hi,
may i propose to fix the attribution problem for the one common use case "do it like wikipedia does". somebody who refers to images from commons like wikipedia does it should be on legal safe grounds.
there is a recent incident of non-wiki-love where user harald bischoff states "comes into situations where pictures for the WMF are created", here:
https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benutzer:Haraldbischoff&diff=... "komme ich regelmässig in Situationen in denen auch das eine oder andere Foto für die wikimedia-foundation"
harald bischoff then uploads these pictures with cc-by-sa-3.0 license, and sues users who use such fotos. the complaint here from a blogger who paid 900 euro, who used a foto, with backlink to commons, and attributing in mouseover: http://diefreiheitsliebe.de/politik/in-eigener-sache-fast-900-euro-verlust-d...
what i would really love to see is that wikipedia is the role model, i.e. wikipedia refers the pictures as they should be referred by any website. the distinction "because wikipedia is owned by wmf we refer differently to commons than anybody else" needs to go away imo. be it only for the educational effect. personally i do not understand why a link to the works is not good enough as attribution. i thought cc-by-sa 4.0 fixes this problem anyway?
to summarize, i propose to legalize the use case "do it as wikipedia does" when attributing images. to make the site look good anyway we should either fix the software, or the license.
best, rupert
I would agree - it has annoyed me for years that on Dutch Wikipedia, if you use a painting image from Commons in an article, you may attribute the painter (though it's not required) but you may NOT attribute the painting's owner (often a museum and this seems ridiculous to me). I agree we should reopen the discussion about image attributions on all projects.
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 10:07 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
hi,
may i propose to fix the attribution problem for the one common use case "do it like wikipedia does". somebody who refers to images from commons like wikipedia does it should be on legal safe grounds.
there is a recent incident of non-wiki-love where user harald bischoff states "comes into situations where pictures for the WMF are created", here:
https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benutzer:Haraldbischoff&diff=... "komme ich regelmässig in Situationen in denen auch das eine oder andere Foto für die wikimedia-foundation"
harald bischoff then uploads these pictures with cc-by-sa-3.0 license, and sues users who use such fotos. the complaint here from a blogger who paid 900 euro, who used a foto, with backlink to commons, and attributing in mouseover:
http://diefreiheitsliebe.de/politik/in-eigener-sache-fast-900-euro-verlust-d...
what i would really love to see is that wikipedia is the role model, i.e. wikipedia refers the pictures as they should be referred by any website. the distinction "because wikipedia is owned by wmf we refer differently to commons than anybody else" needs to go away imo. be it only for the educational effect. personally i do not understand why a link to the works is not good enough as attribution. i thought cc-by-sa 4.0 fixes this problem anyway?
to summarize, i propose to legalize the use case "do it as wikipedia does" when attributing images. to make the site look good anyway we should either fix the software, or the license.
best, rupert
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What do you mean by legalize? The license is what the license is, while we might influence future versions of the license, we don't really control how current licenses are interpreted. That is an issue for the courts.
There is a modest ambiguity in CC BY-SA 3.0 about the attribution clauses (e.g. "you must ... provide" attribution and license information) that at least allows for an argument that reusers should be personally providing author and license information. In CC BY-SA 4.0, clauses were added to make explicit that linking to a page that includes that information is sufficient (at least in cases where using a hyperlink is "reasonable").
I am unaware of any legal cases that have actually delved into the issue of what is sufficient attribution, which in practice means we don't really know how the attribution requirements will be applied by the courts. In practice, most people are friendly about it and publishers work with content creators (within reason) to satisfy the creator's expectations about attribution. However, this would not be the first case of a publisher getting and paying a monetary demand on the basis of not meeting a content creator's expectations about attribution.
Are you suggesting that we stop using older CC licenses (and GFDL, etc.) that don't explicitly say that a hyperlink to the source can be sufficient attribution? If not, what are you actually asking for?
***note this reply is entirely in my personal capacity and in no way represents anything official***
On Jul 20, 2015 3:09 AM, "rupert THURNER" rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
the distinction "because wikipedia is owned by wmf we refer differently to commons than anybody else" needs to go away imo.
Since when has that ever been a thing? With respect to licenses such as CC, we follow the same rules as anyone else.
If the description here is accurate, it sounds to me like this harald bischoff should be blocked and possibly have his files deleted as incorrectly licensed (since he apparently doesn't accept the usual interpretation of CC BY), unless he publicly renounces the behavior of suing reusers. But I'll leave that to Commons and dewiki to work out.
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <bjorsch@wikimedia.org
wrote:
<snip>
Since when has that ever been a thing? With respect to licenses such as CC, we follow the same rules as anyone else.
Not really. Commons actually recommends that an explicit credit line accompany CC BY images, which is something that Wikipedia doesn't do in articles. See below.
If the description here is accurate, it sounds to me like this harald bischoff should be blocked and possibly have his files deleted as incorrectly licensed (since he apparently doesn't accept the usual interpretation of CC BY), unless he publicly renounces the behavior of suing reusers. But I'll leave that to Commons and dewiki to work out.
Commons' own guidance to reusers [1][2][3] recommends including an explicit credit line alongside CC BY images, e.g.
"You must attribute the work to the author(s), and when re-using the work or distributing it, you must mention the license terms or a link to them..." "[R]eusers must attribute the work by providing a credit line"
And recommends credit lines of the form: "John Doe / CC-BY-SA-3.0", with an included link to the license.
As I understand it, Harald sent a demand letter to a reuser who failed to mention his name and the license. In other words, he demanded compensation from a reuser who failed to do precisely the things that Commons actually says that CC BY image reusers are supposed to do. While I agree that Harald's actions are not friendly, it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things that Commons actually recommends that they do. His behavior is either A) a mean-spirited attempt to extract money from unexpecting people by fighting against the spirit of the license, or B) a vigorous defense of his rights under the license. And I'm not really sure which. Suppose, hypothetically, that Harald actually sued someone (as opposed to just sending demand letters) and the courts actually agreed that the 3.0 license requires that reusers provide a credit line (not an impossible outcome). Would that change how we viewed his behavior?
CC BY 4.0 explicitly says that a link to a page with attribution and license terms is sufficient, but prior to 4.0 it isn't clear whether such a link actually compiles with the license. There has been enough recurring doubt over the issue that CC decided to explicitly address the linking issue in the 4.0 version. Wikipedia behaves as if merely linking to an attribution page is always okay, but Commons' advice to reusers seems to be written with the perspective that it might not be. (I don't know the history of the Commons pages, so I'm not really sure of the community's thinking here.)
I do think there is something of a problem that Wikipedia models a behavior (i.e. linking) that is different from what Commons recommends (i.e. credit lines).
-Robert Rohde
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia... [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Credit_line
I would have a serious problem with someone litigating, or threatening to litigate, over an instance of technical non-compliance with the license terms; much less so if the (alleged) infringer persisted in republishing without requested attribution information after warnings.
Has anyone directly contacted Mr. Bischoff and asked him what he is doing and why?
Regards, Newyorkbrad
On Monday, July 20, 2015, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch@wikimedia.org
wrote:
<snip>
Since when has that ever been a thing? With respect to licenses such as
CC,
we follow the same rules as anyone else.
Not really. Commons actually recommends that an explicit credit line accompany CC BY images, which is something that Wikipedia doesn't do in articles. See below.
If the description here is accurate, it sounds to me like this harald bischoff should be blocked and possibly have his files deleted as incorrectly licensed (since he apparently doesn't accept the usual interpretation of CC BY), unless he publicly renounces the behavior of suing reusers. But I'll leave that to Commons and dewiki to work out.
Commons' own guidance to reusers [1][2][3] recommends including an
explicit
credit line alongside CC BY images, e.g.
"You must attribute the work to the author(s), and when re-using the work or distributing it, you must mention the license terms or a link to them..." "[R]eusers must attribute the work by providing a credit line"
And recommends credit lines of the form: "John Doe / CC-BY-SA-3.0", with an included link to the license.
As I understand it, Harald sent a demand letter to a reuser who failed to mention his name and the license. In other words, he demanded
compensation
from a reuser who failed to do precisely the things that Commons actually says that CC BY image reusers are supposed to do. While I agree that Harald's actions are not friendly, it is also hard for me to get behind
the
notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things that Commons actually recommends that they do. His behavior is either A) a mean-spirited attempt to extract money from unexpecting people by fighting against the spirit of the license, or B) a vigorous defense of his rights under the license. And I'm not really sure which. Suppose, hypothetically, that Harald actually sued someone (as opposed to just sending demand letters) and the courts actually agreed that the 3.0
license
requires that reusers provide a credit line (not an impossible outcome). Would that change how we viewed his behavior?
CC BY 4.0 explicitly says that a link to a page with attribution and license terms is sufficient, but prior to 4.0 it isn't clear whether such
a
link actually compiles with the license. There has been enough recurring doubt over the issue that CC decided to explicitly address the linking issue in the 4.0 version. Wikipedia behaves as if merely linking to an attribution page is always okay, but Commons' advice to reusers seems to
be
written with the perspective that it might not be. (I don't know the history of the Commons pages, so I'm not really sure of the community's thinking here.)
I do think there is something of a problem that Wikipedia models a
behavior
(i.e. linking) that is different from what Commons recommends (i.e. credit lines).
-Robert Rohde
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia...
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Credit_line _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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Poking around I found the following related discussions listed below (all in German) dealing with the current issue and a similar 2013 complaint. In the second link Harald responds a couple times to the 2013 complaint. The Google translate versions of the linked discussions are somewhat hard to follow so I'll leave it to someone with a native understanding to summarize. As far as I can tell no one has raised the current issue on his talk page (either at DE or Commons).
It is also worth noting that Harald has about 800 photos on Commons, mostly of athletes or minor celebrities. Spot checking a couple dozen suggests that the majority of his photos are unused, but at least a small fraction are widely used across many Wikipedias.
Current German Wikipedia Discussion:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9#In_eigener_Sache_.E2.80.94...
2013 German Wikipedia Discussion about Harald's behavior:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administratoren/Notizen/Archiv/2013/...
2013 Commons Discussion about same:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Forum/Archiv/2013/August#de:WP:UR...
-Robert Rohde
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Newyorkbrad newyorkbrad@gmail.com wrote:
I would have a serious problem with someone litigating, or threatening to litigate, over an instance of technical non-compliance with the license terms; much less so if the (alleged) infringer persisted in republishing without requested attribution information after warnings.
Has anyone directly contacted Mr. Bischoff and asked him what he is doing and why?
Regards, Newyorkbrad
On Monday, July 20, 2015, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) <
bjorsch@wikimedia.org
wrote:
<snip>
Since when has that ever been a thing? With respect to licenses such as
CC,
we follow the same rules as anyone else.
Not really. Commons actually recommends that an explicit credit line accompany CC BY images, which is something that Wikipedia doesn't do in articles. See below.
If the description here is accurate, it sounds to me like this harald bischoff should be blocked and possibly have his files deleted as incorrectly licensed (since he apparently doesn't accept the usual interpretation of CC BY), unless he publicly renounces the behavior of suing reusers. But I'll leave that to Commons and dewiki to work out.
Commons' own guidance to reusers [1][2][3] recommends including an
explicit
credit line alongside CC BY images, e.g.
"You must attribute the work to the author(s), and when re-using the work or distributing it, you must mention the license terms or a link to them..." "[R]eusers must attribute the work by providing a credit line"
And recommends credit lines of the form: "John Doe / CC-BY-SA-3.0", with an included link to the license.
As I understand it, Harald sent a demand letter to a reuser who failed to mention his name and the license. In other words, he demanded
compensation
from a reuser who failed to do precisely the things that Commons actually says that CC BY image reusers are supposed to do. While I agree that Harald's actions are not friendly, it is also hard for me to get behind
the
notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things
that
Commons actually recommends that they do. His behavior is either A) a mean-spirited attempt to extract money from unexpecting people by
fighting
against the spirit of the license, or B) a vigorous defense of his rights under the license. And I'm not really sure which. Suppose, hypothetically, that Harald actually sued someone (as opposed to just sending demand letters) and the courts actually agreed that the 3.0
license
requires that reusers provide a credit line (not an impossible outcome). Would that change how we viewed his behavior?
CC BY 4.0 explicitly says that a link to a page with attribution and license terms is sufficient, but prior to 4.0 it isn't clear whether such
a
link actually compiles with the license. There has been enough recurring doubt over the issue that CC decided to explicitly address the linking issue in the 4.0 version. Wikipedia behaves as if merely linking to an attribution page is always okay, but Commons' advice to reusers seems to
be
written with the perspective that it might not be. (I don't know the history of the Commons pages, so I'm not really sure of the community's thinking here.)
I do think there is something of a problem that Wikipedia models a
behavior
(i.e. linking) that is different from what Commons recommends (i.e.
credit
lines).
-Robert Rohde
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia...
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Credit_line _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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On 20 July 2015 at 18:09, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things that Commons actually recommends that they do.
It's not a question of punishment, but of protecting Commons' reputation (from being" brought into disrepute", as it might be termed)
I think the next step is for someone to notify him that he's being talked about. :-) On 20 Jul 2015 13:39, "Andy Mabbett" andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 20 July 2015 at 18:09, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things
that
Commons actually recommends that they do.
It's not a question of punishment, but of protecting Commons' reputation (from being" brought into disrepute", as it might be termed)
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 8:38 PM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 20 July 2015 at 18:09, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things
that
Commons actually recommends that they do.
It's not a question of punishment, but of protecting Commons' reputation (from being" brought into disrepute", as it might be termed)
There are two ways of looking at it though. In one narrative you block Harald and delete his images to protect reusers, but in another narrative you are telling content creators that the few rights they are nominally granted by the required license (e.g. attribution) are worthless because if they try to enforce those rights we'll kick them out.
Ultimately though, I wonder if this mailing list is rather a poor venue for this discussion. Isn't it more an issue for Commons?
-Robert Rohde
***note this reply is still entirely in my personal capacity and in no way represents anything official*** On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
Since when has that ever been a thing? With respect to licenses such as
CC,
we follow the same rules as anyone else.
Not really. Commons actually recommends that an explicit credit line accompany CC BY images, which is something that Wikipedia doesn't do in articles. See below.
Sigh.
I think I'll refrain from further comment on Commons' statement.
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
but in another narrative you are telling content creators that the few rights they are nominally granted by the required license (e.g. attribution) are worthless because if they try to enforce those rights we'll kick them out.
No, we'd just be telling them that a non-standard reading of the CC license's requirements on attribution (namely the reading that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author" in the *non-binding description* of the license means the creator is allowed to specify exactly how and where the attribution appears,[1] rather than "in any reasonable manner", "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing", and "at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors" as the license actually says) aren't welcome.
[1]: To the extent of "magenta 24pt Comic Sans", presumably.
On 20/07/2015 19:38, Andy Mabbett wrote:
On 20 July 2015 at 18:09, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things that Commons actually recommends that they do.
It's not a question of punishment, but of protecting Commons' reputation (from being" brought into disrepute", as it might be termed)
If you start deleting the images from Commons you put all re-users absolutely at risk who have linked to Commons.
Why?
Because you will now have removed the link to the attributions and license that they were relying on. This is why anyone that links like that is a fool. It is one thing to link to a page containing attribution/license on your site. Quite another to link to some other site you have no control over for the attribution/license.
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:46 PM, Lilburne lilburne@tygers-of-wrath.net wrote:
On 20/07/2015 19:38, Andy Mabbett wrote:
On 20 July 2015 at 18:09, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things that Commons actually recommends that they do.
It's not a question of punishment, but of protecting Commons' reputation (from being" brought into disrepute", as it might be termed)
If you start deleting the images from Commons you put all re-users absolutely at risk who have linked to Commons.
Why?
Because you will now have removed the link to the attributions and license that they were relying on. This is why anyone that links like that is a fool. It is one thing to link to a page containing attribution/license on your site. Quite another to link to some other site you have no control over for the attribution/license.
the link is good enough imo, commons does not throw away the record that the foto was there and everything can be reconstructed in case of trouble. but - i'd love that this gets solved on a technical level. every media file in commons either contains the author, or it is set by wikipedia software into the metadata. resizing and storing retains this information. after a while all toolchains will retain such information and the problem of wikipedia as cause of cease and desist letters (german: abmahnung) [0] will cease to exist. even for offline wikipedia (kiwix, and similar) and direct links to media. there was a non-wikipedia case a while ago [1], where the court says even in direct links to the image you should be able to see the author and license. it was dragged on to a higher instance but i could not find what the final judgement was.
another challenge in this context are "user defined licenses". those were used by lawyers cease and desist letters bearing a 600-1500 eur price tag. there seems to be even a business in fighting such letters, naming wikipedia authors [2][3]. just as example, one of the mentioned users images has Permission={{User:Ralf Roletschek/Autor2}} as foto license. [4]. different author, same strategy, outcome "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor" for a cc-by-sa 3.0 foto [5]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung [1] http://www.chip.de/news/LG-Koeln-Copyright-Urteil-schafft-neue-Abmahn-Falle_... [2] http://www.abmahnung.de/abmahnung-rechtsanwalt-dr-iur-hans-g-muesse-im-auftr... [3] http://www.obladen-gaessler.de/wikipedia-abmahnung-durch-ra-dr-hans-g-muesse... [4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Farmer_plowing_in_Fahrenwalde,_Meckl... [5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2013-06-08_Projekt_Hei%C3%9Fluftball...
On 21/07/2015 08:00, rupert THURNER wrote:
On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:46 PM, Lilburne lilburne@tygers-of-wrath.net wrote:
On 20/07/2015 19:38, Andy Mabbett wrote:
On 20 July 2015 at 18:09, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
it is also hard for me to get behind the notion of punishing someone for demanding that reusers due the things that Commons actually recommends that they do.
It's not a question of punishment, but of protecting Commons' reputation (from being" brought into disrepute", as it might be termed)
If you start deleting the images from Commons you put all re-users absolutely at risk who have linked to Commons.
Why?
Because you will now have removed the link to the attributions and license that they were relying on. This is why anyone that links like that is a fool. It is one thing to link to a page containing attribution/license on your site. Quite another to link to some other site you have no control over for the attribution/license.
the link is good enough imo, commons does not throw away the record that the foto was there and everything can be reconstructed in case of trouble.
You shouldn't need to reconstruct anything. The attribution should be there. If someone has linked to the attribution on Commons and Commons admins have deleted the page in some snit then the attribution is no longer there. Regardless as to whether linking to attribution is finally considered by a court as OK. The link is no longer to the attribution. Even CC v4 licenses don't say that it is OK to link to a page where the attribution may or may not be, or where the attribution may upon request be reconstructed, or hunted down. If people are relying on the attribution being at the end of the links then you can't effectively 404 the links.
As this may be a good opportunity to discuss the case as test of Commons policies, this has been raised on the Wikimedia Commons administrators noticeboard.[1] Please feel free to add evidence or viewpoints there.
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Leg...
Thanks, Fae
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