On 8/24/07, FloNight sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:

Honestly, what you are suggesting makes no sense at all to me.

Of course Commons can keep its own Foundation's logo and it's other copyrighted material. It goes without saying that this exception is expected. To suggest otherwise seems really odd to me and most other people I think.

Sydney aka FloNight

The biggest problem I've seen is the creation of derivatives without permission. This results in:

1)stuff with a rather messy copyright situation

The copyright status of these two images is one example:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan-in-seaside.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipe-tan-in-seasidewhiteball.PNG

2)more unfree media being created

The pure logos are something we have to accept. The derivatives is an issue that we cannot continue to ignore forever

I think your understanding of copyright is severely flawed. Almost all of the content on Commons is copyrighted, with the exception of public domain works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

On 8/24/07, John Smith rememberthedot@gmail.com wrote:

On 8/24/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:

...

IMO, this isn't about law, it's an appeal to Common sense.

You're right, this has nothing to do with law. It has to do with the position that the foundation has taken. Quite simply, the foundation has said that copyright is evil. This includes copyright that the Wikimedia foundation itself owns. Since it doesn't look like the foundation is going to change its position on free content, the only way to eliminate the double standard would be to impose the same restrictions on Wikimedia-owned content that we impose on content owned by others. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 8/24/07, John Smith rememberthedot@gmail.com wrote:

On 8/24/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:

...

IMO, this isn't about law, it's an appeal to Common sense.

You're right, this has nothing to do with law. It has to do with the position that the foundation has taken. Quite simply, the foundation has said that copyright is evil.

This includes copyright that the Wikimedia foundation itself owns. Since it doesn't look like the foundation is going to change its position on free content, the only way to eliminate the double standard would be to impose the same restrictions on Wikimedia-owned content that we impose on content owned by others.

No, you've gotten it wrong; I disagree entirely.

In fact, free content licensing depends on the existence of copyright. The position we've taken is basically one that copyright as it stands does not always produce the best situation.

Because we believe that society would be better off if everyone had easy access to educational information, and the ability to use that information in the way that most suits their needs, we want to encourage the development of material that is under less restrictive terms. Which may be public domain, but is more frequently still copyrighted, but not under the default conditions which leave *all* rights reserved to the copyright holder.

We don't say that copyright is evil. We don't demand that all copyrighted works be freed. We don't ask everything to be public domain. We don't fight the existence of copyright. Instead, we work within the existing system to create a body of work under more permissive terms.

Copyright was established to serve a purpose: to promote creation and progress, to encourage people to create more works. But are the current specific details of how that is implemented ideal? No, and I don't think anyone would say that they were.

If you start with the idea that it is a social good if everyone can have easy access to whatever educational material they need, for whatever purpose, then you start to look at ways to accomplish that. (If you don't believe that would be a good thing, why are you here?) You can't do it if all material is under stringent protections. And those protections don't even always serve the best interests of everyone "protected" by them. If you want that sort of society, too, you don't want all of those protections on all of your work."

You also can't do it if no one is willing to create works to be used. What's more, you might consider it a good thing if your releasing your work for such uses encouraged other people to do the same thing, because it would go even further toward achieving your goals. So you try and find an alternative to the default protections of copyright that better achieves what it was intended to do: further the interests of society as a whole.

So the basic ethic of content on the Wikimedia projects is "you can do whatever you want with this work, so long as you give everyone else the same rights with whatever copies of the work that you give them." (This is a simplification, but it's not too far off.) It encourages people to free their work in order to use the body of work that already exists, or to be part of a larger project. (Sort of like the idea of matching donations, or group pledges: I'll do my small part if doing so contributes to a larger good.) No one is compelled to free their work if they don't want to, but there are advantages to doing so. It seems pretty fair to me.

But none of this implies "copyright is evil". It's "the typical effects of copyright are not always what we think would be best, or even what it was intended to do".

A longer copyright protection makes more sense on works of art than works that are intended to be useful in themselves, although in the majority of cases, where the full protections of copyright aren't doing the artist very much good, perhaps it's not the best option either. (I say this as a thoroughly unremarkable and unremarked-upon writer and composer; I have a music degree and have in the past made some depressingly small amount of money selling work.)

A logo isn't intended to be useful or educational in itself. But since many humans are visual creatures, they like to have nice-looking symbols to represent their organizations. (Me, I'm an auditory-oriented person, and I have the visual sense of boiled cabbage. But this is what I hear.) It's not terribly important that it be free; it doesn't contribute too much to the common culture. If it's trademarked, you can't do anything particularly "free" with it either.

(While trademark creates a right for the holder, its effect is largely the protection of the "consumer" -- to keep people from being misled by someone who uses the same or confusingly similar marks. Not that this stops aggressive rights holders from sending completely bogus trademark infringement letters in order to suppress criticism, but they shouldn't get away with it.)

So I don't see it as a hypocrisy or a contradiction that the Wikimedia logos are not free. They're not really part of what we're here to do, they're just there for visual identification. We don't demand anyone else's logos be free; projects can choose to accept using those images for appropriate purposes or choose not to accept them at all. For obvious reasons, the Wikimedia logos should be used on all projects. :-)

We're looking into the legal implications of protection on the logos, but in terms of how pressing a priority it is, it's somewhere behind a lot of other things that are really important to do sooner rather than later; our new full-time counsel has no shortage of work at the moment.

Do our logos need to be all rights reserved? Would trademark protection alone be sufficient? (Getting trademark protection for all our marks in all countries where we should have it is not as simple as it may sound.) I can't give a definitive answer, but we can get advice from counsel, in the course of things. One main concern is that people don't go around and use the logo for things that would be damaging to us, passing themselves off as us, or giving people the idea that we approve of or sponsor things we don't have any involvement with. If the logos can be made more free, that would be great. But I don't think it is a priority, and it needs to be considered in light of all of the effects. Wikimedia first needs to make sure it is a responsible steward of our resources, even if that means acting slowly or taking a course of action that is not ideal in some aspects.

I freely admit that having the logos on Commons is just a dirty hack, so that they are easily accessible from all projects. They should probably be included within the skins or something, but I don't know how that should work if they need to be resizable and so on; I'm not the person to ask that question of. It's not ideal, but it works better than other things for now.

(I note that I'm speaking only for myself now, but this is the perspective I bring to discussions about licensing, and I think it is shared by the other board members.)

-Kat

Kat Walsh wrote:

In fact, free content licensing depends on the existence of copyright.

Hmmm! This sounds like a religious person saying that we need Satan in order that God's glory might shine brighter. :-)

The position we've taken is basically one that copyright as it stands does not always produce the best situation.

It doesn't indeed.

Because we believe that society would be better off if everyone had easy access to educational information, and the ability to use that information in the way that most suits their needs, we want to encourage the development of material that is under less restrictive terms. Which may be public domain, but is more frequently still copyrighted, but not under the default conditions which leave *all* rights reserved to the copyright holder.

Fair enough. This speaks for a more graduated series of possibilities between the two black-and-white extremes. Fair use provides this to some extent, but it has become a blunt tool that deals inadequately with the the rights of the author and the public. To me, having a free project goes farther than using only material that is already free; it also involves freeing apparently unfree material. Orphan works are perhaps the most prominent among these, but even they can be divided into sub-classes. Works where we can establish that no copyright owner exists are distinct from those whose copyright owners merely cannot be found. For example, where do corporate copyrights go when a corporation goes into bankruptcy? Tangible assets are liquidated and distributed according to established rules, to some extent on a pro-rata basis among members of a class of creditors. Nobody thinks of distributing copyrights, but the courts determine that what assets are available are properly distributed and discharge the bankrupt. Who owns the copyrights. The annual reports of that company may have historical value, but no-one can use them if we believe in a strict interpretation of copyright. As another example, the sale flyer that your local supermarket distributed door-to-door 20 years ago is still protected by copyrights.

I am personally involved in a situation with a puzzling copyright situation. I am co-executor of an artist who died in 2005 being 87 years old. She has no known relatives, or at least the post-war refugee organizations were unable to find any of them. Yet she left a large body of art, some of which is quite interesting. Nevertheless, she never did much to market her work. It does not have an established market value. That being said, the entire body of work remains copyrighted until 2055, and knowing what to do about those copyrights is a dilemma.

We don't say that copyright is evil. We don't demand that all copyrighted works be freed. We don't ask everything to be public domain. We don't fight the existence of copyright. Instead, we work within the existing system to create a body of work under more permissive terms.

Not demanding that _all_ copyright materials be freed should not imply that we are demanding that all copyright materials should remain unfree until the apparently subsisting copyrights have completely expired. There is a huge gap there. It is precisely within that gap that I believe that there should be a greater effort to push the envelope. I'm not even saying that this should be happening in Wikipedia as we know it, or even in any of the existing sister projects. Perhaps it would take some kind of intermediate project where the cards are laid out on the table, and we let everyone know that there are uncertainties surrounding the copyrights for the material. We also let it be known that if someone with a genuine interest comes out of the woodwork we will bend over backwards to be co-operative.

Copyright was established to serve a purpose: to promote creation and progress, to encourage people to create more works. But are the current specific details of how that is implemented ideal? No, and I don't think anyone would say that they were.

That purpose is consistent with Jefferson's concept of copyrights, and is also consistent with the limited monopolies that were granted back into the 17th century in England, and is even consistent with a broader common law tradition. Be that as it may, people rarely express this creativity for 70 years beyond their death. What kind of encouragement is being provided in the case of relatively unknown works, when the theoretical owner doesn't even know that they exist?

I would also question whether this purpose was ever a part of the reasoning that went into the copyright law of countries that derive their law from the Napoleonic Code. If anything the moral right of integrity actively discourages creativity.

If you start with the idea that it is a social good if everyone can have easy access to whatever educational material they need, for whatever purpose, then you start to look at ways to accomplish that. (If you don't believe that would be a good thing, why are you here?) You can't do it if all material is under stringent protections. And those protections don't even always serve the best interests of everyone "protected" by them. If you want that sort of society, too, you don't want all of those protections on all of your work."

We really do agree on this. 8-) How is it that I end up believing in a more pro-active approach? Is it just me that has this cynical belief that those who have the rights will do whatever it takes to preserve them. If their activities incidentally protect work that no-one wants to protect, and that keeps their opposition off-balance that all works to their benefit.

You also can't do it if no one is willing to create works to be used. What's more, you might consider it a good thing if your releasing your work for such uses encouraged other people to do the same thing, because it would go even further toward achieving your goals. So you try and find an alternative to the default protections of copyright that better achieves what it was intended to do: further the interests of society as a whole.

Sure. Ideas and the play of ideas are more important than the form of their expression. Free licensing achieve some of this ... maybe! They still require a lot of judicial testing. What happens when some European court rejects them with the notion that moral rights are inalienable so you cannot grant the collective the right to modify your work.?

So the basic ethic of content on the Wikimedia projects is "you can do whatever you want with this work, so long as you give everyone else the same rights with whatever copies of the work that you give them." (This is a simplification, but it's not too far off.) It encourages people to free their work in order to use the body of work that already exists, or to be part of a larger project. (Sort of like the idea of matching donations, or group pledges: I'll do my small part if doing so contributes to a larger good.) No one is compelled to free their work if they don't want to, but there are advantages to doing so. It seems pretty fair to me.

Sure.

But none of this implies "copyright is evil". It's "the typical effects of copyright are not always what we think would be best, or even what it was intended to do".

"Copyright is evil" is more a slogan than an argument.

A longer copyright protection makes more sense on works of art than works that are intended to be useful in themselves, although in the majority of cases, where the full protections of copyright aren't doing the artist very much good, perhaps it's not the best option either. (I say this as a thoroughly unremarkable and unremarked-upon writer and composer; I have a music degree and have in the past made some depressingly small amount of money selling work.)

I see no benefit from giving longer benefit to works of art. We have far more arguments over the copyright of illustrations than of texts, and in many cases where the pictures have become part of a large commercial library it would be more difficult to trace the real copyright owner. It would be interesting to require that these libraries show a complete provenance of their copyrights in this stuff, and make copies of all supporting documents publicly available.

When it comes to "a thoroughly unremarkable and unremarked-upon writer and composer", (as with the estate of which I'm executor) fame and fortune may depend on having a grandchild who really thinks that grandma's memory needs to be preserved. That's still unlikely to bring you the money when you need it.

A logo isn't intended to be useful or educational in itself. But since many humans are visual creatures, they like to have nice-looking symbols to represent their organizations. (Me, I'm an auditory-oriented person, and I have the visual sense of boiled cabbage. But this is what I hear.) It's not terribly important that it be free; it doesn't contribute too much to the common culture. If it's trademarked, you can't do anything particularly "free" with it either.

I think that many of our colleagues tend to muddle copyright and trademarks. I do like the use-it-or-lose-it approach to trademarks, and it would make a nice addition to copyrights. I do consider my self to be more visual than auditory, but being visual does not promise that the hands will agree. I'm sorry to hear that you have the eyes of a potato.

(While trademark creates a right for the holder, its effect is largely the protection of the "consumer" -- to keep people from being misled by someone who uses the same or confusingly similar marks. Not that this stops aggressive rights holders from sending completely bogus trademark infringement letters in order to suppress criticism, but they shouldn't get away with it.)

They really protect both sides.

So I don't see it as a hypocrisy or a contradiction that the Wikimedia logos are not free. They're not really part of what we're here to do, they're just there for visual identification. We don't demand anyone else's logos be free; projects can choose to accept using those images for appropriate purposes or choose not to accept them at all. For obvious reasons, the Wikimedia logos should be used on all projects. :-)

We're looking into the legal implications of protection on the logos, but in terms of how pressing a priority it is, it's somewhere behind a lot of other things that are really important to do sooner rather than later; our new full-time counsel has no shortage of work at the moment.

Do our logos need to be all rights reserved? Would trademark protection alone be sufficient? (Getting trademark protection for all our marks in all countries where we should have it is not as simple as it may sound.) I can't give a definitive answer, but we can get advice from counsel, in the course of things. One main concern is that people don't go around and use the logo for things that would be damaging to us, passing themselves off as us, or giving people the idea that we approve of or sponsor things we don't have any involvement with. If the logos can be made more free, that would be great. But I don't think it is a priority, and it needs to be considered in light of all of the effects. Wikimedia first needs to make sure it is a responsible steward of our resources, even if that means acting slowly or taking a course of action that is not ideal in some aspects.

I agree. The last point is particularly important, and many who complain endlessly about the minutiae of logos are completely out of their element when they have to deal in any way with matters of fiscal responsibility.

I freely admit that having the logos on Commons is just a dirty hack, so that they are easily accessible from all projects. They should probably be included within the skins or something, but I don't know how that should work if they need to be resizable and so on; I'm not the person to ask that question of. It's not ideal, but it works better than other things for now.

(I note that I'm speaking only for myself now, but this is the perspective I bring to discussions about licensing, and I think it is shared by the other board members.)

-Kat

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis.

Ec

Has anyone asked Mike's opinion on the discussion? Last I checked he was working on trademarks (and probably logos too). I'm sure he'd find this somewhat interesting.

On 8/25/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:

Brian wrote:

...

I think Erik really got to the heart of the issue. If this _were_ an

issue,

...

it boils down to the fact that you need to have legal protection of

certain

...

digital media that is somewhat stricter than your philosophy usually permits, and finding a way to tackle that problem in all open source projects is the place to do this, perhaps with a new type of license.

Well, the way the Debian project solved this is by [gasp!] just freely licensing their logo, as far as copyright goes, but retaining a trademark that they can use to prohibit misleading uses.

(They do also have a "this logo is for official Debian use only" logo, but it's not the common one that is usually associated with the project.)

See: http://www.debian.org/logos/

IMO this is a much better way of handling it without inviting obvious discussions about consistency.

-Mark

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