I am not an expert, but I am pretty sure that a non-Italian person who is not in Italy and uploads on a server which is not in Italy cannot be subject to Italian law. I'm not even sure that the fact that some servers are in Holland is enough for Dutch law to matter. Copyright on internet is quite a complicated matter, and it would be very nice to have things more clear (also for things like public domain). On it.wikipedia fairuse images have been limited through a community poll in order to avoid potential copyright issues, Italian law is taken as a reference since most users and readers are Italian (and therefore are subject to Italian law). However, scn.wikipedia is a different project so decisions taken by it.wikipedia should be no more relevant than decisions taken by any other project. As far as I understand, if I upload something from country X I have to abide laws of country X and laws of the USA (country where the servers are or where WMF is registered) - which means that if country X does not admit fair use the user would be infringing copyright if uploading fair use material from country X. However, I would appreciate any effort of the WMF lawyers to clarify this situation.
Marco (aka Cruccone)
Berto wrote:
Hi!
- What does Italian law have to do with the Sicilian wikipedia?
You should better ask the wmf lawyers for this. Basically when "selling" something the lawset used depends on where the buyer is. But wmf does not sell anything, so it should be the server's physical placement to be involved. I don't really think that wmf servers are in Italy, so I do not see why the italian law should apply to anyone (it.wiki included).
The alternative approach would be considering where the action is performed, as it happens with sales. It looks quite time consuming, though, since we have none of the usual commercial docs that track a sale process. A possible answer could be: track down the IP. I believe that this might give us a proper identification for the upload origin, but then... we are going to need a copyright policy for each every nation on earth. It looks pretty twisted.
- Why is USA law necesarily valid for the
whole of the English language wikipedia?
see point 1)
He then told me that the Sicilian wikipedia sat on the Italian servers. Once again I was equally dumbfounded, why? since when? under whose direction? Remember that 90% of the contributions to scn.wiki arrive from sources outside of Italy.
Tracert scn.wikipedia.org gives me: 1 151 ms 152 ms 138 ms ************** [**********] hiding myself, sorry :) 2 170 ms 153 ms 130 ms ukrnet-293.ukr.net [212.42.64.225] 3 232 ms 233 ms 838 ms taurus.ukr.net [212.42.64.29] 4 144 ms * 153 ms kiska.interlink.net.ua [194.44.84.5] 5 197 ms 153 ms 154 ms vombat.itsinternet.net [213.133.160.169] 6 197 ms 150 ms 151 ms 195.94.194.145 7 160 ms 167 ms 168 ms plwaw3-ge-1-3-0-311.net.ipartners.pl [157.25.3.1] 8 202 ms 172 ms 193 ms fra-tr1-p0-1-1.gtsce.net [195.39.208.69] 9 239 ms 162 ms 183 ms ge-3-2-0-0-zar1.fri.cw.net [166.63.204.109] 10 322 ms 180 ms 875 ms so-4-0-0-dcr2.fra.cw.net [195.2.10.225] 11 595 ms 190 ms 197 ms so-4-0-0-dcr1.amd.cw.net [195.2.10.149] 12 240 ms 577 ms 565 ms so-4-0-0-bcr1.amd.cw.net [195.2.10.25] 13 202 ms 766 ms 203 ms surfnet2.amd.cw.net [208.173.211.198] 14 206 ms 216 ms * AZ-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net [145.145.80.21] 15 199 ms 197 ms 534 ms kncsw001-router.customer.surf.net [145.145.18.158] 16 192 ms 262 ms 193 ms gi0-24.csw2-knams.wikimedia.org [145.97.32.29] 17 266 ms 205 ms 215 ms rr.knams.wikimedia.org [145.97.39.155]
That does NOT look italian at all. I'd rather bet my euros on Holland, if I was to make a guess. And it makes sense, because it's on the backbone. BTW, you get the very same result for "tracert pms.wikipedia.org" AND "tracert it.wikipedia.org" (!). So I guess the person talking about italian servers was simply poorly informed, because there is no such thing as an "italian server", not even for the italian edition. They can check with tracert if they are in doubt and update their information. One thing is true: both scn and it are on the same server, yet I cannot seem to understand how this can put them under the competence of the italian laws. We actually should all use the dutch laws, in instead. And if this is proved to be true, the whole copyright checking process on it.wiki might call for revisions. Not the it.wiki is special in this, I suppose many more editions may find themselves in muddy waters.
So - can I or can't I have this particular picture of a Beatles single
sleeve, considering that it is ok to put up on en.wiki? IMHO, whenever in doubt the answer should be "load it on commons". They are surely well away from italian lawmakers, because Italy is not on the main physical backbone and having a shared server there would end up in making a slower route for most users. Too bad that when you trace "commons.wikipedia.org" you get the very same result you got for all previously quoted editions. It's Holland, once again. So I am quite doubtful as per using IT or USA laws on it, too.
I myself have sometimes been amazed from IT copyright checkers, too. They often quote the italian law in their policies. Now, how can italian laws apply to people who load content on a foreign server from a foreign country? That may apply only to italian residents (no matter on which edition they upload what), provided that we apply policies to single users and not to physical servers.
I suppose the real problem is that we should have a global copyright policy stated and translated for it to be published on all servers as a part of the distributed UI on Betawiki "prior" to opening any new edition. This really is a job for lawyers, it cannot be done by taking guesses since it impacts both on content management and on the risk of people being sued for copyright infringement. The most important thing to make clear is: who is subject to whose laws, and by what criteria one can objectively determine it. Once we get this clear, the rest is a pure matter of logics.
Any suggestions?
Bèrto
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