http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/
In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, an OSP must:
- have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, the infringing
activity
- provide proper notification of its policies to its subscribers
- set up an agent to deal with copyright complaints
Reverting a copyright violation seems to violate the first point.
On 8/12/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/
In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, an OSP must:
- have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, the infringing
activity
- provide proper notification of its policies to its subscribers
- set up an agent to deal with copyright complaints
Reverting a copyright violation seems to violate the first point.
Only if you have actual knowledge that the version is indeed a copyright violation, which would require at the very least knowing that the material is copyrighted, knowing that it is being used without permission, and knowing that it is not fair use.
<blockquote>Actual knowledge is not an opinion about infringement i.e. "I think this is infringing" or "this is copied from another site, therefore it is infringing".</blockquote> - [[OCILLA]]
Anthony wrote:
On 8/12/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512
In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, an OSP must:
- have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, the infringing
activity
- provide proper notification of its policies to its subscribers
- set up an agent to deal with copyright complaints
Reverting a copyright violation seems to violate the first point.
Only if you have actual knowledge that the version is indeed a copyright violation, which would require at the very least knowing that the material is copyrighted, knowing that it is being used without permission, and knowing that it is not fair use.
<blockquote>Actual knowledge is not an opinion about infringement i.e. "I think this is infringing" or "this is copied from another site, therefore it is infringing".</blockquote> - [[OCILLA]]
I strongly agree. While there are reasons and times times when it is prudent to act on suspicion the important factor remains the need to have standing. From that same chillingeffects site: "[OCILLA] protects online service providers (OSPs) from liability for information posted or transmitted by subscribers if they quickly remove or disable access to material identified *in a copyright holder's complaint." *That last factor is especially important. There is more to determining whether there has been copyright infringement than simply identifying two identical passages.
Ec
I personally feel that the foundation should be proactive in developing technologies that allow potential copyright violations (for example, edits that were reverted because someone thought they were copyright violations) to be removed from the database. It also seems to me that a lot of dangerous interpretation of untested law is going on. This particular instance appears to be a blatant violation of rights, and unless you are suggesting that we should be the ones who test it in court, why not just go through the steps of creating a procedure to remove this and all others like it?
I am still waiting for the fair use analysis of scientific journal abstracts. I actually bothered to read their copyright claims before coming here, and they require you to get explicit permission (via a third party) before using the material, although using an abstract on the web is free once you get that permission.
If the attitude is: we are going to push safe harbor to the untested limits, I have nothing more to say, because there is nothing I can say.
On 8/12/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 8/12/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512
In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, an OSP must:
- have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, the infringing
activity
- provide proper notification of its policies to its subscribers
- set up an agent to deal with copyright complaints
Reverting a copyright violation seems to violate the first point.
Only if you have actual knowledge that the version is indeed a copyright violation, which would require at the very least knowing that the material is copyrighted, knowing that it is being used without permission, and knowing that it is not fair use.
<blockquote>Actual knowledge is not an opinion about infringement i.e. "I think this is infringing" or "this is copied from another site, therefore it is infringing".</blockquote> - [[OCILLA]]
I strongly agree. While there are reasons and times times when it is prudent to act on suspicion the important factor remains the need to have standing. From that same chillingeffects site: "[OCILLA] protects online service providers (OSPs) from liability for information posted or transmitted by subscribers if they quickly remove or disable access to material identified *in a copyright holder's complaint." *That last factor is especially important. There is more to determining whether there has been copyright infringement than simply identifying two identical passages.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Brian wrote:
On 8/12/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 8/12/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512
In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, an OSP must:
- have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, the infringing
activity
- provide proper notification of its policies to its subscribers
- set up an agent to deal with copyright complaints
Reverting a copyright violation seems to violate the first point.
Only if you have actual knowledge that the version is indeed a copyright violation, which would require at the very least knowing that the material is copyrighted, knowing that it is being used without permission, and knowing that it is not fair use.
<blockquote>Actual knowledge is not an opinion about infringement i.e. "I think this is infringing" or "this is copied from another site, therefore it is infringing".</blockquote> - [[OCILLA]]
I strongly agree. While there are reasons and times times when it is prudent to act on suspicion the important factor remains the need to have standing. From that same chillingeffects site: "[OCILLA] protects online service providers (OSPs) from liability for information posted or transmitted by subscribers if they quickly remove or disable access to material identified *in a copyright holder's complaint." *That last factor is especially important. There is more to determining whether there has been copyright infringement than simply identifying two identical passages.
I personally feel that the foundation should be proactive in developing technologies that allow potential copyright violations (for example, edits that were reverted because someone thought they were copyright violations) to be removed from the database. It also seems to me that a lot of dangerous interpretation of untested law is going on. This particular instance appears to be a blatant violation of rights, and unless you are suggesting that we should be the ones who test it in court, why not just go through the steps of creating a procedure to remove this and all others like it?
"Blatant" is only your perception. There is a wide difference between "blatant" and "potential", and we are nowhere near to a court test of the issue. even the most aggressive among us should not hold our breaths waiting for a court action.
There is more to determining whether something is a copyright violation than someone's guesswork. That kind of guesswork leads to such things as taking down material when it was really the other site that was in violation of our copyrights. As Wikipedia ages that will be an ever-growing problem. We should not leave that task to mindless technologies and speculators.
Ironically, the more the Foundation involves itself in hunting down copyright violation, the less it will be able to act objectively in such circumstances. It can and should have policies for dealing with identified copyright violations, but it should not actively seek them out. The factual determination in such situations should rest with the communities and the actual copyright owners.
I am still waiting for the fair use analysis of scientific journal abstracts. I actually bothered to read their copyright claims before coming here, and they require you to get explicit permission (via a third party) before using the material, although using an abstract on the web is free once you get that permission.
Fair use claims do not require explicit permissions. You don't need to "wait" for that fair use analysis, you can do it yourself. Which of the four criteria is troubling you?
If the attitude is: we are going to push safe harbor to the untested limits, I have nothing more to say, because there is nothing I can say.
No-one is even suggesting taking this to the limit. There are plenty of more aggressive actions that we can take without even getting near to the limits.
Ec
On 8/13/07, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I personally feel that the foundation should be proactive in developing technologies that allow potential copyright violations (for example, edits that were reverted because someone thought they were copyright violations) to be removed from the database.
Deletion by admins of single revisions from article history is a feature currently being worked on by the tech team. If you'd like to speed up the process, code would be helpful.
But this won't resolve situations where a copyright violation stayed around for a while, through unrelated edits by other users. In that case there is a catch-22 in that removing the one copyright violation causes another, as the users who made those unrelated edits will no longer be attributed. Fixing this would require even more code, and would be pretty complicated.
It also seems to me that a lot of dangerous interpretation of untested law is going on.
Part of the whole point of OCILLA was supposed to reduce the need for interpretation of untested law. But at some point you're always going to have to do it.
In fact, copyright law is so screwed up that you're pretty much forced to break it all the time. Did you know that US copyright law requires you to send a copy of every copyrighted text work to the Library of Congress? That's right, every time you create an article on Wikipedia without sending a copy to the Library of Congress, you break the law.
This particular instance appears to be a blatant violation of rights, and unless you are suggesting that we should be the ones who test it in court, why not just go through the steps of creating a procedure to remove this and all others like it?
I am still waiting for the fair use analysis of scientific journal abstracts.
Me too. Maybe once this analysis is performed we can determine whether or not to remove the text.
Anthony
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org