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

[John Vandenberg]

Thanks. I didnt search. I looked in the last 250 revisions of the page. I
didnt look back far enough.

John Vandenberg.
sent from Galaxy Note
On Sep 17, 2012 8:42 PM, "Strainu" <strainu10 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Have you searched for it?
>
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2012/09#Potential_deletion_of_all_deep_space_objects
>
> 2012/9/17 John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>:
> > 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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