On 7/20/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote: Every user is bound by their own local laws. Whether the project decides to adhere to any of those is more of a policy issue than a legal one. The problem here is whether to trust the user who originally added a tag that no longer matches what is on flickr. Has anyone said the avoid Foundation is refusing to answer questions for that reason? I'd assumed the problem was that no one knew the answers, not that they did but were purposefully withholding the information. Angela

On Thu, July 20, 2006 13:00, Brianna Laugher wrote: Something that was in The Register yesterday (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/19/youtube_copyright/) includes "That protection [the DCMA] is irrelevant in the UK, says another intellectual property expert. Kim Walker is a partner who specialises in media law at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW. ... Because this is intellectual property, the law that applies is that of the place the alleged infringement took place," said Walker. "That applies even if the servers are in Madras or the Channel Islands." Alison

On 7/20/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote: [snip] 1) Uploaders should obey their local laws. 2) Content on the site should obey laws in Florida. 3) As a project with international goals an impact our content should be as widely useful world wide as possible and thus be as free as possible in every place with sane laws. The content commons should host should be only content which passes under each of those three broad areas. German "right of panorama" work obviously passes (1). In the US material which is permitted under German right of panorama would be okay because the inclusion of copyrighted works is in incidental inclusion, making the content okay where our servers are (2). And most countries have some kind of established common sense principal, furthermore almost no image of an urban public space is possible withone some degree of incidental inclusion... So whatever problems an image might have in some country no other simmlar image would be free of them. (3) I haven't yet read the discussion, but I can't see with a surfance glance why we would forbid this license. Although the license appears to be fairly poorly written it appears no more restrictive than the GFDL. The wording is a bit unclear since it doesn't disambiguate use in DRM apps with DRM distribution, but the intent seems clear enough. Have we attempted to contact the authors to get them to make the license more clear? A copyleft license is somewhat pointless if it doesn't prohibit people from removing the freedom via technological measures. I understand that some people involved with Wikimedia are strongly against copyleft, but their personal wishes shouldn't be setting our policy. Yuck. Cant we just leave these images for the projects to host locally for now? We're not even near mastering copyright yet... Trademark is an even more fun ball of yuck. In American english "You may use this image" does not imply that you can grant others unlimited redistribution rights, and the right to make derivative works. Perhaps if someone said "you may use" with the full knoweldge of who we are and what we do... but never as a general permission on a website. This isn't a new position. Copyrighted sculptures are an issue... And in theory that includes pokemon dolls and the like. Sad as it is, if we want to be confident that our content is free we must not include these things except incidentally. However, I feel these are the least of our problems right now... our effort would be better spent on other images. Since I forgot to mention it before, I am not a lawyer. This is my personal view. It has more to do with what I think our posisiton should be irrespective of the law and what I worry the law might become rather than what it is. It depends. If it is a mechnical reproduction, suchs works would be free under US law due to Bridgeman v. Corel. It's not clear to me that Bridgeman v. Corel would actually stand if someone tried to apply it to, for example, works galleries publish of because most of the time such works are not mere mechnical reproduction but require substantial artistic and technical decision making (try getting cobalt containing watercolors to come out right on normal film or a normal CCD sensor.. YUCK). As much of a problem as the above may be for us, it's not the worst of it: Simmlar cases to Bridgeman v. Corel have come up in the UK and the decision has been exactly the opposite. I'd be much happier if we had people sneaking into galleries and taking pictures (no flash please)... I don't have confidence that a dependance on Bridgeman v. Corel will be good for us long term. Like above I don't think this is (yet) the biggest of our problems. This is something we need to do something about... We should at least propose a standard model release for Wikipedian photographers to use... Without a releas photographs with identifyable people are not free content in the US. They are easy to identify by searching for the external links. I'm in the process of trying to contact all the SXC authors, but keeps blocking my IP. :) What is worse, is that uploaders on commons simply get them wrong fairly often.. So it's hard to take a high ground on the subject. When it comes down to it, these people don't have a contract with us.. we've compensated them not a lick... they are completely unaware of our use. As a result our position is weak. It's simply not possible for a person to accidently free their work (i.e. by making a wrong selection from a drop down, and not catching it before a Wikimedia commons scavenger finds it). If someone protests we can, we do, and we must remove the work. It is the only ethical thing to do (or do we want a reputation as a bunch of jerks trying to rip creators off), and it is quite possibly the only legal thing to do. This is just another reason that we should reduce our reliance on image scavengers and instead ask people to upload their works directly and with full knoweldge of the consiquences However, people seem far more interested in running bots to scavange rather than sending out email invitations to join our effort. One pumps your contrib count and makes you look good, the other brings you no positive attention but helps the project more. Why? None of these are cut and dry. If we limit ourselves to only the images that are zero risk we would have a LOT less content... and we'd have to reject a lot which will be free for all meaningful purposes. When it comes down to it, most of these things can only be decided in a court, and courts rule in strage ways. An official statement by the foundation would be risky and without much gain... after all, what would a statement really accomplish that we couldn't?

Brianna Laugher wrote: The image has already been deleted so I have no idea what it refers to. Nevertheless if it refers to a German entity, and German law allows it that should be the end of the story. More on this below. "Todo esse conteúdo pode ser adquirido em várias definições, inclusive em alta resolução, e ser utilizado livremente, mediante citação do crédito." This seems clear enough. If commercial or derivative use is not clearly forbidden than one should be able to presume that it is allowed. Isn't this a general principle of law? Since he became Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil has done much to move Brazil ahead. Consider this extract from "Wired" Magazine: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html Is this characteristic of a situation where someone's anal fears require every bit to be questioned? Most of these are probably fair use. How else are you going to illustrate these things. It's interesting to read to read the attorney's fee decision in Mattel v. Forsythe http://illegal-art.org/print/forsythe.pdf Forsythe had used a representation of Barbie in a parody, and was awarded over $1.8 million to compensate him for the costs of standing up to the toy giiant. Mattel's action was judged unreasonable. We aren't even doing parodies but simple neutral representations of the logos and other images. Fair use did not come into U.S. law out of a vacuum. It was not a part of the Copyright Act before 1909. Instead the concept developed through a series of court decisions which were effectively codified in 1909. Canada's Copyright Act does not go into a lot of great detail about defining fair dealing, but the Supreme Court of Canada has used the United States experience with approval. When dealing with similar matters in the law of other countries it would be more helpful if people referred to real precedents rather than simply guessing about what the law means. Many of these guys died before 1923. Is there a suggestion that some of these are posthumous pictures? :-) How old is the frame? If the frame has its own copyright, can it be cropped out? This would not be a problem in the US, but the UK situation remains unresolved. The only thing that I would feel confident in saying is that copyrights and privacy rights are distinct legal concepts, and this has nothing to do with copyrights. If the child in the picture is Ethiopian, and the picture was taken in Ethiopia what is the Ethiopian law on this? Is this a news picture? Is someone alleging that the people are recognizable? Is it because of the tatoos? Has the subject complained? The G-string pictures seem posed to me with at least one instance describing the person as a model. That seems to imply consent. Looks like the do-gooders are running rampant on this. There is nothing original about an exact copy of a flag. Ec