Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as legally sound ...
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eugene Zelenko eugene.zelenko@gmail.com Date: 04-Sep-2006 16:20 Subject: [Commons-l] Time to Seek Professional Lawyers Advice? To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List commons-l@wikimedia.org
Hi!
I have not good feelings about several recent discussions on Deletion requests: trademarks and PD-Soviet. Discussions are more like politics where more important is number of supporters, not arguments of sides. And they are more like pack vs. pack fights, since supporters opinions are defined by project where they are participating.
Professional lawyer advice could resolve such conflicts. So may be it's good idea to seek such advice in such cases?
Eugene.
PS
{{PD-Polish}} could become next hot topic. _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as legally sound ...
IMO, as an educated layman, {{PD-Soviet}} is bogus. The arguments are contradictory, half of them seem to boil down to 'nobody is going to sue us over these anyway', and the interactions between poorly-understood Soviet-era law, modern Russian etc. law, and international treaties seem to indicate that while in Russia certain works MAY be out of copyright protection, there is no sane reason to believe this means a damn thing anywhere else in the world. The works that may be out of copyright protection in Russia seem, in fact, to be FOREIGN works from the period, not Soviet works, and even then it's quite probable that this does not apply to new copies made in the present day.
IOW, if you're Russian, this may be of interest in terms of what you can do inside Russia. For the rest of us, IMO, standard Berne-convention copyright law applies. This applies to any other version of the argument; Poland, Iran, or wherever. In the Iran case, people argue since Iran is not a Berne signatory, we can treat any Iranian works as PD. I don't think this is a sound policy morally even if a lawyer could win with the argument.
-Matt
On 04/09/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as legally sound ...
IMO, as an educated layman, {{PD-Soviet}} is bogus.
It seems a little ... odd. But the educated layman argument is another wiki user vote. I'm asking what the Foundation's actual stated policy on whether they're leaving themselves open to this or not is. That is, a legal opinion, and not just any legal opinion but *our* legal opinion. Hence asking on foundation-l.
(And that would suggest writing to juriwiki-l, but that unfortunately seems to be a write-only list in practice.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 04/09/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as legally sound ...
IMO, as an educated layman, {{PD-Soviet}} is bogus.
It seems a little ... odd. But the educated layman argument is another wiki user vote. I'm asking what the Foundation's actual stated policy on whether they're leaving themselves open to this or not is. That is, a legal opinion, and not just any legal opinion but *our* legal opinion. Hence asking on foundation-l.
(And that would suggest writing to juriwiki-l, but that unfortunately seems to be a write-only list in practice.)
I also consider {{PD-Soviet}} suspect, despite my own more generally aggressive views on matters of copyright. In the absence of a clearly expressed difference using the Berne Convention standards when you have no reliable information about the country's laws is a good starting point. If soviet era copyright laws are to be ignored the burden of proof should be on the person trying to make this argument in relation to a specific piece of work.
Ec
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It seems a little ... odd. But the educated layman argument is another wiki user vote. I'm asking what the Foundation's actual stated policy on whether they're leaving themselves open to this or not is. That is, a legal opinion, and not just any legal opinion but *our* legal opinion. Hence asking on foundation-l.
Unfortunately, past experience says the foundation doesn't want to get involved in decisions like that - for quite valid liability reasons, I suspect.
So in practice, the users ARE the final arbiter of this, nine times out of ten or more. This suggests that an attitude of copyright caution, but not paranoia, is required.
-Matt
David Gerard wrote:
On 04/09/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Just what *is* the status of {{PD-Soviet}}? Is it bogus or not? Having a bunch of wiki users vote on legal status doesn't strike me as legally sound ...
IMO, as an educated layman, {{PD-Soviet}} is bogus.
It seems a little ... odd. But the educated layman argument is another wiki user vote. I'm asking what the Foundation's actual stated policy on whether they're leaving themselves open to this or not is. That is, a legal opinion, and not just any legal opinion but *our* legal opinion. Hence asking on foundation-l.
(And that would suggest writing to juriwiki-l, but that unfortunately seems to be a write-only list in practice.)
- d.
Errrr. Afaik, anyone can write to juriwiki-l. This avoids legal issues getting lost in the noise of this list. Well, in any cases, to be certain an issue is noticed, you may put brad patrick in copy of any mails of this type. Note that Brad is on holidays for the full week.
ant
On 05/09/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Errrr. Afaik, anyone can write to juriwiki-l.
And they famously never answer. But I suppose yes, I should at least try.
- d.
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote: And they famously never answer. But I suppose yes, I should at least try.
It's a rumor. Whenever I posted juriwiki-l directly, I got replies from both Legal Officer (J-B Souffron) and board member(s). Most of those mails were about trademarks. I think they worked not so badly as rumored.
Aphaia wrote:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote: And they famously never answer. But I suppose yes, I should at least try.
It's a rumor. Whenever I posted juriwiki-l directly, I got replies from both Legal Officer (J-B Souffron) and board member(s). Most of those mails were about trademarks. I think they worked not so badly as rumored.
Hoi, I can only confirm the rumour not being a rumour. Thanks, GerardM
On 9/4/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
IOW, if you're Russian, this may be of interest in terms of what you can do inside Russia. For the rest of us, IMO, standard Berne-convention copyright law applies. This applies to any other version of the argument; Poland, Iran, or wherever. In the Iran case, people argue since Iran is not a Berne signatory, we can treat any Iranian works as PD. I don't think this is a sound policy morally even if a lawyer could win with the argument.
You think it's immoral to use an image, that someone else created, without permission, to teach someone about a subject, using the internet?
That seems like a way over the top stance. Of course my viewpoint is exactly the opposite. I think it's perfectly moral for Wikipedia to use *any* image which helps educate the readers. Well, maybe not images which violate people's privacy, but except for that, I don't see the harm.
Anthony
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