[Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities

[Teofilo]

David Monniaux said: "only in 2006 it was established for sure that
rights to works
done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer;"

No, it is the opposite. The new French Intellectual Property Code says
that the civil servant author remains the copyright owner of his work
whenever the work is used outside government purposes. See articles
L111-1 and  L131-3-1 of the Code. So for the Wikimedia projects'
purposes, the copyright holder is the civil servant himself or
herself, not the government.

Only in rare cases when the purposes of the Wikimedia projects and the
purposes of the French government overlap, could the government be
considered as being the copyright holder.

L111-1: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do?idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000006161633&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006069414&dateTexte=20090926
L131-3-1: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006069414&idArticle=LEGIARTI000006278959&dateTexte=&categorieLien=cid

2009/9/22, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>:
> Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with
> the French cultural authorities
> Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200
> From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr>
> To: commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> [...]
> Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions
> refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal
> difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the
> pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works
> done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their
> employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and