:::::: Hi [[User:Tuvalkin|Tuválkin]], this [https://web.archive.org/web/20060117054434/http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/f/fic-hmt1.gif link] proves that volde is evil. Volde, What you have to say about this link ?? The date is January 17 2006. [[User:Bencemac|Bencemac]] this case is closed per [https://web.archive.org/web/20060117054434/http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/f/fic-hmt1.gif this] link, we don't need to wait for volde's OTRS. Regards, -- [[User:Eatcha|Eatcha]] ([[User talk:Eatcha|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 15:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
:::::: Hi [[User:Tuvalkin|Tuválkin]], this [https://web.archive.org/web/20060117054434/http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/f/fic-hmt1.gif link] proves that volde is evil. Volde, What you have to say about this link ?? The date is January 17 2006. [[User:Bencemac|Bencemac]] this case is closed per [https://web.archive.org/web/20060117054434/http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/f/fic-hmt1.gif this] link, we don't need to wait for volde's OTRS. Regards, -- [[User:Eatcha|Eatcha]] ([[User talk:Eatcha|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 15:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
::::::* Thanks for that link, {{u|Eatcha}}. I do have the original image in my e-mail inbox since 2004, along with Marc Pasquin’s message about it to the FotW-ml and the discussion that followed prior to it being edited into the FotW-ws. Valdemort is just insisting because he thinks this is all so fun, risking wasted OTRS volonteer time: Classic trolling. -- [[User:Tuvalkin|Tuválkin]] [[User talk:Tuvalkin|✉]] [[Special:Contributions/Tuvalkin|✇]] 17:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
::::::* Thanks for that link, {{u|Eatcha}}. I do have the original image in my e-mail inbox since 2004, along with Marc Pasquin’s message about it to the FotW-ml and the discussion that followed prior to it being edited into the FotW-ws. Valdemort is just insisting because he thinks this is all so fun, risking wasted OTRS volonteer time: Classic trolling. -- [[User:Tuvalkin|Tuválkin]] [[User talk:Tuvalkin|✉]] [[Special:Contributions/Tuvalkin|✇]] 17:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
:::::::*{{u|Tuvalkin}} I sent my OTRS email, also complained about your lies and your hacker friend Eatcha who somehow created that fake link to help you. I will contact WMF against both of you, will file DMCA if you don't stop lying! -- [[User:Voldemort|Voldemort]] ([[User talk:Voldemort|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 13:21, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
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URAA revisited in 2019
In the context of restoring files newly in the PD at the beginning of this year, there was some discussion about the restoration of files now in the public domain in their country of origin (like the Netherlands, Germany or other countries with a protection term of 70 years after the creator's death), but still protected in the USA for several (up to 25) more years because of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA).
Some were in favor of restoring them, others (me among them) for waiting with the restoration until the files are free in the USA as well, as it is still Commons policy to only host files that are free both in their country of origin and the USA (Commons:URAA-restored copyrights: "If the end result of copyright evaluation is that there is significant doubt about the freedom of a file under US or local law, the file must be deleted in line with the precautionary principle.")
Timeline
A timeline:
URAA timeline
2012-01-18: The US Supreme Court upholds the URAA in Golan v. Holder.
2012-02-14: The Wikimedia Foundation issues a statement in that DR which basically says it is better to proceed on a case to case basis instead of mass deleting all files with the tag.
2012-02-19: The DR is closed (without deleting any files yet) in favor of a case by case analysis.
2012-03-12: Commons:WikiProject Public Domain/URAA review is started to go through the files tagged with Template:Not-PD-US-URAA, evaluate them and delete them if they are indeed affected by the URAA.
2013-01-13: {{Not-PD-US-URAA}} is changed to say "Images whose copyright was restored in the U.S. by the URAA are no longer accepted at Wikimedia Commons. New files should not be uploaded with this tag, or they will be deleted."
2013-02-06: The WMF issues m:Legal/URAA Statement saying "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work using the guidelines issued by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department, as well as the language of the statute itself, and remove works that are clearly infringing."
2014-01-24: Wikimedia Israel writes a letter to the WMF asking them to make it possible to host URAA affected files on Commons. Other chapters (Spain, Argentina, Venezuela) follow suit.
2014-02-20: The WMF reply saying "We are not recommending that community members undertake mass deletion of existing content on URAA grounds, without such actual knowledge of infringement or takedown notices."
2014-04-09: Commons:Review of Precautionary principle is started, trying to reconcile the precautionary principle with "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion."
2014-06-21: Commons:Review of Precautionary principle is closed by a bureaucrat without any change to the precautionary principle: "[...] it is my understanding that at this time there is no community agreement to host files affected by the URAA."
Current situation
I hope I've included all relevant events in the timeline. My conclusion is that regarding files affected by the URAA, we have a mess on our hands, and this has been the case for years. The WMF basically says that we should respect US law and delete infringing files, but the WMF itself will only act when forced to (like by a takedown request), else it will look the other way. The German wikipedia has hosted files affected by the URAA (but PD in Germany etc.) for years without any problem from the WMF as far as I know.
Meanwhile on Commons, there's a bit of a confusion. Some argue in favor of deleting/not restoring URAA affected content, others argue to more or less ignore the URAA. Users are constantly uploading new files still protected in the USA because of the URAA, some tagging them with {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}, which says the template shouldn't be used for newly uploaded files.
I filed several deletion requests for such URAA-affected files (PD in their country of origin, but still protected in the USA), which wasn't received well by some users at the German wikipedia and here. Several of the files were uploaded recently, so they are not remnants from the years before 2012 when many users basically thought the URAA would be struck down by the US Supreme Court.
One of those requests, Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Hugo Erfurth, was closed by Jcb as "Keep" with the rationale "see COM:DIU - the hypothetical copyright in US is only imaginary. In line with the WMF point of view, the vast majority of admins does not delete files for this reason."
This
despite the (later) outcome of Commons:Review of Precautionary principle which concluded that there is no community agreement to host files affected by the URAA (on Commons).
Despite the fact that the WMF has actually said that infringing content should be removed (but it would only act when being forced to).
And despite the fact that the URAA is enforced by US courts (thanks to User:Clindberg for these examples, originally from here):
Toho v. Priority Records: This was on some Godzilla stuff. There was some infringement of some sound recordings which did not need to be restored in the first place, but there was additional infringement of a restored musical composition copyright as well.
Toho v. William Morrow: More Godzilla; the films never lost copyright (and the character was infringed), additionally some publicity stuff was ruled to be restored, and also infringed.
Troll Co. v Uneeda Doll Co.: This was on some troll dolls which lost their U.S. copyright due to lack of notice (1965 case ruling), but then got restored. The restoration was not being contested, but was more about if the defendant was a "reliance party" (they were not).
Dam Things from Denmark v Russ Berrie Co.: This is on the same troll dolls; the dolls were restored but the case was remanded to a lower court because they did not properly evaluate the derivative works status in regards to being a "reliance party".
Alameda et al v. Authors Rights Restoration Corporation et al: More Mexican films; the District Court ruled infringement on 81 of 88 films. The appeal addressed the remaining seven; they were ruled PD in Mexico in 1996 (by virtue of being produced before January 1948 and thus PD in Mexico due to failure to comply with Mexico's own registration requirements at the time), and thus ineligible for restoration. The infringement of the 81 others was upheld.
Elkan v. Hasbro: This was on the Stratego board game. It was ruled simultaneously published in the U.S. and Canada, and thus not eligible for restoration.
How to proceed?
So how should we proceed? As I see it, there are three options:
1) Do nothing. Not the preferable course of action in my opinion, the confusion would continue.
2) Delete files that are still protected in the USA because of the URAA, despite being in the PD in their country of origin.
Advantages: Compliance with US law, which is mandatory for Commons because of the ties of the WMF to the USA. Protection of content re-users in the US from potential legal trouble when re-using content not PD in the USA.
Disadvantages: Not giving users outside the US (that includes various wikipedias) files which are PD in their respective source countries. Angry users from those countries.
3) Allow files that are still protected in the USA because of the URAA, despite being in the PD in their country of origin.
Advantages: Giving users outside the US (that includes various wikipedias) files which are PD in their respective source countries. Happy users from those countries.
Disadvantages: Non-compliance with US law, which is mandatory for Commons because of the ties of the WMF to the USA. Potentially exposing content re-users in the US to legal trouble when re-using content not PD in the USA. Files could still be deleted when the WMF is forced to act because of a takedown request or similar.
There's probably a million more things to say, but I'll stop here, this is already long enough. Thoughts, additions, proposals? --Rosenzweigτ14:24, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comparing your 3 options with m:United States non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term#Statement from Wikimedia Foundation, your option 2 resembles hard enforcement and your options 1 and 3 partially resemble no active enforcement. Similar to Chinese Wikisource, I would like to modify your option to better resemble no active enforcement by negatively allowing (not positively encouraging) affected works only with some conditions:
Tag Template:Not-PD-US-URAA as amended to warn that hosting these files is only provisional, subject to copyright holders demanding taking down with no permission.
If copyright holders openly allow us to host the files with permission not compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL, like allowing Wikimedia to host but not commercial, derivative, or subsequent usage, then allow them here only when properly tagged.--Jusjih (talk) 04:34, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion
Another option: Move the servers to a more friendly country, where such massive deletion of free information is not necessary. All this extreme anglocentrism of this project is here again detrimental to our goal of free and open information. This pictures are only in one country not usable, so there should be made provisions by the WMF to comply somehow for this single country without restricting the whole wikiverse. The WMF has more then enough money and personal ressources to cater for that, it's their core task to do so. Information destruction for 98% of the wikiverse should not be an option. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)14:43, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That has been discussed at length before. Bottom line of the discussions: You would (perhaps) solve one problem, but create others instead, because you most likely couldn't host files that are free in the US (but not elsewhere) on such servers in another country. --Rosenzweigτ14:48, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Probably because the Wikimedia Foundation is based in the USA and a substantial portion of the users of the Wikimedia projects are from there too. --Rosenzweigτ15:01, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So move it to another country, it should not be that difficult for an international enterprise to move around to more friendly countries. A move would not implicate a move of employees as well, but I expect the vast majority of those will work somewhere around the world anyway, at least if the WMF really gives anything about the proclaimed diversity, and those are not just meaningless words. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)15:30, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That would help nothing most likely -- the WMF is a U.S. institution, so we are directly subject to U.S. laws either way. We can't exactly tell the WMF to go move countries. And that would probably create a lot more problems then it solves -- it could just mean there is a third country we'd have to respect the copyright laws fully. This type of suggestion is really not anywhere close to being reasonable. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:06, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
MaW: Mir geht Fair Use am Allerwertesten vorbei, wenn Durch damit tatsächlich freie Inhalte gelöscht werden sollten. Fair Use, sprich die wissentliche und willentliche Missachtung von Lizenzen aus recht egoistischen Motiven, hat deutlich weniger Wert als ein möglichst umfangreiches Portfolio an wirklich freien, und tatsächlich fair zu benutzenden Inhalten. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)14:57, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is not about fair use. Fair use files are not allowed on Commons at all. It's about content that is in the public domain in the USA. --Rosenzweigτ15:01, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The whole point of international copyright conventions is that countries are respecting the copyright of works from other countries. For works where the copyright has expired in their country of origin, there is no point in claiming some imaginary copyright in the US. That's why I, together with the vast majority of admins and in line with the WMF point of view, do not delete such files. Jcb (talk) 14:58, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The US copyright is not imaginary, it's real. And the WMF point of view is that we should delete files that infringe on US law. BTW, how do you quantify "the vast majority of admins"? --Rosenzweigτ15:03, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
U.S. copyright law is not imaginary. The URAA restorations are just as real as the EU restorations which happened at the same time. Should we respect those? It would be nice to just decide to use, say, UK law from 1990 rather than what the courts would use today. But we generally don't do that. If we want to change policy to only use copyright in the country of origin, while deleting anything which a DMCA request happens and/or a deletion request from the copyright owners, then that would be a valid discussion. But as long as policy is to use U.S. law, that includes the URAA. We could also just as easily decide to use U.S. law alone, meaning anything published before 1924 is fair game, rather than having to do research on authors and delete an extra 25 years worth of stuff when we can't find a death date, which would be much easier to explain. I tend to agree when it comes to knowing whether it was actually published or not it can get tortuous, and I would not delete on those grounds unless there was specific evidence something was not published until much later -- that would be an "ambiguous" situation the WMF was angling to keep. But the URAA is not imaginary nor easily separable from the rest of U.S. law -- it is the law. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:06, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Thanks for starting this discussion. Seeing WMF position, and that the legal risk is very low, I think that we should change our policy to allow URAA-affected files. We should allow files which are in the public domain world wide, except in the USA. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:20, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"In the public domain world wide" could become problematic in a few years. Accd. to en:Rule of the shorter term#Worldwide situation, Mexico with its 100 years pma term (the currrently longest such term AFAIK) does not apply the rule of the shorter term. If I understand Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Mexico correctly, the Mexican 100 years pma term starts to take effect for works of all authors who died in 1952 or later, so instead of allowing such works in 2023 (or up to 25 years later, depending on year of publication, if respecting the US copyright), we'd have to wait until 2053 if we really wanted "in the public domain world wide". --Rosenzweigτ15:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so Mexico and Côte d'Ivoire are the countries with a copyright term longer than 70 years which do not use the rule of the shorter term. This would be a clear limited exception. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:37, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Colombia is 80pma with no rule of the shorter term. That is likely the longest actual term right now -- both Mexico and Cote d'Ivoire were non-retroactive increases. Mexico was 30pma until 1982, and their increases have been non-retroactive, so they are effectively 66pma now (increasing by one each year). Plus they had a registration requirement before 1948, which is probably impossible to research but most stuff before then is probably PD in fact. Similarly, I think the Ivory Coast went from 50pma to 99pma non-retroactively in 2004 or so. And for Spain, while they use the rule of the shorter term, I think the rest of the EU would respect the 80pma for their stuff. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:14, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a fan. It's treating life+70 as the one true rule, where it's not. If we're going to ignore the US law, why are we going to pay attention to EU law for Canadian, Indian or Japanese works?--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:23, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If a file is PD in Germany (for example) but not in the US, it would be possible to upload it locally to de.wp, de.wikt, nl.wp, so that it can be used in WM projects, that while they can be accessed from the US are not meant to be accessed from the US (but because of the language from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Norway, ...). If this is the case, then how about creating a shadow-commons.wikimedia.org site, that cannot directly be accessed by users, but is added with the instant-commons extension to de.wp, de.wikt and so on? --C.Suthorn (talk) 15:32, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This shadow-commons should for those countries with such restrictive laws, like the US. Commons is for the whole Wikiverse and thus has the duty to serve all the Wikiverse with free content. If a single country differs, a shadow-commons should be created for this single country, not the whole Wikiverse. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)15:35, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
All the proposals about moving the servers, establishing additional servers for affected files etc. are rather pointless IMO unless it is clear that the WMF (or someone else with the WMF being okay with it) is actually prepared to do it. Accd. to m:Legal/Wikimedia Server Location and Free Knowledge, the WMF isn't really willing to do it. At least they were not 5 years ago. --Rosenzweigτ16:04, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and that would not help Wikipedias which do not allow local uploads, i.e. Spanish Wikipedia which serves all of South America except Brazil. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think it would be a problem, if (one or more because of different copyright-realms) shadow sites was physically located in the US, if it only delivers its contents to specific WM-sites that address a chosen copyright-realm. Also the instant-commons extension was made to avoid local uploads (therefore no problem with spanish or other sites). I do not know, if instant-commons supports one or more image-sites, but it should. Then, if the qqx.wp-site wants to show the example.jpg file in an article, it would look for said image in commons, then if not found in shadows1, then shadows2, then locally. As far as I know, WMF has backup datacenters (proxies) outside the US, so if all else fails, a shadow site could be located in one of those. Five years ago the US government was all for freedom of information, today the focus of the US government is more with the car industry and coal mining, eyeing the internet more of a threat that might need to be regulated and gated, maybe in a way that conflicts with the way WM works. --C.Suthorn (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Correct me if I'm wrong please, but my understanding is that de.wiki is special since it's actually hosted in Germany, correct? GMGtalk16:21, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this is what I'm being told on IRC also. They have servers (? I dunno, I'm not tech savvy) in the Netherlands that route traffic to the actual host location in the US. So they didn't decide as a legal matter that they were going to host files locally according to German, Austrian, and Swiss law, they just did it as a matter of local policy. GMGtalk16:40, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I will read the whole text above later, but here's how it is in my never too humble opinion:
Stop being overly worried about the WMF. The WMF has only one legal responsibility: deal with DMCA takedown requests. Nothing else. PD-US is not required.
To host a file on Commons, some rationale to host it in the US is required. This doesn't require a free license, any fair use rationale will work. "I can get away with it" and "the copyright holder won't care!" are also valid rationales.
You know who is legally responsible for files uploaded to Commons? You are! The uploader. You didn't know? Well now you do.
We don't give a shit about files being PD in the US or not. We somehow assume German FoP magically also applies to the US, which it doesn't, and this occasionally results in DMCA takedown requests which are honored by the WMF. In case of costumes, the Commons community has flat out given WMF legal the finger.
Long story short, I support undeletion for files that are PD in their source country and have any rationale (including "we can get away with it!") to host them in the US. - Alexis Jazzping plz16:22, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
i think it is great, that you want to re-open the URAA can of worms. keep in mind this is the consensus currently: "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion."[1] per m:Legal/URAA Statement. but i see there is a continuing movement among a minority to flout the consensus. i look forward to the migration to German servers, and the subsequent mass deletion of swastikas. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge17:11, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If material that has been saved from a third-party website is uploaded to Commons, the copyright laws of the U.S., the country of residence of the uploader, and the country of location of the web servers of the website apply. Thus, any licence to use the material should apply in all relevant jurisdictions; if the material is in the public domain, it must normally be in the public domain in all these jurisdictions (plus in the country of origin of the work) for it to be allowable on Commons.
This text is flawed: "the country of location of the web servers of the website" is nothing but repeating "the U.S." earlier on in the list. It follows with a fallacy, that the same "license" must apply in all jurisdictions. First, this is false. We can perfectly have a non-free "license" (like fair use, CC BY-NC or "we can get away with it") for the US while having PD for the source country. Second, nobody ever in the history of Commons gave a shit about the residence of the uploader. Uploaders best move to Sealand. Bring biscuits. - Alexis Jazzping plz17:50, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Slowking4: The point of my introductory remarks above (timeline etc.) is that there is no real current consensus. There's "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion" that you cited, but there's also "it is my understanding that at this time there is no community agreement to host files affected by the URAA." from Commons:Review of Precautionary principle a few months later. --Rosenzweigτ18:05, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
i think it is great you are trying to develop a consensus. i do not think this community is capable of agreeing to one, hence the talking past each other impasse. but by all means repeat the precautionary fear-mongering. what is the history of DMCA takedowns based on URAA? do those facts change anyone's mind about what the risk of hosting URAA content is? Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge19:27, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Raymond: So you think we should delete the files affected by the URAA, following WMF's conclusion "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work [...] and remove works that are clearly infringing." from that statement? --Rosenzweigτ18:00, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, because you have forgotten the more important part (my POV): "However, if a work’s status remains ambiguous after evaluation under the guidelines, it may be premature to delete the work prior to receiving a formal take-down notice, because these notices often contain information that is crucial to the determination of copyright status. Due to the complexity of the URAA, it is likely that only a small number of the potentially affected works will be subject to such notices. These guidelines differ from the more proactive systems currently used by the community for other copyright violations, but the complexity and fact-intensive nature of the URAA analysis makes a more active approach imprudent." Raymond18:12, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Raymond: I have not forgotten that part, I just think that usually the copyright status of works affected by the URAA is not "ambiguous" because we have the necessary facts to determine said status. When is the status "ambiguous" in your opinion? --Rosenzweigτ18:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
One concrete example: File:Gerhart Hauptmann by Hugo Erfurth 1929.jpg, author is Hugo Erfurth, a German photographer who died in 1948. The work was protected in Germany until the end of 2018. It was protected there on the URAA date, which is 1996-01-01. The US copyright was restored and lasts for 95 years from 1929, so until the end of 2024. Is there anything "ambiguous" here? If so, please tell me. Thanks. --Rosenzweigτ18:24, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So it's completely fine for any german language project to use it, and it's the duty of the WMF with it's multimillions of dollars, to make the use of this completely legitimate free content possible and not to hide behind the laws of some random country from the Wikiverse. Those pictures must not be deleted, the very minimum is a move from here to all projects, where they are legitimate. The free content has to be protected, not deleted. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)18:45, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Rosenzweig: If we want to claim public domain you also have to check for every country where and when this photograph was first published legally according to the local copyright law. We also should compare if the photograph is published in the US less or more than 30 days after publication abroad. For some countries it might the outcome the photograph is never officially published officially, or much later than the creation date. So even for old paintings public domain is not sure. --Hannolans (talk) 18:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hannolans: So what is your conclusion from this? Should we only allow works here that have had their publication history thoroughly checked and for which we can say with absolute certainty that they were published on day (or at least year) X in country Y? In that case, we probably would have to delete whole droves of files, and not only files that are perhaps/probably/possibly affected by the URAA. --Rosenzweigτ19:06, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Rosenzweig: I strongly say see keep, unless there are legal outcomes that proof a particular work is not public domain. Recently we had this situation with the diary of Anne Frank due to legal claims. In this situation you should check sentence by sentence the public domain status as some sentences where published in 1947 while other sentences not. To make your check even more complicated: if we really want to check public domain, for each work we should also check if the work is inspired by an earlier work and if so, if that was an accident or copied and if that work is pd as well . This is for example an issue for music, where some artists could claim they first created a tune used in a work. So, let's focus on real situations. We should respect the rights of artists and photopgraphers who created a work and who need a fixed term of copyright, but not the theoretical legal loops --Hannolans (talk) 20:01, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We have to adhere to https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally", this statement does not specificy the US.
Declare ourselves to be idiots. Seriously. We are not legal experts (any of us who IRL actually are legal experts are off the clock, so you don't count) and shouldn't claim to be legal experts. We cannot determine whether or not a work is in the public domain.
Create COM:We are idiots. (I'll be more than happy to if it doesn't get deleted!)
Thanks for creating this discussion, Rosenzweig. I also agree that the status quo is untenable if only because there is no consistent URAA policy so you have deletions and tense undeletion requests. Alexis Jazz makes some excellent points in that the United States also has no Freedom of Panorama and yet we routinely ignore U.S copyright in allowing German FOP to be the rationale to keep modern sculpture in Germany. Just as we leave to the WMF to handle DMCAs for those sculptures, it would be better if allowed files that are public domain in their countries of origin to remain on Commons and just let WMF handle any potential DMCA takedowns. Deleting because of URAA also exacerbates the orphan works problem (something that countries have dropped the ball on). Commons is intended as an international, multilingual project and yet we keep on forcing anglocentric policies on the rest of the world. That needs to stop. The current administration in the United States is also rather unpredictable. We've seen leaks about pulling out of NATO, pulling out of the WTO, and the United States has exited UNESCO https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/israel-formally-quit-unesco-190101094104787.html So, let's admit that we are not lawyers nor copyright experts and let's allow WMF to do the heavy lifting as far as worrying about U.S. copyright. Because otherwise, this is not an international project but an anglocentric repository dependent on the whims of the United States government. Abzeronow (talk) 21:05, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
let's come back to Rosenzweig's concrete example: File:Gerhart Hauptmann by Hugo Erfurth 1929.jpg from above. Author is Hugo Erfurth, a German photographer who died in 1948. The image is clearly out of copyright since January 1st, 2019. Probably not in the USA. I respect the copyright terms of Germany, where I live. But why should I have any interest or responsibility to enforce a US law that, even if WMF does not care about it? Raymond21:19, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My actual question was whether it is really "ambiguous" that the photograph is, for the reasons I outlined above, still protected by US copyright until the end of 2024? And if so, why? You did not answer that. --Rosenzweigτ22:16, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Rosenzweig: We are idiots. We need to "remove works that are clearly infringing". This would be, for example, the latest Disney movie and the Harry Potter books. Is a century-old photograph of which we are not exactly hurting it's commercial exploitability a copyright infringement? Or is it fair use, in which case it's not an infringement? I don't know. You don't know! We're idiots! Most legal experts probably won't be able to answer that question right away. So let's wait for a DMCA claim in those cases and let WMF handle it. - Alexis Jazzping plz23:51, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and no ;) The trigger for the current discussion was a deletion spree by Rosenzweig against perfectly legal end free pictures from and for German projects, but this discussion is taking place in english instead of the natural language for this discussion: German. But...of course the underlying legalese is us-centrist (America is a continent, no a country, and most of America speaks Spanish or Portuguese) indeed. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)22:48, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is not perse a German discussion either, files from most European countries are in the exact same situation. Jcb (talk) 23:08, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
<quetsch>You've got an (A) behind your name and started a mass deletion process of perfectly legal and free pictures, I call that a deletion spree. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)05:23, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
don't be pedantic. you openly flouted the URAA consensus here, because "you know better", even though there has not been a DMCA for such an example. do not create a load of drama wasting everyone's time, keeping URAA files, especially when there is a DR backlog. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge03:15, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, he was being pedantic -- that is going deletion hunting, which is never popular. However, he was not flouting URAA consensus, which is to delete if there is significant doubt as to its PD status in the U.S., including if restored by the URAA. That is the current consensus. If we want to remove the "and the U.S." part of Commons policy, and make it just the country of origin, that would be another matter. The discussion you point to on the URAA though was overruled just a couple months later, and is *not* the consensus. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
i see a new wave of "significant doubt" recently, in DRs that have not resulted in a deletion. i would suggest those persons with "significant doubts" do not have a consensus based on URAA alone. they should stop. this abuse of "significant doubt" tends to undermine the credibility of the commons at other projects such as Hebrew and German. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge13:07, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Significant doubt" is the wording in the Commons:Licensing policy. You are basically suggesting to ignore copyright law because it is inconvenient. There is really no doubt as to a lot of these; the effects of the URAA are well known and they are fully copyrighted in the US. I get that users are frustrated by following a copyright law that does not apply in the country where they live, but that doesn't change the law. Also be aware that uploaders are technically liable; they are uploading a work to a U.S. website, so they are actually the violators if it's illegal in the U.S. Yes, we have DMCA protections where it can be removed before it gets into more serious legal territory, but you could also ignore all copyright laws with that argument. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:14, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
no, i am not suggesting ignoring copyright law, rather i am saying follow the WMF legal guidance: "However, if a work’s status remains ambiguous after evaluation under the guidelines, it may be premature to delete the work prior to receiving a formal take-down notice, because these notices often contain information that is crucial to the determination of copyright status." and i doubt the credibility of the recent increase of "significant doubt". what facts have changed? where is the evidence of a copyright violation? i get that editors are frustrated that their interpretation of US copyright law is not shared by WMF legal. maybe they should come by American University Washington College of Law, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property for some counseling. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge23:25, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We are following WMF legal's guidance. Their words: The community should evaluate each potentially affected work using the guidelines issued by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department, as well as the language of the statute itself, and remove works that are clearly infringing. So that is what we do. We carefully go through the URAA questions, ask things like was in copyrighted in the source country on the URAA date per their law at the time, and did it lose U.S. copyright due to lack of notice/renewal etc., and if the end result is that the file is clearly restored by the URAA we should delete. WMF Legal did *not* say to keep such works until a DMCA is filed. They do have a point on ambiguous stuff, for example something created before 1924 but we don't know if it was published then or not -- it's hard to answer the URAA questions at that point, which details are often present in a DMCA request, and when in that type of gray area we should probably assume early publication and keep the files. That situation would amount to theoretical doubt, not significant doubt, usually. But never did the WMF say to simply ignore the URAA when it's obvious a work was restored. The fact that something was restored by the URAA does not automatically make it "ambiguous". Any works created 1924 or later do not have the publication date ambiguity. The current Commons:Licensing text follows basically that. We should not do bulk deletions, but go case by case. Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:39, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"We are not recommending that community members undertake mass deletion of existing content on URAA grounds, without such actual knowledge of infringement or takedown notices." and yet we see mass deletion nominations increasing recently, with no actual evidence of infringement, merely "significant doubts", resulting in this tl;dr discussion. you might call that "following WMF legal's guidance", i do not. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge14:44, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but when we have good knowledge of a source country's copyright law on the URAA date, and we know the work was under copyright in that country on that date and it's from 1924 and after, then we basically know it's copyrighted in the U.S., and its presence here is knowledge of infringement. Mass deletions are discouraged because there could be a lot of different details for each work (mass restorations would then be similar). It can be hard -- I just commented on a Malta one where we really don't have enough knowledge of the copyright law in 1996 to really say (in fact it appears the terms were much shorter then); we should not be deleting without such knowledge. But the URAA is law and it's not impossible to evaluate it. What situation would be enough for you to think we should delete on URAA grounds? Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:54, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
America is not a continent; this idea that two huge continental bodies, North America and South America, stuck together by a tiny isthmus, is one continent and yet Africa, Asia and Europe are three is ludicrous. The name America is problematic, but it is a standard name in English, and Germany / Deutschland are hardly unproblematic, given that it's not the only country with Germans or Deutsch speakers, though it has historically used that justification to invade other countries with Germans or with Deutsch speakers. Instead of nitpicking the name of our countries, let's just accept the normal names of these countries for the goal of communication.
For the WMF, German law is irrelevant for legality. It has to abide by US law. I find myself quite frustrated to have to dig through death dates and be stopped from uploading works that are perfectly legal for me and the WMF because of not finding death dates or finding that they died many years too late for me to upload them. Commons is going to have to end up with compromises.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:15, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the WMF would permit Commons to introduce policies that say US copyright law can be ignored, unless there are sufficient doubts about the legal status. The situation with FoP, according to Commons:Freedom of panorama is that "The question of what country's law applies in a freedom of panorama case is an unsettled issue." So, the WMF isn't explicitly permitting the hosting of copyright violations. It can't do the latter, since it's a requirement of the DMCA safe harbor that the site operator isn't aware of any particular violation of US copyright. The DMCA safe harbor is also an advantage of hosting a site like Commons in the US, when in many other countries the site operator wouldn't be shielded from lawsuits. Maybe the current situation, that the Commons policy is a little unclear, and some files are kept when strictly they should be deleted, is the best that can be done (from the point of view of wanting to host files that are public domain in many countries.) --ghouston (talk) 02:51, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's kind of what I am afraid of. Changing policy to "PD in the country of origin" would help the URAA restorations, except we'd be knowingly hosting stuff under copyright in the U.S., which could lead to some rather sticky situations (having to explain that policy, etc.). But, it's *possible* that PD in the country of origin would mitigate that, since works would still need to be pretty old. But we'd have to respect any DR or DMCA from a copyright owner. I'm just not sure that's a good policy to change.
On the other hand, I probably would be in favor of arguing that foreign *government* works should expire per their own country's law -- you could at least make the argument that they are a form of PD-author. The government could make a longer term for their own works if they so choose (I believe New Zealand does), so that is sort of like a copyright owner deciding when something becomes public domain. I'm not aware of any government bringing a copyright lawsuit in another country, especially when it has expired in their own, so to me that enters a wide "unknown" area. However, when asked about that, in this meta discussion on the URAA, they suggested it was still better to get a statement from the government that they consider their term expiring to apply worldwide (like we had from the UK then, and have gotten from Canada and a couple others since). So if they are not willing to ignore potential URAA rights of foreign governments, I really don't see where we should be ignoring them from private citizens where the rules are well established with many court precedents. I would be in favor of that, though. It's probably a similar gray area to the current FoP policy. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:42, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that's an interesting and useful input. But you can't claim that deleting files affected by the URAA is a "consensus". Yes, it is written on the page you mention, but not only there is no general agreement about this, and as it seems lately there is not even a majority for that. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:22, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that there is no consensus on URAA. Seeming by this thread, it's difficult to say how we are going to reach a consensus. Going back to one of Alexis Jazz's comments, would it be possible to do a quasi-noncommercial license for works public domain in their source countries but likely still have an enforceable copyright in the United States (and note, allowing German FOP pictures since those sculptures would also have had restored copyrights in the US is "we can get away with it")? Going back to the concrete example of File:Gerhart Hauptmann by Hugo Erfurth 1929.jpg, is there even someone who can enforce the possible US copyright of Hugo Erfurth's works? It could be an orphan work for all we know since European copyrights are automatic and US copyright has only been automatic since 1989. Abzeronow (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For File:Gerhart Hauptmann by Hugo Erfurth 1929.jpg, yes there is someone who can enforce it. Hugo Erfurth's heirs got the restored copyright, and can enforce it (per the URAA, the ownership of the restored copyright is the author or initial rightholder of the work as determined by the law of the source country of the work, so it can revert to the original owner). There are some examples of determining that in the case law listed above. The restored U.S. copyright will last until 2025. The painting is also still copyrighted in Spain and Colombia until 2029; whoever owned the painting's copyright (heirs, or possibly someone else if the economic right got transferred) can still enforce it there. The FoP situation is different; we don't really have any U.S. case law to go by there -- it's at least quite possible that a court would take foreign law into account in those situations, and are more difficult in the first place as they are derivative works. It's a lot more than simply "we can get away with it". We have plenty of case law on the URAA however. We delete orphan works too (which are works known to be under copyright, just perhaps not knowing who the copyright owner is or there being no way to contact them). Laws give no protection over violating orphan works, unfortunately. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:12, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if he had heirs. I can't find any mention of children in the EN, FR or DE wiki pages for Erfurth. And yes, I am very much aware that there are no legal protections for orphan works. An international travesty as lawmakers are often beholden to the 1% and not the general public. And since the United States has no FOP, pretending that German FOP law is the be all and end all is "we can get away with it". As referenced above, works hosted here under German FOP have been taken down under the DMCA, so there is no current legal basis for us to host works merely protected by German FOP, and yet we do because that's what the community decided. We can and should do the same with the URAA. If not, let's invent some sort of compromise measure like works in their last 20 years of U.S. copyright (1924-1943), or allow CC-BY-NC-ND to only apply in the United States or let's just pretend that works were simultaneously published in the US . Abzeronow (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Heirs don't have to be children -- it would be following the laws of inheritance in the country of origin. Often things will go to parents or siblings or cousins, etc. If the law of that country says there is no inheritance beyond children, and he had no offspring, and there were no heirs designated in a will, then that may be OK. But most countries have well-established laws for inheritance of property, which probably deal with situations where no direct descendants are living, and the copyright would follow those. We generally assume there is *some* owner, somewhere, until the copyright term expires. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:32, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Some of Hugo Erfurth's photographs are available via Getty Images – so I doubt they are "orphan works". In fact, his heirs sold his "Nachlass" (works he left behind) to a museum in Dresden in 2009 [2]. --Rosenzweigτ18:22, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Yann: , policy has *always* been "public domain in the U.S. and the country of origin". Restored files are copyrighted in the U.S., full stop. There is nothing different about them, legally, than if they had a copyright notice and were renewed, unless you are a "reliance party" (which we are definitely not). Following the "massive restoration" discussion where you claimed consensus, you changed Commons:Licensing to say that URAA can not be used as a deletion reason. That got an immediate reaction, and Commons:Review of Precautionary principle was started with a wider audience. That was closed with a summary that consensus was still to delete such files, and Commons:Licensing was therefore updated with this edit (and tweaked right after to this wording), which indicated the new community decision and remains to this day. There are obviously people frustrated about the law -- it sucks for us, no question -- but I'm not as sure they represent "consensus". As long as the policy is "public domain in the U.S. and the country of origin", you really can't claim you are following that policy if you ignore the URAA. Where there is some gray area -- say something created before 1924 but we don't know whether or not it was published before 1924, I would say that would be theoretical doubt and not significant doubt, so we should keep those. But for stuff which the only hope is simultaneous U.S. publication, I think we should need some concrete evidence of that. If there is consensus to change policy to only be "PD in the country of origin", which would be a massive change, then that would eliminate the URAA basically. Short of that though, I don't see a way and say with a straight face that our policy is not not keep stuff which is copyrighted in the U.S. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There is a consensus on the general policy, but there is certainly no consensus on its application for URAA. One of the reason URAA is really a problem is the retroactive application to files which were already in the public domain. That's a big change compared to usual legal practice. When the copyright duration was extended in Europe, it only applied to files which were not already the public domain. AS the WMF says, determining if URAA applies or not can be quite complicated. And the potential legal risk is much much lower than for a copyright in the country of origin. All this combined leads to the current opposition of deletion of these files. That's why we should applies a different policy for these than for others. I am looking for a compromise where some files can be kept. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:09, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Are you claiming the EU restorations to 70pma were not retroactive in exactly the same way? That is quite false. The EU directive quite explicitly applied to files which were already in the public domain. The UK's happened on the same day, even. Hard to say why we should respect one and not the other. I would certainly love to use the UK's old terms of 50 years from creation for photographs. But those got restored in the UK the same day the URAA took effect. Obviously, you can't go back and claim infringement on actions which took place before the works were restored -- no laws are retroactive in that way -- but they can re-create a copyright going forward, which is what both the URAA and the EU directives did. The EU only restored works which were protected in at least one EEA state, but that is pretty much all of them (Spain had 80pma terms). The US only restored works still protected in the country of origin, so was more limited. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:17, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Yann: Your claim "When the copyright duration was extended in Europe, it only applied to files which were not already the public domain." is not true, or not for all countries. Germany in 1995 restored copyrights for photographs that were already "gemeinfrei" (in the public domain). See s:de:Oberlandesgericht Hamburg - U-Boot Foto 1941 for a 2004 court case about a concrete example – a photo of a submarine which was published in 1943, had its copyright expire in 1968 (the therm of protection was 25 years after publication then), only to have the copyright restored in 1995, now for 70 years pma. The photographer was still alive in 2004 btw, so the initial term of protection was extended for 100+ years. --Rosenzweigτ18:41, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The restoration of copyright by URAA was accepted by the Supreme Court in en:Golan_v._Holder. If the WMF is not contesting take-down requests on FoP grounds, it doesn't mean that the legal situation is clear. It may also mean that they are not sure if they would win such cases or not in court. If the decision went the wrong way, and the legal situation was "clarified", the carnage on Commons of FoP artworks would far exceed the URAA issues. Better to just to delete the few images that receive a take-down demand. --ghouston (talk) 00:29, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We are in a strange situation as Wikimedia projects grow in influence. No one is documenting social changes, but there are cases where policy on Wikimedia projects leads interpretation of international copyright law. The community consensus here could become the interpretation of what is normal for the next generation. I agree with Carl's point about non-US government works having an expired term of copyright, even if those works are under that government's copyright in United States copyright law. If the copyright holder themselves takes action to put their own work into the public domain in their own primary jurisdiction, then that sort of release is the kind of permission which Wikimedia projects typically seek for mirroring in Wikimedia Commons. It is not reasonable to expect that any country's export of published works into the United States decades ago was an intent to govern the work globally under US copyright law rather than the law of the government which sought a shorter term for its own works. Something new that is developing is that to a modest extent, we might have greater near-future access to some policy opinions from the meta:Internet Archive. After the Wikimedia Foundation, the IA is the friendliest and most knowledgeable organization to advocate for the Wikimedia community and our style of publishing. While no one at IA has promised to participate in our community discussions, if we ever drafted a position on something, then they do have a policy team and since 2016 they have been seeking out Wikimedia partnerships. We are beginning to establish as common knowledge that the Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive serve complementary roles toward the same goals. I can imagine the IA publishing an opinion if we asked, and if they agreed with what we proposed, and if it seemed useful to establish a coalition statement. Blue Rasberry (talk)21:17, 27 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The rule of the shorter term is bad for global copyright policy. Copyright maximalists have frequently gotten copyright extensions based on the fact that Country B has a longer copyright term than Country A, but due to the rule of shorter term, Country A's works have a shorter copyright length in Country B than they might. One little tweak by Country A, and more money is going to flow from Country B to Country A? Lawmakers jump at it.
It is reasonable to expect that a country's export of works into other countries was in respect of the international copyright treaties, which make caring about the original country's copyright duration a optional feature. These non-US governments did not seek a shorter term for their own works; we'll wait until 2047 for Agatha Christie's works to leave copyright, some of which have been PD-US for 20 years, and by which point most of her writings will be PD-US. If we're worried about social changes, we should worry that we're about the only site on the web that worries about copyright laws that we don't have to.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:04, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Policy vote?
It seems the users who wanted to contribute to this discussion have done so now. From what I gather, most (not all) of them would support a Commons policy change to accept works that are in the PD in their country of origin, removing the requirement that they are also free in the US.
The only way to achieve that IMO is a policy vote. Some will probably say there's no need for that, because one of the earlier votes or one of the WMF statements support whatever is correct in their view. The problem with that is that we have two contradictory earlier Commons votes, and the WMF statements are deliberately vague so people on both sides of the argument can find sentences in there to support their particular point of view (like, we should consider each file invidually and delete clearly infringing files, but also there's no need to do that really). This is precisely what created the current mess we're in.
A URAA policy vote has been tried before from what I can see (like here), but without any real success. The vote I have in mind would be a choice between two of the options outlined above: option 2 (delete files that are still protected in the USA because of the URAA, despite being in the PD in their country of origin) and option 3 (allow files that are still protected in the USA because of the URAA, despite being in the PD in their country of origin). Nothing else, no discussion about moving the servers to another country, creating some kind of "Shadow Commons" etc., because all of that would be outside the scope of a Commons policy vote.
What do you think? Would you support another attempt to clear up the current situation – that there is no real consensus, as shown in the discussion above – by a vote? --Rosenzweigτ13:26, 27 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Rosenzweig: I support that. Also, I strongly suspect the reason for the WMF to be vague is because they are not in the position to really condone anything. If you were to ask them "hey, is FoP okay?" or "hey, is DM okay?" you would also get vague answers. The uploaders are legally responsible (always have been), WMF could easily shoot themselves in the foot if they say out loud X is allowed, because it would shift (part of) the responsibility to them. So they won't. - Alexis Jazzping plz17:49, 27 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is, that Commons is proclaimed the central repository for pictures in the Wikiverse, and uploaders are taken here automagically. They upload perfectly legal and free content for their (and hundreds of other) projects, just to see them deleted because of some for hundrets of projects completely irrelevant foreign country laws. How will those, who want to mass-delete perfectly legal pictures, guarantee, that they will be transferred to all projects, where they are perfectly legal? How should the upload process be changed, so that normal uploaders wuld become aware of those looming mass-deletions of perfectly legal and free pictures, and how could they get them to all projects, that could use them, in one click?
The use as the central repository for all projects of the Wikiverse is the most important use case for Commons, everything else is at most secondary, if not tertiary. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)05:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie, is a perfectly free and legal book for me. I still can't upload it here, because it's still in copyright in the UK. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and its translation into German by Maria Lazar, are completely free and legal for you. It is still in copyright in the US. There is no way to have a multinational project and coherently obey any copyright laws and not have some users have the files deleted because of foreign (to them) copyright laws. Removing the requirement that files be free in the US will still force people to deal with foreign copyright laws that are irrelevant to them but are relevant to the work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Prosfilaes: you could actually upload Murder on the Links to English Wikipedia as PD-USonly, but indeed not here. I think we should either drop the PD-US requirement or start allowing PD-USonly, reduce the complexity. Legally, it doesn't make all that much of a difference despite the server location. Dropping the PD-US requirement is more sensible from the perspective of the enduser and better fits the multinational profile of Commons. - Alexis Jazzping plz08:56, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Legally, uploaders are liable -- so if something is copyrighted in either the country they are in, or the U.S. (the country of the site), they could be committing infringement. Commons:Licensing does explain that. The DMCA would likely protect the uploaders from the U.S. half of that, but technically that is the case. Carl Lindberg (talk) 09:58, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, Commons always has to ask users to upload only files that are free in the USA. If they ignore that, it's not required that other users or administrators delete their files, but if they receive a few DMCA take downs, their account will probably be deleted. They can also face legal action in their country of residence, if they are identifiable and if the files aren't free in that country. The other issue is that Commons is supposed to be a repository of freely licensed files, and ignoring copyright violations doesn't achieve that. Otherwise, there'd be no need for any deletion process, beyond DMCA take-downs. But files that are free in quite a few countries, even if that doesn't include the USA, it doesn't seem like such an issue. If a file was labelled as free in death+70 countries, but said nothing about its US copyright status, it wouldn't bother me. I think adding "not free in the USA" templates would be questionable. But you still have the issue of what to do when such files are nominated for deletion because they aren't free in the USA. Asking administrators to ignore US copyright law isn't a good idea. --ghouston (talk) 06:01, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that source country should make so much difference. Files from the USA that are still under copyright in the USA can be public domain in much of the rest of the world, so are still worth hosting if there's a work-around for the legal issues. --ghouston (talk) 09:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The work-around that I'm thinking of is to separate the legal requirements from the "volunteer deletion policy". The legal requirements are the users shoudn't upload any material that violates US copyright. They should be warned of the consequences, that if their uploads receive 3(?) DMCA take-downs then their account will be banned. They should also be advised not to violate the copyright laws of their country of residence, to avoid personal legal difficulties. The volunteer deletion policy, on the other hand, doesn't exist to enforce US copyrights (that's handled by the DMCA). It exists to maintain Commons as a source of free files. That can be done by deleting files that are not either freely licensed, or public domain in a significant part of the world. That could be defined as either free in the USA, or free in death+70 countries (including the subset of the latter where FoP is accepted). --ghouston (talk) 10:17, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Slowking4: this is just the current policy, as I understand it. I'm not sure if it's exactly 3 images. I think it's required by the DMCA. See en:Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act. It also says that the website operator (Wikimedia) must not be aware of "presence of infringing material or know any facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent" and "must reasonably implement a policy "that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances" of "repeat infringers", must inform their users of this policy, and must accommodate standard copy protection systems." This limits somewhat their freedom to ignore US copyright law, but doesn't require active enforcement by volunteers. --ghouston (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
actually, "repeat infringers" = 3 is not policy; but by all means go for a proposal. you realize that 3 out of 30000 would be nonsense? the management by numbers, and specifying punitive measures in advance, and "the DMCA made me do it" is sad. WMF have a safe harbor; they are not ignoring anything. but by all means propose filters for uploads without a permission from getty. Slowking4 § Sander.v.Ginkel's revenge02:15, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason I had the idea it was 3. Whatever, I'm happy if it's as lenient as the law/courts allow. If it can be set at say a million or a billion. I'm fine with that. "Repeat" on it's own isn't good, since you could be banned on the 2nd "offence". --ghouston (talk) 02:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you search the web for something like "requirements for a dmca repeat infringers policy" you'll find that a million or a billion won't cut it. There have been court decisions on the topic, e.g., against Cox Communications [5]. --ghouston (talk) 03:20, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do I get this right? Commons is not an international project, but a US-only project? That seems to be the gist of most deletion-happy people here. Then why have commons at all, if it doesn't cater all projects? Decentralised Upload and cross-project usability could be a solution. If I upload a perfectly legal and free picture to deWP, currently it's unusable for any other german language project, it has to be uploaded everywhere again, thus perhaps up to hundred times. The very reason for the creation and maintaining of commons was and is to give a central repository for all projects of the Wikiverse. Besides as well let others use the pics also, but that's just a nice add-on, nothing central. If Commons is no longer able to do it's main job to be the central repository for the whole Wikiverse because of restrictions by any random country, why not decentralise it? Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)16:18, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF is always going to delete files that get a take-down request, if they consider it valid. There's nothing we can do about that. But we have no obligation to delete files voluntarily, if we consider them in scope for some other reason (e.g., free in the rest of the world outside the USA.) Works by authors whose heirs are sending take-down requests or lawsuits would be exceptions that should be deleted on sight. --ghouston (talk) 22:03, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We are the Wikiverse, the WMF is just a service organisation from our midst, that was created to do tasks for us. We should say what we want, and the WMF has to cater us. If we want to be international, not just US, the WMF has more then enough ressources to come up with a good solution for that, and a headquarter in SF is nothing of value, it's just the current place, nothing more. Commons is as well primarily a service for all projects in the Wikiverse, as is WD. It should be organised in a manner to cater all projects in the Wikiverse (and perhaps even some outside, but that's nothing central) in the best possible way for all projects. If that means decentralisation, and/or better licence tags for different projects, so be it. The deWP cannot use any Fair Use stuff, as the concept of Fair Use is not legal in the German language projects, but of course the deWP will tolerate for them illegal Fair Use pictures in Commons. The same approach is necessary for pictures, that are free and legal in de German language projects, just not in the USA. Some projects must be prohibited to use them, but they need to be tolerated in the international picture depository for all language versions. And the highly paid legal department should come up with a viable solution, that keeps those pictures in the data base, but restrict the usage for different projects. USA-centrism must never be allowed, that is nothing compatible with an international project. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)22:58, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is the wrong place to propose moving the WMF to Germany. I don't even know what the right place would be. I'm not convinced anyway that Germany or the EU in general has more favourable copyright policies than the USA. Do they even have an equivalent to the DMCA safe harbor, or do you just get sued directly when users upload copyright violations? Isn't the EU always proposing new draconian policies like forcing sites to install upload filters? --ghouston (talk) 23:05, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I never said that. A complete move to Germany would make the deletion of all Fair Use material necessary. It would not be a problem for deWP, as we can't use it anyway, but it would probably be a problem for enWP. Here with this exaggerated usage of URAA against usable pictures for dozens of projects in the Wikiverse it's the other way around. As an international project we have to either follow all laws at once, or all laws just for the projects they apply to, and Commons is not a project restricted to a certain land, it's by definition international. If URAA-deletions should take place because of enWP, Fair Use deletions must follow because of deWP. no project in the Wikiverse is anyhow more equal then the others. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)23:17, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And if that land is not suitable for a lot of projects, a move to a better suited is the best option. Yes, currently the illegal Fair Use is possible, while the perfectly legal pictures, that where the reason für this discussion could be deleted. For a lot of projects the loss of Fair Use will not change anything, only enXY profits from that, so why not make it the other way around? Host Fair Use in the projects themselves, and move commons to a country that abides to other laws. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk)05:21, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wherever you move, you just shift the problems around. It would probably be worse in a number of aspects, moving anywhere else. We may as well suggest you move to the U.S. and solve the problem that way ;-). A policy change is a separate matter though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:13, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing illegal about fair use; it's an exception under law. As I said above, many perfectly legal pictures for me and many other people around the world are deleted because their European source nations consider them under copyright. meta:Non-free_content#Exemption_Doctrine_Policy shows the fair use rules for Wikimedia projects; looking at just the first screen of the Wikipedia section, the Arabic, Belarusian and Bangla Wikipedias are all described as having policies "similar to enwiki".--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:32, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A week ago, I asked who would support a policy vote. Two users responded that they would. In my opinion, that is not enough.
The problem is that, as I see it, a fair number of people (probably including the Wikimedia Foundation) do not really wish a change of the status quo because they fear that the change would be for the worse (from their respective point of view). So they prefer the situation we have right now, where they can point to whatever statement or decision supports their point of view.
That is why, to be meaningful and have any chance of success, such a policy vote would have to be well-prepared, or it would end like the 2017 vote I referred to above (3 supporters and a number of people who were opposed to the vote per se). A vote definitely needs more than three participants if you don't want it to be derailed or dismissed without further discussion.
In order to achieve this, the policy vote must not be a casual affair somewhere on one of the village pump pages, probably unknown to most potential voters. It would have to be on a separate page, there would have to be announcements on Commons and at the other Wikimedia projects, and it all would have to be in several languages. English is the de facto working language of Commons, but obviously the URAA problem affects users from lots of other countries. Not all of those speak English, but if you want the vote to be meaningful, those users need to be able to participate, and they need information they can understand, in a language they can read. Besides English, that would probably mean the other major European languages, like Spanish (which would cover Latin America as well), Russian, French, Italian, German, Portuguese (because of Brazil), possibly also Dutch, Swedish, Polish, others. As for non-European languages, probably Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, others?
All of this would be quite an effort, and a substantial number of supporters would be needed for the translations and the announcements at the various village pumps, forums etc. both on Commons as well as on the projects.
I'm willing to proceed with a vote, but not on my own. As I explained, quite a number of supporters would be needed to do the work. So far two have said they would support the vote. Unless we get more, option 1 from above ("Do nothing") is unfortunately the likeliest outcome of this debate. --Rosenzweigτ14:41, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Current policy, and one way forward?
This issue has actually been settled for some time, and we do have a formal policy on it, which was updated following the initial very extensive discussions. It appears within COM:L at Commons:Licensing#Uruguay_Round_Agreements_Act and reads:
Files nominated for deletion due to the URAA should be evaluated carefully, as should be their copyright status under US and local laws. A mere allegation that the URAA applies to a file cannot be the sole reason for deletion. If the end result of copyright evaluation is that there is significant doubt about the freedom of a file under US or local law, the file must be deleted in line with the precautionary principle.
What sometimes causes confusion is the fact that an admin closed a discussion with the ambiguous summary "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion." But that does not and never has meant that the community has granted itself exemption from the US copyright extensions that resulted from URAA. At the time Commons was facing multiple DRs based purely on a statement that URAA applied, without any detailed legal and factual review of the individual files, and the community decided that that was not good enough. But as Carl Lindberg says above, URAA has since that date become an integral and legally unchallengeable part of US copyright law, and the Commons community is simply not competent to come to any consensus to ignore it.
That is clearly reflected in COM:DR which notes that "Any expressed consensus will be taken into account so far as possible, but consensus can never trump copyright law nor can it override Commons Policy".
Insofar as there may be a 'mess' here, that seems to derive not from Commons policy, but from editors who repeatedly argue it can be ignored. To be clear, unless and until Commons files are hosted outside the US, it is unlawful under US law to host any file that we are aware infringes US copyright of any type, including that created by URAA.
Where an editor lodges a DR, whether for a single file or for a group of files, each should be reviewed against our hosting policies in the normal way. It is not enough for an editor simply to allege that URAA applies, but if on a review of the facts it is found that the file(s) are infringing then they must be deleted. Once again, consensus to the contrary - or editor anger - can never override the law.
One unhelpful issue fact, perhaps, is that Commons interprets COM:PRP very, very strictly in many cases, and deletes many files that the WMF would be a little more relaxed about. Retaining more files shouldn't mean ignoring the law, and could be done by adjusting the rigour of COM:PRP to prevent deletion for fanciful, far-fetched or even paranoic reasons. As it will be hard to get any consensus for changing the simple wording of COM:PRP as it stands, an easier option might be to add some agreed explanations that define more precisely what the community means by significant doubt in different classes of case. An RFC along those lines could allow more images to be held while still complying with the law and the requirements of the WMF.
That could make a real difference. URAA copyright applies only when the work meets a variety of factual qualifying criteria, and whether those criteria are met is frequently unknown and sometimes unknowable. Rather than assuming the worst possible situation ("the file has to be deleted because we can't prove unknowable facts"), Commons could use a more nuanced and practical test of the extent of significant doubt. MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:23, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that would really help. To ascertain if it could, I'd like to see concrete examples of works that could be kept. Let's use Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Hugo Erfurth, which was closed as kept by Jcb because "the hypothetical copyright in US is only imaginary". Of the 22 files contained in this DR, are there any that you think could be kept when NOT applying any of the "fanciful, far-fetched or even paranoic reasons" you mention? Or would they still have to be deleted? --Rosenzweigτ20:01, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest a wide-ranging discussion to get views on suitable wording. That may take some time and should have a variety of examples up for discussion. It shouldn't be based solely on one specific set of facts, ie on one DR. I'm putting the proposal up for initial consideration, and wouldn't want to jump too quickly into specific drafting. In that specific case the stated closing rationale appears contrary both to policy and to US law. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:12, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The only chance for 1924 and later Hugo Erfurth stuff would be if any of his works qualified for Lichtbilder; those may be slightly ambiguous since Germany's terms did not change much (just changing any remaining 25-year simple photos to 50-year) but (per later court rulings) they seem to have changed the qualifying level for them, beyond what the EU directive seems to have required. Or I guess if they were simultaneously published in the U.S., but that should require some evidence to support it. For that list, File:Der Maler Richard Müller mit Modell im Atelier. Foto von Hugo Erfurth.jpg would seem to be the only one which might fall under the simple photo stuff, and even that seems dubious to me (though the date is not known, which makes restoration unclear). For other works, one area could be works where the creation date was before 1924 but we don't know when the publication date was -- those probably fall under the "ambiguous" part of the WMF guidance, part of current policy, meaning we probably should not delete under that uncertainty, but rather treat that as more of a theoretical doubt and keep them under assumption of PD-US-expired (unless we have specific publication info or have some documentation that it was kept unpublished until at least 1924). Of the Erfurth ones, File:Corinth,Lovis 1858-1925.JPG does not have a creation date -- just that it obviously needed to have been before the subject's death in 1925. If that was from 1923 or before, it could be OK. File:Painter Kete Holvits by Erfurt G.jpg also does not have a date -- was that before or after File:Käthe Kollwitz by Hugo Erfurth 1925.jpg, taken of the same person? If before, that could be pre-1924 and also be OK. As User:MichaelMaggs says, we could treat stuff which has a significant chance of being OK (possibly even if there is a significant doubt as well) as "ambiguous" under current policy and keep them. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Italy was 50pma on the URAA date, but I believe they had 6-year wartime extensions, so they were effectively 56pma. I guess the extensions put that work just over the URAA line as being restored. Be careful of assuming 70pma for all EU countries though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right, which documents the situation today. But the URAA restorations applied based on public domain status on the URAA date, which was 1996 for Italy. Italy applied the EU directive in Legislative Decree No. 154 of May 26, 1997, but that was after the URAA date and therefore does not affect the URAA. The law in effect in 1996 is here, which was 50pma. And for non-retroactive laws, sometimes you need to go back even further because sometimes parts of older laws still apply. There are some details at en:Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights in the Italy row. Portugal and France also had lesser terms on the URAA date, as did most of the eastern European nations which joined the EU at later dates. Carl Lindberg (talk) 09:13, 4 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Rosenzweig, while I was suggesting that this might be a possible way forward, I'm afraid I'm no longer closely enough involved with Commons to commit the rather large amount of time that would inevitably be involved to lead the idea. I would certainly support it, and perhaps could help with some of the final drafting, but I don't think I'm the right person to push this forward. MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:21, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright of British newsreels
Hi, What is the copyright status of British newsreels from 1931, i.e. [6], [7] and [8]? If these are still under a copyright, when does it expire? Regards, Yann (talk) 16:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
According to [9], 50 years after the broadcast date, so any broadcast before 1969 is out of copyright, this excludes films, literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works. You need to check if the music at the start is out of copyright, or edit \ mute it out. I don't see any template you can use.--BevinKacon (talk) 18:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't a newsreel a film, though, rather than a broadcast? Hence 70 years from death of director/producer, or from making available to public if anonymous. --bjh21 (talk) 19:20, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yann, "films made before June 1, 1957 were not entitled to protection as films, but as a series of photographs and as dramatic works. The period of protection to which such a film is entitled under the old provisions of the 1988 Act is therefore that applicable to photographs and to dramatic works made before that date." G Davies, N Caddick, and G Harbottle, Copinger and Skone James on Copyright, 17th edn (Sweet & Maxwell 2016) vol 1, para 6-83. Under the 1911 Copyright Act (which was the one in force when the newsreels were created), "photographs [...] were granted a fixed period of protection of 50 years from the date of the making of the original negative." Id, para 6-39. Under the 1956 Act, the term of copyright in a photograph taken before June 1, 1957, continued to be "the period of 50 years from the end of the year in which it was taken". Id, para 6-46. Since they entered the public domain before the 1988 Act (which extended the term of protection) (id, para 6-51), they might have been out of copyright for some time. However, when the Term Directive was transposed, copyright protection of the photographs possibly revived. Under Article 10(2) of the Term Directive, transposed in the UK through Article 16(d) of the Duration of Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations 1995 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/3297/regulation/16/made), protection of the photographs would have potentially revived (to 70 years post mortem auctoris) if (1) they qualify as photographic works, (2) were on 1st July 1995 protected in another EEA state under legislation relating to copyright or related rights. As to (1), it seems highly likely that at least one of the "shots" would qualify as a photographic work both under the (very lax) UK standard and the (somewhat higher) EU standard (compare id, para 3-263; just look at Painer). As to (2), this is a known issue, and I refer for a summary to C Angelopoulos, "Term Directive", in T Dreier and PB Hugenholtz (eds), Concise European Copyright Law, 2nd edn (Kluwer 2016), 335, 371: "In Spain however, on 1 July 1995 all categories of works, including works of photography, were protected for the much longer term of 70 or 80 years pma (depending on the date of death of the author). Applying the EC Treaty's prohibition of discrimination, photographs made by EU nationals who died less than 80 years before 1 July 1995 were protected in Spain on that date, making them eligible for the harmonized term of protection of 70 years pma and revival of copyright throughout the EU, as long as they qualify according to the originality requirements of art. 6 [Term Directive, -pajz]." That being said, I would submit that we should, under Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle, assume protection for 70 years pma. — Pajz (talk) 19:29, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In addition, some of the newsreels cover events in USA, so it is confusing. In that case, I assume that they were published in USA first. Is {{PD-US-no notice}} OK for them? Regards, Yann (talk) 08:09, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter where a photograph was taken; legally, it matters where it was published, and occasionally the nationality of the author. Unless you can establish that Japan is the place of first publication, that license doesn't cover it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:07, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Side question. I cant see any previews except the 2nd revision. Clicking a preview shows me Error Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes. It had the same error when it was still on enwp. Do you have the same problem?--Roy17 (talk) 17:22, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the reasoning can work in the opposite direction. The EXIF of this photo has a specific notice that K. Lindsey Kramer owns the copyright, which means that Kramer did not take this photo as a USFWS employee. There may have been some permission granted to USFWS to use the photo but no transfer of copyright. The career summary does not mention USFWS, although there's no mention of the years 2007-2012 when this photo is supposed to have been taken. -- Asclepias (talk) 22:08, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are several things to keep in mind here: 1) Under the current law putting up (c) sign is completely meaningless, it neither adds nor removes copyright from any work. The work is copyrighted at the moment it has been recorded on a tangible medium, and adding the sign to something that is not copyrightable or no longer copyrighted does not give anybody extra rights; 2) Creative Commons are not laws, but are licences, such licences only apply to things that are copyrighted, if the work is not copyrighted it cannot be distributed under any CC licence (you can apply CC-PD tag to it, but CC and Commons both discourage that due to confusion it creates); 3) You can release any work under multiple licences if you are a copyright holder, and although other people cannot violate those licences, you can (because you did not have to agree to the licence in the first place), for example if I make a photograph, I can plaster "Copyrighted, all rights reserved, I will kill you if you ever use it" on it (or in metadata) and then release it under a free licence on Commons, another person may have legal problems doing that, but as a copyright holder, I can do anything. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 04:50, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, What is the copyright status of Category:Pathé films? Since Charles Pathé died in 1957, and that films are copyrighted 70 years pma in France, films made by Charles Pathé himself (or his brothers) are not in the public domain in France. I was not able to find any date of death for his brothers. May be concerned:
I checked all reference sites, and they all give 1948. Then the reference given on Wikipedia doesn't mention that name, so I removed it. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:26, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yann, agreed. 1953 seems at this point to be based on self-published sources or original research. I would go with the BNF catalog which gives 1948 [12]. — Racconish💬16:28, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
An interesting "joint work" example
Here's an interesting art piece with a potentially wacky copyright situation.
The design was presumably conceived by Denali National Park artist-in-residence Sonja Hinrichsen[13]
Denali artists-in-residence retain copyrights on their works[14]
The work was actually executed by volunteers, who may or may not have included National Park Service employees
The photograph was presumably taken by a National Park Service employee (photo credit is "NPS Photo")
I believe that the copyright for the work probably rests with all the volunteers who did the snowshoeing, and not with Hinrichsen (important info on joint works). I'm unsure what the effect is if one of those voluteers was an NPS employee, but absent confirmation of that I think this would be a copyright violation, unless any one of the volunteers was to release it with a free license. – BMacZero (🗩) 22:07, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Always remember, Copyright only protects creative expression. There is a threshhold of how small the creativity can be, but it needs to be there at all. So, if a person has given those volunteers exact places to place their feet, then the volunteers did not express any of their creativity. However, if they were given a rouph layout and they were following it, but could also change ever-so-slightly; only then we need to start discussing whether they were employees at all. In this case I do not know enough about the process to make up an opinion. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 02:45, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would be interesting to see if snow qualifies as a "fixed medium" in the first place. If the design was drawn first, that would solely be the NPS artist. I probably would not worry about copyright though unless we had a specific complaint from a possible copyright owner, or we have something of a court precedent on something like this, which I'm not sure exists. It could be considered more like folk art rather than a joint work, it may not be in a fixed medium, the volunteers could well be considered work for hire since they were directed by the NPS (or better, since it was "specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work"). Which, in turn, would make the whole thing PD-USGov. In general I don't like deleting anything where we cannot point to a court case or some other kind of precedent; if something like that has not been a copyright problem in the entire history of copyright, it's probably OK for a reason we haven't thought about -- we aren't that expert. Extrapolating copyright to new situations and deleting on that theoretical basis can give Commons a bad name (and in my opinion, deservedly in cases like that). Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:21, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
* I think the work would qualify as fixed by virtue of having been recorded in a photograph[15]. But it does make sense to me that we probably shouldn't delete this image off of our speculation about the nature of joint works. – BMacZero (🗩) 03:25, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
* Snow is definitely a fixed medium. Something doesn't have to be long lasting, just fixed. An ice sculpture, a snow castle, or the specifically arranged snowpaths are fixed. We have a sequence of events here. 0) (probably) Somebody draws an outline of how people are suppose to walk, this can be the first copyright, but it was almost certainly done by the government employee. 1) People walk in the snow. The question is are they told how to walk or do they transform 2D plan into the 3D surface (the latter is definitely copyrightable). Also they are probably, but not certainly acting as volunteers for the government in general. If they are volunteers for this specific project, it is actually worse, because that can create a copyright transfer. US government can own the copyright, it just cannot generate the copyright, so if volunteers were volunteering only for this project, they could generate copyright and then transfer it to the government. 2) The photo is taken, transferring work again into 2D world. This is again potentially copyrightable, but I am sure that this is done by the government employee, and thus is free from additional copyright. So the question is step 1. And I do not have enough information to make an oppinion on that. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 04:19, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
* Snow is not definitely a fixed, tangible medium. From the compendium: Specifically, the Office cannot register a work created in a medium that is not intended to exist for more than a transitory period, or in a medium that is constantly changing. They go on: Most visual art works satisfy the fixation requirement, because the deposit copy(ies) or identifying material submitted with the application usually indicate that the work is capable of being perceived for more than a transitory duration. However, the fact that uncopyrightable material has been fixed through reproduction does not make the underlying material copyrightable. For example, a photograph of a fireworks display may be a copyrightable fixation of the pho- tographic image, but the fireworks themselves do not constitute copyrightable subject matter. So, the fact you may be able to photograph the snow does not necessarily make it copyrightable. The drawing of how they were supposed to walk, yes that would be copyrightable. The photo itself is also copyrightable, but that says nothing about the photographed subject. Very little else about this is "definitely" -- some of us have learned more than the average layman about copyright, but we are far from experts. Were the people told to walk in a slavish imitation of the pattern, or could they exercise creative judgement themselves? And even if so, this would seem to be a contribution to a collective work, meaning that it would fall under the definition of "work for hire" meaning that there is no transfer, and everything is PD-USGov if a copyright even exists. Someone can diagram what fireworks are supposed to look like, but a photo of the resulting fireworks has no copyright encumberments (in the U.S., at least) and this could be the same situation. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
* Well of course, you also may be right :-) "Transitory" could only count when it's changing before our eyes. I just don't think it's definite either way, and I don't like guessing how courts would expand the scope of copyright when it comes to deletions. We have enough problems deleting stuff that there are solid precedents for... Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Mumbai International Airport Logo
If is said that "In a fair amount of cases, a logo is considered a trademark without also being a copyright. This is most often the case for simple logos that only contain letters or simple geometric shapes. The rationale here is that such simple logos do not meet the threshold of originality required under U.S. copyright law." In this regard, whether This logo] of Mumbai Internaltional Airpot will be under copyright or it will be out of copyright. --Sushant savla (talk) 06:10, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Sushant savla: We have to account for copyright laws in both the U.S. and the country the work was published in (India). According to COM:TOO India, these have the same threshold of originality laws. In my opinion, this is a borderline case, but it is probably above the threshold of originality because it is composed of more than a few distinct elements that are not common shapes. – BMacZero (🗩) 16:29, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's above the U.S. line. That's not a simple geometric shape like a square or a triangle. Given enough elements, you can also get a copyright on a creative arrangement of simple geometric shapes, and that probably qualifies on that score even if the individual shapes do not. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:02, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@大诺史: BritAir is certainly below the TOO. The Cityhopper simply adds text to the KLM logo, which isn't sufficient for copyright, so if the KLM logo is than this one is, too. I believe it would be because it is only composed of a few common shapes. – BMacZero (🗩) 16:39, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
{{PD-old-assumed}} says 120 years, which this is a little over a decade short of. w:1890#Births says the last person clearly born in 1890 to die died in 2006; there are many names on that list who outlived 1949, which would make them copyright in the EU.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would the artist or the publisher be the bearer of the copyright? Since the artist's name is not stated, if he would otherwise have the copyright, how would Greek law handle this? WhisperToMe (talk) 23:34, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If the author's name was not stated, it was published anonymously, and I'd think {{PD-anon-70-EU}} would apply. If the author's name became public before 1982 it would change things, so it's worth Googling a little bit to see if there is further information out there -- particularly to confirm the author was not named on the back, which was rare but possible -- but failing that I'd say it's OK to upload. But not on the basis of assuming the author has been dead for 70 years, that's all. Oh, I see the back is linked on the image (it's often good to upload those, then overwrite with the front, for documentation purposes). I'm not sure if that is the author name or publisher name or just further description, to be honest -- would be best to document that inscription as well. Greek copyright law says the publisher represents the copyright in an anonymous work until the author is made public, but that type of copyright would have expired -- either the author is known and the PD status depends on their lifetime, or it remained anonymous for 70 years and is fine. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:45, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
... and I also missed that it is documented, in that it says it was "published by N. Christopoulos, Nafplion". If that is just a publisher name, then we're OK I think. If that is the photographer as well, it's problematic without knowing when they died, because a named author means it's not anonymous. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:26, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The inscription on the back seems to say "ΕΚΔΌΣΙΣ", which Google translates as "publishing", so I think the photographer is uncredited on the card itself, even if it was actually taken by the publisher. --bjh21 (talk) 13:05, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
These seem quite complex to be "own work" and there's really no EXIF data or other information provided to help verify that it is. The animation looks like an in-game screenshot of some kind, and both files can be seen online here and here. It looks like the uploader is working on a draft at en:User:Vuong Thanh Tai/sandbox so it's possible the uploader is the game designer. Can these files be kept as is or do they at least need to be OTRS verified? -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:41, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
OTRS (or fair use) for me. The second file mentioned above is a straight (slightly squashed) copy of an image available at your amazon link, and while there is a bit of additional detail on the first one than is present in the found images, it seems most likely that it is available somewhere, and it's at the very least derivative. And actually, I do see versions with that extra little bit available, meaning this may just be a version where the border etc. was cropped out. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:54, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Уместна ли загрузка (Is the download appropriate?)
Прошу пояснить мне, уместна ли загрузка приобретённого .pdf файла книги Хронографическая история. Мхитар Айриванкский (Айриванеци) в котором явно сказано, что "Текст приводится по изданию: Хронографическая история, составленная отцом Мехитаром, вардапетом Айриванкским: Пер. К. Патканова. — СПб., 1869."
@Gorvzavodru: Замечательный вопрос! Всегда стоит учитывать, что копирайт может быть как на всю работу целиком, так и на отдельные её части. В описаном случае очевидно, что копирайт самого текста уже закончился и сам текст может быть использован кем угодно для любых целей. Соответственно с этой стороны проблем нет. Но вёрстка самой книги также может создать отдельный копирайт... а может и не создавать. Тут вопрос в том, было-ли принято какое-либо креативное рещение при этой вёрстке. Как правило ответ для многих книг - это да. Они, к примеру часто вручную решают где переносить слова, чтобы абзаци легче читались, помещались целиком на странице (по возможности), чтобы не было одного последнего слова абзаца или главы на следующей странице, и тд. Такие решения ведут к созданию нового копирайта. К счастью банальная подборка шрифта не создаёт нового копирайта в большинстве случаев. Теперь... уместна-ли загрузка. Чтобы ответить на этот вопрос нужно знать как верстали текст в этой книге, так как я этого не знаю, я не могу ответить. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 08:48, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Насчёт вёрстки - не понял. В викитеке же всё наново перевёрстывается. А этот текст нужен только как источник для викитеки. В общем, загрузил я, для лучшего эксперимента. File:Мхитар Айриванкский Хронографическая история.pdf К тому же, шрифтовое оформление и разрывы абзацев - несложно мне и поменять перед загрузкой на Викисклад. Превентивно не стал так делать. Могу задним числом сделать. Можете теперь что дополнительное сказать, User:Gone_Postal? Ссылки на файл из Викитеки - сделал. --Gorvzavodru (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Но вы-же хотите сюда залить PDF файл в котором возможно присутствует сложная вёрстка. Тот факт, что она вам не нужна, не означает, что вы можете нарушать авторское право. Викитека будет использовать только текст, создавая свою собственную вёрстку, так что у них никаких проблем. Вопрос в том, можно или нельзя загружать ваш PDF на Викисклад. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 06:44, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Gorvzavodru: Я посмотрел(а) на ваш файл. Я далеко не профессионал в вёрстке книг, но мне кажется, что в этом случае она целиком автоматическая, и соответственно не создала дополнительного авторства. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 06:46, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Спасибо за высказанное мнение. (это вообще очень странная книга. Есть у меня мнение, что это они вообще просто материалы из интернета тупо перепечатывают....) --Gorvzavodru (talk) 06:49, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Verifying that a Youtube video is licensed CC-BY
Hello. I am having a bit issue determining if a video a licensed under CC on Youtube. A video on this Youtube search shows that "OWWC BlizzCon 2018 - Day 2" is indeed licensed under CC BY, but I cannot find any licensing info on the video page itself. It was a live video, so maybe that's why the licensing isn't under the description for some reason? Just wondering if anyone knew if there is any way to verify the copyright status on the video before I reuse it. Thanks. Pbroks13 (talk) 14:03, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We had a similar issue here, and ended up deleting the video. I would tend to trust the actual label on the page more than the YouTube search engine, so if it appears in a search result but isn't marked on the page, I would consider it not CC BY. But you could try emailing the YouTube user to ask whether they labeled it CC BY, or to change the label if they haven't. As a side note, most of that video would likely be copyrighted as proprietary game screenshots. --GRuban (talk) 14:28, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was looking for non-in-game content. And after a bit more research on the YT forums, I also found that this seems to be a common issue that dates back a while. Thanks for the response. Pbroks13 (talk) 15:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Pbroks13: I cant find the video from the search results. If you did, please watch out for the tiny Related beneath the video descriptions on the search results page. Some searches selecting CC will still show you non-CC Related contents (but some do not, AFAICR searching CC and sorting by upload date at the same time will get rid of all the Related results). Stupid youtube algorithms and UI.--Roy17 (talk) 17:22, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Roy17: I see now some that have the "related" tag underneath the description, but strangely, the one I am referring to does not have one. However, sorting by upload date did get rid of (as far as I can tell) all non-CC videos, which is super helpful. Thanks! Pbroks13 (talk) 17:35, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A soundtrack is almost always above TOO. Keeping the soundtrack significantly weakens the claim a restored silent film is PD. — Racconish💬15:40, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The copyright is on the sound recording, not necessarily the sounds themselves. So while the sounds may not have any authorship, the recording still does. Just like in music, there is a separate copyright of the songwriter (typically owned by the band member individuals, and licensed through ASCAP and the like), and also the recording copyright (typically owned by the labels). Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:27, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'll appreciate it if fellow Commoners review this action of user:Julo, especially since they actually didn't keep those files - deletion templates are still on pages of files involved.
It looks somewhat odd for me, when one of fellow admins uses arguments more suitable for a speedy deletion case than for a regular DR. I've nominated some maps, uploaded by a multiple copyvio uploader. Most of them (example) have no description, author and source specified, some (example) are based on previously deleted files. I find these doubts significant enough for a regular deletion request as per COM:PCP policy, so I'd prefer to get a more detailed explanation, why files may be kept only because I didn't give any evidence or any proof of copyvio and how this decision fits the COM:EVID requirements. Thank you. Sealle (talk) 18:17, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
File:Kazan Khanate map Tatar.svg has over fifty uses on various Wikipedias, and was uploaded in 2007, and is one of the files nominated for deletion. You're arguing for deletion of heavily-used files that have been here for a decade by an uploader that hasn't been here for six years. I think deleting such files without any actual evidence is massively disruptive, and reduces the trust that Wikipedia has in us, and our deletion of files in us already annoys a lot on Wikipedias. Also, it's incredibly frustrating to have work deleted or pages broken because people decide to question the images after they've been here a decade and the uploader is no longer here to discuss them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good example of a reasonable closure of a DR as keep. No evidence has been provided. If you have evidence that these files were some sort of copyright violation, please feel free to reopen the DR with that evidence. ℺ Gone Postal (〠✉ • ✍⏿) 12:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Jeff G.: Thanks for the answer. I don't doubt it. I just wanted to be sure before uploading images. I just don't want to incur in copyvio. Again, thanks for your quick reply.--SirEdimon (talk) 23:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I want to re-use an image available in upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/ rather than via the usual Commons URL. This is for a print publication, probably with a companion ebook.
A. Is it okay to use this image?
B. If so, what citation should appear with it?
I am interested in posting audio of U.S. town halls on Wikimedia Commons, in conjunction to posting transcripts of them on Wikisource. I wanted to get some insight into copyright issues. I will describe one file I have which I think is pretty clearly in the public domain, then ask about some harder hypothetical cases.
A U.S. Congressman held a public telephone town hall, then posted a link to its audio on Facebook. I have a copy of this audio file. It seems to me that the town hall audio constitutes "a work prepared by an officer or employee" of the federal government "as part of that person's official duties," which puts it into public domain by law. Am I correct?
Official duties: suppose that the Congressman did not use public funds to run the town hall. Does that put holding the town hall outside of his official duties, and thus impact whether the audio is in the public domain?
Public release: suppose the Congressman continues to hold town halls but stops posting the audio of them. Does this change things? If I make a recording of a public town hall open to all, can my recording be put in the public domain with no need to obtain permissions?
Venue: does whether the town hall is held in a physical hall, or via telephone, change whether audio recordings of it are in the public domain?
Finally, what if a state level legislator (instead of a federal one) was the one holding the town halls? Federal law then doesn't apply, but these are public events open to all. Is audio of them in the public domain? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dennis.the.Anarcho-syndicalist (talk • contribs) 04:04, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wonderful idea!
Official duties This is an interesting one, there is a similar case, where the state of Georgia has attempted to copyright its laws ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VOzCpmLlg ) by using a private company to publish them with notes. I am in no way a lawyer, but I think that where the money flows is not the only question. In your case it would still make it public domain. However, if the private company were recording the town hall, they do have a copyright on the recording. So you will need to ask whether the recording itself was done by somebody who was a government employee.
Public release This has nothing to do with copyright. If the files were in public domain, they wee in public domain. You cannot "recall" them by no longer publishing them yourself. If you make a recording yourself, you are free to release them into public domain, or to publish them under the free licences that are available on Commons. If you wish to achieve maximum closeness to public domain, you can look into CC-0, if you want to make sure that somebody cannot then take your recording, alter it, and then disallow others from redistributing it, you will need a viral licence, for example CC-BY-SA.
Venue No, such things do not matter, unless they alter some other aspect of the recording (for example, who is doing the recording) as well.
If a politician has publicly posted a link to an audio file, is that file henceforth in the public domain? The link to the audio of a town hall I have transcribed is now dead, can I upload the file to Wikimedia Commons?
I hadn't noticed the 'fixedness' requirement for copyright. Town halls are not fixed and so they are not events subject to copyright. A transcript of one is subject to copyright, since the work of transcribing it is 'creative', but if I make it myself I can release it into the public domain and post to Wikisource. Is this thinking correct?
Many existing transcripts of audio addresses in Wikisource do not supply a link to an audio source, but without an audio source there is no way for readers to check the accuracy of the transcript, or to listen to it for information not in the transcript such as the speaker's tone. I very much want to include audio sources.
However, town hall audio sources are much more open to questioning whether they are in the public domain than transcripts. This project is new and there are very few cases where people have uploaded town hall recordings and/or transcripts. Should I just upload an audio source to determine what the thinking of the community is to that particular file? It seems to me that each file will constitute a different case which may have to be discussed separately, until a tradition of posting town hall transcripts is established. Dennis.the.Anarcho-syndicalist (talk) 16:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The State Council has declared a plan to made all national standard public available online for free by 2020, with a subgoal to make all mandatory and non-adapted standard available by the end of 2018, and all adapted standard available by the end of 2020. Wikimedia should have a license for that.Viztor (talk) 01:15, 11 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hypothetical re: digital retouching becoming digital painting
At what point does a digital retouch of a photo become a digital painting, which only has that photo as reference? I’ve got a photo of a newspaper columnist from over on en.wiki that is still under copyright (assumed) but nobody’s sure exactly who holds that copyright. It’s a tiny scan of a photocopy of a halftone head shot of the columnist that I have been cleaning up. First I upsampled the image to a decent size, and then I did a lot of heavy retouching on the photo to get it to look decent, removing the moiré, etc. I doubt there’s a single original pixel left in the image. The thing I wonder is, now that I’ve put all this work into it, is it a new piece that I can share via Commons under my copyright, or is it still the original copyrighted image? When does it become a new creative work? Taking this back to analog, if a portrait painter works from a photo, is her copyright invalidated by the photograph owner’s copyright? All input appreciated. - Tim D. Williamsonyak-yak01:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In analog, the Pop Art movement ran into these issues back in the 60s. For example, Roy Lichtenstein created paintings which were close adaptations of existing comic book art, such as with Whaam! and Drowning Girl. Lichtenstein never reimbursed or acknowledged the original artists, and the copyright holders of the original art never brought suit against him. Lichtenstein did not use the original art as templates but only as inspiration, however, which is one difference with your digital artwork. Dennis.the.Anarcho-syndicalist (talk) 15:22, 11 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Once I’ve found the copyright owner (in this case, the publishing company that now owns the Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio) how do I find out whether they renewed their copyright? The original photo was work for hire published before 1969. - Tim D. Williamsonyak-yak02:38, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Coins in Austria
Can anyone fluent in German determine whether what's discussed here mean that an image of an Austrian Euro coin is acceptable under Commons rules? Thanks --Discastotalk07:20, 11 July 2019 (UTC) PS: feel free to move this discussion to Commons_talk:Currency[reply]
We got a mail. File:Gilead-Flag.gif was uploaded on 2006, the author is Voldemort. The picture can be found here. The sender says that “the image was actually made by me nearly a year earlier and posted on the FOTW site” and “please either change the name or else remove his name as creator and leave it blank if this is easier”. The earliest archive is after the uploading. Pinging @Voldemort. What to do? Bencemac (talk) 08:05, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
FOTW says "Last modified: 2006-01-21", that doesn't look like something that could be faked by anyone but the site owner. - Alexis Jazzping plz08:36, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That only proves that the webpage existed before 2006-01-21(that too if you trust a random unimportant website). How does it proves that it (the image) was there before my upload ?? Please believe me. Anyone can send an email and claim anything, but he did not provided the proof required, because he is lying. BTW why do I need to steal a flag from a stupid website. Have a great day boys! -- Voldemort (talk) 13:05, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why "please either change the name or else remove his name as creator and leave it blank if this is easier" ? I think he is a fanboy and has a problem with my username, if that's the case I can consider changing my user-name if he stops lying about the image. -- Voldemort (talk) 13:16, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
FotWer here. Voldemort, stop trying to claim ownership over Marc Pasquin’s work, m’kay? I was there when this image was first contributed to FotW-ml, and when it was posted to FotW-ws (that “unimportant site”, LOL), and I was there when the original image was improved to its current version (which we should synch, btw). -- Tuválkin✉✇13:52, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone harbouring any lingering doubt concerning the untruthfulness of Voldemort’s claim of authorship should ask why is this image 217 px high? It had been the standard in the Flags of the World mailinglist and website since about 1997, and in wide use thereon even before, changed shortly later to 216px high. Why would an independetly created image use this same unusual number of pixels?… -- Tuválkin✉✇14:04, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Guy, be aware that OTRS means you will have to disclose your real life name, which will be thus linked to your fraudulent authorship statement. Maybe you don’t wanna do that. -- Tuválkin✉✇14:28, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Volde, better you accept your lies, I can prove that you're lying. But I think you should be given a chance to plead guilty. And Tuválkin is right that you need to disclose your real life identity for OTRS assistance. Regards, Eatcha (talk) 14:46, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Tuválkin, this link proves that volde is evil. Volde, What you have to say about this link ?? The date is January 17 2006. Bencemac this case is closed per this link, we don't need to wait for volde's OTRS. Regards, -- Eatcha (talk) 15:10, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that link, Eatcha. I do have the original image in my e-mail inbox since 2004, along with Marc Pasquin’s message about it to the FotW-ml and the discussion that followed prior to it being edited into the FotW-ws. Valdemort is just insisting because he thinks this is all so fun, risking wasted OTRS volonteer time: Classic trolling. -- Tuválkin✉✇17:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Tuvalkin I sent my OTRS email, also complained about your lies and your hacker friend Eatcha who somehow created that fake link to help you. I will contact WMF against both of you, will file DMCA if you don't stop lying! -- Voldemort (talk) 13:21, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
ICRC photos from Spanish Civil War
Hello! I have recently found some interesting photos for a series of articles that I'm writing. This photos can be found here. I have been discussing with user:DarwIn about this and it is difficult to find if this images are in the public domain:
The ICRC allows using their images if the use is not commercial (so we shouldn't upload them to Commons)
But, this images were taken in Spain between 1936-1939 and the author is completely unknown: ICRC gives themselves as copyright holders
They weren't published in Spain and surely (I assume) weren't done by a Spanish, as they were visiting a prisoner's camp within an international visit.
They are archived in Switzerland, as the code says (GEN for Geneve) and even the publication names are in French. So I think Swiss laws apply here.
It is 80 years since the images were done and as they have a collective title we can think they were published in a sort of memorandum (or maybe a book?). PD-Old should be used?
I think we can use {{PD-Switzerland-old-unknown}} because we know that the author is unknown and the institution uses its name for the author copyright.
Comment Always remember, Copyright only protects creative expression. There is a threshhold of how small the creativity can be, but it needs to be there at all. So, if a person has given those volunteers exact places to place their feet, then the volunteers did not express any of their creativity. However, if they were given a rouph layout and they were following it, but could also change ever-so-slightly; only then we need to start discussing whether they were employees at all. In this case I do not know enough about the process to make up an opinion. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 02:45, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
--Discasto talk 07:21, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
- Alexis Jazz ping plz 08:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
