Hi Matanya I'm sure there are others with more expertise than me on this list but a) isn't Commons the place to start this process, and b) have you looked at Michael Maggs' proposal (see email copied below from April) to relax the scope of the precautionary principle? That, and the discussion there, might be a good start. Best Simon -----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Michael Maggs Sent: 09 April 2014 18:44 To: UK Wikimedia mailing list; Wikimedia Mailing List; commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; chapters(a)wikimedia.ch Subject: [Wikimedia-l] New Commons RFC on changing the Precautionary principle to tackle the URAA problem I have made a proposal to relax the scope of the Commons so-called Precautionary principle to allow the site to host more of the locally public domain files that are being deleted because of the US URAA law, and also to keep more photos that have freedom of panorama in their home country but which might (or might not) be copyright-protected in the US. This proposal comes out of an extremely long and complicated argument about copyright, which you don't necessarily need to get into, but it is an attempt to allow Commons to host more media files while at the same time ensuring that the site remains fully legal under US law. We can legally take a much more nuanced position than 'Definitely Free' or 'Definitely Unfree', which is pretty much what we do at present. Some editors have suggested ignoring US law, which the WMF simply cannot allow to happen, and this is an attempt to allow us to keep more non-US Public Domain material while still remaining on the right side of US law. Put simply, do you agree that Commons should aim to host more files that are public domain in their home country even if they *might* still be copyright-protected in the US? Please contribute here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Review_of_Precautionary_principle Michael _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> -----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of matanya Sent: 08 June 2014 12:21 To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Commons and OCILLA Hello, Commons licensing policy determines media should be free in source country and in US. I want to propose We change the policy to be: "free in source country" only, and to cope with US laws where the servers are hosted found a "DMCA take down notice" Team in OTRS, that will handle requests to remove Items that are non-free in the US after verifying proper grounds for the claim. This approach to copyright will prevent issues like URAA issues, shorter term issues and restored copyright issues. It will enrich commons with many files that are FREE (mostly PD) in source country, but not on commons due to US laws. Unless the copyright holder (mostly Gov's and archives) will not request removal, and they won't since they released the media, we will be using those files. I'm not a lawyer, so I probably missed most of the legal implication, But I do volunteer to found and lead the team, if this idea is accepted and commons community would want this policy change. I'm seeking input from copyright experienced users and lawyers, before i start an official policy change on commons. Thanks Matanya Moses _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

On 8 June 2014 12:21, matanya &lt;matanya(a)foss.co.il&gt; wrote: No it it won't. UK restored a bunch of copyrights when EU went life+70 If the government held the copyright then you contact them and ask them about their position on potential overseas copyrights. The main problem that you hit is that "free in source country and in US" is a pretty good proxy for "free pretty much anywhere" (well unless the source country is the US but that's a separate problem). For example depending on how you read Saudi law there are a bunch of photos that are free in Saudi Arabia and pretty much nowhere else (Switzerland perhaps) but unless our resuser know their way around over 100 copyright systems they probably aren't going to know that. Thus from a reuse POV commons goes from being useful (as long as you allow for US weirdness) to being (from a copyright perspective) a radioactive mess.