Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Jane Darnell]

This is a good idea in theory, but the tags-per-country could become
endless, and I wonder who would be brave enough to upload images to
such a project, as the uploader would be responsible for the
"freeness" of the uploaded content and the associated completeness of
license tags.

Perhaps if you just open it for certain popular types of images that
could each be supported with a standard USRAA-exemption-type template
(I am thinking of unattributable news photos of famous people of the
20th century, WWII art, or WLM photos of monumental structures in
locales without freedom of panorama that are taken by non-residents of
those locales). Do we have any stats on what types of images are on
the en.wiki under "fair use" and so forth?

2014-03-03 4:16 GMT+01:00, Avenue :
> That would be wonderful. I imagine we would want to tag the images to
> indicate their copyright status in certain jurisdictions, and set up a
> mechanism so that projects can define which sorts of images they want to be
> able to embed in their local pages, and which they do not want (unless a
> locally EDP-compliant tag is attached).
>
> However, that wouldn't improve the URAA situation much. We would still need
> to delete clear infringements under the URAA, unless they are covered by
> some project's EDP. I guess it would at least reduce the number of
> transwiki transfers needed.
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 12:51 AM, Sam Klein  wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Nathan  wrote:
>>
>> > Which led to the thought that hey, what we really need is a meta-project
>> > for hosting images that is *explicitly* intended to serve the other
>> > projects. We tried this before, right? But maybe this time we make the
>> > meta-project a technical implementation without its own community, where
>> > local uploads can be toggled to make files globally available without
>> > giving some global intermediary the right to turn that toggle off.
>>
>> I can see every file that is uploaded to any project being available
>> via some global namespace.   Commons as we currently imagine it could
>> become the core set of "maximally free" images: those "freely reusable
>> in every jurisdiction".
>>
>> And there would be a separate threshhold for the rest of the images.
>> "Covered by at least one project's Exemption Doctrine and tagged as
>> such; freely reusable in almost all of the world and tagged as illegal
>> in one or two countries; &c..."
>>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Avenue]

That would be wonderful. I imagine we would want to tag the images to
indicate their copyright status in certain jurisdictions, and set up a
mechanism so that projects can define which sorts of images they want to be
able to embed in their local pages, and which they do not want (unless a
locally EDP-compliant tag is attached).

However, that wouldn't improve the URAA situation much. We would still need
to delete clear infringements under the URAA, unless they are covered by
some project's EDP. I guess it would at least reduce the number of
transwiki transfers needed.


On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 12:51 AM, Sam Klein  wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Nathan  wrote:
>
> > Which led to the thought that hey, what we really need is a meta-project
> > for hosting images that is *explicitly* intended to serve the other
> > projects. We tried this before, right? But maybe this time we make the
> > meta-project a technical implementation without its own community, where
> > local uploads can be toggled to make files globally available without
> > giving some global intermediary the right to turn that toggle off.
>
> I can see every file that is uploaded to any project being available
> via some global namespace.   Commons as we currently imagine it could
> become the core set of "maximally free" images: those "freely reusable
> in every jurisdiction".
>
> And there would be a separate threshhold for the rest of the images.
> "Covered by at least one project's Exemption Doctrine and tagged as
> such; freely reusable in almost all of the world and tagged as illegal
> in one or two countries; &c..."
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Sam Klein]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Nathan  wrote:

> Which led to the thought that hey, what we really need is a meta-project
> for hosting images that is *explicitly* intended to serve the other
> projects. We tried this before, right? But maybe this time we make the
> meta-project a technical implementation without its own community, where
> local uploads can be toggled to make files globally available without
> giving some global intermediary the right to turn that toggle off.

I can see every file that is uploaded to any project being available
via some global namespace.   Commons as we currently imagine it could
become the core set of "maximally free" images: those "freely reusable
in every jurisdiction".

And there would be a separate threshhold for the rest of the images.
"Covered by at least one project's Exemption Doctrine and tagged as
such; freely reusable in almost all of the world and tagged as illegal
in one or two countries; &c..."

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Mark]

On 3/2/14, 6:17 PM, David Gerard wrote:

On 2 March 2014 16:56, Mark  wrote:

On 3/2/14, 5:31 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:

There is a further disconnect in that Commons is taking an increasingly
ultra-conservative approach to the definition of "Free", whereas most other
projects are working to a definition of "Free for all practical purposes".
It is the latter interpretation that the board, in consultation with the
legal team, are recommending as the way forward but is being resisted
strongly by many on Commons.

This is more the crux of the issue, I think. I'm mostly familiar with
en.wiki, but on there the definition swings pretty far to the opposite
extreme, with a lot of content that is *not* Free for most practical
purposes.


This discussion is not even about en:wp or its content; you are
derailing the discussion.

You argued that there is a big divergence between the goals of Commons 
and those of the other projects, and that Commons is the outlier 
diverging from the Movement's goals. I am arguing that isn't the case, 
and Commons is in fact closer to the movement's goals than the projects 
that have been complaining.


As someone interested in reusing Wikipedia content outside of the "main" 
countries of origin (en.wiki content in Denmark, in my case), I actually 
find Commons's copyright policy one of the few useful things helping out 
reusers, which is one reason I'm defending it. Here is one heuristic for 
"freeing-up" a Wikipedia article: for each image, look to see if it's 
locally hosted or hosted on Commons. Keep it if it's hosted on Commons, 
remove it if it's locally hosted. This will remove *most*, though not 
all, of the unfree or free-only-in-one-country images, meaning I can 
them (probably) legally publish the resulting article in Denmark. Of 
course, a detailed case-by-case copyright investigation is still the 
gold standard, but we're not very useful to reusers if everyone has to 
engage in one, and we can't present people a body of "proably free for 
you to reuse" content. That's what I think Commons is doing fairly well, 
or at least better than the other projects.


To the extent that other projects are, as you advocating, "routing 
around Commons", they are routing around free content and reusers' 
ability to actually reuse our content— in multiple countries, in 
multiple settings, by nonprofits and for-profits, in part or in whole.


-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 2 March 2014 22:20, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 2 March 2014 13:51, geni  wrote:
>
> > Its a pretty accurate description. What do you think the law says?
>
>
> It's possible, if you want people and organisations to stop their
> moves against you, that snideness and word play may not serve to
> convince them that you have any evidenced interest in working with
> others, and don't have to be treated as simply intransigent.
>


Given that attempt to explain how the law actually works have been ignored
there isn't much we can do to avoid being perceived as intransigent. If
people won't listen there isn't much we can do other than add them to the
list of people who unaccountably have better things do on weekends than
read through copyright statutes and caselaw.

It may be worth noting at this point that the Israelis and the Argentinians
face two different problems. The Argentinian one probably can't be solve
short of the US government adopting the rule of the shorter term (assuming
stability in Argentinian copyright law in the meantime).

The Israeli problem on the other hand could probably be solved by getting
their government to issue a statement on the status of their copyrights
overseas (the Brits did back in 2005). I'm not up enough on the Israeli
Freedom of Information Law to know if that would be the appropriate
mechanism ( and in any case I'm not an Israeli citizen or resident so I
can't file one) but even if it isn't I expect the chapter would get a
response to a query. But that is up to them. I can make an Israeli do this.

-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 2 March 2014 16:35, David Gerard  wrote:

>
> Indeed. The extreme paranoia over images people created themselves
> versus the ridiculously sloppy standards for anything on Flickr (a bot
> can't meaningfully "verify" an image) makes Commons merely seem
> capricious.
>

No the same standards are applied to flickr images. The bot is verifying
against later changes of license not that the license claim is correct. The
reality is though that flickr images tend to be either fine of
straightforward copyvios so arguments over less known areas of copyright
law tend not to be an issue. Its mostly a matter of spotting the stream has
an unlikely range of images or cameras.


>
> tl;dr Commons is behaving like damage that needs to be worked around.
> If people who consider themselves part of the Commons community don't
> like that being noted, they're the ones who need to consider changing;
> their intransigence up to now is *why* Commons appears to behave like
> damage.
>


Because you and various other members of the project seem to view insisting
on free content as damaging. Fundamentally there isn't much that can be
done about.

-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[???]

On 02/03/2014 01:26, geni wrote:

On 1 March 2014 23:59, ???  wrote:


On 01/03/2014 23:06, geni wrote:


On 1 March 2014 19:58, ???  wrote:



You have no guarantee that the account that the images were scraped from
held the copyright in the first place, and as such you are unable to pass
that guarantee on to any one else.




Want means its an objective not something we have actually archived yet.



Then it is an objective that cannot be fulfilled unless you get written
clarification from all the accounts that are being scraped on flickr and
elsewhere, that the images contained within the accounts were taken by the
account holder.




There are various approaches. Personally I'd like to see the software
modified so images can be tagged by level of certainty with regards to
their copyright status.




Many flickr accounts collect images found on the web. Many of them upload
those images under a CC license, because "images on the web are all public
domain".




Those are usually fairly obvious and can be avoided for the most part.




Really? You may be able to detect those that have an AP or Getty 
watermark and similar, but with other flickr streams it is not so clear. 
A few years ago one poster to flickr was uploading images taken a 
pre-Arab Spring protests in Egypt. All of them were uploaded as 
CC-BY-SA, but they weren't all from the same photographer. As I recall 
people were sending him the photos and he was uploading them to flickr, 
and then these were being reused on various anti-Mubarek blogs. Whether 
or not everyone that was emailing photos was aware of the CC licenses 
that were being added is unknown. A casual observer would not of been 
able to detect that the stream was from dozens of photographers. Names 
were kept out of the uploads and the EXIF data was removed for obvious 
reasons.


Again on flickr people may set there default upload settings to CC-BY-SA 
and by and large only upload images that they have taken. However, that 
doesn't mean that everything they upload is something they have taken.


Other sites offer CC-BY-SA images, and there is no guarantee that the 
uploader to those sites is the copyright holder either.


On Commons there are a number of people trawling through websites 
offering CC-BY-SA images, and uploading them to Commons. There is 
absolutely no guarantee that they are properly licensed. Even if they 
are, there is no traceability to show that in five years time the anon 
uploader to the original site (if the original site still exists) is the 
same person that is claiming copyright on the images.


The bottom line here is that IF your business relies on CC-BY-SA images, 
then you are unwise to take at face value any CC-BY-SA license, 
particularly commercial use, unless YOU have traceability. That today 
Commons can provide any guarantee that the images it holds are properly 
licensed is a fantasy.




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Avenue]

On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 8:50 PM, Chris McKenna  wrote:
>
> You've missed the point. Commons is not at present a reliable source of
> media, Free or otherwise, because media gets deleted because once someone
> alleges that it is not free it gets deleted if the original uploader cannot
> prove it is free, regardless of the merits of the allegation.
>

That's an odd view of "the merits". The content should not really have been
uploaded to begin with if the uploader couldn't show it was free. Commons
has help desks to assist people who are unsure.



> The Foundation has said "do not delete images that *might* be unfree under
> URAA unless there is a takedown notice" yet the images continue to be
> deleted.
>

I would take that complaint more seriously if people had identified
deletions where the URAA status was not entirely clear, and complained
about them. Instead the current proposal is that *all* URAA-related
deletions would be overturned.

The Foundation has not changed its position (expressed two years ago) that
images which are clearly unfree under URAA should be deleted.


This is entirely irrelevant to the attitude at Commons. English Wikipedia
>>> is Free according to the definition it uses, which is essentally "Free for
>>> practical purposes as an Encyclopaedia" and that is applied reliably. In
>>> contrast, Commons is arbitrarily and inconsistently Free and appears to be
>>> prioritising point making over being a practical media repository. You are
>>> free to disagree about en.wp's choices, but this does not excuse the
>>> attitude of Commons to the Wikimedia community.
>>>
>>
Modify that to "Free for practical purposes *in the USA* as an
Encyclopaedia", and you're getting closer. Commons should have a broader
goal than that, though.

Getting back to URAA-affected images, [[en:Template:Not-PD-US-URAA]] places
images in [[en:Category:Works copyrighted in the United States]], which
says "we are currently trying to figure out what to do with files like this
one." It's more than two years since Golan vs Holder, which seems a long
time to be figuring this out.

That's fair enough in a way, since image hosting probably shouldn't be high
on enwiki's list of priorities. But contrast that with Commons, where the
essential decisions regarding URAA were made (based partly on WMF Legal
input) within 6 months or so, and substantial progress has been made
towards implementing them, despite the much larger scale of the problem
there (several thousand images, compared to 127 in [[en:Category:Works
copyrighted in the United States]]).
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 2 March 2014 13:51, geni  wrote:

> Its a pretty accurate description. What do you think the law says?


It's possible, if you want people and organisations to stop their
moves against you, that snideness and word play may not serve to
convince them that you have any evidenced interest in working with
others, and don't have to be treated as simply intransigent.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 2 March 2014 20:50, Chris McKenna  wrote:

> On Sun, 2 Mar 2014, Mark wrote:
>
>  On 3/2/14, 5:31 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:
>>
>>> There seems to be a disconnect between what Commons sees as it's
>>> mission: To be a repository of Free media; and what other projects see as
>>> Commons' mission: To be a repository of media for use on Wikimedia projects.
>>>
>> But since the other Wikimedia projects should be producing free-content
>> encyclopedias, this is no disconnect: Commons should host Free media, and
>> the other projects should include Free media. Otherwise the other projects'
>> content cannot be reused externally, and they are not free-content
>> encyclopedias.
>>
>
> You've missed the point. Commons is not at present a reliable source of
> media, Free or otherwise, because media gets deleted because once someone
> alleges that it is not free it gets deleted if the original uploader cannot
> prove it is free, regardless of the merits of the allegation.
>


As someone with OTRS access I beg to differ



> The Foundation has said "do not delete images that *might* be unfree under
> URAA unless there is a takedown notice" yet the images continue to be
> deleted.
>


"or without such actual knowledge of infringement"

The reality is that the Resolution:Licensing_policy:

 http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy

Is still the standard we work to. The relevant section is "All projects are
expected to host only content which is under a Free Content License, or
which is otherwise free as recognized by the 'Definition of Free Cultural
Works' as referenced above."

Individual projects can file an Exemption Doctrine Policy to get around
that however commons is explicitly banned from doing so.



This is entirely irrelevant to the attitude at Commons. English Wikipedia
> is Free according to the definition it uses, which is essentally "Free for
> practical purposes as an Encyclopaedia" and that is applied reliably.



Nope. Probably the closest to an actual description of the English
wikipedia position would be "free in the US unless certain record and film
companies decide to become as lawsuit happy as they are commonly portrayed"
and even that isn't done consistently.




> In contrast, Commons is arbitrarily and inconsistently Free and appears to
> be prioritising point making over being a practical media repository. You
> are free to disagree about en.wp's choices, but this does not excuse the
> attitude of Commons to the Wikimedia community.
>


You are aware that most commons bods are active on other projects?


-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Chris McKenna]

On Sun, 2 Mar 2014, Mark wrote:


On 3/2/14, 5:31 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:
There seems to be a disconnect between what Commons sees as it's 
mission: To be a repository of Free media; and what other projects see 
as Commons' mission: To be a repository of media for use on Wikimedia 
projects.
But since the other Wikimedia projects should be producing free-content 
encyclopedias, this is no disconnect: Commons should host Free media, 
and the other projects should include Free media. Otherwise the other 
projects' content cannot be reused externally, and they are not 
free-content encyclopedias.


You've missed the point. Commons is not at present a reliable source of 
media, Free or otherwise, because media gets deleted because once someone 
alleges that it is not free it gets deleted if the original uploader 
cannot prove it is free, regardless of the merits of the allegation.


The Foundation has said "do not delete images that *might* be unfree 
under URAA unless there is a takedown notice" yet the images continue to 
be deleted.




There is a further disconnect in that Commons is taking an 
increasingly ultra-conservative approach to the definition of "Free", 
whereas most other projects are working to a definition of "Free for 
all practical purposes". It is the latter interpretation that the 
board, in consultation with the legal team, are recommending as the 
way forward but is being resisted strongly by many on Commons.
This is more the crux of the issue, I think. I'm mostly familiar with 
en.wiki, but on there the definition swings pretty far to the opposite 
extreme, with a lot of content that is *not* Free for most practical 
purposes. For example, a large number of our articles on 20th-century 
artists cannot be legally republished in their home countries, or even 
other English-speaking countries, without stripping the images, due to 
the author having died less than 70 years ago. As a result, the 
illustrated version of en.wiki is effectively Free only for *American* 
reusers specifically; someone in the UK or Spain cannot legally 
republish [[en:Pablo Picasso]].


This is entirely irrelevant to the attitude at Commons. English Wikipedia 
is Free according to the definition it uses, which is essentally "Free for 
practical purposes as an Encyclopaedia" and that is applied reliably. In 
contrast, Commons is arbitrarily and inconsistently Free and appears to be 
prioritising point making over being a practical media repository. You are 
free to disagree about en.wp's choices, but this does not excuse the 
attitude of Commons to the Wikimedia community.



Chris McKenna

cmcke...@sucs.org
www.sucs.org/~cmckenna


The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes,
but with the heart

Antoine de Saint Exupery


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 2 March 2014 16:56, Mark  wrote:
> On 3/2/14, 5:31 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:

>> There is a further disconnect in that Commons is taking an increasingly
>> ultra-conservative approach to the definition of "Free", whereas most other
>> projects are working to a definition of "Free for all practical purposes".
>> It is the latter interpretation that the board, in consultation with the
>> legal team, are recommending as the way forward but is being resisted
>> strongly by many on Commons.

> This is more the crux of the issue, I think. I'm mostly familiar with
> en.wiki, but on there the definition swings pretty far to the opposite
> extreme, with a lot of content that is *not* Free for most practical
> purposes.


This discussion is not even about en:wp or its content; you are
derailing the discussion.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Richard Symonds]

> One possible approach is certainly to choose a "representative" country
per language, and define freeness as only free in that country
specifically. So en.wiki's ambition is to be free only for Americans.
Perhaps es.wiki's goal will be to be free for Spaniards, and/or
Argentinians. de.wiki will be focused on freeness for Germans. etc. I think
that would be... suboptimal, though.

I agree that it would be suboptimal - most of the English speaking world
would be at a disadvantage then! You would also have to ask difficult
questions about Anglo Saxon, or Portuguese, where the language to country
link is not as clear.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Mark]

On 3/2/14, 5:31 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:
There seems to be a disconnect between what Commons sees as it's 
mission: To be a repository of Free media; and what other projects see 
as Commons' mission: To be a repository of media for use on Wikimedia 
projects.
But since the other Wikimedia projects should be producing free-content 
encyclopedias, this is no disconnect: Commons should host Free media, 
and the other projects should include Free media. Otherwise the other 
projects' content cannot be reused externally, and they are not 
free-content encyclopedias.


There is a further disconnect in that Commons is taking an 
increasingly ultra-conservative approach to the definition of "Free", 
whereas most other projects are working to a definition of "Free for 
all practical purposes". It is the latter interpretation that the 
board, in consultation with the legal team, are recommending as the 
way forward but is being resisted strongly by many on Commons.
This is more the crux of the issue, I think. I'm mostly familiar with 
en.wiki, but on there the definition swings pretty far to the opposite 
extreme, with a lot of content that is *not* Free for most practical 
purposes. For example, a large number of our articles on 20th-century 
artists cannot be legally republished in their home countries, or even 
other English-speaking countries, without stripping the images, due to 
the author having died less than 70 years ago. As a result, the 
illustrated version of en.wiki is effectively Free only for *American* 
reusers specifically; someone in the UK or Spain cannot legally 
republish [[en:Pablo Picasso]].


One possible approach is certainly to choose a "representative" country 
per language, and define freeness as only free in that country 
specifically. So en.wiki's ambition is to be free only for Americans. 
Perhaps es.wiki's goal will be to be free for Spaniards, and/or 
Argentinians. de.wiki will be focused on freeness for Germans. etc. I 
think that would be... suboptimal, though.


-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 2 March 2014 16:31, Chris McKenna  wrote:

> These days I wouldn't dare upload an image that was not either my own work
> or public doman due to life+100 because I couldn't guarantee that it wont be
> delted. Even with my own work I'm wary because of recent cases of amateur
> lawyering over the definition of "permanent" for the purposes of UK freedom
> of panorama.


Indeed. The extreme paranoia over images people created themselves
versus the ridiculously sloppy standards for anything on Flickr (a bot
can't meaningfully "verify" an image) makes Commons merely seem
capricious.

tl;dr Commons is behaving like damage that needs to be worked around.
If people who consider themselves part of the Commons community don't
like that being noted, they're the ones who need to consider changing;
their intransigence up to now is *why* Commons appears to behave like
damage.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Chris McKenna]

On Sun, 2 Mar 2014, geni wrote:


On 2 March 2014 08:55, David Gerard  wrote:


On 2 March 2014 02:01, Mark  wrote:

> I personally would welcome more attention to our actual mission,
producing
> free content, rather than the mission some of our members seem to be
engaged
> in, "making the *.wikipedia.org sites look nice in the short term, even
if
> nobody external can reuse the content".


There seems to be a disconnect between what Commons sees as it's mission: 
To be a repository of Free media; and what other projects see as Commons' 
mission: To be a repository of media for use on Wikimedia projects.


There is a further disconnect in that Commons is taking an increasingly 
ultra-conservative approach to the definition of "Free", whereas most 
other projects are working to a definition of "Free for all practical 
purposes". It is the latter interpretation that the board, in consultation 
with the legal team, are recommending as the way forward but is being 
resisted strongly by many on Commons.


These days I wouldn't dare upload an image that was not either my own 
work or public doman due to life+100 because I couldn't guarantee that it 
wont be delted. Even with my own work I'm wary because of recent cases of 
amateur lawyering over the definition of "permanent" for the purposes of 
UK freedom of panorama.



Chris McKenna

cmcke...@sucs.org
www.sucs.org/~cmckenna


The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes,
but with the heart

Antoine de Saint Exupery


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 2 March 2014 08:55, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 2 March 2014 02:01, Mark  wrote:
>
> > I personally would welcome more attention to our actual mission,
> producing
> > free content, rather than the mission some of our members seem to be
> engaged
> > in, "making the *.wikipedia.org sites look nice in the short term, even
> if
> > nobody external can reuse the content".
>
>
> You're seriously characterising the present dispute as this?



Its a pretty accurate description. What do you think the law says?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 2 March 2014 02:01, Mark  wrote:

> I personally would welcome more attention to our actual mission, producing
> free content, rather than the mission some of our members seem to be engaged
> in, "making the *.wikipedia.org sites look nice in the short term, even if
> nobody external can reuse the content".


You're seriously characterising the present dispute as this?


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Mark]

On 2/28/14, 1:43 PM, David Gerard wrote:

On 28 February 2014 08:27, Delirium  wrote:


But the other Wikimedia projects are *also* supposed to share that goal: of
producing a Free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia whose contents can be safely
reused and adapted by a wide range of other people and organizations, who
should be able to assume that it is legal to do so without exhaustive
case-by-case investigation. The movement's main job is not merely hosting
the websites *.wikipedia.org, putting up whatever we find useful to put up,
and taking down things when we get complaints or lawsuits.


You're justifying the observed, serious problems with current actions
by saying "but they should work in theory!"


I'm just disagreeing with the view that Common and the "rest of the 
projects" have some big gap in goals, and especially with the view that 
the "rest of the projects" are achieving the Movement's goals 
successfully in this respect, while Commons is not.


Given the large gray area that is copyright, it's inevitable that there 
will be a mess. But I think to the extent projects are "incorrectly" 
approaching the issue, the blame is quite distributed. For example, I 
would judge the English Wikipedia's current image policy a failure in 
practice: a failure in the too-permissive direction. The English 
encyclopedia, as it currently stands, is not really free content unless 
you strip the images. It cannot in practice be safely reused by 
organizations who are not Wikimedia, without extensive case-by-case 
analysis. This is because there is a large reliance on a bunch of narrow 
and brittle exceptions to copyright law, with images that are not either 
solidly public domain, or solidly CC-licensed. Examples: 1) works that 
are in copyright in almost the entire world, including their country of 
origin, *but* are out of copyright in the USA (only); 2) weak fair-use 
rationales that would be hard for a reuser to win a case on (especially 
a reuser that isn't a nonprofit educational charity like Wikimedia is); 
and 3) images with quite weak sourcing.


I personally would welcome more attention to our actual mission, 
producing free content, rather than the mission some of our members seem 
to be engaged in, "making the *.wikipedia.org sites look nice in the 
short term, even if nobody external can reuse the content". This doesn't 
mean Commons isn't erring too far in the other direction, of course. But 
I think it's a more complex issue than Commons diverging from the 
correct path.


-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 1 March 2014 23:59, ???  wrote:

> On 01/03/2014 23:06, geni wrote:
>
>> On 1 March 2014 19:58, ???  wrote:
>>
>>
>>> You have no guarantee that the account that the images were scraped from
>>> held the copyright in the first place, and as such you are unable to pass
>>> that guarantee on to any one else.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Want means its an objective not something we have actually archived yet.
>>
>>
> Then it is an objective that cannot be fulfilled unless you get written
> clarification from all the accounts that are being scraped on flickr and
> elsewhere, that the images contained within the accounts were taken by the
> account holder.
>


There are various approaches. Personally I'd like to see the software
modified so images can be tagged by level of certainty with regards to
their copyright status.



> Many flickr accounts collect images found on the web. Many of them upload
> those images under a CC license, because "images on the web are all public
> domain".
>


Those are usually fairly obvious and can be avoided for the most part.


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[???]

On 01/03/2014 23:06, geni wrote:

On 1 March 2014 19:58, ???  wrote:



You have no guarantee that the account that the images were scraped from
held the copyright in the first place, and as such you are unable to pass
that guarantee on to any one else.




Want means its an objective not something we have actually archived yet.



Then it is an objective that cannot be fulfilled unless you get written 
clarification from all the accounts that are being scraped on flickr and 
elsewhere, that the images contained within the accounts were taken by 
the account holder.


Many flickr accounts collect images found on the web. Many of them 
upload those images under a CC license, because "images on the web are 
all public domain".




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 1 March 2014 19:58, ???  wrote:

> On 28/02/2014 01:23, geni wrote:
>
>>
>> We could do that but it pretty much removes commons only advantage over
>> say
>> imgur or flickr. We want the images on commons to be free. Not simply
>> stuff
>> no one has got around to complaining about yet,
>>
>>
> You are deluding yourself and reusers if you believe and promote that
> nonsense. On Commons you have people uploading works from flickr, and other
> sites, where the account that is being scraped is anonymous. In many cases
> after the images have been uploaded the original account is deleted.
>
> You have no guarantee that the account that the images were scraped from
> held the copyright in the first place, and as such you are unable to pass
> that guarantee on to any one else.
>


Want means its an objective not something we have actually archived yet.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[???]

On 28/02/2014 01:23, geni wrote:


We could do that but it pretty much removes commons only advantage over say
imgur or flickr. We want the images on commons to be free. Not simply stuff
no one has got around to complaining about yet,



You are deluding yourself and reusers if you believe and promote that 
nonsense. On Commons you have people uploading works from flickr, and 
other sites, where the account that is being scraped is anonymous. In 
many cases after the images have been uploaded the original account is 
deleted.


You have no guarantee that the account that the images were scraped from 
held the copyright in the first place, and as such you are unable to 
pass that guarantee on to any one else.


What are you going to do should Joe Photog come along and say that image 
is mine, here is the original, and your use is a copyright violation. 
can you show that the flickr account in the name of "Freddie Bignose" is 
that of Joe Photog? If you can't then every one that has reused the 
image is screwed. You have no traceability.




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 28 February 2014 12:43, David Gerard  wrote:

>
> You're justifying the observed, serious problems with current actions
> by saying "but they should work in theory!"
>
>
No. Its more that they are features rather than problems.

There have always been images hosted locally that commons won't touch. The
English Wikipedia fair use stuff is probably the best known but the polish
wikinews also has an Exemption Doctrine Policy. Other projects are free to
file them per Resolution:Licensing policy. Of course it could be
interesting to watch them try and argue that such images are PD under US
law but that at the end of the day between them and the foundation.

Commons provides the base-load of free images. If projects want to use
unfree images then they need to do that locally taking their language norms
into account.


The trouble is that
>
> (a) there's no natural limit of caution - we could question every
> single file on Commons and require OTRS for every single one *years*
> after the fact (as is happening with many of the files the current
> issue is about) - but we don't. Why is that?
>

Because we have no particular reason to believe they violate US copyright
law.



> (b) the Commons community has already gone way past the limits *the
> WMF has explicitly said are fully OK*.
>
>
The WMF have said no such thing.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 28 February 2014 16:05, geni  wrote:
> On 28 February 2014 08:18, David Gerard  wrote:

>> This supports what I noted: Commons increasingly just can't be relied
>> upon as a repository for the other Wikimedia projects.

> Given the general failure of such projects to file exemption doctrine
> policies they wouldn't be able to host the content either per the
> Resolution:Licensing policy they wouldn't be able to host the images either.



This would be why we're having a serious discussion here. Well done.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 28 February 2014 08:18, David Gerard  wrote:

>
>
> This supports what I noted: Commons increasingly just can't be relied
> upon as a repository for the other Wikimedia projects.
>


Given the general failure of such projects to file exemption doctrine
policies they wouldn't be able to host the content either per the
Resolution:Licensing policy they wouldn't be able to host the images either.


-- 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 28 February 2014 08:27, Delirium  wrote:

> But the other Wikimedia projects are *also* supposed to share that goal: of
> producing a Free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia whose contents can be safely
> reused and adapted by a wide range of other people and organizations, who
> should be able to assume that it is legal to do so without exhaustive
> case-by-case investigation. The movement's main job is not merely hosting
> the websites *.wikipedia.org, putting up whatever we find useful to put up,
> and taking down things when we get complaints or lawsuits.


You're justifying the observed, serious problems with current actions
by saying "but they should work in theory!"

The trouble is that

(a) there's no natural limit of caution - we could question every
single file on Commons and require OTRS for every single one *years*
after the fact (as is happening with many of the files the current
issue is about) - but we don't. Why is that?
(b) the Commons community has already gone way past the limits *the
WMF has explicitly said are fully OK*.

I can't speak to the claims of selective zealotry in caution, but the
effects are clear enough.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Samuel Klein]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 7:02 AM, Jane Darnell  wrote:
> This would be the more concise open letter that I think all projects could 
> support, no?

Yes, this would be helpful.  It's in everyone's interest for the US to
adopt the rule of the shorter term.   And the current Register of
Copyrights is smart and interested in constructive discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Pallante


> On Feb 28, 2014, at 10:08 AM, Yann Forget  wrote:
>>
>>> Now if someone could get the US to follow the law of the shorter term that
>>> would simplify things somewhat.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Jane Darnell]

This would be the more concise open letter that I think all projects could 
support, no?

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 28, 2014, at 10:08 AM, Yann Forget  wrote:

> 2014-02-28 7:00 GMT+05:30 geni :
> 
>> 
>> Now if someone could get the US to follow the law of the shorter term that
>> would simplify things somewhat.
>> 
> 
> Yes, that's won't come any time soon.
> 
> --
>> geni
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Yann
> A Commons admin.
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> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Yann Forget]

2014-02-28 7:00 GMT+05:30 geni :

> On 27 February 2014 22:56, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> > This is the essential point of the problem:
> >
> > * Commons has a long-running attitude of absolute copyright paranoia,
> > so that no reuser will ever be put in legal danger. This is extremely
> > unlikely to change, and particularly not with what the Commons
> > community perceive as outside intruders (rather than e.g. its main
> > users) coming in to question it.
> >
>
> Not true. If anything commons copyright policy tends towards the legally
>
(...)

Yes, that is sadly true. David hit the nail on the head very well.


> aggressive. A lot of that involves finding and exploiting loopholes.
> However the other side of that involves obeying copyright law to the
> letter. Its far easier to defend the edge cases if we have a solid record
> of respecting the law as it stands at this present time.
>
> Now if someone could get the US to follow the law of the shorter term that
> would simplify things somewhat.
>

Yes, that's won't come any time soon.

--
> geni


Regards,

Yann
A Commons admin.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Delirium]

On 2/28/14, 9:18 AM, David Gerard wrote:

On 28 February 2014 01:23, geni  wrote:

On 27 February 2014 22:03, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent
implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until
there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which to
our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can
mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.

We could do that but it pretty much removes commons only advantage over say
imgur or flickr. We want the images on commons to be free. Not simply stuff
no one has got around to complaining about yet,


This supports what I noted: Commons increasingly just can't be relied
upon as a repository for the other Wikimedia projects.

This implies no bad faith or bad actions on the part of the Commons
community. (But that that's a distinct thing from the Wikimedia
community is a lot of the problem.) Nor that what Commons *is* is
inherently problematic; but what it is is less and less useful inside
Wikimedia.


But the other Wikimedia projects are *also* supposed to share that goal: 
of producing a Free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia whose contents can be 
safely reused and adapted by a wide range of other people and 
organizations, who should be able to assume that it is legal to do so 
without exhaustive case-by-case investigation. The movement's main job 
is not merely hosting the websites *.wikipedia.org, putting up whatever 
we find useful to put up, and taking down things when we get complaints 
or lawsuits.


What level of scrutiny we want to apply is indeed a judgment call, so 
and I don't know if the current URAA policy falls on the right or wrong 
side of that (I haven't investigated it). But I don't think the 
fundamental goals are different. And if they are, it's the other 
projects that are in the wrong: *not* having a free, reusable body of 
content as the project goal is fundamentally incompatible with the 
Wikimedia Movement. We want the content on all Wikimedia wikis to be 
free-as-in-freedom and reusable by anyone. That's the point.


-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 28 February 2014 01:23, geni  wrote:
> On 27 February 2014 22:03, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

>> And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent
>> implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until
>> there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which to
>> our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can
>> mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.

> We could do that but it pretty much removes commons only advantage over say
> imgur or flickr. We want the images on commons to be free. Not simply stuff
> no one has got around to complaining about yet,


This supports what I noted: Commons increasingly just can't be relied
upon as a repository for the other Wikimedia projects.

This implies no bad faith or bad actions on the part of the Commons
community. (But that that's a distinct thing from the Wikimedia
community is a lot of the problem.) Nor that what Commons *is* is
inherently problematic; but what it is is less and less useful inside
Wikimedia.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 27 February 2014 22:56, David Gerard  wrote:

> This is the essential point of the problem:
>
> * Commons has a long-running attitude of absolute copyright paranoia,
> so that no reuser will ever be put in legal danger. This is extremely
> unlikely to change, and particularly not with what the Commons
> community perceive as outside intruders (rather than e.g. its main
> users) coming in to question it.
>

Not true. If anything commons copyright policy tends towards the legally
aggressive. A lot of that involves finding and exploiting loopholes.
However the other side of that involves obeying copyright law to the
letter. Its far easier to defend the edge cases if we have a solid record
of respecting the law as it stands at this present time.

Now if someone could get the US to follow the law of the shorter term that
would simplify things somewhat.


-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 27 February 2014 22:03, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

> We remain convinced that something is fundamentally wrong when its
> practical result is self-inflicting the highest possible loss of contents.
>


No that would come from accepting the sweat of the brow doctrine.


> And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent
> implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until
> there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which to
> our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can
> mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.
>

We could do that but it pretty much removes commons only advantage over say
imgur or flickr. We want the images on commons to be free. Not simply stuff
no one has got around to complaining about yet,




-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Nathan]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 5:56 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 27 February 2014 22:03, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:
>
> > We remain convinced that something is fundamentally wrong when its
> > practical result is self-inflicting the highest possible loss of
> contents.
> > And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent
> > implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until
> > there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which
> to
> > our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can
> > mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.
>
>
> This is the essential point of the problem:
>
> * Commons has a long-running attitude of absolute copyright paranoia,
> so that no reuser will ever be put in legal danger. This is extremely
> unlikely to change, and particularly not with what the Commons
> community perceive as outside intruders (rather than e.g. its main
> users) coming in to question it.
> * Commons policy is, here, being directly damaging to the projects who
> are its main users.
>
> At this point, Commons policy constitutes damage and needs to be worked
> around.
>
> Note that this implies no bad faith or bad actions on the part of
> Commons admins; just that Commons' aims are increasingly incompatible
> with the rest of the movement.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
I was going to just repeat the point that any community that wants a more
liberal interpretation of the rules can host its own images, but then I
thought through the implications of that... Sure, the individual projects
would have more liberty than they do relying on Commons, but if each
community hives off its uploading then the meta community no longer
benefits from that work.

Which led to the thought that hey, what we really need is a meta-project
for hosting images that is *explicitly* intended to serve the other
projects. We tried this before, right? But maybe this time we make the
meta-project a technical implementation without its own community, where
local uploads can be toggled to make files globally available without
giving some global intermediary the right to turn that toggle off.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 27 February 2014 22:03, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

> We remain convinced that something is fundamentally wrong when its
> practical result is self-inflicting the highest possible loss of contents.
> And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent
> implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until
> there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which to
> our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can
> mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.


This is the essential point of the problem:

* Commons has a long-running attitude of absolute copyright paranoia,
so that no reuser will ever be put in legal danger. This is extremely
unlikely to change, and particularly not with what the Commons
community perceive as outside intruders (rather than e.g. its main
users) coming in to question it.
* Commons policy is, here, being directly damaging to the projects who
are its main users.

At this point, Commons policy constitutes damage and needs to be worked around.

Note that this implies no bad faith or bad actions on the part of
Commons admins; just that Commons' aims are increasingly incompatible
with the rest of the movement.


- d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Galileo Vidoni]

Not to mention demanding excuses and delivering such high expressions of
politesse as this one:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AWikimedia_Argentina%2FOpen_letter_regarding_URAA&diff=7665183&oldid=7665158

I'll repeat it here for the record: I'm sorry and I offer our apologies if
any Commons admin felt offended or personally touched by our words. We keep
them, though, because the situation that motivated us to make our voice
heard in that terms has not changed. It is always hard to find the exact
tone in a multilingual community as ours, even including cultural
disagreements about the nature of open letters as Cristian has noted. Our
language was intended to be hard, not rude, and I apologize if anyone
considers we crossed that line.

We remain convinced that something is fundamentally wrong when its
practical result is self-inflicting the highest possible loss of contents.
And we remain convinced that there is space for a way more prudent
implementation of URAA that prevents deleting educational resources until
there is complete copyright information and no legal alternative, which to
our understanding (and to our interpretation of WMF's communications) can
mean waiting for DMCA takedown notices.

Best,

Galileo


On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Carlos M. Colina wrote:

> And what about the [apparently lack of] self-criticism of some Commons
> sysops/admins?
>
> I think being able to accept criticism and moreover being able to say
> "hey, somebody is questioning what we do. Why would that be?" instead of
> plainly rejecting any questioning, is one essential part of civility..
>
> M
>
> El 27/02/2014 09:19 p.m., Pierre-Selim escribió:
>
>  Still no explanation (nor appologies) on usage of inappropriate wording
>> towards volunteer by the board of Wikimedia Argentina.
>>
>> It quite amazing when almost all projects have policies on civility ...
>>
>>
>> 2014-02-27 0:24 GMT+01:00 geni :
>>
>>  On 26 February 2014 22:39, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:
>>>
>>>  [Sorry for this excurse]

 Dear Geni, the 20 years indeed come from article 24 of law 11 723. The
 25
 years come from the Berne Convention.

>>>
>>> But that merely established a minimum under international law. Unless you
>>> have some case law that says otherwise I'd suggest that article 6 applies
>>> to unpublished photographs which results in an effective term of life+10
>>> for unpublished photographs (although life+30 could be gained through
>>> careful timing of publication).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  In any case, Argentine copyright law
 is already known and documented in Commons, and we have been using a
 specific template (PD-AR-Photo) for years.

>>>
>>> See the last section of the template talk page which covers some of the
>>> issues the template has with US law. I'm afraid years of use doesn't mean
>>> that it has been reviewed by common's more serious copyright nerds.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> geni
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>>
>>
> --
> "*Jülüjain wane mmakat* ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua
> junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain."
> Carlos Manuel Colina
> Vicepresidente
> A.C. Wikimedia Venezuela
> RIF J-40129321-2
> +972-52-4869915
> www.wikimedia.org.ve
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Carlos M. Colina]

And what about the [apparently lack of] self-criticism of some Commons 
sysops/admins?


I think being able to accept criticism and moreover being able to say 
"hey, somebody is questioning what we do. Why would that be?" instead of 
plainly rejecting any questioning, is one essential part of civility..


M

El 27/02/2014 09:19 p.m., Pierre-Selim escribió:

Still no explanation (nor appologies) on usage of inappropriate wording
towards volunteer by the board of Wikimedia Argentina.

It quite amazing when almost all projects have policies on civility ...


2014-02-27 0:24 GMT+01:00 geni :


On 26 February 2014 22:39, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:


[Sorry for this excurse]

Dear Geni, the 20 years indeed come from article 24 of law 11 723. The 25
years come from the Berne Convention.


But that merely established a minimum under international law. Unless you
have some case law that says otherwise I'd suggest that article 6 applies
to unpublished photographs which results in an effective term of life+10
for unpublished photographs (although life+30 could be gained through
careful timing of publication).




In any case, Argentine copyright law
is already known and documented in Commons, and we have been using a
specific template (PD-AR-Photo) for years.


See the last section of the template talk page which covers some of the
issues the template has with US law. I'm afraid years of use doesn't mean
that it has been reviewed by common's more serious copyright nerds.



--
geni
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"*Jülüjain wane mmakat* ein kapülain tü alijunakalirua jee wayuukanairua 
junain ekerolaa alümüin supüshuwayale etijaanaka. Ayatashi waya junain."

Carlos Manuel Colina
Vicepresidente
A.C. Wikimedia Venezuela
RIF J-40129321-2
+972-52-4869915
www.wikimedia.org.ve
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Avenue]

To be fair, Galio has apologised multiple times (not for the wording, but
"if you feel offended") on the letter's meta talk
page.
There is much discussion there of what was really meant, and the problems
with the letter's wording.

I think WM Argentina has a legitimate point to make about the wasted work
of its members, so it's a shame that it was expressed in such a way.


On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:19 AM, Pierre-Selim wrote:

> Still no explanation (nor appologies) on usage of inappropriate wording
> towards volunteer by the board of Wikimedia Argentina.
>
> It quite amazing when almost all projects have policies on civility ...
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Pierre-Selim]

Still no explanation (nor appologies) on usage of inappropriate wording
towards volunteer by the board of Wikimedia Argentina.

It quite amazing when almost all projects have policies on civility ...


2014-02-27 0:24 GMT+01:00 geni :

> On 26 February 2014 22:39, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:
>
> > [Sorry for this excurse]
> >
> > Dear Geni, the 20 years indeed come from article 24 of law 11 723. The 25
> > years come from the Berne Convention.
>
>
> But that merely established a minimum under international law. Unless you
> have some case law that says otherwise I'd suggest that article 6 applies
> to unpublished photographs which results in an effective term of life+10
> for unpublished photographs (although life+30 could be gained through
> careful timing of publication).
>
>
>
> > In any case, Argentine copyright law
> > is already known and documented in Commons, and we have been using a
> > specific template (PD-AR-Photo) for years.
>
>
> See the last section of the template talk page which covers some of the
> issues the template has with US law. I'm afraid years of use doesn't mean
> that it has been reviewed by common's more serious copyright nerds.
>
>
>
> --
> geni
> ___
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> 
>



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 26 February 2014 22:39, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

> [Sorry for this excurse]
>
> Dear Geni, the 20 years indeed come from article 24 of law 11 723. The 25
> years come from the Berne Convention.


But that merely established a minimum under international law. Unless you
have some case law that says otherwise I'd suggest that article 6 applies
to unpublished photographs which results in an effective term of life+10
for unpublished photographs (although life+30 could be gained through
careful timing of publication).



> In any case, Argentine copyright law
> is already known and documented in Commons, and we have been using a
> specific template (PD-AR-Photo) for years.


See the last section of the template talk page which covers some of the
issues the template has with US law. I'm afraid years of use doesn't mean
that it has been reviewed by common's more serious copyright nerds.



-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Galileo Vidoni]

[Sorry for this excurse]

Dear Geni, the 20 years indeed come from article 24 of law 11 723. The 25
years come from the Berne Convention. In any case, Argentine copyright law
is already known and documented in Commons, and we have been using a
specific template (PD-AR-Photo) for years. Regarding article 31,
personality rights do not apply to public activities; what the law is
protecting are private portraits in particular: "Publication of portraits
is free when related with scientific, didactical and in general cultural
goals, or with facts or events in the public interest or that have
developed in public".

Best,

Galileo


On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 6:51 PM, geni  wrote:

> On 24 February 2014 20:51, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:
>
> > Dear movement fellows,
> >
> > Wikimedia Argentina would like to express its support for the letter by
> > Wikimedia Israel regarding URAA-motivated massive content deletions in
> > Wikimedia Commons. Yet, we would like to express our view not only to the
> > Foundation BoT but also to all Wikimedia editors, and especially to those
> > working in Wikimedia Commons.
> >
> > Volunteers from Argentina have been among the most affected by the policy
> > adopted by Wikimedia Commons administrators regarding images that could
> > fall under URAA copyright provisions. Argentine copyright law provides
> that
> > images enter the public domain "only" 25 years after their production and
> > 20 after their first documented publication.
>
>
> You really should cite the relevant law if you want commons to pay
> attention to you.
>
> Okey I get that the 20 years come from Article 34 but I'm not sure where
> the 25 years comes from.
>
>
>
> > This relatively generous
> > criterion has enabled unaffiliated volunteers and we as Wikimedia
> Argentina
> > to enrich Commons with hundreds of thousands of historical images that
> are
> > absolutely free under Argentine law: images of the political and every
> day
> > life of the country, of its culture, of its popular idols, of its joyful
> > and dark days, of its customs and architecture.
> >
>
>
> Absolutely free? Not so. Due to Article 31 pretty much any photo that shows
> a person who hasn't been dead for 20 years isn't free (this is a side
> effect of Argentina going for a rather extreme form of personality rights)
>
>
> I'd also advise you against hosting locally. Under Article 72 bis (d)
> copyright violations can carry a prison sentence.
>
>
> --
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[geni]

On 24 February 2014 20:51, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

> Dear movement fellows,
>
> Wikimedia Argentina would like to express its support for the letter by
> Wikimedia Israel regarding URAA-motivated massive content deletions in
> Wikimedia Commons. Yet, we would like to express our view not only to the
> Foundation BoT but also to all Wikimedia editors, and especially to those
> working in Wikimedia Commons.
>
> Volunteers from Argentina have been among the most affected by the policy
> adopted by Wikimedia Commons administrators regarding images that could
> fall under URAA copyright provisions. Argentine copyright law provides that
> images enter the public domain "only" 25 years after their production and
> 20 after their first documented publication.


You really should cite the relevant law if you want commons to pay
attention to you.

Okey I get that the 20 years come from Article 34 but I'm not sure where
the 25 years comes from.



> This relatively generous
> criterion has enabled unaffiliated volunteers and we as Wikimedia Argentina
> to enrich Commons with hundreds of thousands of historical images that are
> absolutely free under Argentine law: images of the political and every day
> life of the country, of its culture, of its popular idols, of its joyful
> and dark days, of its customs and architecture.
>


Absolutely free? Not so. Due to Article 31 pretty much any photo that shows
a person who hasn't been dead for 20 years isn't free (this is a side
effect of Argentina going for a rather extreme form of personality rights)


I'd also advise you against hosting locally. Under Article 72 bis (d)
copyright violations can carry a prison sentence.


-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Galileo Vidoni]

Thanks for your replies. We'll surely take the French precedent into
account if Commons' admins fail to reconsider the current policies and we
propose hosting images on the Spanish Wikipedia. By the way, I forgot to
mention that we've also published this letter on Meta and that there's also
an ongoing discussion there:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Argentina/Open_letter_regarding_URAA

Best,

Galileo


On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:42 PM, Yann Forget  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> 2014-02-26 16:01 GMT+05:30 David Gerard :
>
> > On 24 February 2014 20:51, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:
> >
> > > However, over the last months certain Wikimedia Commons administrators
> > have
> > > conducted massive deletions of these contents, in many cases involving
> > > entire categories. The burden of proof has been inverted: instead of
> > having
> > > to justify the deletion of a certain file, things go that volunteers
> have
> > > to devout their time trying to justify the validity of their efforts.
> > This
> > > has caused great damage, not only by way of our readers loosing access
> to
> > > free educational contents, but also de-motivating many editors and
> > > volunteers by making them feel that their efforts are ultimately vain
> and
> > > that our goal of free knowledge for everyone is being replaced by a
> > certain
> > > legal fetishism whose reason gets lost in processes and misses the
> > outcome.
> >
> > This strongly suggests that URAA is a good reason to deprecate
> > Commons, and have language wikis self-host images that fail the more
> > unduly stringent requirements Commons is manifesting these days.
> >
>
> If only some Commons admins were not pursuing a political campaign to
> delete all these under false pretences, everything would be much better.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Yann Forget]

Hi,

2014-02-26 16:01 GMT+05:30 David Gerard :

> On 24 February 2014 20:51, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:
>
> > However, over the last months certain Wikimedia Commons administrators
> have
> > conducted massive deletions of these contents, in many cases involving
> > entire categories. The burden of proof has been inverted: instead of
> having
> > to justify the deletion of a certain file, things go that volunteers have
> > to devout their time trying to justify the validity of their efforts.
> This
> > has caused great damage, not only by way of our readers loosing access to
> > free educational contents, but also de-motivating many editors and
> > volunteers by making them feel that their efforts are ultimately vain and
> > that our goal of free knowledge for everyone is being replaced by a
> certain
> > legal fetishism whose reason gets lost in processes and misses the
> outcome.
>
> This strongly suggests that URAA is a good reason to deprecate
> Commons, and have language wikis self-host images that fail the more
> unduly stringent requirements Commons is manifesting these days.
>

If only some Commons admins were not pursuing a political campaign to
delete all these under false pretences, everything would be much better.

Regards,

Yann
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Lionel Allorge]

Hi,

...
> Many years ago, the editors of the Spanish Wikipedia decided to close the
> possibility to directly host images, choosing instead to use Wikimedia
> Commons. If we miss the opportunity to find a workaround that saves
> hundreds of thousands of images from an unrequested deletion that hurts our
> very mission, Wikipedia editors could ultimately evaluate reversing that
> decision, reopening "project-hosted" uploads just to avoid the restrictive
> and exclusionary URAA interpretation that Wikimedia Commons has been
> sustaining against the Foundation's political and legal advice. That would
> be far from being an optimal outcome.

The french version of Wikipedia  is already doing 
that by keeping pictures of recent buildings that got erased from Commons. So 
I think you should do exactly the same and keep all those documents in your 
local Wikipedia until they become Free enough for Commons.

If you can read french, the decision is here :
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Prise_de_d%C3%A9cision/Remise_en_cause_de_l%27exception_au_droit_d%27auteur_sur_les_b%C3%A2timents_r%C3%A9cents

Best regards.

-- 
Lionel Allorge
April : http://www.april.org
Lune Rouge : http://www.lunerouge.org
Wikimedia France : http://wikimedia.fr


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[David Gerard]

On 24 February 2014 20:51, Galileo Vidoni  wrote:

> However, over the last months certain Wikimedia Commons administrators have
> conducted massive deletions of these contents, in many cases involving
> entire categories. The burden of proof has been inverted: instead of having
> to justify the deletion of a certain file, things go that volunteers have
> to devout their time trying to justify the validity of their efforts. This
> has caused great damage, not only by way of our readers loosing access to
> free educational contents, but also de-motivating many editors and
> volunteers by making them feel that their efforts are ultimately vain and
> that our goal of free knowledge for everyone is being replaced by a certain
> legal fetishism whose reason gets lost in processes and misses the outcome.


This strongly suggests that URAA is a good reason to deprecate
Commons, and have language wikis self-host images that fail the more
unduly stringent requirements Commons is manifesting these days.


- d.

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[Wikimedia-l] Open letter from Wikimedia Argentina regarding URAA

[Galileo Vidoni]

Dear movement fellows,

Wikimedia Argentina would like to express its support for the letter by
Wikimedia Israel regarding URAA-motivated massive content deletions in
Wikimedia Commons. Yet, we would like to express our view not only to the
Foundation BoT but also to all Wikimedia editors, and especially to those
working in Wikimedia Commons.

Volunteers from Argentina have been among the most affected by the policy
adopted by Wikimedia Commons administrators regarding images that could
fall under URAA copyright provisions. Argentine copyright law provides that
images enter the public domain "only" 25 years after their production and
20 after their first documented publication. This relatively generous
criterion has enabled unaffiliated volunteers and we as Wikimedia Argentina
to enrich Commons with hundreds of thousands of historical images that are
absolutely free under Argentine law: images of the political and every day
life of the country, of its culture, of its popular idols, of its joyful
and dark days, of its customs and architecture.

However, over the last months certain Wikimedia Commons administrators have
conducted massive deletions of these contents, in many cases involving
entire categories. The burden of proof has been inverted: instead of having
to justify the deletion of a certain file, things go that volunteers have
to devout their time trying to justify the validity of their efforts. This
has caused great damage, not only by way of our readers loosing access to
free educational contents, but also de-motivating many editors and
volunteers by making them feel that their efforts are ultimately vain and
that our goal of free knowledge for everyone is being replaced by a certain
legal fetishism whose reason gets lost in processes and misses the outcome.

We acknowledge that the Wikimedia Foundation BoT and its Legal team have
repeatedly stated, as has been reinforced in recent communications, that
images shouldn't be deleted unless we receive a takedown notice, and that
it has not received a single URAA-motivated notice to date. Certain
Wikimedia Commons administrators have dismissed the Foundation's statement
as a mere opinion vis-à-vis the SCOTUS ruling. Yet, it is an opinion by the
organization that is legally responsible for the contents being hosted in
Wikimedia Commons.

We respectfully call the Wikimedia Commons community to reflect on the
practical consequences of its current policy on URAA's implementation.
Those files generating potential conflict could be even identified as such
without the need for a pre-emptive deletion. And we would like the Commons
community to reflect not only on the preventive loss of free contents we
are generating, but also on the harmful disconnection between Wikimedia
Commons and all of the other Wikimedia projects it serves as media
repository, mostly Wikipedia.

Many years ago, the editors of the Spanish Wikipedia decided to close the
possibility to directly host images, choosing instead to use Wikimedia
Commons. If we miss the opportunity to find a workaround that saves
hundreds of thousands of images from an unrequested deletion that hurts our
very mission, Wikipedia editors could ultimately evaluate reversing that
decision, reopening "project-hosted" uploads just to avoid the restrictive
and exclusionary URAA interpretation that Wikimedia Commons has been
sustaining against the Foundation's political and legal advice. That would
be far from being an optimal outcome.

We are sure that we as the broader community of Wikimedia volunteers can
find a common ground that permits to adapt to all legal conditions and
challenges while putting in the first place the fulfillment of our goal
towards free knowledge.

Approved by the Board of Wikimedia Argentina on February 22, 2014
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