[Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...

[wjhonson at aol.com]

 -----Original Message-----

From: wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wed, Sep 30, 2009 2:58 pm
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...










wjhonson at aol.com wrote:
>  -----Original Message-----
> 
> From: wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tue, Sep 29, 2009 5:31 pm
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with 
the Frenc...
> 
> 
> 
> David Gerard wrote:
>> 2009/9/28  <wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk>:
>>
>>>  From the earlier poster Teofilo:
>>>    I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full
>>>    resolution pictures of Public Domain works.
>>> That seems to be a demand to have the highest resolution copies possible.
>>
>> That sets it out as a goal, not a demand.
>>
> 
>     "There is no need to negociate anything. There is no need
>      to change a single word from the current French copyright
>      law. Simply have the French government's cultural institutions
>      (museums, archives) recognize that they have been wrong until now"
> 
> 
> just doesn't read like a goal, its a demand.
> 
> 
>> But getting back to the case in question - we're talking about the
>> sort of museum that's actually a government sub-department. Thus,
>> public domain images that the taxpayer has *already paid for*. I see
>> nothing whatsoever unreasonable about the idea of asking-to-demanding
>> those. They're owned by the public, not by the museum bureaucrats.
>>
> 
> 
> <<Whilst those digitalizations they may be owned by the French public,
> they certainly aren't owned by the German public, British, Italian,
> Spanish, or American public either.>>
> 
> 
> "The public" doesn't have national boundaries.
> "The public" means all of the public, here there and elsewhere.
> 

You are confused. Lets parse the quote shall we?

   "Thus, public domain images that the taxpayer has *already paid for*."

would be the digitization of the images that the French taxpayers have
paid for. The following sentence:

   "They're owned by the public, not by the museum bureaucrats."

refers to the digitizations that the public (the French taxpayers) have
paid for. It can't possibly refer to the images themselves because in
most cases those images were either given to the Nation by their owners
in lieu if taxes, confiscated, or stolen during periods of war and
colonialism.

As such we aren't taking about "'The public' means all of the public,
here there and elsewhere." but a specific set of national taxpayers.>>
------------------

Okay let's parse the meaning.
Once an image has "been paid for" and is "in the public domain", that means that
anyone, in this country, the next, or on Venus can use the image.

Whether or not the person who said "paid for by the taxpayers" was being specific
to a certain country or using a loose phrase, isn't really relevant.

The image is in the public domain.  That's the point.
Public means all public, not limited to the whims of what the boundary of a certain
country might be today.