[Commons-l] Some reflections about the governance of Commons

[Daniel Kinzler]

Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
> Hoi,
> There is material that can be used for particular purposes and not
> others. For instance logos. Many logos of friendly organisations have
> been removed from Commons because they are not "Free content" They are
> not free because they represent trade marks.

No, they have been deleted because they are also copyrighted. If they are only
trademarked, they can stay. We even have a template for such trivial (namely:
text only) logos.

> The fact that we have not been able or willing to find a solution for
> this reasonable exemption of Commons policy makes an alternative possible.

The problem is that the law lacks many reasonable excemptions.

> Another category are screen dumps. Nobody will protest for using
> undoctered screen dumps. 

"nobody will protest" is not a valid argument. It doesn't work that way.

No, I for one would argue that the user interface of a program is industrial
design, not artwork, and thus isn't copyrighted. If we can establish that
postionion and back it up with court cases, excellent!

> The restrictions are in using the art work of a
> user interface for other user interfaces..

That would be true if it was indeed that case that the user interface was deemed
industrial design. Sadly, as long as we have to consider it copyrighted, we
can't have screenshots on commons.

Again: it would be perfectly reasonable, but it's not for us to decide, it's up
to the folks who make and interpret the laws.

-- daniel