[Wikipedia-l] file uploads

Derek Ross derekross at fisheracre.freeserve.co.uk
Sun Jun 9 23:57:39 UTC 2002


----- Original Message -----
From: "Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen" <daniel at copyleft.no>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2002 11:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] file uploads


> On Sun, 9 Jun 2002, Derek Ross wrote:
>
> > GIF is in itself a copyrighted, or rather a patented, file format.
> > Therefore it is just as legally problematic to upload GIF images to the
> > Wikipedia without permission from the patent-holder as it is to upload
any
> > other form of copyrighted material without the permission of the
> > copyright-holder.
>
> Didn't the patent for the compression scheme used in GIF recently expire?
>
> Also, isn't it just the "compressing party" that would be hit by such a
> patent? (I don't need to pay patent fees for collecting used machines
> containing patented gear.)
>
Maybe it has expired, maybe it hasn't.  Unisys don't seem to think that it
has (http://www.unisys.com/unisys/lzw/).  The FSF doesn't think that it will
expire until 2003 (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/gif.html).  It seems to me
that the simplest way to deal with the problem is to avoid it by not
accepting GIFs.  That way we're in the clear no matter what the current
position is.

Cheers

Derek





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