On 26 December 2013 16:16, info@cymruwales.com info@cymruwales.com wrote:
Hi all
I approached CADW (the Welsh equivalent of English Herritage) a few weeks ago:
*Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons can now use 'Crown Copyright files'. This means that in theory we could upload all your images. Here's an example on Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harlech_Castle_-_Cadw_photograph.jpg, which is then taken into 5 Wikipedia languages (see bottom of the image page)....Can you please supply me with high-res copies of these images?*
To which they have replied:
*In an earlier discussion with the WG Head of Library Services, I was informed there was a conflict between Crown Copyright and Open Commons type licensing. I would be grateful if you would provide the source of statement ‘Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons can now use ‘Crown Copyright’ and what is your understanding of this. When I have received this information, I will be able to investigate further.*
Does anyone know where I can find more information on this marriage of convenience, please?
Many thanks
Robin
Open goverment license rather than crown copyright:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence
You may have got the wrong end of the stick on this one. Releasing on the OGL is optional, though does appear to be a modern default for many government agents.
Material released as Crown Copyright cannot be uploaded until expired (50 years) but it can be worth checking if the Agent is prepared to confirm that the OGL also applies, it is not automatic and is not equivalent.
Fae
On 26 Dec 2013, at 18:11, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
You may have got the wrong end of the stick on this one. Releasing on the OGL is optional, though does appear to be a modern default for many government agents.
Material released as Crown Copyright cannot be uploaded until expired (50 years) but it can be worth checking if the Agent is prepared to confirm that the OGL also applies, it is not automatic and is not equivalent.
Ah, it appears that I misunderstood the OGL and thought that it applied to all Crown Copyright works, which led to me passing the wrong end of the stick to Robin. Mea culpa, and apologies! It does seem that it’s necessary for organisations to explicitly release Crown Copyright works under the OGL, which I didn’t realise. I’ve started an enwp article on the OGL to better understand it, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence Would anyone be interested in helping expand this?
However, the wales.gov.uk copyright statement (http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/copyright/?skip=1&lang=en) does talk about the OGL, although they don’t link to it or make it clear which version they are using. So it does look like the OGL applies to Cadw images released on that site…
Thanks, Mike
On 26 December 2013 22:24, Michael Peel michael.peel@manchester.ac.uk wrote:
I’ve started an enwp article on the OGL to better understand it, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence Would anyone be interested in helping expand this?
I think Jon Foster is your man for that; IIRC he helped to write the OGL.
Robin as Mike says (/as far as I can see) Cadw is by default OGL as per http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/copyright/?skip=1 http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/copyright/?skip=1&lang=en &lang=en unless it says otherwise (e.g. it’s identified as third party). That means for example all the images at this section http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/learning/resources/castles/earthworkcastle/?lang=en should be reproducible. Certainly worth clarifying and seeing how much can be reused!
Best
Simon
From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of info@cymruwales.com Sent: 27 December 2013 19:40 To: UK Wikimedia mailing list Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Open Gov + CC = a marriage of convenience?
Many thanks to you all.
CC to me has always meant Creative Commons, I'm sorry for clouding the issue with such ambiguity! Thanks for the the link to the OGL article. If I'm correct: files with an OGL license can be used on Wikipedia and her sisters; Crown Copyright, in general, can not. Crown Copyright runs out after 50 years.
I'll reword my request to Cadw.
Have a great new year all of you!
Robin
On 26 December 2013 at 23:04 Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 26 December 2013 22:24, Michael Peel michael.peel@manchester.ac.uk wrote:
I’ve started an enwp article on the OGL to better understand it, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence Would anyone be interested in helping expand this?
I think Jon Foster is your man for that; IIRC he helped to write the OGL.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 27 December 2013 19:39, info@cymruwales.com info@cymruwales.com wrote:
Many thanks to you all.
CC to me has always meant Creative Commons, I'm sorry for clouding the issue with such ambiguity! Thanks for the the link to the OGL article. If I'm correct: files with an OGL license can be used on Wikipedia and her sisters; Crown Copyright, in general, can not. Crown Copyright runs out after 50 years.
I'll reword my request to Cadw.
Have a great new year all of you!
Robin
Exact crown copyright expiry is slightly messy. We generally use this flow chart:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090317005703/http://www.museumscopyright.org.uk...
FWIW I'd suggest historic wrecks are probably the stuff they have that would be of most interest (wikipedians have a hard time getting photos of them). The wrecks HMY Mary and Resurgam (especially Resurgam) are probably of greatest interest but whatever it is they've found in Cardigan Bay would also be useful.
The others listed at:
http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/historicenvironment/protection/maritimewrecks/wreck...
http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/historicenvironment/protection/maritimewrecks/wreck...
Don't have articles but there is enough material that they could be written.
The Open Government License is itself just a license. It is basically CC BY with a few modifications: it deals with EU database rights (which previous versions of CC didn't) and includes pre-baked conditions on what it doesn't apply to just in case the government accidentally release a whole load of stuff and fail to do due diligence on what it contains.
The important bit of the OGL isn't the license itself but the Public Sector Information (PSI) licensing framework which requires works that are eligible for Crown Copyright produced by or on behalf of central government to licensed under the OGL. This applies regardless of whether the work is actually licensed as such.
I don't know whether the Welsh and Scottish governments have done similarly to HM Government. That's a matter that should really be raised with the local equivalents of the Cabinet Office.
I've dealt with a lot of OGL-related issues on Commons, and in the process of one DR consulted with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. You can see the DRs here (and the first one has an OTRS ticket for my contact with the government lawyers):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Olympic_ma...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Canoe_Slal...
There's a page on Meta that I created a while back to track use of OGL material and document the issues around it (as well as point to templates/categories on sites like Commons and Wikisource).
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence
The other thing to consider is that OGL licensing applies on top of other license. If the government have released an image on Flickr as something like CC BY-ND, you can use the image under that license (although not on Wikimedia, obviously). But it's also Crown Copyright, and if it is a work of central government, OGL applies AS WELL AS CC BY-ND. In the above deletion requests, we've had issues where people have said "Yeah, but it's CC-BY-ND" because that's what it says on Flickr.
Another caveat is that the proceedings of Parliament are not covered by the OGL. They are instead covered by the Open Parliamentary Licence. And the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament are covered by the Open Scottish Parliamentary Licence. The OPL is basically the same as the OGL but with the word "Parliament" instead of "Government". The Scottish one is the same except it contains references to the appropriate Scottish legislation and institutions.
I know a fair bit about this stuff because back in 2011, I worked for a government-sponsored technology non-profit that existed precisely because of OGL/PSI. The government could do a much better job of making this stuff clear. (It'd help also if Flickr let accredited UK Gov agencies apply OGL on images.)
Thanks for this Tom, as far as I can see your statement (which I think is what I understood to be the case previously) slightly conflicts with the sentence ref'd by '8' here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open_Government_Licence#Applicabi... at least, in tone.
You're saying Crown Copyright materials are OGL unless expressly stated otherwise, or falling into one of the excluded types (third party, personal data, etc.). The article currently, and as Fae I think is suggesting, indicates that OGL must be expressly applied. (Sorry if I'm misreading you Fae, it is of course possible to be "optional" in the sense that one may "opt out").
If that's right, I'm not sure how to change the text of the article, I'll of course have a think but perhaps someone else has ideas.
Best Simon
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tom Morris Sent: 02 January 2014 16:23 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Open Gov + CC = a marriage of convenience?
The Open Government License is itself just a license. It is basically CC BY with a few modifications: it deals with EU database rights (which previous versions of CC didn't) and includes pre-baked conditions on what it doesn't apply to just in case the government accidentally release a whole load of stuff and fail to do due diligence on what it contains.
The important bit of the OGL isn't the license itself but the Public Sector Information (PSI) licensing framework which requires works that are eligible for Crown Copyright produced by or on behalf of central government to licensed under the OGL. This applies regardless of whether the work is actually licensed as such.
I don't know whether the Welsh and Scottish governments have done similarly to HM Government. That's a matter that should really be raised with the local equivalents of the Cabinet Office.
I've dealt with a lot of OGL-related issues on Commons, and in the process of one DR consulted with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. You can see the DRs here (and the first one has an OTRS ticket for my contact with the government lawyers):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Olympic_ma...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Canoe_Slal...
There's a page on Meta that I created a while back to track use of OGL material and document the issues around it (as well as point to templates/categories on sites like Commons and Wikisource).
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_Licence
The other thing to consider is that OGL licensing applies on top of other license. If the government have released an image on Flickr as something like CC BY-ND, you can use the image under that license (although not on Wikimedia, obviously). But it's also Crown Copyright, and if it is a work of central government, OGL applies AS WELL AS CC BY-ND. In the above deletion requests, we've had issues where people have said "Yeah, but it's CC-BY-ND" because that's what it says on Flickr.
Another caveat is that the proceedings of Parliament are not covered by the OGL. They are instead covered by the Open Parliamentary Licence. And the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament are covered by the Open Scottish Parliamentary Licence. The OPL is basically the same as the OGL but with the word "Parliament" instead of "Government". The Scottish one is the same except it contains references to the appropriate Scottish legislation and institutions.
I know a fair bit about this stuff because back in 2011, I worked for a government-sponsored technology non-profit that existed precisely because of OGL/PSI. The government could do a much better job of making this stuff clear. (It'd help also if Flickr let accredited UK Gov agencies apply OGL on images.)
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
No, I'm saying Crown Copyright materials that are covered by the PSI licensing framework are automatically OGL. The PSI licensing framework covers works by central government departments (like, say, the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice etc. etc.).
Fae is right in that the OGL must be applied by the controller of the material. It's just the controller of the material for all of central government has given that permission in the form of the PSI licensing framework.
Basically, the government made the OGL and then made it so everything they have the right to licence under the OGL has been made OGL. This overrides the copyright statements of the government bodies.
There are other public bodies that produce Crown Copyright works including local governments, non-departmental public bodies (e.g. the British Library), non-governmental-but-constitutional bodies (like the Church of England and the Royal household), and the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and NI aren't covered by the PSI licensing framework. Those may choose to use the OGL either on an individual basis for specific files or, like central government has with the PSI licensing framework, they may do so for all works.
I'll have a look at changing the article at some point. Unfortuantely, it's one of those things where I'm absolutely certain that I'm right, but can't quite put my finger on the sources necessary to show I'm right if asked to defend it on a Wikipedia talk page. The OTRS ticket from the DCMS lawyers backs up my interpretation, as do people I know who work for the Cabinet Office. ;-)
On 2 January 2014 21:49, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
I'll have a look at changing the article at some point. Unfortuantely, it's one of those things where I'm absolutely certain that I'm right, but can't quite put my finger on the sources necessary to show I'm right if asked to defend it on a Wikipedia talk page. The OTRS ticket from the DCMS lawyers backs up my interpretation, as do people I know who work for the Cabinet Office. ;-)
Perhaps it would be worth asking them to post an unequivocal and plain-English statement to that effect, on gov.uk?
On 26 December 2013 16:16, info@cymruwales.com info@cymruwales.com wrote:
Does anyone know where I can find more information on this marriage of convenience, please?
Ask on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump?
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org