Forwarding to foundation-l, I forgot it the first time.
--- On Thu, 21/8/08, Patricia Rodrigues snooze210904@yahoo.se wrote: From: Patricia Rodrigues snooze210904@yahoo.se Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] PD-art and official "position of the WMF" To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, 21 August, 2008, 5:55 PM
Dear everyone,
According to the Wikimedia Foundation's values (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values), "An essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by the entire human community. We believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse."
Indeed, one of the milestones achieved by Wikimedia was the approval of the resolution about licensing policy across projects (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy), setting up restrictions about how EDPs are to be implemented, and which legislations should be respected when writing up such EDPs. This is appliable to all projects except Commons, which is expressively forbidden to have such a thing as an EDP - because EDPs are for non-free content, and Wikimedia Commons is supposed to host only free content (free defined as in http://freedomdefined.org/Definition).
In practice, things are a little bit different. Projects here and there have been setting up EDPs, and although there is no visible record of this (as far as I know), hopefully all these EDPs have been set up in accordance to this licensing resolution. I do not if such is supervised, but that is not really what I'd like to talk about today.
What I hopefully can point out today is that Commons is also not complying to the Four Freedoms, in light of its own licensing policy, which is the centerpiece of the project (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing). We have several inconsistencies in our "subpolicies", but the biggest one has just been introduced: the modification to {{PD-Art}} that has been the topic for this thread. The new wording on this template reflects a position of the community in light of opinions/positions of WMF staff members, and goes to the point of considering this an official position of the WMF.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to pose some questions: *Is the official position of the WMF to consider only US copyright in what concerns content to be hosted in any Wikimedia project? **If the answer is yes, is Commons included? **If the answer is no, which copyrights should we consider to host content? Please specify the situation for Wikimedia Commons too. *Is any WMF staff member entitled to give a "position" in behalf of the Board in a way that condones (even incites?) breaking the law outside of the US, in the sake of lobbying for Free Content/Licensing? *Are the positions/opinions given by Erik and Mike to be considered for the National Portrait Gallery/UK copyright law only, or for any legislation that has similar/equivalent problems, such as the Swedish one? *Finally: if we are to consider US copyright only in this specific (PD-Art) matter, but non-US admins are required by some authority in their own country to take down any media that is copyrighted in that country, should admins defy the local authorities or the new Commons licensing?
I believe that if we start allowing exceptions of this kind, Commons does not fulfill its role as a media repository that is indeed free to reuse, and its existence is not making much sense. So I would like to know what is the future of this project, and whether it is more feasible to have local uploads everywhere else, tightly regulated with a legislation, whichever that may be, instead of a central repository of "more or less free stuff, it sort of depends, you know".
Thank you for your time. Patrícia Rodrigues Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
Patricia Rodrigues wrote:
*Is the official position of the WMF to consider only US copyright in what concerns content to be hosted in any Wikimedia project?
From a philosopical standpoint, I doubt that this kind of question
is useful. In order to guarantee that content can be reused freely everywhere, you need to consider not only copyright law but also laws on privacy, blasphemy, national security, etc. Images that we share, such as caricatures of national leaders and photos of train stations, might be unlawful in various countries. To what extent should we let that stop us?
Exactly what is legal or illegal varies from place to place and from time to time. It can only be determined by a court of law, and not by a popular vote on Commons, or by any statement from the board of the WMF. Even though WMF/Commons policies can provide a guideline, it is impossible to guarantee that any image or content is "safe" or "free" for any use. That cannot be the goal for such policies. Instead, such policies must have the limited goal of protecting the WMF, so it can continue to function.
Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for anybody, only for myself.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Patricia Rodrigues wrote
*Is the official position of the WMF to consider only US copyright in what concerns content to be hosted in any Wikimedia project?
From a philosopical standpoint, I doubt that this kind of question
is useful. In order to guarantee that content can be reused freely everywhere, you need to consider not only copyright law but also laws on privacy, blasphemy, national security, etc. Images that we share, such as caricatures of national leaders and photos of train stations, might be unlawful in various countries. To what extent should we let that stop us?
Exactly what is legal or illegal varies from place to place and from time to time. It can only be determined by a court of law, and not by a popular vote on Commons, or by any statement from the board of the WMF. Even though WMF/Commons policies can provide a guideline, it is impossible to guarantee that any image or content is "safe" or "free" for any use. That cannot be the goal for such policies. Instead, such policies must have the limited goal of protecting the WMF, so it can continue to function.
I very much agree with this approach. If we comply with the lowest common denominator of all laws we may find ourselves stifled in our ability to do anything. The areas of law that would need to be considered go well beyond mere copyright law.
Votes on Commons, or any subset of the broad Wiki community are more often than not based on the voters' ignorance of the law. Statutory provisions are only a small part of the law; they are subject to highly varied interpretation, and often to constitutional challenge. So it is painful when, like Alice, someone proclaims his interpretation to be law because he remembers having seen it in a book somewhere.
The Board would be doing everyone a disservice if it sought to micromanage legal policy to satisfy all those who are chronically fearful of being sued. The Board needs to rule based on reasonable probabilities that failure to act will have dire consequences. It is not required to comply with the obscure provisions of every forsaken corner of the world. It needs to resist the paranoid tendencies of those who lack the courage to accept their own responsibilities, and would rely on the illusion that there is some bright line behind which they could feel absolutely protected.
The real requirement is simple: If you feel that it would be illegal in your country and circumstances to upload certain material, don't do it. You have no need to impose on them some silly notion that you are your brothers' keeper.
Ec
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