[Wikimedia-l] : Copyright of deep space objects (DSOs) outside of the solar system

[John Vandenberg]

Where is the onwiki discussion about this? I could find '[1]'

Or a wikipedia page that describes the copyright status of imagery of DSOs?

John Vandenberg.
sent from Galaxy Note
On Sep 15, 2012 1:25 PM, "とある白い猫" <to.aru.shiroi.neko at gmail.com> wrote:

>   Hi,
>
>   I am not seeking legal advice. I am asking the pursuit of the issue. I am
> not a US citizen so I do not have a congress person to contact. The laws
> governing copyright can be amended to address the issue of deep space
> objects (DSO). I do not expect a result next week, I merely want the issue
> to enter into an agenda of some sort. If the Foundation is going to take
> the lead, this probably would only be possible through a board decision. In
> such a case I want to work with people to come up with such a draft
> proposal to the board.
>
>   I realize this is an unusual request but there seems to be a lack of
> clarity on this issue[1]. Argument is that copyright can be an issue since
> not every organization observing or assisting NASA's observations are
> PD-USgov compatible. We may be forced to permanently delete all deep space
> objects as a result.
>
>   I'd like to provide a short technical explanation why copyright of deep
> space objects or DSOs (objects outside of the solar system) are
> meaningless. For ordinary photographs copyright is determined by factors
> such as lighting, perspective, exposure and other such settings that
> creates a different image of the same object. You can distinguish the
> difference between a daylight photo and an evening photo.
>
>   With deep space objects however, even the stellar parallax[2] has a very
> small value. The closest object outside of the solar system is 4.24 light
> years (268,136 AU's) away. The semi-major axis of earth is about 1AUs. The
> difference in perspective is like looking at a 2cm (width of a nickel) wide
> object 5.3km (3.29 miles) away and the perspective difference is switching
> left eye to the right eye. We lack scientific instruments to even detect a
> stellar parallax for objects much further. In other words our perspective
> of the nearest star and beyond is more or less constant and the objects
> themselves look the same for hundreds of years.
>
>   So any photo of a deep space object I or someone else takes from the
> solar system will look identical regardless of when and where on earth I
> take it within multiple lifetimes. I think this can bring legal precedent
> for us to either disregard any copyright claim or at least pursue lawmakers
> in congress to amend the copyright law to make an exception in the law.
> People who worked with congress such as Neil Degrasse Tyson could be
> consulted to this end. Also international treaties[3] can be consulted to
> this end as copyrighting photos of deep space objects could be interpreted
> as an unfair exploitation of resources.
>
>   I realize this reads like something out of Star Trek but this is growing
> to be quite a problem as we see more and more weird copyright claims even
> when dealing with NASA which traditionally had a PD-USgov mentality. NASA
> regularly contracts its more recent projects and to be fair we do not know
> how NASA contracts these projects which could potentially lead
> to legitimate copyright claims in the future.
>
>
> [1]:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Potential_deletion_of_all_deep_space_objects
>
> [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax
>
> [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law#International_treaties
>
>   -- とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
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