Of relevance here:
http://www.publicdomainday.org/sites/www.publicdomainday.eu/files/World_cop…
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues
Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 14:51:27 +0530
From: Achal Prabhala <aprabhala(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi Balasankar,
The question you raise is a very important one. The solution, however,
is not likely to be to host content in India (I don't speak for the
Wikimedia Foundation, but there are sound legal reasons why all
Wikimedia content is hosted in the US; mostly liability risk and freedom
of expression and this is unlikely to change).
The default across Commons and Wikisource, the two projects that host
the bulk of public domain content (images, videos, sounds, books) in
Wikimedia, is the US copyright term - it's the only yardstick that
matters for what qualifies as public domain by virtue of being out of
copyright. You are absolutely right, however, in that there's a big
difference btw US copyright terms and those of other countries, for
instance:
For photographs, while the binding limit (Berne/TRIPs) is 25 years from
the making of the work, India is life of photographer + 60 years after
death, and in the US it is life + 70.
For literary works, the binding limit (Berne/ TRIPs) is life + 50 years,
whereas in India it is life + 60, whereas in the US it is life + 70 or
120/95 if made on work for hire.
(The binding limit is the WTO mandated term that country members - US
and India and 150 others - have to follow. As you can see, typically,
most countries exceed the limit for reasons of their own, which they are
allowed to do, with the US exceeding in far greater amount than India.)
In short, there can be a difference of between 10 and 40 years between
the time a work goes into the public domain in a country with shorter
terms than the US (any number of countries in the non-Anglo-European
world) and the US. This seriously affects even 'Indian' works (where
India is the first country of publication) because of the copyright
protection granted to such works in the US, thus effectively placing
them under copyright for our purposes within Wikimedia long after
they've gone in to the public domain in their source country.
The case to consider here is Golan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder
A summary of the US Supreme Court decision in this case is - US law
trumps international agreements, so the US copyright term holds within
US territory, and restores copyright protection to any works that have
gone into the public domain by virtue of a shorter copyright term in
another country. Because Wikimedia servers are based in the US, Golan
applies to us.
But your question is an extremely pertinent one, and if we were to find
unusual solutions to it, they would seem to lie in:
1) Whether hosting on US servers for a global audience makes any
difference, since we do not serve readers only bound by US law
(Wikimedia reader numbers bear this out, ie US readership = minority
percentage of whole) and whether we specifically have anything special
on the basis of which to mount some kind of strategic litigation on the
issue of allowing us to exploit the shortest possible route to public
domain anywhere in the world for all or some of our readers.
2) Whether hosting on US servers but using publicly audited geolocation
to switch off for readers from IP addresses where the material in
question is still under copyright is a legally and operationally
feasible workaround (connected to whether Wikimedia Tech thinks this is
both doable and worth our while to do)
3) Whether, if all fails and there is no getting around this in any way,
Commons and Wikisource (if there is sufficient interest in those
communities) should be interested in looking at a way of allowing
external links to chapter-managed local sites from the US-served base to
see the material in question; and if this is something, say, the India
chapter wants and is willing to do, whether this route poses any legal
risks.
In any case, I passed around your question to a few friends for comments
and suggestions - as well as to Geoff Brigham at the Wikimedia
Foundation, who is not too hopeful for a solution but is very receptive
to looking into it and getting back to us - and I'll tell you when I
know something.
Meanwhile, if you have other ways of looking into creative solutions
around this problem (not at all easy to crack, but the benefits are
significant) - or if anyone else on this list does - you should.
Cheers,
Achal
On Friday 10 May 2013 10:20 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath wrote:
> Hi Srikanth,
> I didnt quite understand what you meant by example.
> An example for a work which is in public domain in India and not in US
> - Works by Changampuzha Krishnapillai (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changampuzha_Krishna_Pillai ).
> He passed away in 1948, and hence it is 65 years after the author's
> death. So the books are copyright-free in India as of now (in pubic
> domain).
> But they
>
> 1. were not published before 1923
> 2. were not in the public domain in India as of 1 January 1996 (
> because criteria of "60 years after author's death" not satisfied
> on 1996)
>
> Hence they are not in public domain according to US Laws. So we cannot
> store them in US servers.
>
> The main problem is India considers copyright based on date of
> author's death and US does it based on date of publication.
>
> Regards,
> Balasankar C
>
>
>
> 2013/5/10 Srikanth Ramakrishnan <srik.ramk(a)wikimedia.in
> <mailto:srik.ramk@wikimedia.in>>
>
> Hi Balasankar,
> Can you point out specific instances and show when and where the
> book or publication was first published? If the works are still
> copyrighted in India, then they should be copyrighted in the US as
> well, generally speaking. The term India awards to creators is
> lesser than the one provided in the US under copyright laws.
> Regards,
>
>
> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath
> <c.balasankar(a)gmail.com <mailto:c.balasankar@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> As most of you know, the Indian copyright law says that a book
> gets relieved of copyright after 60 years from the author's
> death. But this is not the case with US Law. As given here
> <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Copyrightterm.pdf>
> , of all the works published outside US, only those published
> before 1923 are directly in the public domain. The ones
> published between 1923 and 1977 without compliance to the US
> formalities will be in the public domain only if they are in
> the public domain in their source country as of 1 January
> 1996. Almost all the other categories of published works will
> not be in the public domain until 95 years after publishing.
>
> This induces a confusion and when looked in a legal
> perspective, most of the books in Indian Wikisources, are
> still not in public domain and hence must be removed. This
> makes a huge negative impact on the hard work done by
> contributors. Their contributions are wasted which may cause
> them to stop contributing. In short, this may be a negative
> impact on Wikimedia's image in the society.
>
> The only solution to this problem is to *host the servers of
> Indian Wikimedia services in India*, so that the data we
> upload is stored under Indian Laws. Can Wikimedia India
> Chapter do anything on this? We can plan and conduct a
> fundraiser in India to raise money for the hosting expenses.
>
> Please consider this issue with maximum priority as it
> involves legal procedures and related headaches.
>
> Regards,
> Balasankar C
> https://ml.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Balasankarc
> Regards,
> Balasankar C
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Srikanth Ramakrishnan
> Treasurer,
> Wikimedia Chapter [India]
>
> Donate to the Wikimedia India Chapter today
> <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donations>
>
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Dear All,
Some members have written to me asking if the mail on the CIS-A2K Work Plan
(draft) has been posted on WMI community list. It got held for mod approval
initially and has hit the list later. I could see it in the list archives.
However, I am taking the initiative of re-posting the e-mail below.
The first feedback on Work Plans was given by Arjuna. Thank you Arjuna! You
can find his feedback at these links [3].
Warmly,
Vishnu
Dear All,
CIS-A2K Team would like to share with you it's draft Work Plan (2013-2014)
for Indian language Wikimedia projects. The detailed work plan can be found
here. [1] The main objective of this document is to present a detailed
plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme
activities, during the next 15 months.
The A2K team has, over the last two months, extensively engaged with
various stakeholders in developing these plans. These include a) some
Wikimedia India Community members across various Indian language Wikimedia
projects; b) some English Language Wikimedia community members from India;
c) Wikimedia India Chapter Executive Committee; d) some potential
institutional partners; e) a few like minded advocates of free knowledge;
f) A2K Programme Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and last but not least g)
a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff. We are extremely thankful to all
of them who have taken time out in sharing their ideas and opinions and in
actively giving feedback, which has helped us immensely in drawing up these
plans. This document has been made keeping in mind the objectives,
opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia
projects.
We welcome your feedback and suggestions to further refine these
plans. However, for the sake of structured engagement, we would request you
to *please read the following guidelines [2] on how to share your
feedback.*We would deeply appreciate if you could share your valuable
feedback in the
next three weeks based on which we will revise the plans.
Looking forward to receiving your inputs.
Thank you,
T. Vishnu Vardhan
Programme Director
Access to Knowledge<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge>
The Centre for Internet and Society
[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Work_plan_April_20…
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Work_plan_April_20…
[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Work_plan_Apr…http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Work_plan_Apr…http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Work_plan_Apr…
http://niralimagazine.com/2007/03/look-whos-talking-hindustani/
I just came across this. It is not saying anything new, but puts across a
complex issue in an accessible way.
--
Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD
Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications
(HEIRA)
Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS)
Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-26730476, 26730967, 26730268
f: 91-80-26730722
http://heira.inwww.cscs.res.in
Free Software Movement Maharashtra - Outcome of preparatory meeting
The preparatory meeting for formation of 'Free Software Movement
Maharashtra' was a success. The meeting was held at the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay on 4th May 2013. 44 people participated
in it.
The agenda of the meeting was:
1. Discussion on the importance free software and knowledge as a commons
2. Discussion about the need for a movement in the free software domain
3. Forming an organising team to take forward activities in Maharashtra
4. Listing and approving of action items for the next few months
The participants were welcomed by Vikram Vincent, Member, General
Council, FSMI and Prof. Puru Kulkarni moderated the session.
Prof. Kannan Moudgalya inaugurated the first agenda point by talking
about the FOSS initiatives at IITB and the efforts to connect with the
teachers and students from all over the country. Prof. D.B. Phatak
explained about the role of Aakash and the need for large scale
efforts to localise knowledge. He raised several points of importance,
two of which are the need to create strong business ecosystems in the
FOSS domain and the need for the end users to have the freedom to
choose the products and services they want. Dr. T. Jayaraman of TISS
highlighted the efforts of TISS in opening up knowledge and the
challenges that arise out of such initiatives. He extended support
both from himself personally and also of his colleagues at TISS for
furthering the free software movement. Dr. Vivek Monteiro spoke a few
words on the universalisation of knowledge. Venkatesh Hariharan of
Knowledge Commons intervened in the discussions and provided the
theoretical framework for knowledge as a commons. Kiran Chandra,
General Secretary of FSMI, detailed the need for a strong people’s
movement in the free software domain. He emphasised on the guiding
principles of FSMI which allowed it to take up issues of human concern
and society.
The recent mandate of AICTE (to all its institutes) to implement Microsoft's
Office365 suite of collaboration tools was discussed.
A link to AICTE's announcement is here:
http://www.aicte-india.org/downloads/AICTE_notice%20_3_.pdf
Kiran Chandra pointed out FSMI's response to this, which is available at the
following link:
http://fsmi.in/content/fsmi-representation-aicte-against-deal-microsoft
The possible effects of the implementation of the mandate to use
Office 365 were discussed and there was unanimous agreement towards
demanding reasons for the same from AICTE, through legal means and
using RTIs etc., along with an agreement to oppose such an initiative.
The meeting then called for volunteers to form a core team who would drive the
activities for the next few months towards initiating the Free
Software Movement Maharashtra. A team of 18 members was created, and
Dr. Puru and Vikram will coordinate the same. The members of the
organising team are Dr. T. Jayaraman, Mrunmayee Tayade, Rajesh Kumar,
Nikita Belavate, Rahul Maganti, Deepak Pacha, Arun Khan, Siji Sunny,
Kiran Eranki, Prof. Shishir Jha, Dinesh Jain, Rahul Muttu, Pradeep
Mohandas, Krutikaa Jawanjal, Karthik Nadar, one for ERP-next. The
meeting had representation from several organisations such as IITB,
TISS, FSMI, Wikipedia, Knowledge Commons, DA-IICT, ILUG-BOM, Somaiya
and other colleges.
The ‘Free Software Movement Maharashtra' with the domain name of
http://fsmm.in was declared functional.
The following points were chosen as action points in near future:
1. FOSS sessions in colleges and schools
2. GNOME Marathi popularisation and supporting respective groups
already working in this domain.
3. Office 365
4. Any other that may be feasible as and when opportunity arises.
Photographs of the meeting. Courtesy of Venky
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/116931769998801651977/albums/58745079553…
hi,
The Danes invited us for a1864 Edit-a-thon. The effort is to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the year 1864. The idea was interesting and excited me enough to make me sign up. Do sign up if you're interested on Google+ - https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/crdt1sr7grvoi9jbaucvan3tlno since the official page is in Danish - http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Edit-a-thon_1864. If there are enough people, consider making a page on Wikimedia.in?
1864 is quite an interesting year - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1864 - lists the highly western centric list of events. Lots of possibility to spread the events more geographically.
warm regards,
Pradeep
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email? - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
Namaste
1st May 2013, Marathi language Wikipedia celebrates its 10 anniversary.Thanks and Barnstars to all Marathi wikipedians and also all wikimedian community for all their participation and best wishes over the years.
We are proud of Marathi Wikipedian community not only shares the vision -"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."-but works to make Marathi wikipedia more inclusive.
Wikipedia is part of school curriculum in State of Maharashtra ,In fact good number of Marathi wikipedia readers and contributors rural region.Still the information gap is too huge.It is very commendable that IITns sitting in Powaiactively working and supporting in reaching out to make Marathi language wikipedia available to common people by through various technological initiatives apps for Mobile phones, Marathi Wikipedia on Tabs and so also Marathi WIkipedia to schools in DVD formats.
Let this 'Badshah' or that 'Badshah' take the credit,but we acknowledge the real kudos goes to the way every unsung artisan worked to their best to create beautiful monument like TajMahal, and let us same we hope for Wikipedia.
The couplet (I like) by poet Robert Frost
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Let us hope for the best, let us work for the best.Once again thanks and best wishes to every one
-Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
________________________________
From: "wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org" <wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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Subject: Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 446, Issue 1
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Today's Topics:
1. Fwd: 10th Anniversary Marathi Wikipedia will be available in
(free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach 10, 000 schools.
(SudhanwaJogalekar)
2. Re: [WMIN-Members] Fwd: 10th Anniversary Marathi Wikipedia
will be available in (free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach 10, 000
schools. (Arjuna RaoChavala)
3. Re: [WMIN-Members] Fwd: 10th Anniversary Marathi Wikipedia
will be available in (free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach 10, 000
schools. (sankarshan)
4. Re: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Fwd: 10th Anniversary Marathi
Wikipedia will be available in (free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach
10, 000 schools. (NirajSuryawanshi)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 01:30:34 +0530
From: SudhanwaJogalekar <sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia India EC <wikimedia-in-exec(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
"Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia."
<wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, mr-wiki
<mr-wiki(a)yahoogroups.com>, "Mailing list for Wikimedians in Pune,
India" <wikimedia-in-pun(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Mumbai List Wikimedia
<wikimedia-in-mum(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: 10th Anniversary Marathi Wikipedia
will be available in (free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach 10, 000
schools.
Message-ID:
<CA+Ho68zoS4P2Wz1bPZMRT-8P-Zn4PxQngWWeBMqCT1Oww805BQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
FYI
Media coverage in Sakal newspaper- Mumbai, Pune edition.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10th Anniversary Special - Marathi Wikipedia will be available in
(free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach 10,000 schools.
विकिपीडिया आता डीव्हीडीच्या रूपात
- मनीषा फाळके - सकाळ वृत्तसेवा
मंगळवार, 30 एप्रिल 2013
http://online3.esakal.com/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsId=4965158952679418726&Secti…
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: rexx <withheld>
Date: Thu, May 2, 2013 at 4:17 AM
Subject: [Chapters] Why are users blocked on Wikipedia?
To: Wikimedia Chapters general discussions <withheld>
Many of you may know Oliver Keyes (User:Ironholds) who works for WMF. He's
been doing some spare-time research on "Why are users blocked on
Wikipedia?" and documented it on his blog at
http://blog.ironholds.org/?p=31- interesting reading.
I commented that he needed to duplicate the research on other language
Wikipedias to see what differences show up, so that we can look for reasons
why the problems may be different in different wikis. Unfortunately Oliver
is only fluent in English and would like to partner with Wikimedians from
other projects who might be interested in helping out. It certainly sounds
like a good cause, so if you know anyone who would be willing, perhaps they
could drop a note on Oliver's blog or leave him a message on hid talk page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ironholds
Thanks in advance for any help,
--
Doug Taylor
_______________________________________________
Chapters mailing list
Chapters(a)wikimedia.ch
https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/chapters
--
Srikanth Ramakrishnan
Treasurer,
Wikimedia Chapter [India]
Donate to the Wikimedia India Chapter today<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donations>
