[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia considering declaring open-season on works from countries lacking US copyright relations

[Newyorkbrad]

This would be shockingly inappropriate, to the point that I would urge
intervention at the Foundation level if this were to happen.

The Wikimedia communities' approaches to copyright and related issues
often reflect what I consider a bewildering contradiction.  On the one
hand, even when it damages the encyclopedias, we are often careful to
uphold intellectual property rights that hypertechnically might
conceivably exist, even where it is blindingly obvious that no real
person or entity has any existing interest in the intellectual
property and there is no prospect that any claim will ever be
asserted.

On the other hand, we sometimes are just as strongly willing to
disregard actual assertions of rights by bona-fide creators and
rightsholders on the basis of the slightest arguable legal defect in
the rights claim, without regard to any other considerations.  The
position you describe below would be an example of the latter, and in
my view a well-nigh indefensible one.

Newyorkbrad


On 2/23/12, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Newyorkbrad <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can we agree that if the creator of a (reasonably recent) work from
>> one of these countries were ACTUALLY to request that the file be
>> deleted due to a copyright issue, we would grant the request rather
>> than rely on an omission or incompatibility in the copyright treaty
>> regime?
>
> One of the most vocal commenters at w:Talk:Copyrights, would almost
> certainly say no.
>
> For example:
>
> "... [T]hey have the opportunity to obtain copyrights elsewhere and
> chose not to do so. That is their responsibility."
>
> "The rights of copyright for the individuals end at the border of Iran,
> period."
>
> At least some of the Wikipedia commenters seem prepared to draw a hard
> line on this issue with no exceptions.
>
> Personally, I'd like to believe that we as a community are more
> reasonable than that.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
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