale -- To: foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org From: Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:09:48 +0100 Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright of Vatican stuff Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html here it says The edict covers Pope Benedict XVI?s first encyclical, which is to be issued this week amid huge international interest. The edict is retroactive, covering not only the writings of the present pontiff ? as

Pope and as cardinal ? but also those of his predecessors over the past

>50 years. It therefore includes anything written by John Paul II, John

...

>Paul I, Paul VI and John XXIII. > > >Is it again incorrect press report ? > > >ant > > >valdelli(a)bluemail.ch wrote: >> Sorry, the copyright will be applied only to NEW Vatican's documents. >> >> Please, read this: >> >> http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/topnews/news/2006-01-22_2439593.html >> >> it's in italian but it's the more importante italian information bureau. >> >> If someone need to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the

Libreria

...

Editrice Vaticana. Ilario >-- Messaggio originale -- >Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:49:45 +0100 >From: Pawe? Dembowski <fallout(a)lexx.eu.org> >To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> >Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff >Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> > > >>Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few >>quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we >>obey anyways. >>Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years. >>ciao, tom > >Polish Wikisource has more. > >-- >Ausir >Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia >http://pl.wikipedia.org > >_______________________________________________ >foundation-l mailing list >foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Ray Saintonge

25 Jan 25 Jan

10:27 p.m.

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

...

Hello, There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents signed by Pope. According to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright. We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals and http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican, asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete all these documents?

The best thing is not to panic or send hurried letters until you have a better idea of what's going on. Sending letters before that will only create more confusion. The Vatican has been a party to the Berne Convention since 1935, so it does have a right to copyright protection. They also refer to 50 years, so they do not appear to be using the 70 year extension adopted by the EU. No mention is made of Pius XII. The range of things that they appear to be covering suggests that they may be treating the encyclicals as works for hire, (servus servorum dei). It's encouraging that the Vatican is asking for a levy of 3 to 5 percent of the cover price to reproduce material, and that this would increase to 15% in the case of infringement. I think we should be able to afford that. :-) I think that they are most pissed-off with the Milan publisher that scooped the forthcoming encyclical. Let's see what the Italians do with this before we take very much action. Ec

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