David Strauss wrote: You're arguing from the ridiculous premise that Wikipedia must be legal in every country. Even the topics of some articles aren't legal in some countries.
No, I'm not. I'm aware that this is impossible. But when you say that anyone should be able to reuse a whole Wikipedia article as is, you are making a ridiculous premise, because the very fact that Wikipedia can't be legal in every countru makes this impossible. Unless you intended "a US commercial organization can at least take whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them"
Now please, consider the following two as being the same image (they are not, but for the sake of exemplification they are).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Microsoft_Office_Word_2007.png
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:MS_Office_Word.JPG
The image on en.wiki qualifies as fair use
The image on it.wiki is tagged as copyrighted and used with permission (based on what's written here http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#ELC)
The image on it.wiki should be removed right?
Roberto (Snowdog)
------------------------------------------------------ Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
There are a lot of points here worth mentioning... the Board has just finished 3 very long days of discussion in Rotterdam but we have not yet finished talking about this issue.
Since I'm sure everyone is wondering if we have been paying attention, I just wanted to mention that we have taken note of the questions and concerns in this thread and in other discussions about image licensing, and will have something more to say in the near future.
Cheers, Kat
The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless. The Italian Wikipedia (hosted in Florida) isn't under Italian law just because it's in Italian. Nor are Italian citizens liable for something on the Italian Wikipedia just because the page is in Italian.
There seems to be a plausible argument that Italian citizens cannot upload normally copyrighted material under the fair use exception. But there's a huge difference between what the Italian Wikipedia can host and what Italian citizens may post to it.
And if you think that you can fix the problem by making the Italian Wikipedia have policies that fit within Italian law, what about Italians who edit the English or other Wikipedias? They're not suddenly exempt from Italian law because they're working in another language.
Perhaps we should put together guides for legal interaction with Wikipedia. For example, Wikipedia editors in Italy must obtain permission for Wikipedia to use the content from the copyright holder *and* post a fair-use justification for use in jurisdictions with fair use or similar exceptions.
We must distinguish between language editions of Wikipedia and national borders.
rfrangi@libero.it wrote:
David Strauss wrote: You're arguing from the ridiculous premise that Wikipedia must be legal in every country. Even the topics of some articles aren't legal in some countries.
No, I'm not. I'm aware that this is impossible. But when you say that anyone should be able to reuse a whole Wikipedia article as is, you are making a ridiculous premise, because the very fact that Wikipedia can't be legal in every countru makes this impossible. Unless you intended "a US commercial organization can at least take whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them"
Many countries have analogues of fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing
The English Wikipedia allows only a relatively safe subset of fair use, so another country's system need not allow everything the U.S. does to make use English Wikipedia materials.
Now please, consider the following two as being the same image (they are not, but for the sake of exemplification they are).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Microsoft_Office_Word_2007.png
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:MS_Office_Word.JPG
The image on en.wiki …qualifies as fair use
The image on it.wiki is tagged as copyrighted and used with permission (based on what's written here http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#ELC)
The image on it.wiki should be removed right?
Assuming the person posting the material lives in Italy, the image should probably carry the Microsoft "used with permission" template *and* the fair-use justification. The former is to protect the person posting the material; the latter is to protect re-use of the content where fair use or fair dealing are allowed.
If the person posting the material lives in the U.S., they would only need to post the fair-use justification because that covers their use, Wikipedia's, and future organizations'.
Notice that I don't care to what language edition the person is posting.
Hoi, The German chapter has been taken to court in the past on matters of law in Germany. It is not as simple as you suggest. The Italian chapter is another entity that plays its part in the whole mess that is the law. The British say it nicely: "the law is an arse". Do you know what your personal legal status is when you edit an existing article with a legally problematic picture or whatever in it.. Are you responsible, maybe. Can you be taken to court, certainly.
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy. What I believe in is that we know as an organisation what our message is about all this. That we take our position judiciously as the many organisations that are the WMF and its chapters. This way we protect the most vulnerable, our editors. This way we may be able to resist the continuing land grab of the proprietary stake holders.
Thanks, GerardM
PS this is not a Wikipedia issue .. :(
David Strauss schreef:
The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless. The Italian Wikipedia (hosted in Florida) isn't under Italian law just because it's in Italian. Nor are Italian citizens liable for something on the Italian Wikipedia just because the page is in Italian.
There seems to be a plausible argument that Italian citizens cannot upload normally copyrighted material under the fair use exception. But there's a huge difference between what the Italian Wikipedia can host and what Italian citizens may post to it.
And if you think that you can fix the problem by making the Italian Wikipedia have policies that fit within Italian law, what about Italians who edit the English or other Wikipedias? They're not suddenly exempt from Italian law because they're working in another language.
Perhaps we should put together guides for legal interaction with Wikipedia. For example, Wikipedia editors in Italy must obtain permission for Wikipedia to use the content from the copyright holder *and* post a fair-use justification for use in jurisdictions with fair use or similar exceptions.
We must distinguish between language editions of Wikipedia and national borders.
rfrangi@libero.it wrote:
David Strauss wrote: You're arguing from the ridiculous premise that Wikipedia must be legal in every country. Even the topics of some articles aren't legal in some countries.
No, I'm not. I'm aware that this is impossible. But when you say that anyone should be able to reuse a whole Wikipedia article as is, you are making a ridiculous premise, because the very fact that Wikipedia can't be legal in every countru makes this impossible. Unless you intended "a US commercial organization can at least take whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them"
Many countries have analogues of fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing
The English Wikipedia allows only a relatively safe subset of fair use, so another country's system need not allow everything the U.S. does to make use English Wikipedia materials.
Now please, consider the following two as being the same image (they are not, but for the sake of exemplification they are).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Microsoft_Office_Word_2007.png
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:MS_Office_Word.JPG
The image on en.wiki …qualifies as fair use
The image on it.wiki is tagged as copyrighted and used with permission (based on what's written here http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#ELC)
The image on it.wiki should be removed right?
Assuming the person posting the material lives in Italy, the image should probably carry the Microsoft "used with permission" template *and* the fair-use justification. The former is to protect the person posting the material; the latter is to protect re-use of the content where fair use or fair dealing are allowed.
If the person posting the material lives in the U.S., they would only need to post the fair-use justification because that covers their use, Wikipedia's, and future organizations'.
Notice that I don't care to what language edition the person is posting.
I agree that we need much further analysis of the legal issues editors encounter. Despite my lack of legal expertise, it's clear to me that languages aren't the right variable for composing legalistic policy.
I also agree that this is not solely a Wikipedia issue. I use Wikipedia as my example because it's where the language-level policies have seen the most proliferation.
I still think the best solution would be divorcing legalistic policy from language-based Wikipedia policy. We could set up pages on Meta to establish the obligations and limitations for editing as a citizen of or within certain countries.
What we're doing now overly limits some editors and leaves others vulnerable.
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, The German chapter has been taken to court in the past on matters of law in Germany. It is not as simple as you suggest. The Italian chapter is another entity that plays its part in the whole mess that is the law. The British say it nicely: "the law is an arse". Do you know what your personal legal status is when you edit an existing article with a legally problematic picture or whatever in it.. Are you responsible, maybe. Can you be taken to court, certainly.
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy. What I believe in is that we know as an organisation what our message is about all this. That we take our position judiciously as the many organisations that are the WMF and its chapters. This way we protect the most vulnerable, our editors. This way we may be able to resist the continuing land grab of the proprietary stake holders.
Thanks, GerardM
PS this is not a Wikipedia issue .. :(
Hoi, So the next step is to understand that it is not the projects that are autonomous in this. To be realistic our legal issues are most visible in our Commons repository. It has a restrictive policy as it needs to function for ALL our projects and in all their languages.
There are in essence on our side four parties to consider:
* The WMF * The chapters * The editors * The users
In the end all that we do is for the users. When we get it wrong, our projects will not be available to them. This is from my pov worse than that an editor is not allowed to edit. The ultimate reason why you as an editor want to be careful is because you do not want to get personally into legal issues.. Chapters and the foundation itself are organisations, they are getting the clout/visibility to improve the situation. In order to do this, these organisations have to lobby for the good cause. At the same time they have to take care that our projects are sustainable.
Thanks, GerardM
David Strauss schreef:
I agree that we need much further analysis of the legal issues editors encounter. Despite my lack of legal expertise, it's clear to me that languages aren't the right variable for composing legalistic policy.
I also agree that this is not solely a Wikipedia issue. I use Wikipedia as my example because it's where the language-level policies have seen the most proliferation.
I still think the best solution would be divorcing legalistic policy from language-based Wikipedia policy. We could set up pages on Meta to establish the obligations and limitations for editing as a citizen of or within certain countries.
What we're doing now overly limits some editors and leaves others vulnerable.
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, The German chapter has been taken to court in the past on matters of law in Germany. It is not as simple as you suggest. The Italian chapter is another entity that plays its part in the whole mess that is the law. The British say it nicely: "the law is an arse". Do you know what your personal legal status is when you edit an existing article with a legally problematic picture or whatever in it.. Are you responsible, maybe. Can you be taken to court, certainly.
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy. What I believe in is that we know as an organisation what our message is about all this. That we take our position judiciously as the many organisations that are the WMF and its chapters. This way we protect the most vulnerable, our editors. This way we may be able to resist the continuing land grab of the proprietary stake holders.
Thanks, GerardM
PS this is not a Wikipedia issue .. :(
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, The German chapter has been taken to court in the past on matters of law in Germany. It is not as simple as you suggest. The Italian chapter is another entity that plays its part in the whole mess that is the law. The British say it nicely: "the law is an arse". Do you know what your personal legal status is when you edit an existing article with a legally problematic picture or whatever in it.. Are you responsible, maybe. Can you be taken to court, certainly.
I accept that I am responsible for what I edit, but I am also careful. Regrettably we have more people who rejcct responsibility and are far from careful.
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy.
Yes.
What I believe in is that we know as an organisation what our message is about all this. That we take our position judiciously as the many organisations that are the WMF and its chapters. This way we protect the most vulnerable, our editors. This way we may be able to resist the continuing land grab of the proprietary stake holders.
I wonder if your proposal to protect the most vulnerable is not acting too much like a parent. :-)
I don't see it as the Foundation's responsibility to protect every editor from himself. The best countermeasure to the proprietary land grab may lie in making sure that there is very little land for them to grab.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy.
Yes.
While true, it's worth recalling the reason for the general anti-lawyer backlash among communities of this sort: That in normal corporate/foundation/business practice, when left to the legal department things almost never get approved because of the legal risk. Wikipedia as a project would never have been approved at all by any reasonable corporation's legal department, because the legal issues are far too risky to countenance. We recklessly went ahead and started building it anyway, and figured we'd tackle the legal issues as they arose.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't defer to lawyers where useful and necessary, but the general "ecology" is one of tension between legal caution on the one hand and a desire to produce a useful encyclopedia on the other hand.
-Mark
Wikipedia's unique structure combined with certain favorable provisions in the DMCA seem to make Wikipedia much more legally sane than many* Web projects.
*e.g. MySpace, Google's book scanning project, YouTube, LiveJournal
Delirium wrote:
While true, it's worth recalling the reason for the general anti-lawyer backlash among communities of this sort: That in normal corporate/foundation/business practice, when left to the legal department things almost never get approved because of the legal risk. Wikipedia as a project would never have been approved at all by any reasonable corporation's legal department, because the legal issues are far too risky to countenance. We recklessly went ahead and started building it anyway, and figured we'd tackle the legal issues as they arose.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't defer to lawyers where useful and necessary, but the general "ecology" is one of tension between legal caution on the one hand and a desire to produce a useful encyclopedia on the other hand.
-Mark
Delirium schreef:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy.
Yes.
While true, it's worth recalling the reason for the general anti-lawyer backlash among communities of this sort: That in normal corporate/foundation/business practice, when left to the legal department things almost never get approved because of the legal risk. Wikipedia as a project would never have been approved at all by any reasonable corporation's legal department, because the legal issues are far too risky to countenance. We recklessly went ahead and started building it anyway, and figured we'd tackle the legal issues as they arose.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't defer to lawyers where useful and necessary, but the general "ecology" is one of tension between legal caution on the one hand and a desire to produce a useful encyclopedia on the other hand.
-Mark
Hoi, It is very nice to look at it from the perspective of a single legal practice ie the American one. When you look how things are, you have to acknowledge that the German chapter was taken to court and not the Foundation. Luckily the German chapter behaved in a proper way and did well. The point is that your attitude is way too simple. An anti-lawyer backlash will hurt us where it hurts most; in effect when there is an issue we need our lawyers and when you think it healthy to consider them dirt, they will smile and increase the bill.
The notion of having a useful encyclopaedia is not one where it can only be freely used in the United States. That would be utterly stupid because it would negate our aims.
Thanks, GerardM
Delirium wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
The biggest error that I see is that people with not enough knowledge about the law make the policy.
Yes.
While true, it's worth recalling the reason for the general anti-lawyer backlash among communities of this sort: That in normal corporate/foundation/business practice, when left to the legal department things almost never get approved because of the legal risk. Wikipedia as a project would never have been approved at all by any reasonable corporation's legal department, because the legal issues are far too risky to countenance. We recklessly went ahead and started building it anyway, and figured we'd tackle the legal issues as they arose.
Reckless or not, it has not led to any law suits against the Foundation itself. There may have been any number of threats of lawsuits, but so far the only lawsuit was in Germany and was won. Risks are often a major factor in implementing anything really new.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't defer to lawyers where useful and necessary, but the general "ecology" is one of tension between legal caution on the one hand and a desire to produce a useful encyclopedia on the other hand.
That depends a lot on where you put the limits of "useful and necessary". I think that the latitude is much wider than what we have used.
Ec
On 1/14/07, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless.
No it's necessary, if we want to create *free* knowledge.
In an ideal world our content would comply with any law in any country. Of course this is almost impossible, so we have to make decisions, which laws are important to comply with and which aren't. And in some cases these decisions depend on language. To give you an example: IMHO it's fundamentally important to our mission that the content of the German Wikipedia complies at least with German, Austrian and Swiss law. Because these are the countries where the content is going to be used by third parties most likely.
Arne
I don't think you understand my position. I'm not arguing for an elimination of policy catering to non-U.S. countries. I'm arguing for a separation between languages and legalistic policy. We would have guides for editors from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Such a guide would not be specific to the German Wikipedia.
Plenty of people in Germany edit the English Wikipedia. The current language-country ties don't account for those scenarios.
Arne Klempert wrote:
On 1/14/07, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless.
No it's necessary, if we want to create *free* knowledge.
In an ideal world our content would comply with any law in any country. Of course this is almost impossible, so we have to make decisions, which laws are important to comply with and which aren't. And in some cases these decisions depend on language. To give you an example: IMHO it's fundamentally important to our mission that the content of the German Wikipedia complies at least with German, Austrian and Swiss law. Because these are the countries where the content is going to be used by third parties most likely.
Arne
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 1/14/07, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't think you understand my position. I'm not arguing for an elimination of policy catering to non-U.S. countries. I'm arguing for a separation between languages and legalistic policy. We would have guides for editors from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Such a guide would not be specific to the German Wikipedia.
The guide, I think, is a good starting point. However, we should not be imposing any kind of "licence" or "legal trick" or whatever you want to call it to wikipedias in one specific language which have chosen not to use these licences or tricks. This has to be a two-way street. That the Foundation issues a clear policy about what is acceptable and what is not is one thing, and yes, I believe it is needed.
That some language based Wikipedias agree to make these rules narrower to comply with the laws of the country in which the Wikipedia is most likely to be read/used etc. is, imho, the problem of the community of those wikipedias and their call.
Plenty of people in Germany edit the English Wikipedia. The current language-country ties don't account for those scenarios.
I have said it many times on this list, and I say it again. Any user who thinks he is above the laws of his own country is doing so at his own risk.
Let me try to give an example.
Imagine that German law declares that stroopwafels are illegal. Talking about them, praising them, showing them, is illegal. Of course, US law thinks stroopwafels are just great.
As a result, we could assume anything related to stroopwafels would be banned from the German wikipedia and allowed on the English one.
If a contributor lives in Germany, he is subject to German law. Of course, technically, the contributor *could* (in the sense they have the possibility of) upload pro-stroopwafel material in the English Wikipedia and say "but it's allowed in that wikipedia".
However, making such a document public is illegal in Germany. The contributor is responsible for making it public, against the laws of the country he/she lives in. Hence also "suable" under the law of the country he lives in.
To summarize, people should always: - forget the idea that internet is a lawless zone - observe the laws of the country they live in - observe the laws of the US, where the servers are.
That's for the user.
Now, for the projects.
We could argue that since the German Wikipedia is hosted on American soil, it could display tons of stuff about stroopwafels. However, whatever you will say, the German Wikipedia does have a public that is primarily located on German soil. So there's a big chance that the people who are going to reuse the content are Germany-based. Promoting stroopwafels heavily in the German Wikipedia could be a liability, even for an American based web-site, for users reusing, but also for the website itself, at least on German soil.
In the past, legality of content has been measured against the primary audience of a website. See the Yahoo! lawsuit in France about nazi material on Yahoo! Auctions.
I therefore believe that allowing communities to voice their concerns and apply restrictions in their own Wikipedia according to a country-language relationship is only fair.
However, I also believe that we have a responsibility to make people aware of the risks they are taking by uploading material that is "illegal" in their countries, even on a website where those are "legal". Without going all the way to nazi stuff, this could apply for things not so dramatic, such as Fair use material.
It's a difficult balance to find, but one we should be able to find by educating our users as to how they can reuse our content, as you suggest, and responsibilizing our contributors ("you are responsible for the stuff you upload/write on Wikipedia, man!").
Delphine
Hi interesting, my position is, that we have a term or keyword for the encyclopaedia. e.G. STROOPWAFELS.
My idea is, that the description in all countries is the same and as well the structure of the article should be the same.
We are on the way to have a global consensus.
See LITVINENKO, in germany the article was fixed because of heavy editing, and in england every users could edit at any time.
See china blocking some content and principles, which we accept/grant here for right. Here we want the same description. I want that the chinese groups like "Falun Gong" fighting for democracy get the option to the same decription in every country. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
I want this article be written in the same way in china, as here in germany, and chinese people in germay should be able to edit this chinese article or just translate some content as well.
This is as well a reason, why we should support the wikia search engine project for a p2p search engine www.yacy.net and www.yacysearch.com (as a good demo for it) to have social development not depending on central monopolists.
A decentral search box on each wikipedia page like yacysearch.com would be cool, so please discuss this point as well at the board meetings in every country.
Thanks tom
-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Datum: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:30:17 +0100 Von: "Delphine Ménard" notafishz@gmail.com An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week
On 1/14/07, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't think you understand my position. I'm not arguing for an elimination of policy catering to non-U.S. countries. I'm arguing for a separation between languages and legalistic policy. We would have guides for editors from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Such a guide would not be specific to the German Wikipedia.
The guide, I think, is a good starting point. However, we should not be imposing any kind of "licence" or "legal trick" or whatever you want to call it to wikipedias in one specific language which have chosen not to use these licences or tricks. This has to be a two-way street. That the Foundation issues a clear policy about what is acceptable and what is not is one thing, and yes, I believe it is needed.
That some language based Wikipedias agree to make these rules narrower to comply with the laws of the country in which the Wikipedia is most likely to be read/used etc. is, imho, the problem of the community of those wikipedias and their call.
Plenty of people in Germany edit the English Wikipedia. The current language-country ties don't account for those scenarios.
I have said it many times on this list, and I say it again. Any user who thinks he is above the laws of his own country is doing so at his own risk.
Let me try to give an example.
Imagine that German law declares that stroopwafels are illegal. Talking about them, praising them, showing them, is illegal. Of course, US law thinks stroopwafels are just great.
As a result, we could assume anything related to stroopwafels would be banned from the German wikipedia and allowed on the English one.
If a contributor lives in Germany, he is subject to German law. Of course, technically, the contributor *could* (in the sense they have the possibility of) upload pro-stroopwafel material in the English Wikipedia and say "but it's allowed in that wikipedia".
However, making such a document public is illegal in Germany. The contributor is responsible for making it public, against the laws of the country he/she lives in. Hence also "suable" under the law of the country he lives in.
To summarize, people should always:
- forget the idea that internet is a lawless zone
- observe the laws of the country they live in
- observe the laws of the US, where the servers are.
That's for the user.
Now, for the projects.
We could argue that since the German Wikipedia is hosted on American soil, it could display tons of stuff about stroopwafels. However, whatever you will say, the German Wikipedia does have a public that is primarily located on German soil. So there's a big chance that the people who are going to reuse the content are Germany-based. Promoting stroopwafels heavily in the German Wikipedia could be a liability, even for an American based web-site, for users reusing, but also for the website itself, at least on German soil.
In the past, legality of content has been measured against the primary audience of a website. See the Yahoo! lawsuit in France about nazi material on Yahoo! Auctions.
I therefore believe that allowing communities to voice their concerns and apply restrictions in their own Wikipedia according to a country-language relationship is only fair.
However, I also believe that we have a responsibility to make people aware of the risks they are taking by uploading material that is "illegal" in their countries, even on a website where those are "legal". Without going all the way to nazi stuff, this could apply for things not so dramatic, such as Fair use material.
It's a difficult balance to find, but one we should be able to find by educating our users as to how they can reuse our content, as you suggest, and responsibilizing our contributors ("you are responsible for the stuff you upload/write on Wikipedia, man!").
Delphine
~notafish NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 1/14/07, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't think you understand my position. I'm not arguing for an elimination of policy catering to non-U.S. countries. I'm arguing for a separation between languages and legalistic policy. We would have guides for editors from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Such a guide would not be specific to the German Wikipedia.
The guide, I think, is a good starting point. However, we should not be imposing any kind of "licence" or "legal trick" or whatever you want to call it to wikipedias in one specific language which have chosen not to use these licences or tricks. This has to be a two-way street. That the Foundation issues a clear policy about what is acceptable and what is not is one thing, and yes, I believe it is needed.
I think that it's even more important to have policies that establish protocols for dealing with these issues. The actual policies should be consistent with the Foundation's role as a specialized ISP that edits content itself only within very narrow parameters, and these could likely be defined. The Board should avoid putting itself in the position where it must be the one making a factual determination. It cannot begin to review 6,000,000 articles in 200 languages, and confidently declare on the spot that this one is legal and that one not. Still some editors will want to push it into taking positions that should be studied at a lower level.
That some language based Wikipedias agree to make these rules narrower to comply with the laws of the country in which the Wikipedia is most likely to be read/used etc. is, imho, the problem of the community of those wikipedias and their call.
Absolutely. Stricter policy on the copyrights of Commons contents seems sensible. The refusal of Commons to allow PD-Italy material is within its rights. If the IT:WP community then chooses to not have local images it has the right to do so. If it wants to include PD-Italy material resolving that problem means acknowledging that it can accept images that are not acceptable to Commons. It is their problem, and has nothing to do with whether EN:WP allows or disallows fair-use images.
Plenty of people in Germany edit the English Wikipedia. The current language-country ties don't account for those scenarios.
I have said it many times on this list, and I say it again. Any user who thinks he is above the laws of his own country is doing so at his own risk.
It is not just about being above the law. A reasonable claim to a different interpretation of the law is not putting oneself above the law. I think it would be better faith to presume that a person has an honest difference of opinion. Still, it's also important to distinguish between a difference of opinion and blind ignorance; how they respond to inquiries will usually sort that one out quickly.
Let me try to give an example.
Imagine that German law declares that stroopwafels are illegal. Talking about them, praising them, showing them, is illegal. Of course, US law thinks stroopwafels are just great.
As a result, we could assume anything related to stroopwafels would be banned from the German wikipedia and allowed on the English one.
If a contributor lives in Germany, he is subject to German law. Of course, technically, the contributor *could* (in the sense they have the possibility of) upload pro-stroopwafel material in the English Wikipedia and say "but it's allowed in that wikipedia".
However, making such a document public is illegal in Germany. The contributor is responsible for making it public, against the laws of the country he/she lives in. Hence also "suable" under the law of the country he lives in.
Yes, and his liability will be there even when he uploads to the English Wikipedia. Navigating through these situations is like wandering through a minefield. If the underlying reason for banning stroopwefels related to predatory commercial behaviour along the Austrian border the Austrians may have a completely contrary law on the matter. The law that applies depends on such a complex set of parameters that it needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. We need to avoid sweeping generalizations
To summarize, people should always:
- forget the idea that internet is a lawless zone
- observe the laws of the country they live in
- observe the laws of the US, where the servers are.
That's for the user.
Good.
Now, for the projects.
We could argue that since the German Wikipedia is hosted on American soil, it could display tons of stuff about stroopwafels. However, whatever you will say, the German Wikipedia does have a public that is primarily located on German soil. So there's a big chance that the people who are going to reuse the content are Germany-based. Promoting stroopwafels heavily in the German Wikipedia could be a liability, even for an American based web-site, for users reusing, but also for the website itself, at least on German soil.
In the past, legality of content has been measured against the primary audience of a website. See the Yahoo! lawsuit in France about nazi material on Yahoo! Auctions.
I therefore believe that allowing communities to voice their concerns and apply restrictions in their own Wikipedia according to a country-language relationship is only fair.
However, I also believe that we have a responsibility to make people aware of the risks they are taking by uploading material that is "illegal" in their countries, even on a website where those are "legal". Without going all the way to nazi stuff, this could apply for things not so dramatic, such as Fair use material.
This may work better in languages where that language is normally spoken in only one country, or in a group of geographically close countries. German is like that. French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic are official in a wide range of countries on more than one continent. In some countries there can be a deep resentment to imposing the imperialist values of the old colonizing power.
It's a difficult balance to find, but one we should be able to find by educating our users as to how they can reuse our content, as you suggest, and responsibilizing our contributors ("you are responsible for the stuff you upload/write on Wikipedia, man!").
That's fine
Ec
David Strauss wrote:
The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless. The Italian Wikipedia (hosted in Florida) isn't under Italian law just because it's in Italian. Nor are Italian citizens liable for something on the Italian Wikipedia just because the page is in Italian.
This is always very important to keep in mind.
There seems to be a plausible argument that Italian citizens cannot upload normally copyrighted material under the fair use exception. But there's a huge difference between what the Italian Wikipedia can host and what Italian citizens may post to it.
And if you think that you can fix the problem by making the Italian Wikipedia have policies that fit within Italian law, what about Italians who edit the English or other Wikipedias? They're not suddenly exempt from Italian law because they're working in another language.
There is also a very large Italian immigrant community in North America that can still understand its ancestral language. I can't see them feeling bound by Italian law.
Perhaps we should put together guides for legal interaction with Wikipedia. For example, Wikipedia editors in Italy must obtain permission for Wikipedia to use the content from the copyright holder *and* post a fair-use justification for use in jurisdictions with fair use or similar exceptions.
Is such a set of guidelines pssible? I think you underestimate the difficulty of a task that threads its way through such a jungle of law.
We must distinguish between language editions of Wikipedia and national borders.
Many countries have analogues of fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing
The English Wikipedia allows only a relatively safe subset of fair use, so another country's system need not allow everything the U.S. does to make use English Wikipedia materials.
Allowing only a subset of fair use is within Wikimedia's rights. If no fair use is allowed at all the results could be more severe than expected.
Assuming the person posting the material lives in Italy, the image should probably carry the Microsoft "used with permission" template *and* the fair-use justification. The former is to protect the person posting the material; the latter is to protect re-use of the content where fair use or fair dealing are allowed.
If the person posting the material lives in the U.S., they would only need to post the fair-use justification because that covers their use, Wikipedia's, and future organizations'.
Notice that I don't care to what language edition the person is posting.
I broadly agree with most of what you have said.
Ec
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