[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikimedia Foundation's help to the projects

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

Brad Patrick a écrit :
> "You took the words right out of my mouth."  Exactly.  For those who
> want answers,
> (a) it's complicated
> (b) the answer is "it depends"
> (c) there is no "right" answer
> (d) if there is a "right" answer, it can be challenged
> (e) no, we aren't going to represent you to fight about it.

Erik Moeller a écrit :
> On 12/14/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>I don't believe you understand how useful it would be
>>to just have some one say "That particular case is
>>unknown.  The most similar case to this is Foobar."
>>Even if there were a table of questions that people
>>have asked in the past with yes/no/unknown and no
>>futher advice would be extremely helpful.  I think it
>>a false expectation of yours that we are expecting
>>clearcut answers.  Really we have been mucking through
>>copyright questions as best we can for some time; we
>>are all well aware there are often not answers only
>>arguments.  Just being able to eliminate some
>>arguments as invalid would be very helpful.
> 
> 
> Aside from the potential issues with the WMF "officially" giving such
> advice to the communities, Brad (our GC and ED) simply doesn't have
> the time to do this.

Obviously I didn't mean that Brad or any professional lawyer paid by the
Foundation has to write all this. The information has to be put down by
the wiki editors as usual, but I think that the coordination is to be
done at the Foundation level, not for each wiki. Then maybe a
professional lawyer in behalf of the Foundation can give a general
agreement about the policy, or just say "this is wrong and has to be
written again". I am not even sure if this last step is necessary or
possible.

> Let's brainstorm about how we can get juriwiki-l
> going, i.e. a functioning, community-driven group of advisors with
> demonstrable legal expertise.
> 
> At the moment juriwiki-l is configured so that postings from the
> outside are moderated and replied to by a group of insiders. Is there
> any real issue, from a legal point of view, with making it a public
> mailing list? This is perhaps something Brad can answer.

For what I need, I don't think a mailing list is the answer.
I think that the information should be on the wiki (probably Meta or
Commons).

There is already a lot of information about legal issues on different
wikis [1], so I cannot really buy the idea that legal matters cannot
generally be written down somewhere. Simply what is already there is not
enough, and a bit more detailed information is needed.

Ray Saintonge a écrit :
> It may not always be easy to establish when the picture was taken, or
> who took it.

All the above implies that this information is known, obviously. The
case when this information is unknown will need rules in itself, and it
may not be the least interesting. Which rules are to be applied when the
author is not known? when the date is not known? when the place is not
known? etc.

So I started a stub here. Please help to complete it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules

[1] See for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_tags

Regards,

Yann