[Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the NationalPortrait Gallery ...

[Tom Maaswinkel]

2009/7/12 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Tom Maaswinkel<tom.maaswinkel@
>
> 12wiki.eu> wrote:
> [snip]
> > They only thing that I don't understand is that they claim that no-one
> from
> > the wikimedia foundation ever responded to this. Is there any reason for
> > this?
>
> That isn't what they claimed.
>
> They claimed:
> "Our client contacted the Wikimedia Foundation in April 2009 to
> request that the images be removed but the Wikimedia Foundation has
> refused to do so […]"


The part I am talking about is the part where they say that they want to
talk to the Wikimedia Fundation to have a discussion about making
low-resolution images of paintings in its collection available!


2009/7/12 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>

> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Tom Maaswinkel<tom.maaswinkel at 12wiki.eu>
> wrote:
> [snip]
> > They only thing that I don't understand is that they claim that no-one
> from
> > the wikimedia foundation ever responded to this. Is there any reason for
> > this?
>
> That isn't what they claimed.
>
> They claimed:
> "Our client contacted the Wikimedia Foundation in April 2009 to
> request that the images be removed but the Wikimedia Foundation has
> refused to do so […]"
>
> The initial complaint (OTRS #2009060110061897 for those with access)
> was made by a commercial partner (in the US) of the NPG, and was the
> typically legally uninformed nonsense that comes in often enough to
> have a boilerplate reply. They were given the standard "Wikimedia and
> it's servers are based in the US. Under US law such images are public
> domain per Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. Therefore no
> permission is
> required to use them." response.  Presumably the commercial vendor got
> the NPG to make the legal threat under UK law because we adequately
> expressed that there was clearly no copyright concern under US law.
>
>
> They also stated:
> "However, to date, the Wikimedia Foundation has ignored our client’s
> attempts to negotiate this issue, preferring instead to take a more
> harsh approach that one would expect of a corporate entity."
>
> Please— allow me to translate:  "We're confused. We're used to dealing
> with organizations like YouTube who will roll over instantly even for
> the most obvious cases of CopyFraud. Why wont you play along with our
> effort to lock up and monetize the public domain?"
>
> Thank you, Wikimedia Foundation, for not being yet another Web 2.0 get
> rich quick scheme.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>