Hi,
Over on Wikipedia, there's a significant group of editors who've decided that current copyright policy doesn't go far enought, and are rewriting the external linking guidelines to require 'copyright verification' and 'due care to verify copyright' on external links. This is because they feel we are risking threat of suit due to linking to the likes of YouTube.
No, I'm not suggesting we should allow links to copyvio, it's clear that we shouldn't. But it's my understanding that the proposed changes would be poor ones to make for various reasons.
Primarily because we don't have the resources to take 'due care' and 'verify copyright'. True copyright verification needing lawyers time and money, it's not something that's in our grasp at all.
At the moment, copyright policy says not to 'knowingly and intentionally' link to violations of copyright. And I believe this is pretty much the best standard we can claim without introducing unattainable burdens.
Additionally, my lay understanding of the legal implications is that claiming we can and do verify copyright status of external links may well open us up to liability rather than reduce it.
I've tried to explain this in discussion, but the discussion has gotten a bit overheated. It appears no one is going to calm down over this until there's a clarification of copyright policy by the foundation.
I hope this can be clarified by the foundation.
- John
Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer "news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
Anything folks can do to limit our exposure here is a good thing. For the most part, WMF and its policies err on the side of caution, and this is a very good thing. The more prudent we can be in this area, the better. There's just been too much abuse of the current copyright laws by the internet community as a whole.
:-)
Jeff
John Barberio wrote:
Hi,
Over on Wikipedia, there's a significant group of editors who've decided that current copyright policy doesn't go far enought, and are rewriting the external linking guidelines to require 'copyright verification' and 'due care to verify copyright' on external links. This is because they feel we are risking threat of suit due to linking to the likes of YouTube.
No, I'm not suggesting we should allow links to copyvio, it's clear that we shouldn't. But it's my understanding that the proposed changes would be poor ones to make for various reasons.
Primarily because we don't have the resources to take 'due care' and 'verify copyright'. True copyright verification needing lawyers time and money, it's not something that's in our grasp at all.
At the moment, copyright policy says not to 'knowingly and intentionally' link to violations of copyright. And I believe this is pretty much the best standard we can claim without introducing unattainable burdens.
Additionally, my lay understanding of the legal implications is that claiming we can and do verify copyright status of external links may well open us up to liability rather than reduce it.
I've tried to explain this in discussion, but the discussion has gotten a bit overheated. It appears no one is going to calm down over this until there's a clarification of copyright policy by the foundation.
I hope this can be clarified by the foundation.
- John
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer "news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
Anything folks can do to limit our exposure here is a good thing. For the most part, WMF and its policies err on the side of caution, and this is a very good thing. The more prudent we can be in this area, the better. There's just been too much abuse of the current copyright laws by the internet community as a whole.
Some would say the pendulum's already swung too far to the right; it needs to become more free. In some ways I feel that the term extension to 95 years helped to awaken the open access community, as did the Ashcroft vs. Eldred case..
I think that copyrights became favorable to the publishing industry because it had no significant opposition.until relatively recently. Previously, serious copyright infringement was primarily an economic act that required a significant capitalization before it could happen Now, everybody has the capacity to infringe just by banging away on his keyboard; that requires almost no capitalization at all because the home computer was likely already bought for other perfectly legitimate uses. With the heightened awarenes of open access, I expect that the lobbying efforts will be more balanced between the two sides than they have ever been. Congress still needs to deal with the problem of orphan copyrights.
All that being said, I don't consider it wise to base policy on speculation about what the politicians may or may not do. When almost any laws are passed they include an effective date which is only exceptionally retroactive. My observation is that copyright enactments are usually made effective at the end of the current calandar year.
I can't comment about Slashdot because I don't participate there. I agree that there is rampan abuse of copyright laws on the net, and that swings both ways. Some are obviously violating the copyrightsd of others, but so too are there numerous people claiming copyrights to which they have no right.
I have no dispute with being cautios. I believe in pushing the limits, but I also believe that there is a point beyond which pushing those limits is stupidity. Taking prudence to excess, however, is also a mistake. There is a point (that remains to be defined) beyond which copyright laws stifle creativity in a way contrary to the US constitution. We owe it to ourselves to encourage a favorable definition of that point.
Ec
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer "news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
Anything folks can do to limit our exposure here is a good thing. For the most part, WMF and its policies err on the side of caution, and this is a very good thing. The more prudent we can be in this area, the better. There's just been too much abuse of the current copyright laws by the internet community as a whole.
:-)
Jeff
I expect that if there will be any major legislation, it will mainly cover presumptions of fair use rather than changes in the release of public documents. And fair use is clearly something that even Wikimedia projects tend to abuse on a large scale.
I think it was a very wise and prudent move on the part of those who set up the Wikimedia Commons that they avoided fair use images altogether. This may be ultimately a saving grace for all Wikimedia projects that this has been done.
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer "news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The pendulum is starting to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
expect that if there will be any major legislation, it will mainly cover presumptions of fair use rather than changes in the release of public documents. And fair use is clearly something that even Wikimedia projects tend to abuse on a large scale.
I think it was a very wise and prudent move on the part of those who set up the Wikimedia Commons that they avoided fair use images altogether. This may be ultimately a saving grace for all Wikimedia projects that this has been done.
What's more needed is clarification and a balancing of interests. Much of the legislation is clouded by an absence of defining litigation. This allows for a great deal of private interpretation based only on speculation; that is so on both sides of the debate. Thee is quite enough abuse on the English language projects alone; much of it does not meet my own standards of belief in a more aggressive copyright policy.
I agree that there's an element of sense to the policy on Commons. It makes allowing fair use images more workable on the individual projects, where a context for the images must be provided.
Ec
Let's send everyone involved in the argument on a trip to Hawaii.
On 1/12/07, John Barberio barberio@lineone.net wrote:
Hi,
Over on Wikipedia, there's a significant group of editors who've decided that current copyright policy doesn't go far enought, and are rewriting the external linking guidelines to require 'copyright verification' and 'due care to verify copyright' on external links. This is because they feel we are risking threat of suit due to linking to the likes of YouTube.
No, I'm not suggesting we should allow links to copyvio, it's clear that we shouldn't. But it's my understanding that the proposed changes would be poor ones to make for various reasons.
Primarily because we don't have the resources to take 'due care' and 'verify copyright'. True copyright verification needing lawyers time and money, it's not something that's in our grasp at all.
At the moment, copyright policy says not to 'knowingly and intentionally' link to violations of copyright. And I believe this is pretty much the best standard we can claim without introducing unattainable burdens.
Additionally, my lay understanding of the legal implications is that claiming we can and do verify copyright status of external links may well open us up to liability rather than reduce it.
I've tried to explain this in discussion, but the discussion has gotten a bit overheated. It appears no one is going to calm down over this until there's a clarification of copyright policy by the foundation.
I hope this can be clarified by the foundation.
- John
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 1/12/07, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Let's send everyone involved in the argument on a trip to Hawaii.
Where can I get invloved in the argument? ;)
John Barberio wrote:
Over on Wikipedia, there's a significant group of editors who've decided that current copyright policy doesn't go far enought, and are rewriting the external linking guidelines to require 'copyright verification' and 'due care to verify copyright' on external links. This is because they feel we are risking threat of suit due to linking to the likes of YouTube.
No, I'm not suggesting we should allow links to copyvio, it's clear that we shouldn't. But it's my understanding that the proposed changes would be poor ones to make for various reasons.
Primarily because we don't have the resources to take 'due care' and 'verify copyright'. True copyright verification needing lawyers time and money, it's not something that's in our grasp at all.
That's the whole thing there. They are requiring the impossible. Except for the occasional obvious link there is no way to tell whether something is a copyvio. In the absence of that one is not "knowingly" committing a contributory infringement. Policy should not be based on a presumption of guilt, rather it should be up to those claiming a violation to make a reasonable case for it, not an air-tight one just a reasonable one. That would begin the discussion about that allegation. It seems, however, that this gang is exhibiting the usual traits of paranoia and laziness that we have encountered in many other situations where deletion was demanded.
At the moment, copyright policy says not to 'knowingly and intentionally' link to violations of copyright. And I believe this is pretty much the best standard we can claim without introducing unattainable burdens.
Additionally, my lay understanding of the legal implications is that claiming we can and do verify copyright status of external links may well open us up to liability rather than reduce it.
This is possible. Saying that you just don't know is far more honest than any claim either way about the copyrights of of someone else's site. The simple fact that the other site has attached some sort of copyright notice cannot be taken as evidence of anything. The material may be partially copyright, and the rest not copyrightable in the first place. When we say that we definitely know we are likely to be intentionally misleading our readers.
I've tried to explain this in discussion, but the discussion has gotten a bit overheated. It appears no one is going to calm down over this until there's a clarification of copyright policy by the foundation.
I hope this can be clarified by the foundation.
Unfortunately such a determination should not come from the Foundation. It is up to the community of editors on a project to sort it out. The Foundation can adopt general policy against copyright infringement on all Projects. It can demand reasonable care from all Projects and editors. This is consistent with its mission.
As an ISP it cannot monitor and respond on every detail in every Project; it cannot draft meticulous rules to define what is and isn't a copyright violation. It should not be micromanaging in this way. By accepting such a greater degree of responsibility in the matter it exposes itself more, not less.
To be legal the Foundation absolutely needs to respond to formal complaints by specific people with a specific interest. Legal cases depend on there being an affected person whose own rights are being violated. None will depend solely on the claims of third parties who love to stick their noses into other people's business, and who have taken upon themselves the role of a white knight with a mission to purify the internet of copyright violation.
It's up to the en:wp community to find its own consensus on this, and that won't happen unless others actively resist this attempt to enforce idiosyncratic misinterpretations of law.
Ec
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org