[Foundation-l] BitTorrent Downloads of enwiki Images

[Lars Aronsson]

christophe.henner at wikimedia.fr wrote:

> The point is I don't see what the DMCA have to do with redistribution
> of free images. With Fair Use I can see but, in my opinion, the

Regardless of the image metadata provided by the uploader, the 
image could constitute slander, hate speech, child pornography, 
disclosure of state secrets, or a copyright violation.  I'm not 
sure how the U.S. DMCA works, but similar laws in Sweden 
(BBS-lagen, SFS 1998:112; LEK, SFS 2003:389) requires the hosting 
provider to cooperate with the police in (a) taking down the 
offensive content, and (b) tracing the uploader.  If Jeff copies 
images from Wikimedia and hosts them, tracing the (original) 
uploader (the criminal offender) goes back through the WMF, e.g. 
its IP logs.

I don't know if Jeff needs any permission from WMF.  All he should 
need to do, when he receives a take-down notice with a requirement 
to trace the offender, is to point the police to WMF, and the 
police could then contact the WMF if need be.  Or something such. 

Whether the uploader claimed this is "fair use" or "public domain" 
or "creative commons licensed" doesn't matter much if the picture 
was illegal in some other way to begin with.

Despite everything you might read in media, my impression (as a 
hosting provider) is that in practice these laws work very well.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se