I do not understand the relevance of this reply to my comments. ~~~~
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Fæ Sent: 18 June 2014 10:20 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons On 18/06/2014, Peter Southwood <peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote: > This is a strong argument for locating Uncommons outside the USA. > Somewhere where the copyright laws allow the widest range of images to > be kept. Images can be tagged for where they are free and where they are not > free. I have now uploaded nearly 400,000 public domain and other freely released images to Wikimedia Commons. Every week there are times I break into a sweat wondering if one of the many institutions I have taken the original images from, will attempt to prosecute me personally under 'sweat of the brow', conflicting international law, database rights, misuse of a website under a tacit contract, etc. Even though I am careful to ensure I have made "reasonable efforts" to ascertain that the images are free to reuse, mistakes happen and I am subject to UK law, along with the long reach of US law and the Wikimedia Foundation has made it clear that there is no guarantee that any legal costs as a direct result of my volunteer work would be covered by them. Deliberately setting out to avoid copyright law and uploading material to an aggregating website that you know for certain is "non-free" and supplying it so that others may avoid copyright, is a far riskier thing to do. If a civil action against a volunteer were taken, I doubt there could be a defence in court based on "good faith" or "reasonable effort". I note that a WMF trustee has made a supportive comment in this thread, however before Wikimedia starts officially encouraging and promoting sharing non-free media using donated charitable funds intended for free works, any "uncommons" proposal should be carefully advised on by lawyers. At an individual level, I would recommend that volunteers protect themselves with anonymity using technical means to ensure their contributions were untraceable, so that only the website host could ever be prosecuted in relevant jurisdictions. Note that just because your server is in Peru, does not mean that works protected under US or EU law may not be vigorously defended in local courts. Legally, this may well be treated as an internet piracy website, they tend to not end well. Commons has 21,500,000 files, the unnecessary drama created (literally) by a couple of admins who should be able to talk to each other rather than wheel-warring, and then forum shopping, over some works suffering under the consequences of the rather daft URAA, represent a pin-drop in that ocean of freely reusable media. This does not make Commons "tragic", indeed it feels like a mellow place 99% of the time as nobody really notices the committed content contributors. Links * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Staying_mellow * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WW#Wheel_war Fae -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3972/7697 - Release Date: 06/18/14 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
