Hi all,
In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
A few years back, I started a project on Savannah to offer data about postage stamps under a free licence, but with no success. Maybe a wiki would be more appriopriate. I have a MySQL database about French stamps to start with. AFAIK, there are no other project to provide data about stamps are under a free licence.
Articles about stamps obviously need an illustration with stamps scans and photos. But it seems that most modern stamps can be considered as artitic work and could therefore not be reproduce without the permission of the author.
cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg AFAIK, the information provided on this page is wrong. This image can't be under a free licence. Can a lawyer can confirm or refute that?
I asked this here but got no answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg
Best regards, Yann
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:19:33 +0200, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hi all,
In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
I think detailed coverage of stamps, coins, bills, &c is well within the scope of Wikipedia; to the extent of eventually having one article per item for items that look significantly different from one another. Although the list of misprints or misstrikes for a given stamp/coin should be listed uner a single aticle.
+sj+
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 09:01:48 -0400 Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
I think detailed coverage of stamps, coins, bills, &c is well within the scope of Wikipedia; to the extent of eventually having one article per item for items that look significantly different from one another. Although the list of misprints or misstrikes for a given stamp/coin should be listed uner a single aticle.
I disagree. As stated by the person who started this, there are a few stamps that would have their place in Wikipedia, but most I would not want to include, just like I don't want to include every road in every city (but for most cities there would be some that would warrant inclusion). If someone does want to include stamps 'because they are there', I would say that a sister project would be the better place.
Andre Engels
Certain articles lend themselves to philatelic coverage, for example, Stellaland, after all, most folks who have ever heard of Stellaland first encountered it with respect to its stamps. Illustrations of a few representative stamps could be added.
A complete stamp catalog might be going a bit far, but if the energy is around, which I doubt, it could be a sister project, Wikistamps...
If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included in Wikipedia in that way. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese stamp.
It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright free but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there is very little difference in what you have done.
Fred
From: Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:19:33 +0200 To: wikipedia-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stamps, wiki and copyright
Hi all,
In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
A few years back, I started a project on Savannah to offer data about postage stamps under a free licence, but with no success. Maybe a wiki would be more appriopriate. I have a MySQL database about French stamps to start with. AFAIK, there are no other project to provide data about stamps are under a free licence.
Articles about stamps obviously need an illustration with stamps scans and photos. But it seems that most modern stamps can be considered as artitic work and could therefore not be reproduce without the permission of the author.
cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg AFAIK, the information provided on this page is wrong. This image can't be under a free licence. Can a lawyer can confirm or refute that?
I asked this here but got no answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg
Best regards, Yann
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Le Friday 27 August 2004 15:49, Fred Bauder a écrit :
Certain articles lend themselves to philatelic coverage, for example, Stellaland, after all, most folks who have ever heard of Stellaland first encountered it with respect to its stamps. Illustrations of a few representative stamps could be added.
A complete stamp catalog might be going a bit far, but if the energy is around, which I doubt, it could be a sister project, Wikistamps...
Ok, thanks for your answer.
If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included in Wikipedia in that way. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese stamp.
It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright free but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there is very little difference in what you have done.
I fear that is wrong, but IANAL... If you take photos in a modern art museum where this is allowed (in of most them, it is not), you can't release under a free license your photos. If the painting is in the public domain, then you can release your photos under a free license. So the question is whether stamps are in the public domain or not. Maybe stamps from the USA are, AFAIK, but for most other countries, modern stamps are not in the public domain.
Fred
Yann
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:49:48 -0600 Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included in Wikipedia in that way. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese stamp.
Anyone _can_ make and publish it. But that does not mean that it's legal. Making a photograph of something and copying that photograph is a way of copying, and disallowed just like all other methods of copying copyrighted works.
It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright free but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there is very little difference in what you have done.
Indeed, there's little difference, and your statement is wrong.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels wrote:
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 07:49:48 -0600 Fred Bauder wrote:
If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included in Wikipedia in that way.
Anyone _can_ make and publish it. But that does not mean that it's legal. Making a photograph of something and copying that photograph is a way of copying, and disallowed just like all other methods of copying copyrighted works.
This is somewhat muddled. Saying that an act infringes copyright would be more accurate that saying that it is illegal or disallowed. There are circumstances, such as fair dealing, where the copying is perfectly legal. A copy of a copy can indeed infringe an original copyright whether or not there is a derivative copyright in the first copy. Every current Canadian stamp has a copyright notice on it, but catalog manufacturers quite readily reproduce them in their books without any hint of having sought permission from the Post Office. The Scott Company, on the other hand, is very protective of its own copyrights.
It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright free but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there is very little difference in what you have done.
Indeed, there's little difference, and your statement is wrong.
This is a variant of the issue about the National Portrait Gallery in London.. The copyright depends on the underlying work, not the reproduction.
Ec
Yann Forget wrote:
Hi all,
In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
Don't tease me! :-) I have a database currently describing 146,336 types to varying degrees of detail, all personally typed in by me and copyright-clean, made possible by some special C software that handles defaults and integrity checking. This is about half of all types in existence. I use it to track my collection, which is an unknown size above 68,557 types, since many are in the "other half" not yet entered - WP editing has severely cut into my stamp db time. :-( The software also lets me do things like download into a Palm, so it's handy when I'm out shopping.
Certainly I've thought about how to publish this database, and have steered clear of the various obstacles (no use of existing catalog numbers for instance) in expectation of being able to make it available some day. A wiki project could be a great way to finish filling it out, and I even brought it up a while back as something that needs a database-editing mode.
There are some technical problems to solve; for instance, I don't want to upload data about my personal collection, but if people add to the type data, I want to be able to download it and merge in - but what if some idiot deleted the record describing one of my stamps? I've also started separating the English-language bits from the generic data, in the hope of making it multi-lingual.
I'm of two minds about whether it's "encyclopedia data" - certainly there are "encyclopedias of postage stamps", with coverage ranging from one paragraph to multiple pages per stamp. (When you get into designers, the politics, the varieties, etc, it adds up.) On the other hand, I've been seeding WP with overview-type philatelic accounts for various countries, about two dozen articles so far, plus a pile of illustrations, but they haven't generated much interest - glaring typos have sat in some of them for months. So it doesn't feel like there's a groundswell of demand for something even lengthier and more detailed.
But if people like, I could create a meta page with more info about my existing data and how it might be usefully wikified, and we can continue thinking about it there.
Stan
Hi,
Le Sunday 29 August 2004 02:58, Stan Shebs a écrit :
Yann Forget wrote:
While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
Don't tease me! :-) I have a database currently describing 146,336 types to varying degrees of detail, all personally typed in by me and copyright-clean, made possible by some special C software that handles defaults and integrity checking. This is about half of all types in existence. I use it to track my collection, which is an unknown size above 68,557 types, since many are in the "other half" not yet entered - WP editing has severely cut into my stamp db time. :-( The software also lets me do things like download into a Palm, so it's handy when I'm out shopping.
Certainly I've thought about how to publish this database, and have steered clear of the various obstacles (no use of existing catalog numbers for instance) in expectation of being able to make it available some day. A wiki project could be a great way to finish filling it out, and I even brought it up a while back as something that needs a database-editing mode.
There are some technical problems to solve; for instance, I don't want to upload data about my personal collection, but if people add to the type data, I want to be able to download it and merge in - but what if some idiot deleted the record describing one of my stamps? I've also started separating the English-language bits from the generic data, in the hope of making it multi-lingual.
I'm of two minds about whether it's "encyclopedia data" - certainly there are "encyclopedias of postage stamps", with coverage ranging from one paragraph to multiple pages per stamp. (When you get into designers, the politics, the varieties, etc, it adds up.) On the other hand, I've been seeding WP with overview-type philatelic accounts for various countries, about two dozen articles so far, plus a pile of illustrations, but they haven't generated much interest - glaring typos have sat in some of them for months. So it doesn't feel like there's a groundswell of demand for something even lengthier and more detailed.
But if people like, I could create a meta page with more info about my existing data and how it might be usefully wikified, and we can continue thinking about it there.
Yes, go for it! I am very interested to build a free database about stamps. See http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/stamps-sql/ A simple MySQL database with data about 3000 French stamps. This project was a failure. Probably Savannah is not adapted for this kind of project, it's mainly not software, but data. However I am not sure that Mediawiki is the framework needed for this.
Stan
Yann
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