[Foundation-l] Stroop report

[Birgitte SB]

--- Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Birgitte SB wrote:
> > The WMF licensing policy puts the burden on being
> able
> > to declare a work to be "free content" or else use
> an
> > EDP.  Unless something is *really* old you have to
> > know who held the copyright in order to show that
> > their rights have expired.  Not being able to
> > determine the copyright holder, or even being able
> to
> > prove the copyright holder is 100% unknown and
> always
> > was, does not release the work into the Public
> Domain.
> >  Orphaned works are still copyrighted in the US. 
> > There is no provision for a work to be declared
> "free
> > content" unless it a) released under a free
> license or
> > b) in the Public Domain.  *Many* works do not fit
> > either of those criteria and still have 0% chance
> of
> > anyone being awarded damages for copyright
> > infringement. 
> > 
> > But we are limited by the WMF licensing
> resolustion,
> > which has a very high standard for "free content"
> and
> > what is allowed to be hosted as such on WMF
> servers. I
> > don't particularly like the licensing resolution
> for a
> > number of reasons, but we can't just ignore that
> it
> > exists and decide use a different standard that is
> > more appealing.
> 
> I think that this argument can be easily reversed.
> Copyright without a copyright holder is just
> nonsense, because only the 
> copyright holder can claim it. Nobody, not even the
> "State" or any 
> public body, can do it on the holder's behalf. So I
> think that we should 
> apply common sense, and allow images of which the
> copyright holder has 
> disappeared in the mists of time.
> 

I agree that that such a reversed approach to the
issue *could* be made.  However that is not the
approach WMF took with the licensing resolution.  

Copyright without a copyright holder may seem
nonsense, but it is an acknowledged part of copyright
law.  [1] I find alot of copyright law to be
short-sighted and in the end to not make much sense. 
Personally I wish that the WMF would revist the
resolution and particularly look into the
incorporation of existing works into the projects,
rather than only focusing on the new works being
created by the projects.  But right now it is what it
is.

Birgitte SB


[1] http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report.pdf


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