[Foundation-l] BitTorrent Downloads of enwiki Images

[Jeffrey V. Merkey]

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>christophe.henner at wikimedia.fr wrote:
>
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>>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
>>    
>>
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>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.
>
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After reviewing Anthere's comments that the images are part and parcel 
with Wikipedia's free content, and she does not feel it is needed to 
grant any permissions, I am going to expose the torrents. Also, Greg's 
very insightful comments are much appreciated. Since there is an image 
archive with fair use images and one without for each dump, users of 
Wikipedia content can choose which they wish to use.

If anything, the logs between the two image archives are a "report card" 
on how well Wikipedia is doing in getting rid of fair use images as much 
as possible and substituting free images.

If I receive DMCA notices regarding any of the fair use images, I am 
going to respect the privacy rights of Wikipedia's users and simply take 
the images down and log them in the public logs area via ftp access for 
the server hosting the torrents any respond to the filer the images have 
been removed. As far as who is or is not an "uploader" of the images, me 
or the original person publishing them in an encyclopedia is an area of 
experimental law we should avoid -- its always better to be smart than 
to be right.

The community should reasonably be expected to review the DMCA takedown 
logs published at WikiGadugi regularly to help identify images which 
folks feel strong enough about to send such notices, and consider 
removing them or replacing them with free images.

Jeff