[Foundation-l] Copyright rules on Wikipedia and Commons (and elsewhere)

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

Recently a photo of Alain-Fournier from 1904 was deleted on Commons 
because "no proof of PD" [1]. The photographer is unknown, and therefore 
his date of death is obviously unknown. I advocate that we should keep 
this kind of images. Seeing what was the life expectancy 100 years ago 
(about 50-55 years in USA / Europe [2] [3]), a limit of 100 years seems 
reasonable to me. The figures I found are actually lower than I expected 
(60 years). While we accept a lot of content which is much less safe 
than this, it seems unreasonable to me to refuse this kind of images. It 
is in the public domain in USA anyway.

Rocket000 said [4] "I think it's very safe to assume it's PD or can be
treated like it is, but that's different than allowing it on Commons."
That's exactly the point: if it is very safe to assume it's PD, why
should we refuse them? Why setting different standards? This goes
against our mission.

Now, Cecil made an interesting research on life expectancy [5]. Actually 
that's the only meaningful arguments I have seen so far in this 
discussion. I understand this argument, but I am not really convinced 
that we have to be so strict about this issue. For me, it is all a 
matter of interpretation anyway. If we adopt the POV advocating 
deletion, we should have a clear rule, so that this gets clear once and 
for all, and most important, this rule should be applied equally on all 
projects, not only on Commons. Some people have suggested a 120-years 
old rule, because of such a duration mentioned in US copyright law.

But why bringing this issue to foundation-l? Because most other projects 
accept a 100-years old rule. The German Wikipedia has a specific 
template for that [6]. I don't understand how one can advocate different 
copyright rules for Wikipedia and for Commons. This is beyond any legal 
and objective argument: this content is hosted on the same computers, 
managed by the same organisation. What this content is used for does not 
change in anyway its copyright status (except for fair use, but fair use 
is not the point here). Therefore if this content is allowed on the 
German Wikipedia, there is no reason it should not be allowed on 
Commons. Lupo said: “The "100 years rule" at the German Wikipedia is a 
kind of EDP. They clearly acknowledge that they are not sure these 
images are free, but they consider the risk of getting into trouble over 
hosting such files low.” Actually that's exactly what I am suggesting. 
The legal risk for the Foundation is quite nil as the images are in the 
public domain in USA anyway.

But why should different rules on different projects? The fact that the 
image is used to illustrate a biography on Wikipedia or the author's 
page on Wikisource, or standing in its own right on Commons does not 
change at all its copyright status. I am therefore requesting input from 
copyright knowledgeable people, including Mike Godwin as counsel for the 
Foundation, on copyright rules we should apply to our projects.

I also think that this attitude of excessively strict copyright 
interpretation is the main reason why Commons is not more widely used by 
the different projects: they have no guarantee that the content they 
allow and they need will be kept on Commons.

Regards,

Yann

[1]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Alain_fournier.jpg
[2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
[3] http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/55/6/1196S.pdf
[4] 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#100_years_old_images
[5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#1907_analysis
[6] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Bild-PD-alt-100

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