2009/7/11 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>:
2009/7/11 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:
... the National Portrait Gallery appear to be
sending legal threats
to individual uploaders, after the Foundation ignored their claims as
utterly, utterly specious.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_threat
The editor in question is US-based.
So. What is WMF's response to this odious attempt to enclose the commons?
I don't know if the WMF can/will do much. When we've discussed this
situation hypothetically in the past the consensus was that we would
all rally round and pay for the appropriate legal representation
required (I hereby pledge £10). Wikimedia UK may also be able to help,
I don't know (we don't yet have a lawyer, but for something this
specific we can find one). I don't know if WMUK wants to get involved
with this sort of thing but if it does it could be a useful vehicle
for collecting the funds. I have cross-posted this to the UK list.
I imagine the user in question has no choice but the fight the case,
since he doesn't have the power to fix the alleged infringement (the
commons community may decide to remove them, but our community tends
to be of the opinion that we shouldn't bow down to such legal threats,
especially under non-US law). I don't know as much about UK copyright
law as perhaps I should, given my choice of hobby and my location, but
I would be surprised if there was enough creativity or work involved
in taking a photograph of a painting for it to be independently
copyrightable.
General opinion is that creativity isn't required for copyright in the
UK as long as enough work went into it.
From a legal POV there is little point in fighting this
in the UK. Far
better to fight when it hits the US if the NPG is stupid enough to
take it that far.
As long as the case remains within the UK our best line of attack is
probably PR based. On the face of it thats pretty hopeless. Trying to
get people annoyed about the national portrait gallery over some
arcane copyright issues is not going to be easy.
Sure for things like slashdot just mentioning the DRM angle will
probably do it but getting the wider public/media involved would be
problematical. The WMF could probably do it but without dirrect action
on their part this could be tricky.
--
geni