That's a valid point, but I'm coming at it from different direction: works that are public domain in the country of origin but not in the US. I don't view that as gaming the copyright system, as I'm based in the UK and I don't view Wikimedia as an American website/set of projects. If a UK photographer's works are public domain in the UK but not in the US, there shouldn't be anything stopping me uploading them to (some variant of) Commons and tagging them as life+70 but not US-PD.
Mike On 9 Feb 2010, at 09:00, Rama Neko wrote: > We do not game copyright laws in this way. > > You can see an example with Heinrich Hoffman's photographs: the USA > consider them to be in the Public Domain in apparent disregard for > international law on copyright; these photographs are protected by > copyright in Germany, where they are the object of very proprietary > publications. The policy on Commons is that we do not accept such > images. > > -- Rama > > On 09/02/2010, Michael Peel <em...@mikepeel.net> wrote: >> >> On 8 Feb 2010, at 23:05, Ken Arromdee wrote: >> >>> This is also a particular problem with pictures of living people, >>> since we've >>> been told that since it's *possible* to take another picture of a >>> living >>> person, all non-free images of living people are prohibited. The >>> official >>> way of interpreting "it's possible to" takes no consideration of >>> just how >>> possible it is. In any other context this would be considered >>> rules-lawyering-- >>> we're basically officially rules-lawyering our own policies. >> >> Personally, I think we should remove all non-free images from all >> language Wikipedias (and everywhere else they occur) - as they make >> it difficult to get freely licensed content off people that already >> have that content. Case study: I emailed ESA to ask for a photograph >> of a satellite to use in an article; they provided a 200 pixel image >> I could use as 'fair use' in return. In the past, we weren't big >> enough to have any leverage to get that content released - but now we >> are, and we could have that leverage if we want to take advantage >> of it. >> >> However, that is somewhat separate from the question of images that >> are in the public domain _somewhere_. It is somewhat crazy that US >> laws dictate what public domain materials you can upload to Wikipedia >> etc - irrespective of what laws apply in your own country. >> >> One possibility that might be worth investigating is something like >> Wikilivres - which holds books that are out of copyright in Canada >> (life+50 years) but not in the US. It can do that as its servers are >> based in Canada. Could we do something similar with Wikimedia >> Commons? i.e. host multimedia content on a server in a different >> geographical area, and then have that linked in with Wikipedia in the >> same way that Commons currently is? There shouldn't be any concerns >> about having thumbnail images of these works on Wikipedia, as these >> are all done under fair use anyway (e.g. all of those uncredited CC- >> BY-SA images...). >> >> Mike >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Commons-l mailing list >> Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l >> > > _______________________________________________ > Commons-l mailing list > Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
