[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies (some important points)

[Ray Saintonge]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 2/8/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>IANAL, but I'm not sure this can be applied to works of art, photographs
>>and all the non-text things we're talking about. Last months SIAE
>>(Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) enforced copyright on an
>>amateurial art website which was showing contemporary paintings. The
>>website was describing and commenting these works, so the use of the
>>pictures was "to illustrate what it was talking about". Still, this is
>>copyright infringement under the Italian Law. Instructional purposes
>>means that a teacher can distribute N copies of a copyrighted media to
>>his/her students, but if you print a book well you have to pay the
>>copyright owner his/her fair royalty.
>>    
>>
>My understanding from talking to someone I know who is a professor at
>a university is Italy (i.e. not a legal authority), is that the
>Italian law takes a much more aggressive stance on the commercial
>impact of a work than does the law other places.   I don't believe
>that the foundation policy should be to conform to the most
>restrictive laws in the world, ... we should still be able to discuss
>democracy even if the Chinese government forbids such discussion.
>Rather, we should adopt rules reflecting a common subset.
>
Winks and nods seem to work well in Chinese copyright.  The new 
unhackable MS operating system was immediately available as quickly as 
it came out in the US.  Some countries enforce copyrights by 
occasionally seizing a big stack of pirated CDs and running them over 
with a bulldozer in front of the cameras. :-)

Ec