[Commons-l] Writing Public Domain Guidelines

[Dereckson]

Good afternoon,

The guidelines seem reasonable, but such a move could be dangerous.

Let's start to remember what the WMF mission is: "The mission of the
Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world
to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in
the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

One of the part of the mission is to disseminate effectively the
public domain. But to adopt such guidelines, especially when
associated with the expression "public domain" could be a move towards
stronger contractual relations in the future, based on those
guidelines.

Yes, this is not binding. But that will create with Europeana (14M
pieces of artwork) and Wikimedia Commons (10M works) two big media
repositories (a little less than 25 millions works) having asking
kindly to use public domain d'une certaine façon (a certain way).

The problem is the legislation isn't only the written law: when a
tribunal or a court judges a case, it compares frequently the behavior
of the parties with the usual practices of the sector.

And this is exactly what we're defining here, admitted practices in
the GLAM sector.

That's why my opinion is to adopt such guidelines could be dangerous
and against the WMF mission.

* * *

Now, to help us to take a decision knowingly, could you add some
figures to your proposal, ie the number of institutions who were
convinced because of those guidelines?

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Maarten Zeinstra <mz at kl.nl> wrote:
> Hi list(s),
> As per request I am crossposting a summary to both the WIkimedia Cultural
> Partners Coordination list and the Commons list.
> During GLAMCamp NYC[1] a discussion started to adopt Europeana's Public
> Domain Usage Guidelines[2] or Europeana Public Domain Charter[3] for
> Wikimedia Commons. The usage guidelines are pleases that state how Europeana
> would like to see Public Domain Works being re-used. It has been suggested
> that it is a good idea if Commons would also adopt these or similar
> guidelines.
> Patrick Peiffer of Europeana Licensing (on the Cultural Partners list) says:
> "the guidelines have been (for Europeana) a key trust building element to
> get GLAMs to follow the Europeana Public Domain Charter and apply the PD
> Mark (CC PD Mark). It did take a couple of years to get this trio of
> measures going, but it really was the Guidelines that tipped the scale.
> My guess is that the guidelines alone or in combination with the Charter
> and the CC PD Mark, could help Wikimedia to overcome resistance of curators
> as well. Europeana has worked hard to be a trusted partner in that community
> which mostly was spend on listening to fears and wishes of curators
> while educating them about the value of releasing Public Domain works as
> proper Public Domain, without additional contractual restrictions. In that
> sense it is a big success, showing commitment of both sides to find a
> solution (but of course, I would never claim this is the only solution)
> [...]
> I do not believe that the Guidelines can be construed to restrict the uses
> anyone can make of a Public Domain work, they are explicitly non-binding and
> thus neither interfere with the Public Domain status nor any copyright
> limitations and exceptions.
> They should be seen as what they are: a key element to build trust with
> institutions that are far away from an "everything is permitted" mind-set.
> They establish sensible community norms for the GLAM sector while
> not restricting re-use of Public Domain works with contractual restrictions.
> The fact that they are also seamlessly integrated into the CC PD mark is
> noteworthy as Europeana shares with CC the conviction that the easier it
> is to comply (in this case pointing to the guidelines), they more they will
> be respected, thus building trust with curators and users."
> User:Jean-Frédéric created this
> page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Public_domain_works_guidelines
> to draft and discuss this idea. I am looking forward to wider discussion on
> this topic.
> A discussion started about whether users should be pointed to the pleases as
> Europeana defines them, however Europeana notices that this an important
> tool to create trust for GLAMs.
> Best,
> Maarten Zeinstra
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Martsniez
>
> Kennisland | Knowledgeland
> t +31205756720 | m +31643053919 | s mzeinstra
> www.kennisland.nl | www.knowledgeland.org
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_NYC
> [2] http://www.europeana.eu/portal/pd-usage-guide.html
> [3] http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/web/europeana-project/publications/
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>

-- 
Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson
http://www.dereckson.be/