I'm uncertain why CC-0 would be more beneficial than a statement that the
government believes the photos to be in the public domain. The main
difference I see is that a release is active, which might be out of the
power of the civil servant, the statement is a matter of fact and thus
passive.
Maybe you would insist that the Israeli govenment issues a statement that
they will follow their own copyright law rather than the US copyright law?
Seems like an open door to me, to be honest. (yeah yeah, i know this is an
easy target for snarky anti-israel remarks - lets steer away from that here
please)
I can understand this to be an issue with private non-government works from
Israel, but I really don't see the point in government works that are
considered PD in the country where they originate.
Either way, we're not going to resolve this discussion here - but I do get
a better understanding of some of the frustration.
Lodewijk
2014-06-22 12:26 GMT+02:00 Russavia <russavia.wikipedia(a)gmail.com>om>:
Craig, et al
On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Craig Franklin
<cfranklin(a)halonetwork.net> wrote:
Pardon me if this has already been covered, but
as I understand it the
problem is not the legal status of the files in Israel, the problem is
with
the legal status of the files in the United
States, where the Israeli
Government may still have some copyright protections.
You are misunderstanding completely the issue. There is no evidence
that Israel has a PD exemption for such government works, as we see
for say, Russia,[1] which allows for letters such as this to exist on
Commons.[2]
It seems to me that rather than insisting that
the files are permitted to
remain, a more fruitful avenue might be to use WMIL's contacts with the
Israeli Government to licence these images anywhere where copyright might
still exist under a very free licence like CC-0. That way even if URAA
or
some future copyright shenanigans places these
images back under
copyright,
they're usable by anyone. This ought to
satisfy even the most dogmatic
Commons admin that the images are indeed free.
I have told someone that what needs to occur is for the GPO to release
their claims over copyright worldwide in relation to URAA. The reason
for this, is the same reason that the Israeli Government would NEVER
CC-0 licence their materials -- because it opens them up to parody,
satire and other uses that they might not agree with -- and we need to
protect re-users who wish to use materials for such purposes. That's
the same reason that the Australian Commonwealth Parliament refuses to
CC photos of MPs, in case you weren't aware.
Cheers
Russavia
[1]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-RU-exempt
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_letter_to_FIFA.jpg
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