Russavia, I am aware that that is the issue (and I was talking about the original problem images, not this letter). I'm a bit confused though about the parody/satire angle, my understanding is that a CC licence does not extinguish things such as moral rights that are not related to copyright. Also, I do find it a bit odd that the Israeli Ministry of Justice would be comfortable disclaiming any copyright to the image within Israel per their letter, but would be uncomfortable licencing them in other jurisdictions under a licence that does essentially the same thing. We can but only ask, and see what they say; if they say "no" for the reasons you outline then nothing has been lost. I do agree that the Australian Commonwealth is behind the curve as well here, but in my experience and with some honourable exceptions, most federal bureaucrats still conflate these issues with the unrelated matter of FOI law.
But, I guess what I'm trying to get at, is that if these images *are* useful, a more productive course of action than arguing about it on a mailing list would probably be to identify what steps can be taken in good faith to move them from a disputed copyright situation to a situation where everyone is comfortable that there are no problems with re-use. If all the energy that had gone into these threads and the various tit-for-tat nominations on Commons had gone into that instead, we'd probably already be halfway there. Cheers, Craig On 22 June 2014 20:26, Russavia <russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Craig, et al > > On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Craig Franklin > <cfrank...@halonetwork.net> wrote: > > Pardon me if this has already been covered, but as I understand it the > > problem is not the legal status of the files in Israel, the problem is > with > > the legal status of the files in the United States, where the Israeli > > Government may still have some copyright protections. > > You are misunderstanding completely the issue. There is no evidence > that Israel has a PD exemption for such government works, as we see > for say, Russia,[1] which allows for letters such as this to exist on > Commons.[2] > > > It seems to me that rather than insisting that the files are permitted to > > remain, a more fruitful avenue might be to use WMIL's contacts with the > > Israeli Government to licence these images anywhere where copyright might > > still exist under a very free licence like CC-0. That way even if URAA > or > > some future copyright shenanigans places these images back under > copyright, > > they're usable by anyone. This ought to satisfy even the most dogmatic > > Commons admin that the images are indeed free. > > I have told someone that what needs to occur is for the GPO to release > their claims over copyright worldwide in relation to URAA. The reason > for this, is the same reason that the Israeli Government would NEVER > CC-0 licence their materials -- because it opens them up to parody, > satire and other uses that they might not agree with -- and we need to > protect re-users who wish to use materials for such purposes. That's > the same reason that the Australian Commonwealth Parliament refuses to > CC photos of MPs, in case you weren't aware. > > Cheers > > Russavia > > [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-RU-exempt > [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_letter_to_FIFA.jpg > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
