Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Thank you, Ryan. I did a quick check. The count for that Template:PD-Layout is indeed some 3.3 million. I went to commons, and looked up the Template:PD-Layout. I think the correct link is: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Layout. Then I looked up the lionk: What links here. The first one was: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Death_of_Hyacinthos.gif According to the description, the author is Artist Jean Brochttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jean_Broc(1771–1850) [image: Link back to Creator infobox template]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Jean_Broc With a death of the author in 1850, that seems to me to be outside the scope of this law. Though this is just one example, it indicates that the count may be too generous. Just to have an indication of the size, i went through the first 5 of the links: File:Chinese_opera051.jpg : 19th century drawing of Chinese opera, public domain from en wiki File:Alicebeggar.png : Description *English:* Alice Pleasance Liddellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Liddellas a beggar girl. This was first published in Carroll's biography by his nephew: Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson (1898). File:LocatieRotterdam.png : This work has been released into the *public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:public_domain* by its author, *Mtcvhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mtcv *. This applies worldwide. File:AliceSilvy.png: Date 1861 None of these 5 seem to qualify as fitting into the gap of death of the author between 50 and 70 years ago, though for File:Alicebeggar.png and File:AliceSilvy.png: this is not 100% sure - if the artist was 20 years old in 1861, and became 91, he died in 1942, just 69 years ago. It looks to me that the template PD-Layout is too general. And a count of PD-old gives just 17K. kind regards, Teun Spaans On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.orgwrote: It's based on the template transclusion count here: http://toolserver.org/~jarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=commonsname=Template%3APD-Layout#bottomhttp://toolserver.org/%7Ejarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=commonsname=Template%3APD-Layout#bottom Ryan Kaldari On 6/23/11 1:01 PM, teun spaans wrote: The number of 3 million surpises me. Common hosts about 10 million items. Are you certain this amount is approximately correct? On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Geoff Brighamgbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 11:07 AM, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: None of these 5 seem to qualify as fitting into the gap of death of the author between 50 and 70 years ago, though for File:Alicebeggar.png and File:AliceSilvy.png: this is not 100% sure - if the artist was 20 years old in 1861, and became 91, he died in 1942, just 69 years ago. You don't have to do any guesswork, as for both of these the author is given, including year of death. Alicebeggar.png is by Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, died 1898, and AliceSilvy.png by Camille Silvy, died 1910. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
I imagine that having non-US GLAMs undersand that the foundation wants to be able to ignore what they regard as their more legitimate copyright claims will be really helpful. It's not about ignoring legitimate copyright claims-- we can always decide for ourselves what is a legitimate copyright claim for WMF-hosted projects. We can recognize claims even if we are not required to do so under US law-- but we can't go the other way-- if the US law says no, we can't host it.If this case goes the wrong way, it's possible that the congress will force all US citizens and organizations to recognize illegitimate copyright claims. Remember that in the US law, copyright isn't a 'god-given-right' or anything like free speech or right to property, or even right to privacy- Copyright isn't a 'right'-- it's just a government granted monopoly intended exclusively to achieve a pragmatic end-- incentivizing creation. The nation's judicial branch has a legitimate question that's gone all the way to the supreme court-- precisely how should copyright laws be interpreted in the internet age? Of course the non-profits are right to share their analysis with the US supreme court. It's not as if they're actually deciding the case-- they're just contributing to the discussion with the US Supreme Court, sharing their best guess about what their lawyers believe the correct answer is.. Alec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Such works belong to our global knowledge. You can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture. Clearly, you can copyright knowledge, for a time. True, you can't copyright facts or scientific laws (yet)-- but some forms of knowledge absolutely get copyrighted, and they're lobbying for even greater powers over what people can read, write, and share. In the past, for example, some entities have even claimed 'copyright' to try to limit distribution of knowledge of the specific 'special whole numbers-- since those numbers were the ones they picked as keys when setting up their content encryption system. To bring things full circle, I think what we, collectively, are asserting is that culture is, in fact, a very essential type of educational knowledge. There are two big myths I wish I could debunk: One is The Myth of Non-Educational Knowledge-- all information is educational, but some sets of information are certainly more educational than others; it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. The secomd myth is what I'd call 'The Myth of the Superiority of High Culture-- basically the idea that operas and classical music are somehow a 'more important' culture to document than, say, anime or jazz. In practice, 'high culture' usually means 'the culture of the most affluent'. All culture, whether scientific, encyclopedic, high art, low art, pop culture, kitsch, criminal, idiosyncratic, or even literally hunter-gather tribal culture-- all cultures are important to document so we can understand our fellow humans. Our species has important work to do. The more that binds us together, the better. Perhaps the things that bind us will simple cultural artifacts just like this-- things like a common love of the images of M.C. Escher, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, or the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Culture is knowledge. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 08:47, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: Such works belong to our global knowledge. You can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture. Clearly, you can copyright knowledge, for a time. True, you can't copyright facts or scientific laws (yet)-- but some forms of knowledge absolutely get copyrighted, and they're lobbying for even greater powers over what people can read, write, and share. In the past, for example, some entities have even claimed 'copyright' to try to limit distribution of knowledge of the specific 'special whole numbers-- since those numbers were the ones they picked as keys when setting up their content encryption system. The issue with that wasn't so much the copyright of the encryption key as the fact that it was an anti-circumvention measure under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws internationally that implement Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty like European Directive 2001/29/EC. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention Article 11 implementations may be incompatible with sanity, reality and/or traditionally recognised civil liberties. If is possible to make circumvention technologies without infringing copyright: for instance, if you had a phone that, say, had a small sensor to decide whether or not is allowed to take photographs or videos in a concert venue, and you decided to put a smal piece of black tape over said sensor, you have circumvented a technological measure [...] used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law. But in doing so, you haven't infringed on the copyright of either the concert performer or the creator of the device. Another similar case might be some of the CDs that you could disable the DRM on by covering certain areas of the disk surface with a black marker pen. I Am Not A Lawyer, but I occasionally play one on Wikipedia. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 23 June 2011 07:54, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: It's not about ignoring legitimate copyright claims-- we can always decide for ourselves what is a legitimate copyright claim for WMF-hosted projects. Except the WMF just signed up in support of the EMF side which means it's now the foundation's position that such copyright claims should have no significance in the US. If this case goes the wrong way, it's possible that the congress will force all US citizens and organizations to recognize illegitimate copyright claims. That doesn't even make sense. The nation's judicial branch has a legitimate question that's gone all the way to the supreme court-- precisely how should copyright laws be interpreted in the internet age? Indeed the lawyers are free to make such arguments. No reason for us to get involved. Of course the non-profits are right to share their analysis with the US supreme court. It's not as if they're actually deciding the case-- they're just contributing to the discussion with the US Supreme Court, sharing their best guess about what their lawyers believe the correct answer is.. Did you even bother to read the opening post? Arcane legal arguments about what the law is falls outside the foundation's remit. We are not a lawyers benefit foundation. No the foundation has taken a very practical real world campaigning position which probably sounds great to a limited number of people within the US but is going to cause problems outside. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 23 June 2011 15:39, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Arcane legal arguments about what the law is falls outside the foundation's remit. We are not a lawyers benefit foundation. No the foundation has taken a very practical real world campaigning position which probably sounds great to a limited number of people within the US but is going to cause problems outside. At this point you are just being contrary for the sake of a row. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 23 June 2011 16:09, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: At this point you are just being contrary for the sake of a row. Citation needed. That in any case is not a valid counterpoint. If you think the foundation's involvement will have no wider impact feel free to make that case. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 6/22/11 7:13 PM, geni wrote: Ohh bad example. You haven't consulted commons policy have you? We don't carry stuff on commons unless it is PD in the US and it's country of origin. I think you're missing the point here. This court decision isn't about allowing us to ignore other country's copyright laws. Due to the URAA and the fact that the U.S. doesn't follow the rule of the shorter term, there are hundreds of thousands of works that are public domain in the country of origin, but re-copyrighted in the U.S. until doomsday (basically every foreign work who's copyright has expired since 1996). For example, the works of Mahatma Ghandi are public domain in India and most of the rest of the world, but are copyrighted in the U.S. until 2055 thanks to the URAA. Same for the paintings of Paul Klee, the wildlife illustrations of Henrik Gronvold, the writings of Leon Trotsky, etc. Ryan Kaldari ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 23 June 2011 16:17, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: If you think the foundation's involvement will have no wider impact feel free to make that case. Considering that that's precisely the point - that if the US starts re-enclosing the public domain, it will use its influence to get other countries to do the same - and I expressly said so upthread, well, no, I'm not going to argue that. Do try to keep up. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 23 June 2011 19:38, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Considering that that's precisely the point - that if the US starts re-enclosing the public domain, it will use its influence to get other countries to do the same - and I expressly said so upthread, well, no, I'm not going to argue that. Do try to keep up. A bit late no? Other countries have done precisely that. The UK when we jumped from life+50 to life+70. In fact if anything the influence has so far been the other way around. The rest of the world signed up for the Bern convention and Europe went in the direction of life+70 then the US did. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Europe is already in line. Where the U.S. is exercising its muscle on IP issues is mainly Latin America (where many countries like Brazil, Belize, and Jamaica still have reasonable IP laws). The U.S. commonly pressures Latin American countries on IP issues when negotiating trade agreements. Obviously we have a lot of work to do to reform U.S. copyright law (rule of the shorter term, freedom of panorama, etc.), but it would be nice if we don't actually shrink our public domain in the meantime. Ryan Kaldari On 6/23/11 12:02 PM, geni wrote: On 23 June 2011 19:38, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: Considering that that's precisely the point - that if the US starts re-enclosing the public domain, it will use its influence to get other countries to do the same - and I expressly said so upthread, well, no, I'm not going to argue that. Do try to keep up. A bit late no? Other countries have done precisely that. The UK when we jumped from life+50 to life+70. In fact if anything the influence has so far been the other way around. The rest of the world signed up for the Bern convention and Europe went in the direction of life+70 then the US did. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
The number of 3 million surpises me. Common hosts about 10 million items. Are you certain this amount is approximately correct? On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
It's based on the template transclusion count here: http://toolserver.org/~jarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=commonsname=Template%3APD-Layout#bottom Ryan Kaldari On 6/23/11 1:01 PM, teun spaans wrote: The number of 3 million surpises me. Common hosts about 10 million items. Are you certain this amount is approximately correct? On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Geoff Brighamgbrig...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
I would like to personally thank the WMF staff and board for having pursued this. Good luck. On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Hello Geoff, great work you are doing here. Greetings Ting On 22.06.2011 20:40, wrote Geoff Brigham: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. I'm really happy to see us start getting involved in this kind of work; I think it too is part of fulfilling our mission. Thanks for your work on this, Geoff. -Kat -- Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:mindspillage IRC(freenode,OFTC):mindspillage * identi.ca:mindspillage * phone:ask ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 22 June 2011 20:15, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: I would like to personally thank the WMF staff and board for having pursued this. Seconded. This is something important enough we need to stand up about it. Is there anything we can do, in practical terms, to support this? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
I'm very pleased with this amicus brief, specially because it joins both an organization that I spent my free time getting fun (Wikimedia) and a organization that represents my professional categorie (American Association of Libraries, despite the fact that I'm not a US citizen). Congratulations and thank you for all of those that worked on it! [[:m:User:555]] On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 5:00 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 22 June 2011 20:15, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: I would like to personally thank the WMF staff and board for having pursued this. Seconded. This is something important enough we need to stand up about it. Is there anything we can do, in practical terms, to support this? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Thank you for sharing! This potentially has a big impact indeed, and the support of the WMF seems more than appropriate. Is this something the WMF will do more often in the future (or has done in the past) or is this an extreme exception due to its importance? With kind regards, Lodewijk 2011/6/22 Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus (friends of the court) brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of the public domain for years to come. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder. The EFF is representing the Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the Internet Archive. This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime. In 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain. Affected cultural goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by Fellini, Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and J.R.R. Tolkien. The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public domain for their livelihood. They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They eventually won at the district court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so here. Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684. We are expecting a number of parties to file friends of the court briefs. The EFF's brief can be found here: http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder . The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. It is not right - legally or morally. The Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms. The First Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons. Such works belong to our global knowledge. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future. We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012. -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 15:00, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Is there anything we can do, in practical terms, to support this? IANAL, but I think the most practical support any of us could do would be donations to the EFF (who'll actually argue the case for our side) or sympathetic organizations filing an amicus brief (such as the WMF). Beyond that, moral support and words of encouragement will have to do. -- Jim Redmond [[User:Jredmond]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 22 June 2011 21:14, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: Is this something the WMF will do more often in the future (or has done in the past) or is this an extreme exception due to its importance? I was talkiing to someone today, describing WMF as an 800lb gorilla that tries very hard not to have people notice its muscles ... Our power is something to save for special occasions. This is,IMO, just the sort of thing it's for. I would hope we don't have to use it very soon again. But if this sort of thing comes up again, it would be appropriate. I would suggest Wikimedia chapters and fans reblog it and possibly do press releases. Worldwide publicity is appropriate for this - the US keeps setting the terms of copyright of late. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
Kat Walsh writes: I'm really happy to see us start getting involved in this kind of work; I think it too is part of fulfilling our mission. Thanks for your work on this, Geoff. Chiming in here -- I'm very happy to see Geoff's announcement too. As Geoff and a few others here know, I've favored WMF involvement in this case at least since it was confirmed that the Supreme Court is going to hear it (and of course I conferred with my EFF colleagues in the runup to the Supreme Court's granting certiorari in Golan v. Holder). The case is centrally important to the Wikimedia Foundation's continuing ability to offer free knowledge and to preserve and provide access to important cultural and artistic creative works. I'm also pleased that another former employer of mine, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, is filing an amicus brief as well. Here's the text of the Yale announcement (and a link to a PDF of the brief) for those who are interested: Today, professors and fellows associated with the Information Society Project at Yale Law School filed an amicus brief in *Golan v. Holder*, a case that will be heard before the United States Supreme Court this fall. In this brief, we argue that the Court should apply strict First Amendment scrutiny to Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a law that allows works to be taken out of the public domain and placed back under copyright protection. Although the plaintiffs in this case had stipulated that intermediate scrutiny was the appropriate standard of review under the First Amendment, we argue that when Congress abrogates a central constitutional privilege—as it has done here, by stripping away a traditional speech-protective contour of copyright law—Congress must satisfy a more rigorous standard of review. The brief is available for download here: http://yaleisp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Golan-Amicus-Brief-filed.pdf Many thanks are due to everyone at the ISP who helped in writing, researching, and thinking about this brief over the past two months! --Mike Godwin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
I'm so overjoyed to see we've taken this step! Good work Board, Staff, Counsel, and everyone else!!! It always seemed our obvious destiny to lend a helping hand to important issues like this, I'm really really happy that this day has arrived. Is there anything we can do, in practical terms, to support this? Yes. Provided we don't use significant foundation resources, we do have power to put this Copyright Question on the map if we really want to. Jimmy or another prominent wikimedian doing an interview with Stewart/Colbert, Maddow (who tends toward the geek), or any other news outlet. I leave it to wiser minds to decide whether this is worth doing. But eventually an issue will come along where it will be worth doing. Personally, I think think the WMF has already 'crossed the rubicon' by joining the suit-- the powers-that-be that are upset by that are upset already-- so having taken a stance, why not publicize it? I tend to think any time we can be seen standing next to the the Librarians, we come off looking good. The most we can associate those two-- ALA, WMF; ALA, WMF; The more we do that, the more outsiders will get us as a legitimate social institution, rather than see us as just another website paid for by reader donation. Alec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 22 June 2011 18:24, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: I tend to think any time we can be seen standing next to the the Librarians, we come off looking good. The most we can associate those two-- ALA, WMF; ALA, WMF; The more we do that, the more outsiders will get us as a legitimate social institution, rather than see us as just another website paid for by reader donation. I'm particularly pleased about that part too, Alec, for exactly the reason you give. They're our natural allies, and having that be publicly visible helps people understand us better :-) Thanks, Sue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 22 June 2011 19:40, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously important role that the public domain plays in our mission to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. Globally? Oh I think not. A situation where works are PD in the US, Afganistan, and Iran is of pretty limited use if you want to disseminate stuff globaly We host millions of works in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search out and archive these works. Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3 million items in these cultural commons. Ohh bad example. You haven't consulted commons policy have you? We don't carry stuff on commons unless it is PD in the US and it's country of origin. To put it bluntly, Congress cannot be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever it finds it suitable to do so. Parliament in the UK has had that power since 1710 when copyright was invented. The world hasn't ended. Try undesirable. Such works belong to our global knowledge. You can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture. For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain Nice line but the foundation does generally makes the attempt to appear like it's aware of non US areas. Truth is of course that congress can't impact my public domain one way or another. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain
On 23 June 2011 03:09, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: I'm particularly pleased about that part too, Alec, for exactly the reason you give. They're our natural allies, and having that be publicly visible helps people understand us better :-) I imagine that having non-US GLAMs undersand that the foundation wants to be able to ignore what they regard as their more legitimate copyright claims will be really helpful. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
