[Foundation-l] Instant Commons : INCORRECT

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 6/8/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do however want to address Amgine's point. There is one important
> difference between Commons and Napster. On Commons people are actively
> engaged in ensuring that content is properly labeled and licensed.
> This is in marked contrast with Napster where the defence was that
> they were only providing a service and that it was not THEIR content.

Considering that we've had violations persist for months after they
were tagged and even brought up in a Wikimedia board meeting, I'd say
that our position is even weaker than napsters.

At least napster was obviously at-your-own-risk.   As things stand
today I think it would be irresponsible for us to encourage others to
use content taken from commons automatically.  Yes, people can browse
commons and upload, but that means at least one person other than the
uploader has had a chance to consider the copyright impact.  With
instant commons, some drive-by anonymous editor types in
[[Image:Cat.jpg]] and you may suddenly have a violation.

> Given that everything is done to make Commons free of copyrighted
> articles and given that Commons explicitly aims to be a public
> resource for Free material. It is stupid to suggest that this cannot
> be because not everything has been 100% checked. Either it is a public
> resource or it is not. You cannot have it both ways.

I don't follow.   Instant commons as proposed would enable the
automated propagation of content without any real human oversight.
That seems quite dangerous.

Consider.
Sue holds the copyright to a book cover which includes pretty flowers.

John is not bright and uploads it to commons as pretty_flowers.jpg
tagged as "Public Domain".
Because our interface is so helpful, his tagging looks well formed and valid.

Over several months various Wiki's pick it up via instant commons.

Sue notices, and asks us to take down this obvious violation. We do,
but now sue is left playing wack-a-mole with hundreds, if not
thousands, of sites. Many of whom are still distributing the content
with a notice that it's public domain.

What a mess.

We've avoided a lot of problems with copyright holders on media by
simply being very responsive. While we've had instances of people
quite angry at us over mirrored text that we can't control.  Images
are an especially weak point for us from a copyright perspective, so
our ability to be more responsive (due to a lack of mirroring) has
been fortunate.

> What InstantCommons does is nothing more than make the material that
> is there as a public resource available in a convenient way.

As proposed it is also a vehicle where any irresponsibility on our
part can lead to greatly increased harm.  Care should be taken to
avoid this.