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

[Richard Symonds]

I'd just like to echo NYB here. I'm dissappointed that so many of our 
community are taking such a view.

Richard Symonds
Office&  Development Manager
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 207 065 0992
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On 05/03/2012 05:01, Newyorkbrad wrote:
> 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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