[Wikimedia-l] : Copyright of deep space objects (DSOs) outside of the solar system
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) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] : Copyright of deep space objects (DSOs) outside of the solar system
On 15 September 2012 07:24, とある白い猫 to.aru.shiroi.n...@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. Not so. The results from the Atacama Desert are going to be far clearer than the results from say Snowdonia. That is before we consider the issues of different filters, exposure times and instruments. If you claim was true we could just team up with a couple of amateur observetories (one in each hemisphere) and retake all the deep sky images (which might not be an entirely bad thing anyway). -- geni ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open Knowledge Fest this upcoming week
Hi Sarah et all, I am in Helsinki and also partly organizing the Open Knowledge Festival (http://okfestival.org/) - the main venue is my Department of the Aalto University. I'll come to say hi to you. If you (or anyone else from the Wikimedia community coming over to Helsinki for the OK Fest) need any help, advice etc. do not hesitate to contact me. Welcome to Helsinki! - Teemu On 15.9.2012, at 19.17, Sarah Stierch wrote: I'll be in Helsinki, Finland this upcoming week for Open Knowledge Fest, where I'm co-planning the gender and diversity sessions and also participating in some other aspects of the conference. I know this is super last minute, but, if any Finnish Wikipedians (or Wikipedians living in Helsinki) want to get a drink or are going to the conference, ping me off list. Feel free to forward this message to anyone you know. -- Teemu Leinonen http://www2.uiah.fi/~tleinone/ +358 50 351 6796 Media Lab http://mlab.uiah.fi Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture -- ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open Knowledge Fest this upcoming week
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leino...@aalto.fi wrote: Hi Sarah et all, I am in Helsinki and also partly organizing the Open Knowledge Festival (http://okfestival.org/) - the main venue is my Department of the Aalto University. I'll come to say hi to you. If you (or anyone else from the Wikimedia community coming over to Helsinki for the OK Fest) need any help, advice etc. do not hesitate to contact me. Welcome to Helsinki! - Teemu On 15.9.2012, at 19.17, Sarah Stierch wrote: I'll be in Helsinki, Finland this upcoming week for Open Knowledge Fest, where I'm co-planning the gender and diversity sessions and also participating in some other aspects of the conference. I know this is super last minute, but, if any Finnish Wikipedians (or Wikipedians living in Helsinki) want to get a drink or are going to the conference, ping me off list. Feel free to forward this message to anyone you know. I am a nativeborn Helsinki-dweller. I don't have the funds to buy a ticket to the events, and have limited material means to assist visitors, but local knowledge is a strong suit. Any questions I can help with, feel free to contact me by this gmail-account, or via personal message on FaceBook. Also, if someone wants to visit the secret awesomeness in Helsinki, on which ever theme, you could do worse than have me as a tour guide; at least I would know who to contact if doors need to be opened, even if what you are interested is something I cannot get you to see myself. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] FDC members
Dear friends: I just posted the initial composition of the Funds Dissemination Committee in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/2012_FDC_members as resolved today by the Board of Trustees. The resolution will be published as soon as possible. I would like to thank all the nominees, on behalf of the Board of Trustees. Many committed and valuable wikimedians nominated themselves to serve in this Committe. For those who were not appointed, we will ask you to help us in other ways. For those who were appointed, welcome aboard! Best, Patricio. -- Patricio Lorente Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar Identi.ca // Twitter: @patriciolorente ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
