On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 6:29 PM, David Gerard<dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/7/17 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxw...@gmail.com>: > >> (*) Would not make the Wikimedia Foundation or its community of user >> appear to endorse or support the assertion of copyright on exacting >> reproductions of clearly public domain works. Wikimedia (as far as I >> can tell) and many of its users believes that it would be a >> significant harm to the public and a blow to the fundamental nature of >> copyright if that kind of loophole were allowed to exist. > > > I can imagine an NPG copyright tag that carefully states their claims > without endorsing them: > > "This image is public domain in the US, as a plain reproduction of a > public domain work. The National Portrait Gallery asserts copyright > over this scan in the UK and licenses said scan under [copyleft > licence]." > > That would pass muster for Commons just fine, though many would be > annoyed and consider it was a sellout not to push the public domain > question.
It would probably have to go as far as the full NPOV "but X-Y-Z-respectable-notable-parties think this is would be a ruinous perversion of copyright, and not true even in the UK." (Consider: The Wikimedia communities are generally pretty diligent about actually following copyright, in my experience even more so than many commercial organizations much less online communities. Our communities will even behave more strictly than is required by law if we see some greater social purpose. Collectively we've taken the position we have because we have reason to believe the claims are both invalid and are socially harmful.) It's a pretty broad and complicated matter with ramifications far outside this particular instance. I surely don't want people coming back and telling me that slavish reproductions of PD art are copyrightable in the UK according to Wikipedia. Nor will the NPG want people claiming Wikipedia says their claims are bunk. Perhaps we can work out a scrupulously neutral statement which will satisfy both parties. I doubt this will happen unless both parties feel like they MUST come to an agreement. At it stands I think think that it's clear that agreement must actually be reached. As far as the sellout thing goes— consider that we already avoid accepting a lot of 'fair use' that we could legally get away with in the interest of expanding the base of of freely licensed works. You're point about copyleft is a good one though, generally a copyleft grant would completely satisfy our user community (as well as the foundation's formally stated mission). (There are more than a few things which are probably PD which we allow folks to assert copyleft licenses over; some of *my* SVGs probably fall into that bucket) But has this gotten so much attention that even that wouldn't be enough? I think probably so. Moreover, it's not clear enough that we could honestly negotiate it. I.e. the NPG could agree to it, but if the wider community doesn't like the arrangement and creates a lot of noise everyone involved would look like fools. Though, I'm prone to being too cynical at times. We've seemed to have had reasonably good luck elsewhere getting access to public domain art unencumbered by special requirements. We'd be short-sighted if we accept an unreasonably conciliatory compromise in this one case. I think we need to negotiate with the full expectation that whatever we permit here may be demanded in all future cases, even by non-museums, and even by those who would have previously asked for no special treatment. (Again, this is why the copyleft point is interesting— as we already accept copylefted works, I just have no clue how to reconcile it with the enormous amount of attention this has had so far plus the desire to not accept the validity of magically-not-PD trick) On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dal...@gmail.com> wrote: > What does Bridgeman vs. Corel have to do with it? We're talking about > a UK legal threat. I think Geni is making a cat's out of the bag argument. Regardless of the degree of validity of the claim in the UK a completely reasonable response to UK civil action against someone in the US is "Good luck collecting on that!". A lot of people already have these images already. Getting clearly illegal content off the internet is already almost impossible. But something that appears to be clearly legal, in the US of all places,? Good luck with that. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l