I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide comments on it please?
Angela
---- Forwarded message from tanter tanter@tarleton.edu ----
Date: From: tanter To: board Cc: Reply-To: Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
Hello. On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at this URL: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson. You need to be aware that these poems are NOT in the public domain. Harvard University owns the copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems published in the 1955 and later editions of her poetry. The editions from the 1890s are public domain but the ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard edition. I haven't had time to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor review this because you may be violating copyright.
---- End forwarded message ----
Dear Mr. Tanter: You may be pleased to know that Emily Dickinson died in 1886. What determines the copyright on a work of literature is the date of original publication. The fact that Harvard University republished some of her poems in 1955 would not give them any copyrights in the poems themselves unless perhaps they included poems that had not been previously published such as in the 1924 edition of her complete works published by Little, Brown and Co.
We note too that Harvard would have copyrights to any prefaces, introductions, indexes, and editorial notes that may have accompanied their edition. We sincerely hope that you have not found such materials in our files. We also sincerely hope that our presentation does not infringe on the arrangement and selection process which Harvard undertook, although I would think that the term "complete" attached to the 1924 edition would be self-explanatory.
I also trust that you have also reviewed the files of the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress to verify that whatever copyrights Harvard may have had were properly renewed in or about 1983.
I am not personally an Emily Dickinson scholar, nor was I a party to the posting of these poems. That certainly puts me at a disadvantage in the face of someone such as you, whose scholarship is evidently more familiar with that corpus of works. That being said, we look forward to your response identifying precisely which poems are identical copies of the Harvard poems without being identical to those found in any earlier edition. We would be glad to make any adjustment to ensure that our version of the poems conforms to the earlier version.
Should this response not be satisfactory, and you believe that the material should be the subject of a take down order, please note that such an order requires that you indicate a statement of your legal standing in this matter in relation to either Miss Dickinson or Harvard University.
Yours very truly, Ray Saintonge a Wikisource editor
Angela wrote:
I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide comments on it please?
Angela
---- Forwarded message from tanter tanter@tarleton.edu ----
Date: From: tanter To: board Cc: Reply-To: Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
Hello. On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at this URL: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson. You need to be aware that these poems are NOT in the public domain. Harvard University owns the copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems published in the 1955 and later editions of her poetry. The editions from the 1890s are public domain but the ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard edition. I haven't had time to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor review this because you may be violating copyright.
Works published prior to Jan 1, 1923, that had a copyright notice, enter the public domain in 75 years. ALL works published prior to 1930 are now in the public domain. If they didn't have a copyright notice, then they immediately entered the public domain.
However, if a work was NOT published prior to 1930 - for instance, if a work was discovered after the author's death and published in 1955, then it is subject to to the 1978 copyright law of 28 years from the date of publication plus potential renewal of up to 47 more years.
So... if Harvard published the poems in 1955, and they were never previously published, then they can potentially have a copyright that lasts until 2030.
Republishing does not generate a new copyright, although new materials included in the republished works, such as commentary, are protected.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/copyright-howto
- MHart - http://taxalmanac.org
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net To: "Angela" beesley@gmail.com; "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@wikimedia.org; tanter@tarleton.edu Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 11:06 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
Dear Mr. Tanter: You may be pleased to know that Emily Dickinson died in 1886. What determines the copyright on a work of literature is the date of original publication. The fact that Harvard University republished some of her poems in 1955 would not give them any copyrights in the poems themselves unless perhaps they included poems that had not been previously published such as in the 1924 edition of her complete works published by Little, Brown and Co.
We note too that Harvard would have copyrights to any prefaces, introductions, indexes, and editorial notes that may have accompanied their edition. We sincerely hope that you have not found such materials in our files. We also sincerely hope that our presentation does not infringe on the arrangement and selection process which Harvard undertook, although I would think that the term "complete" attached to the 1924 edition would be self-explanatory.
I also trust that you have also reviewed the files of the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress to verify that whatever copyrights Harvard may have had were properly renewed in or about 1983.
I am not personally an Emily Dickinson scholar, nor was I a party to the posting of these poems. That certainly puts me at a disadvantage in the face of someone such as you, whose scholarship is evidently more familiar with that corpus of works. That being said, we look forward to your response identifying precisely which poems are identical copies of the Harvard poems without being identical to those found in any earlier edition. We would be glad to make any adjustment to ensure that our version of the poems conforms to the earlier version. Should this response not be satisfactory, and you believe that the material should be the subject of a take down order, please note that such an order requires that you indicate a statement of your legal standing in this matter in relation to either Miss Dickinson or Harvard University.
Yours very truly, Ray Saintonge a Wikisource editor
Angela wrote:
I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide comments on it please?
Angela
---- Forwarded message from tanter tanter@tarleton.edu ----
Date: From: tanter To: board Cc: Reply-To: Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
Hello. On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at this URL: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson. You need to be aware that these poems are NOT in the public domain. Harvard University owns the copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems published in the 1955 and later editions of her poetry. The editions from the 1890s are public domain but the ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard edition. I haven't had time to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor review this because you may be violating copyright.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
MHart wrote:
Works published prior to Jan 1, 1923, that had a copyright notice, enter the public domain in 75 years. ALL works published prior to 1930 are now in the public domain. If they didn't have a copyright notice, then they immediately entered the public domain.
The Sonny Bono extension changed this period to 95 years. The 75 year period now applies only to libraries and archives for works that are not available at a reasonable price.
The failure to include a copyright notice voided the copyright for works published before 1989.
However, if a work was NOT published prior to 1930 - for instance, if a work was discovered after the author's death and published in 1955, then it is subject to to the 1978 copyright law of 28 years from the date of publication plus potential renewal of up to 47 more years.
The need to have been renewed only applies to works published before 1964.
So... if Harvard published the poems in 1955, and they were never previously published, then they can potentially have a copyright that lasts until 2030.
Yes, but the copyright had to be renewed in 1983
Republishing does not generate a new copyright, although new materials included in the republished works, such as commentary, are protected.
This is a key point.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/copyright-howto
See also
Ec
Very good letter, but please Ray, don't end it the way you do :)
It is kind of provocative, don't you think so ?
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Le 27 mai 05 à 05:06, Ray Saintonge a écrit :
Dear Mr. Tanter: You may be pleased to know that Emily Dickinson died in 1886. What determines the copyright on a work of literature is the date of original publication. The fact that Harvard University republished some of her poems in 1955 would not give them any copyrights in the poems themselves unless perhaps they included poems that had not been previously published such as in the 1924 edition of her complete works published by Little, Brown and Co.
We note too that Harvard would have copyrights to any prefaces, introductions, indexes, and editorial notes that may have accompanied their edition. We sincerely hope that you have not found such materials in our files. We also sincerely hope that our presentation does not infringe on the arrangement and selection process which Harvard undertook, although I would think that the term "complete" attached to the 1924 edition would be self- explanatory.
I also trust that you have also reviewed the files of the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress to verify that whatever copyrights Harvard may have had were properly renewed in or about 1983.
I am not personally an Emily Dickinson scholar, nor was I a party to the posting of these poems. That certainly puts me at a disadvantage in the face of someone such as you, whose scholarship is evidently more familiar with that corpus of works. That being said, we look forward to your response identifying precisely which poems are identical copies of the Harvard poems without being identical to those found in any earlier edition. We would be glad to make any adjustment to ensure that our version of the poems conforms to the earlier version. Should this response not be satisfactory, and you believe that the material should be the subject of a take down order, please note that such an order requires that you indicate a statement of your legal standing in this matter in relation to either Miss Dickinson or Harvard University.
Yours very truly, Ray Saintonge a Wikisource editor
Angela wrote:
I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide comments on it please?
Angela
---- Forwarded message from tanter tanter@tarleton.edu ----
Date: From: tanter To: board Cc: Reply-To: Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
Hello. On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at this URL: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson. You need to be aware that these poems are NOT in the public domain. Harvard University owns the copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems published in the 1955 and later editions of her poetry. The editions from the 1890s are public domain but the ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard edition. I haven't had time to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor review this because you may be violating copyright.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
Very good letter, but please Ray, don't end it the way you do :)
It is kind of provocative, don't you think so ?
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Thanks for the compliment. I admit that I was a little sarcastic. I have received further correspondence from the individual, and now that I know that she is more than some random idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about I can respond with a different tone.
In my previous comments there was a point to be made about take down orders. Under US law there are a number of elements that must be included in a take down order. I think that one of the most important ones is the statement of legal standing. This protects people from wild claims and demands from those really have no connection with the copyrighted work. If a negotiated agreement were available it would not be with them.
As things stand there are some peculiar problems with this situation. Although Emily Dickinson died in 1886, it seems that 41 of her poems were published posthumously for the first time by Harvard University in 1955. This would make the copyright still valid in the United States on those poems until 2050.
The same material also appears at http://www.emilydickinson.it/ but it appears that this is quite acceptable under Italian law.
Dr. Tanter also raised the question of the 1847 photograph of Emily Dickinson in the Wikipedia article, feeling that permission to include the photograph should be had from Amherst College
I haven't noticed a lot of claims of potential copyright violation
Ec
Soufron wrote:
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Yes, I think we are.
The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the public domain for a very long time. If I get one more like that, I'm going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
--Jimbo
Hi Jimbo,
Le Saturday 4 June 2005 18:54, Jimmy Wales a écrit :
Soufron wrote:
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Yes, I think we are.
The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the public domain for a very long time. If I get one more like that, I'm going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
--Jimbo
Then you will have matters to complain with French administrations. ;o)
Did you heard about the French Academy claiming that their dictionaries are all still copyrighted from the 1st edition published in the 17th century because the people writing the dictionary are "immortels" ?
Then there is the French National Library (yes, the one complaining about Google taking over the world) which claims copyright on their digital content because there are, they claim, photographed, and not simply scanned, which is IMHO quite spurious as the process for digitalization is automated. Also are the archives of the French National Museums.
And I just learnt that according to Indian copyright law [1] all pictures are in the public domain 60 years after the date of _publication_. Needless to say that all Indian picture databases claim copyright of pictures up to the 19th century. See [2][3] as an example where the photographer claims copyright for pictures he would have taken before his birth.
Yann
[1] http://www.naukri.com/lls/copyright/section5.htm#25 [2] http://www.gandhiserve.org/cgi-bin/if/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=Ph... [3] http://www.gandhiserve.org/information/our_photographers/vithalbhai_jhaveri....
At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that. (I am more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).
So I do not think these are random museums breaking from tradition, or overeager law departments stretching to expand their control beyond current limits; perhaps the precedent here is unclear, or unclear to a significant subset of museums and their lawyers.
SJ
On 6/4/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Soufron wrote:
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Yes, I think we are.
The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the public domain for a very long time. If I get one more like that, I'm going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
--Jimbo
--
The law is not unclear, nor is the fact that it is considered ethical to seek to intimidate by adopting a posture which although it has little, or even no support in law, may yet succeed in influencing other's behavior.
Fred
On Jun 4, 2005, at 11:41 PM, Sj wrote:
At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that. (I am more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).
So I do not think these are random museums breaking from tradition, or overeager law departments stretching to expand their control beyond current limits; perhaps the precedent here is unclear, or unclear to a significant subset of museums and their lawyers.
SJ
On 6/4/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Soufron wrote:
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Yes, I think we are.
The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the public domain for a very long time. If I get one more like that, I'm going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
--Jimbo
-- _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Maybe some of the museums need to have their fingers slapped as happened in http://www.eff.org/legal/ISP_liability/OPG_v_Diebold/
Ec
Fred Bauder wrote:
The law is not unclear, nor is the fact that it is considered ethical to seek to intimidate by adopting a posture which although it has little, or even no support in law, may yet succeed in influencing other's behavior.
Fred
On Jun 4, 2005, at 11:41 PM, Sj wrote:
At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that. (I am more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).
So I do not think these are random museums breaking from tradition, or overeager law departments stretching to expand their control beyond current limits; perhaps the precedent here is unclear, or unclear to a significant subset of museums and their lawyers.
Sj wrote:
At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that. (I am more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).
That much is true, if they are "creative works" rather than verbatim copies, which is the gray area.
Interestingly, not all museums follow the anti-information-dissemination route. All of Greece's national museums permit free photography without a permit to all visitors, with the caveat that no flash is permitted (to avoid either damaging the pieces or irritating visitors with incessant flashes).
This leads to the interesting situation where Greek artifacts in Greece are free to photograph, but Greek artifacts stolen by colonial UK and France demand further tribute to have photographs taken of them!
-Mark
Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [050606 02:14]:
Sj wrote:
At the second "Signal or Noise" conference, a museum curator stated explicitly that many museums consider their images of their artwork to be copyrightable and copyrighted; they sell postcards, posters, etc of those images. They spend money curating the works of art, and commissioning the photos, and want to be able to recoup that. (I am more or less repeating verbatim arguments I heard).
That much is true, if they are "creative works" rather than verbatim copies, which is the gray area. Interestingly, not all museums follow the anti-information-dissemination route. All of Greece's national museums permit free photography without a permit to all visitors, with the caveat that no flash is permitted (to avoid either damaging the pieces or irritating visitors with incessant flashes).
The Victoria & Albert Museum in London often allows photography, though without flashes. But with a good digital camera that's not a problem. I have some fantastic shots from the Vivienne Westwood exhibition I'll be putting on Wikipedia some time before the Sun goes cold.
- d.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Soufron wrote:
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Yes, I think we are.
The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the public domain for a very long time. If I get one more like that, I'm going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
That did arise in this thread. The third person commentor remarked that our 1847 photograph of Emily Dickinson was owned by Amherst College, and that permission should be obtained to use it.
Ec
Jimmy:
Soufron wrote:
Don't you folks feel like we're getting more and more stuff like this these days ?
Yes, I think we are.
The kind of case that I personally find most annoying are claims from museums where the art underlying the photo has clearly been in the public domain for a very long time. If I get one more like that, I'm going to go on a rampage and make a lot of noise about it.
If German copyright law or precedent made such reproductions copyrightable, would the German Wikipedia have to remove them? Would the Commons?
Are we increasing the risk of such a situation arising with every new chapter and every new server cluster around the planet, particularly with servers which are not mere proxies? I would prefer to see all copyright liability directed at Wikimedia USA and to be able to defer solely to US precedent in cases like this. But perhaps it's already too late for that and we're headed for a global legal nightmare.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
If German copyright law or precedent made such reproductions copyrightable, would the German Wikipedia have to remove them? Would the Commons?
Are we increasing the risk of such a situation arising with every new chapter and every new server cluster around the planet, particularly with servers which are not mere proxies? I would prefer to see all copyright liability directed at Wikimedia USA and to be able to defer solely to US precedent in cases like this. But perhaps it's already too late for that and we're headed for a global legal nightmare.
Well, I think this is a very valid and very confusing question. :-)
First, the German association is specifically not responsible for the website, and we have been clear about this with several (bogus) trademark complainants already. This is a very helpful strategy, I think... the German association gets a bogus complaint, and tells the complainer to complain to the foundation in the US, and we tell them to go away.
Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of maximal reusability. This is a huge grey area, but for example the German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
When we place servers in different countries, we do introduce new legal risks, although in some ways these risks are minimal. Consider for example the Amsterdam cluster -- these machines are for us to use, but we don't own them. We don't have any assets in the Netherlands. So if by some chance there was legal trouble there, well, I suppose "they" could force someone to shut down the Amsterdam cluster, but we wouldn't lose any money.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of maximal reusability. This is a huge grey area, but for example the German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:, which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which doesn't.
-Mark
On 6/13/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of maximal reusability. This is a huge grey area, but for example the German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:, which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which doesn't.
I don't care much about fair use, though for some things there is no other way. But I don't like this either because if you take it to the extreme and obey the law of every country, there's going to be little that is allowed. What if some country prohibits the GFDL itself?
Dori wrote:
On 6/13/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
This is a huge grey area, but for example the German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:, which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which doesn't.
I don't care much about fair use, though for some things there is no other way. But I don't like this either because if you take it to the extreme and obey the law of every country, there's going to be little that is allowed. What if some country prohibits the GFDL itself?
Unless the prohibition is against specifically the Free Software Foundation licenses in general, or a very specific anti-American licensing law (both are possible and weird), the GFDL is simply a contractural agreement on how you can reuse copyrighted material. If you fail to follow the proscribed method to legally reuse the content, you are then subject to copyright violations that in many places, notably the USA and Europe, can be quite harsh with multi-year jail terms and fines in hundreds of thousands of dollars.... per violation.
Outlawing the GFDL or GPL is going to be a pandora's box that will essentially make copyright laws useless, and make it impossible to license somebody to legally copy any copyrightable content.
Fair-use, on the other hand, is something that the courts are very vague about, and even in the USA I would not stake my reputation on complying with copyright law if it is just "fair-use" as a justification to copy the material. There were plenty of professors that got burned when Kinko's (a photocopy center business chain) was prohibited by a judicial decree resulting from a lawsuit from publishing compilations of copyrighted material for university classes. This was a widespread practice until the mid 1990's at most American universities, to have students "go down to Kinko's" and grab lecture notes and supplimentary material not in a textbook.
It is important also to simply be as "reasonable" as possible, and in the case of Wikipedia or all Wikimedia projects to try and err on the side of caution. I just bumped into the anti-fair-use issue with WikiCommons, but I agree with the decision that no fair-use material should be on that server. It makes life a little harder for those of us who want to write spashy and spectacular articles, but when all is said and done with what is on fair-use restricted sites, the legal questions about what can be published are much easier to deal with. The problems seem to be particularly rough with photographic images and audio recordings, as most textual information on the Wikimedia projects is original material where fair-use questions are not even a problem.
Hi,
On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 10:17:59PM -0600, Robert Scott Horning wrote:
I don't care much about fair use, though for some things there is no other way. But I don't like this either because if you take it to the extreme and obey the law of every country, there's going to be little that is allowed. What if some country prohibits the GFDL itself?
Unless the prohibition is against specifically the Free Software Foundation licenses in general, or a very specific anti-American licensing law (both are possible and weird), the GFDL is simply a contractural agreement on how you can reuse copyrighted material. If you fail to follow the proscribed method to legally reuse the content, you are then subject to copyright violations that in many places, notably the USA and Europe, can be quite harsh with multi-year jail terms and fines in hundreds of thousands of dollars.... per violation.
Outlawing the GFDL or GPL is going to be a pandora's box that will essentially make copyright laws useless, and make it impossible to license somebody to legally copy any copyrightable content.
the problem is, country laws may prescribe specific requirements for contractual agreements, or licenses, not fullfilled by GFDL. E.g. -a contract must consist of an offer and an acceptation. An offer has to be directed (not "You,...") -the acceptation is valid in the moment, when the autor recieves some notice about acceptation (impossible in GFDL) -specific requirements for licenses, e.g. written form, explicit mentioning the license is not payed etc.
For example, in the Czech Republic, few years ago, GPL (and also GFDL) was probably contradicting both copyright law and contract laws. Now the copyright law changed and contract laws are going to change, and legal situation is unclear. In practice, nobody cares about the law and GPL and GFDL is respected.
***
The safest way how to avoid legal nightmare is to route all legal issues to the US.
What's interesting, it would still be possible to have mirror servers in Czechia under Czech law, even if the legal status of the content is unclear. CZ has special law "about services of information society", and part of the law explicitely exempts "caching" from much of the copyright liability. AFAIK major part of the law was inherited from EU directives, thus it schould be possible to have mirror/cache/... servers in most EU countries without necessity to comply with their copyright laws.
Jan Kulveit (user:Wikimol)
Jan Kulveit wrote:
Hi,
the problem is, country laws may prescribe specific requirements for contractual agreements, or licenses, not fullfilled by GFDL. E.g. -a contract must consist of an offer and an acceptation. An offer has to be directed (not "You,...") -the acceptation is valid in the moment, when the autor recieves some notice about acceptation (impossible in GFDL) -specific requirements for licenses, e.g. written form, explicit mentioning the license is not payed etc.
For example, in the Czech Republic, few years ago, GPL (and also GFDL) was probably contradicting both copyright law and contract laws. Now the copyright law changed and contract laws are going to change, and legal situation is unclear. In practice, nobody cares about the law and GPL and GFDL is respected.
The safest way how to avoid legal nightmare is to route all legal issues to the US.
What's interesting, it would still be possible to have mirror servers in Czechia under Czech law, even if the legal status of the content is unclear. CZ has special law "about services of information society", and part of the law explicitely exempts "caching" from much of the copyright liability. AFAIK major part of the law was inherited from EU directives, thus it schould be possible to have mirror/cache/... servers in most EU countries without necessity to comply with their copyright laws.
Jan Kulveit (user:Wikimol)
While I would agree some portions of contract law in different countries might not specifically permit something like the GPL, it is still a protection in the sense that in those countries where the GPL or GFDL is not permitted that the content simply become sealed and propritary. That is not an ideal situation, but it does protect people unless copyright is simply ignored altogether (like China.... well at least in the past and somewhat in the present). I think larger problems would be issues like discussions regarding national socialism, images of a swastika, where places like Germany it is illegal (or highly regulated) but elsewhere you are free to talk about it. I know similar kinds of laws are in France, and discussion about the Quran (Koran?) in less than reverent tones is illegal in most Arab countries as well. Routing legal disputes over things like that to the USA simply isn't always going to be so easy.
BTW, version 3 of the GPL is currently being discussed at the Free Software Foundation, and (this is not specifically being directed at you Jan) if you have comments or know of legal conflicts of the GPL or GFDL that revisions of the license would make it easier to distribute "libre" content world-wide, please add some comments@ gnu.org
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
The problems seem to be particularly rough with photographic images and audio recordings, as most textual information on the Wikimedia projects is original material where fair-use questions are not even a problem.
In terms of word count that's certainly true, but we use a *lot* of fair-use textual material as well. Many articles about copyright books, for example, contain short quotations from them.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of maximal reusability. This is a huge grey area, but for example the German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
This one I find particularly bizarre, because languages are hardly confined within countries---there are plenty of German editors on en:, which permits fair use, and plenty of non-German editors on de:, which doesn't.
Right, but it isn't so much about the editors, but about the places where the content is most likely to be reused. We naturally expect that German Wikipedia will be redistributed by people in Germany (and other places too).
I think it is likely that we will not be 100% consistent in our policies, because such questions are generally left to the judgment of each language community. I consider it a difficult judgment call in many cases.
--Jimbo
Jimmy:
Second, for the case of non-bogus complaints (under German law) it makes sense (usually) for us to comply with them out of the interest of maximal reusability. This is a huge grey area, but for example the German Wikipedia policy of "no fair use" seems sensible to me.
Well, the situation on the German Wikipedia is not very satisfactory in this regard, and many editors are increasingly recognizing this. Articles which are richly illustrated in English are entirely without pictures in German. This is especially true in cases where we will never be able to get free content images of the characters, such as cartoon series. (Making them available as free content would allow the creation of derivative works, which obviously the creators do not want.)
An interesting exception is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons
Compare: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Simpsons
Here, the German Wikipedia is trying to be clever by using 3D puppets of the Simpsons characters. However, such puppet designs are just as much copyrighted as a other picture of the Simpsons cast, so the "workaround" isn't really a workaround at all. (Note that Disney has threatened bakeries for selling Mickey Mouse shaped cakes and the like.) It actually makes the situation worse because we claim that these pictures are GFDL and therefore can be used for derivative works and commercial purposes.
The simple fact is, you won't get free content pictures of the Simpsons cast. Just forget it. You can have photos of the voice actors, of course, but getting a picture of Homer Simpson even under CC-BY-ND-NC would be difficult. Permission for Wikipedia only might be possible, but I think we all agree that this isn't very helpful.
When the copyright policy on the German Wikipedia was originally drafted, I suggested making exemptions that are allowed for scientific purposes under German copyright law. However, that proposal was narrowly defeated by the now established "no fair use" doctrine. A heated discussion is underway to again somewhat relax the policy.
I agree with you that we should maximize reusability. There are, however, two additional comments I would make on this:
1) Many countries have legal frameworks which are similar, but not identical to the US framework. We should generally try to interpret local law in a way that is generous to us, as the above demonstrates. Insofar as German law has "fair use" like exemptions, I believe it is unwise to reject those.
2) We should *never* comply with laws that would violate the spirit of Wikipedia. [*] Having no pictures of the Simpsons in a free content encyclopedia is forgivable. Removing facts from an article about Taiwan because of fear of Chinese censors is not.
This is precisely what worries me about Chinese Wikinews -- that our current attitude to it emboldens users in the Chinese Wikipedia who would remove facts and justify it by citing the threat of censorship for the whole Wikipedia, or worse, justify it by citing your comments on this. Defying censors needlessly is indeed wrong, but so is appeasement if it affects our core principles.
I am concerned that the proliferation of chapters will contribute to more conservative legal interpretations, as people will feel they need to prevent the organization from being held liable (even if its bylaws explicitly disclaim liability). I think the above goals, if we agree on them, should be formally written down somewhere (perhaps the WMF bylaws, and a general chapter policy) and be introduced into the discussion process of any new chapter.
Erik
[*] Note that I did not say "foreign laws". What we should do if US law made Wikipedia's existence impossible as it is today is an interesting question. I personally believe that in an extreme situation, a new legal home for the project and its organization should be sought.
Erik Moeller wrote:
[*] Note that I did not say "foreign laws". What we should do if US law made Wikipedia's existence impossible as it is today is an interesting question. I personally believe that in an extreme situation, a new legal home for the project and its organization should be sought.
If US law were to ever change to make Wikipedia' existence impossible, a new home for *Jimbo* should be sought as well. ;-)
--Jimbo
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