User talk:Anthere

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
(→Wikimania report)
(→Message from it.wikisource community about "Shorter term" and Italian law about texts)
Line 440: Line 440:
Thank you for the summary. I'll raise that amongst board members + Mike (legal counsel) BUT I'll wait about 2 weeks to do so, because I would prefer Frieda is here (she just left for holidays for about 2 weeks if I understood well). As an italian, I think it will help if she is present.
Thank you for the summary. I'll raise that amongst board members + Mike (legal counsel) BUT I'll wait about 2 weeks to do so, because I would prefer Frieda is here (she just left for holidays for about 2 weeks if I understood well). As an italian, I think it will help if she is present.
  +
===Regarding servers===
I can immediately answer about servers in Europe. We have no servers in Paris. We had 3-5 in the past, but this center has been closed. In Europe, some of our servers are hosted by Kennisnet, a dutch facility. All the servers over there are squids, which means they mirror the content. However, technically speaking, they do not HOST the content. This is done only on database servers. All the database servers are currently in Florida. If (when ?) we move databases to Holland, we will be submitted to Dutch law. I do not know how restrictive the dutch law is, but until now, we have felt best to host content only in the USA, so as to be seriously only liable to american law. Now, this is largely due to the law on free speech/libel, more favorable in the USA. <br>
I can immediately answer about servers in Europe. We have no servers in Paris. We had 3-5 in the past, but this center has been closed. In Europe, some of our servers are hosted by Kennisnet, a dutch facility. All the servers over there are squids, which means they mirror the content. However, technically speaking, they do not HOST the content. This is done only on database servers. All the database servers are currently in Florida. If (when ?) we move databases to Holland, we will be submitted to Dutch law. I do not know how restrictive the dutch law is, but until now, we have felt best to host content only in the USA, so as to be seriously only liable to american law. Now, this is largely due to the law on free speech/libel, more favorable in the USA. <br>
We could possibly open a database server in Holland, where to host wikisource. But this server would still be owned by an american organization, so submitted to american law. Which means even though the content is hosted in Holland, we still would have to respect american law. So, I am not sure it would be very helpful. However, I'll submit the issue to Mike and I'll come back to you.
We could possibly open a database server in Holland, where to host wikisource. But this server would still be owned by an american organization, so submitted to american law. Which means even though the content is hosted in Holland, we still would have to respect american law. So, I am not sure it would be very helpful. However, I'll submit the issue to Mike and I'll come back to you.
Line 446: Line 447:
[[User:Anthere|Anthere]]
[[User:Anthere|Anthere]]
  +
  +
===Regarding public speeches===
  +
  +
The answer below is from Mike Godwin
  +
  +
Most people who give a public speech proceed in one of two ways: (a) They write down all of their words in advance and essentially read their speech out loud, or (b) They use notes (or perhaps don't use notes) and give extemporaneous comments that may be recorded by someone else.
  +
  +
In cases like (a), the speech is not public-domain -- it's copyrighted. It became copyright-protected as soon as it was written down on paper (or typed into a computer, or whatever). This is true even if the speech is never delivered. The writing down of the speech is called "fixation," and nations that are signatory to the Berne Convention on copyright (including, e.g., the United States and France) hold that copyright protection begins at "fixation" of the creative work in a tangible medium (which, as I said, can include paper or a computer file or a Dictaphone recording).
  +
  +
In cases like (b) the actual words of the speech may not themselves be copyright-protected because the author hasn't committed "fixation" of the words in a tangible medium. (The notes to the speech may be copyrighted, but that may not mean much if the speaker isn't reading directly from the notes.) What if the speech is recorded by, say, radio or TV broadcasters? The view of the broadcasters is that they have a copyright in the recording of the speech, even if they don't have a copyright in the words of the speech themselves.
  +
  +
Again, this answer is generally correct for both the USA and the EU, as well as for other signatory nations to the Berne copyright convention.
== Proposal to move [[:ru-sib:|Siberian Wikipedia]] to Wikia ==
== Proposal to move [[:ru-sib:|Siberian Wikipedia]] to Wikia ==

Revision as of 20:39, 17 September 2007

/archive1 -- /archive2 -- /archive3 -- /archive4 -- /archive5 -- /archive6 -- /archive7 -- /archive8 -- /archive9 -- /archive10 -- /archive11 -- /archive12


Contents

Open Proxies

Hi!

I'm Wulfson of Russian WP.

I would like to check whether you could help me with my problem - or if not, whether you could direct me to someone else.

This is an issue of the Meta ban on the use of open proxies (Meta:No open proxies).

The main question is - should we regard this ban as a MUST, as an obligatory rule that must be enforced in every Meta project and in every national language WP? Or does every national WP community decide for itself whether it should enforce it - say, by taking a vote?

I hope my question does not seem ludicrous. A majority of our active community does believe this Rule to be binding upon us, and we are blocking open proxies whenever we can - yet we still have a large enough group of people who do not wish to be restricted by this Rule and who even say we may go against it (or part of it), if we so decide it among ourselves. So they doubt the validity and relevance of our sysops' resolute action against open proxy users (actually, the ones that were blocked were all sockpuppets and/or vandals). They, in particular, refer to the fact that many decent users in Russian regions get access to the web and, accordingly, to WP, through Internet providers which, in their turn, use anonymous proxies to concentrate their web traffic and reduce costs. So they say that, by banning these, we may deprive them of the opportunity to edit WP at all.

Our position, however, is that we (say, the ArbCom) can reasonably consider all such cases, whenever they arise, and take a decision in every individual case (or region by region, if need be).

Question 2 is - what is Jimmy Wales' opinion? The conflicting factions here cite his quotes (or alleged quotes) that seem to disagree.

Finally, Question 3 - can a national language WP community take a vote on a Rule of its own, which does not contradict the Meta Rule yet goes even further, saying that users who persistently use open proxies without any apparent reason (or without a permit from the ArbCom) shall be blocked?

Regards, Wulfson 12:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

"No Open Proxies" is a policy allowing us to simply block an open proxy if it's causing problems.

But of course not all open proxies should be blocked. E.g. for countries that can only reach us via proxies, it wouldn't make sense to block them.

Ant


Which countries are blocked? And why?

Some obvious suggestions about Wikimedia Foundation finances

Hi, I'm almost complete sure these have been brought up and looked into, but then again, as a Six Sigma "Black Belt" it is has been my experience that the "obvious" is sometimes overlooked.

I was reading some of a recent financial statement and was surprised to see ~$45,000 in PayPal fees and ~$76,000 in travel expenses. Am I reading these figures right? Holy cow. Have you negotiated lower than standard rates with PayPal? With the volumes of transactions you do, there must be a way to reduce the overhead of receiving donations. And the travel costs seem quite high as well...

Best Regards, --Aerik 03:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The paypal fees, OH yes we tried ! But with no results. This is why we also have the moneybooker system, which is far less costly, but alas, less known. And I agree, these fees are frankly too high. But we unfortunately have little lever here to negociate.

Travel. Seems high as well, but you must realise travel is not only board (board travel is always related to board job, so does not take into account travel costs to go to a conference, this is taken in charge by the organisations inviting us to talk). It is also all travel done by employees themselves (such as Delphine going to a wikimeet). It is also travel made to meet some potentiel content and business parters (this cost can not really be left aside. If we want to do business deals, we sometimes have to go and visit people. For example, I am invited to a meeting with Unesco people in may, my travel costs will be paid by WMF). Last, in travel is also included the travel support we gave to some people to go to Wikimania (this cost was actually supported by sponsors, but still appear in travel). So, when you add it up, yup, it comes to that amount overall. In all honesty, I do not think it is high. Since I became chair, the board met in Florida in november, in Rotterdam in January and will meet again in March. This is one trip every 2 months, but the amount of work we can get done when face to face is absolutely amazing.

Anthere 08:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes - there are definitely some things that are simply done more effectively in person! On the paypal/moneybooker thing... it looks to me (after only a quick look) like moneybooker moves the fees from the seller to the buyer, basically (?). At any rate - have you looked at direct credit card payment solutions? There are a lot of suppliers, and it looks like many of them are more expensive than paypal... I had a radical idea: Do a press release with a request for quotes for credit card processing suppliers - have them come to you. Someone might choose to take it on at a very low rate for the good PR.
How about Google Checkout? They are advertising no fees for all of 2007 (http://checkout.google.com/seller/fees.html) and even after than, it may be cheaper than paypal (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiving-fees-outside) depending on the volume. OR, maybe Google would be willing to cut you a discount when PayPal wouldn't.
Best Regards, --Aerik 00:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

sugestion: creating a Wiki-based family tree site under Wikimedia

such a open-source project is necessary and important. are you guys considering such a project? Acidburn24m 01:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nod. This has already been mentionned (see Proposals for new projects), but did not meet so much support.... Anthere

ComCom

Je ne comprend pas pourquoi on ne peux pas demander le ComCom le suivant:

What does the Wikimedia Foundation do to fight corruption in Wikimedia projects? Is there a place to report corruption? What point of view has the Wikimedia Foundation with respect to the goals stated by Transparency International?

Le page du ComCom dit

Statement of scope: .... Supporting and overseeing communication with the general public.

Ou est-ce que on peut demander cette question? Pourqoui les persons du ComCom peuve directement bourer le question sans dire ou il y a une endroit mellieur pour cette question? Tobias Conradi 84.190.55.228 19:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand this question :(( Can you explain which corruption you are talking about ?

Wikinews ArbCom election

Hello again, Anthere! Can you confirm the Wikinews ArbCom election results so that the users can be officially inducted into the ArbCom? --Thunderhead 21:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

what are we exactly supposed to approve ? ant
Perhaps I misread the policy, but aren't all arbitration committies to be approved by the Board? Thunderhead 05:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Politique corporative pour l'usage des logos

Sur une page utilisateur, on voit apparaître un logo émis par la fondation. J'ai été tenté de demander au contributeur de virer l'image, mais il n'y a aucun document de la fondation qui prévienne cette utilisation. Est-ce acceptable ?

Les Wikimedia visual identity guidelines se concentrent principalement sur l'utilisation du logo « principal » de WikiMedia. Selon mon interprétation du texte, il faudrait que chaque logo émis par la fondation soit accompagné au minimum du texte « WIKIMEDIA ». Or, Image:Wikiquote-logo.svg, par exemple, ne contient pas ce texte. Il en est ainsi pour plusieurs autres logos émis par la fondation. Est-ce voulu ?

Sherbrooke 15:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

J'ai supprimé toute occurrence du logo sur mes pages. Désolé que ça ait pu poser problème. /84•5/06.04.2007/06:58 UTC/

I hereby request permission to alter Wikimedia logos for my own public, non-profit use.

I know that those logos are copyrighted, so I am asking for permission before altering them in any way, or posting these alterations publicly. Also, I was told by a member of the WP Community to ask you, so here I am. I have created a Google Co-op Wikimedia search engine for my own use, and I would like to combine - meaning place side by side in one image - several project logos in order to create a title image to use in place of the default text supplied by Google: "Wikimedia Search". The Search Engine is located here: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=002002171166015021901%3Aiz3pyuxcryc w:en:User:Alex460, 18:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello, specific community logos have been developped specifically for this type of use. You may find the relevant one here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg. YOu are free to use that logo, not the Wikipedia copyrighted logo. Cheers and good luck. Anthere 21:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your help. The image I have created is posted here: http://pages.burgert.name/WikimediaSearch1.png Alex460; w:en:User:Alex460 07:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks - imprint

Hello, Mrs. Nibart-Devouard,

my name is Gert Blazejewski, I work as administrator for German wikibooks. One of our authors told us recently, that we have Jimbo Wales still called as general contact (pls. have a look at http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Impressum). Now the question is, whether we should change the German Wikibooks - imprint and give your address as general contact address instead of Jimbo Wales. I am not sure in this general legal question. Can you help me? Kind regards, Gert Blazejewski, 2007/04/22.

hmmmm. I see. I have no idea where that phone number goes. No idea what the address is (not the official one in any cases), and the email is wikia type. Ouch. At the same time, I do think the contact should be someone actually in the office (which is the case of neither JImbo, nor I). Let me check with other board members how we fix that. Thank you for mentionning it. It is not really a legal issue proper, but definitly an organizational issue :-) Anthere 22:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


Administrator permissions on ro.Wikibooks

Hi, my name is Emily, I am administrator on ro.wikipedia and I require administrator permissions for ro.wikibooks, because I want to correct the mistakes, translate the interface, do some cleaning and add new content, considering that the two admins of ro.wikibooks were not active in the last months. Thank you, Emily

Please make this request here. Thanks, Yonatanh 15:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Edition war

Hello, I have been blocked by a steward (guillom for 1 day.because I added a paragraph on Nicolas Sarkozy's french wikipedia page about his position on software pattern which is very particular. No other french politician has been telling such things about that. All other politicians which expressed themselves about that. Can you talk with the steward who blocked me about this issue ?

My discussion page : http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussion_Utilisateur:Le.iota

Can you please discuss with Guillom about this issue ?

The logo is in the public domain in Germany because of its ordinary and average design: design patent law (Geschmacksmustergesetz) applies as a lex specialis in such cases. Please refer your lawyers to BVerfG, 26. Januar 2005, Az. 1 BvR 1571/02, GRUR 2005, 410 – „Laufendes Auge“. I guess the logo is not registered as a design patent? Then there are no copyright-like restrictions on it. We use very many logos in the German wikipedia under this provision. The logo should also be in the PD anywhere else (except UK and other countries with sweat of the brow jurisdiction or provisions for "typographic copyright"), since it consists solely of design of letters, which is not copyrightable, see en:WP:PD#Fonts. --rtc 02:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

contrary to what you say, the logo is a registered trademark. This is not an argument to delete it though. However, the argument that it is not copyrightable does not seem to be widely accepted. And definitly not accepted by TUM. Anthere 19:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Please note that I was talking about w:design patent registration, not about w:trademark registration. I don't claim that the logo wasn't registered as a trademark. The argument about its copyrightability has been given in a very clear and unambigous wording by Germany's constitutional court; if it is not widely accepted then only because people don't know the decision. Please at least give the lawyer a hint about the decision I cited—I assume that he didn't know it. Further, I guess if TUM were explained the background of the PD status and that their interests are in no way affected by this status, then they wouldn't be so negative about the logo, if the trademark restrictions were pointed out more clearly on the logo's image description page. As a first step, and since we are using so many logos under this provision, I have suggested in the German wikipedia to change the logo template to include more explicit information about the PD status and said restrictions. It goes without saying that we shall respect your decisions, but I hope we can improve the situation for the other logos before it comes to further office actions. --rtc 21:27, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Nod. All this is noted. Mindspillage will follow up on this, as she is more versed in legal considerations than myself. Best Anthere

Conférences grand-public à Rennes les 4,5,et 6juillet : s'il vous plait, venez !

Bonjour, La région Bretagne organise les "Etes TIC de Bretagne" les 4,5 et 6 juillet à Rennes. Michel Briand et moi sommes les principaux concepteurs du programme dans lequel le grand-public pourra gratuitement assister à trois conférences.

Voici les intervenants pressentis :

- WIKIPEDIA : le savoir par tous et pour tous -> Mme Nibart-Drouard responsable du board de Wikipedia (Monde)

- web 2.0 et journalisme citoyen -> Carlo Revelli (fondateur AGORAVOX)

- Les enjeux de la gouvernance de l'internet -> M.Benhamou, représentant de la France au sommet mondial de la société de l'information et à l'Internet Gouvernance Forum.

Sinon j'ai une conférence sur "Mondes virtuels/mondes réels : stratégies", avec des professeurs de San José fondateurs du projet Library 2.0 dans second life (500 professeurs actifs, 6 campus virtuels véritablement utilisés en contexte de cours dans les universités) mais il faut faire la conférence depuis second life et techniquement c'est peu fiable...Je vais tenter de la faire à Aix dans le cadre du séminaire upfing.

Pour avoir un aperçu des "Champs Libres" dans lesquels se trouve la grande salle de conférence : [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ortille/158917359/]

Je vous sollicite donc urgemment pour intervenir à la date du 5 juillet 2007 de 16h15 à 17h30.

Le reste du programme est en cours d'élaboration sur un wiki. Le programme s'articule autour d'une rencontre des laboratoires francophones de recherche sur les usages (notamment avec Serge Proulx), de rencontres sur l'économie du web 2.0 et de rencontres sur les pratiques collaboratives. Les rencontres ont lieu en matinée et 9 ateliers ont lieu les après midis des 4 et 5. Deux soirées (carrefour des possibles et projets innovants en Bretagne) sont programmés les 4 et 5 au soir.

Ce serait un véritable honneur pour nous que vous acceptiez de venir présenter Wikipédia lors d'une de nos conférences pleinières !

Au fait, permettez-moi de me présenter : http://www.web2bretagne.org/wiki/HugAubin.

commons:Commons_talk:Licensing#Pros_and_Cons

Bonjour Anthère,

  • Le sujet est la "rule of shorter term", suivant laquelle quand une oeuvre artistique n'est plus protégée dans son pays de première publication, les pays signataires du traité de Berne le considèrent comme également domaine public, sauf disposition législative contraire.
  • Les USA ayant été considérés comme n'applicant pas la "rule of shorter term", Commons n'admet pas de travaux tombés localement dans le domaine public avant la limite légale US.
  • Suite à une contestation de ma part, j'ai souligné qu'il n'y avait pas de raison de dire que la "rule of shorter term" ne s'applique pas aux USA. La situation aux USA a été examinée un peu plus sérieusement, et la conclusion est ... qu'il n'y a rien de très conclusif ;o)
  • Du coup, il y a un débat pour savoir l'attitude à adopter sur Commons, y compris la possibilité de risquer un procès aux USA...

Je pense qu'il vaut mieux que tu y jettes un oeil. Michelet-密是力 10:19, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Si tu as besoin d'éléments d'analyse ou de contexte, je suis plus facilement joignable sur fr:utilisateur:Michelet ou commons:user:Micheletb Michelet-密是力 16:23, 6 May 2007 (UTC) et si tu es de passage à Paris on pourra toujours en discuter autour d'un pot - je n'ai guère l'occasion de passer à Clermont Ferrand :(

Having spoken with a member of Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. board it seems the best to communicate the consensus of the Wikimedia projects and especially of Commons via foundation-l to inform the WMF board about the opinion of the communities. For the small German Wikisource Community I can already communicate the clear consensus that the texts of authors like Karl Kraus or Kurt Tucholsky (which are as scanned books on Commons and as E-texts on German Wikisource) should remain on Wikimedia servers. The active users of Wikisource-de have voted for the option #3 in the "opinion section" on Commons. Best regards --Histo 14:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The discussion on Portuguese Wikisource is still ongoing, but apparently this is resulting on a consensus to keep all texts on this situation. All of these is going to receive a copyright disclaimer on their talk page (example) with instructions if a successor claims for copyright (the second paragraph of the header on s:pt:Wikisource:Violações de direitos autorais is specially devoted to it). The listing is still on the beginning, but in some weeks all talk pages from these problematic PD works can be listed on the category s:pt:Categoria:!Obras protegidas por direitos autorais nos Estados Unidos if in any time any emergency action is needed (but please, if Foundation receive any copyright claims on these works from pt.ws, send a friendly-warning before going to do some type of delete action, to make way to "move" from pt.ws to some external site). 555 17:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I thought there was an agreement. But apparently, there is not. I am not sure board members will agree on this topic anytime soon. I fear I will have no answer for you. I'll try to remember your warning 555, but usually, I am not the person doing the office action. You should mention it to Cary perhaps. Cheers Anthere 23:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Lupo's analysis

Florence, the board's non-response you posted and removed at the commons makes me suspect that the board maybe didn't quite understand where the problem is. (Complying with the laws of all countries is probably not what anybody would want, we'd end up using the maximum of the Mexican term of 100 years after an author's death or of the U.S. term of 95 years since publication. That's excessive.)

Let me try to put together an executive summary:

The problem arises in the context of public domain works hosted on Wikimedia servers. The public domain is different in different countries: a work may be in the public domain in one country, but may still be copyrighted in another country. Because the U.S. does not implement the rule of the shorter term, foreign works that are in the public domain in many foreign countries where copyright expires 70 years after an author's death are still copyrighted in the U.S. (where a copyright term of 95 years since the first publication applies for works published before 1978), if they were still copyrighted in their foreign source country on January 1, 1996.

The rule of the shorter term is a non-mandatory provision in the Berne Convention saying that if the copyright on a work has expired in its source country, other countries are allowed to also consider the work to be in the public domain. Notwithstanding Michelet's rather singular opinion above, there is strong evidence that the U.S. does not implement this rule: the U.S. grants all eligible works the copyright exclusively under the U.S. copyright law.

The WMF and its servers are in the U.S. They are subject to U.S. law. It is believed that this means that any content hosted on Wikimedia servers must be legal to publish in the U.S.

The commons therefore has the policy (commons:Commons:Licensing) that works that are used without a license but under a "public domain" claim must be in the public domain in both the source country of the work and in the U.S. However, as one can see, any attempt to enforce that policy is highly unpopular.

People would prefer to apply only the law of the source country, ignoring U.S. law for non-U.S. works. The dispute is ultimately about whether this is allowed.

Since public domain works are not licensed, the licensing resolution doesn't help at all to resolve that question.

The problem does not only affect the Commons, but also all the other Wikimedia projects, in particular the non-English ones. As I understand it, local projects would like to apply only their local laws, ignoring U.S. copyright law with its rather inconvenient copyright restorations.

This gives rise to a set of questions that the Board should seek to answer in a resolution on minimum requirements for hosting.

  1. Is it true that any content hosted on Wikimedia servers must be legal to publish in the U.S.?
    If the answer to that question is "no", we can stop right there. Local non-English Wikimedia projects could decide to apply only their local foreign laws, ignoring U.S. law, and the Commons could also change its public domain requirements to consider only the law of the source country. (For the commons, however, there'd still be the problem that e.g. an image that was in the public domain only in Switzerland could be hosted, but couldn't be used on any other Wikimedia project.) The commons would still need to tag images better to avoid that such "claimed public domain" images were used on projects where these images are not in the public domain under the local laws, but that's a perennial problem that we already have.
    If the answer is "yes":
  2. May local non-English Wikimedia projects still make an exception to that rule by applying only their local laws?
    I don't know if that'd even be possible. Maybe one could argue that since such non-English projects are clearly targeted at non-U.S. markets, the fact that the servers are in the U.S. is incidental and of no importance, and that the non-English projects may use the laws of their target countries instead. But again, I have no idea whether that'd be sound. Note, however, that if such an exception is not possible, there might be an increased incentive to fork for local projects, using servers based in their jurisdiction.
  3. Confirm whether or not the WMF (and thus the Wikimedia projects) considers the U.S. to apply the rule of the shorter term.
    If the WMF is prepared to defend the argument that the U.S. would need to apply that rule (following maybe Michelet's reasoning, for which there is no external confirmation, though), local projects again could operate basically under their local laws, and the commons also could consider only the source country of a "public domain" work. Otherwise, local projects (and the commons for "public domain" works) need to apply at least the local laws plus the U.S. copyright law. Take note of William F. Patry's comments on the U.S. and the rule of the shorter term.
  4. Is the Commons' rule for public domain works "a work must be in the public domain in its source country and in the U.S." good enough?
    Or does the Board really want the Commons to apply the rule "the work must be in the public domain in all countries"? Careful there; see above. The commons would also no longer be able to host pre-1923 U.S. works (which are not in the public domain in some other countries), it could no longer host many reproductions of old art (Bridgeman v. Corel doesn't apply everywhere), it couldn't host U.S. governmental works anymore (may in theory be copyrighted outside the U.S.), and so on. (I really don't think you'd want that.)

I truly think the WMF should clarify these points in a resolution on hosting. I know the WMF has traditionally avoided giving concrete guidelines, but as the operator of the servers and as the service provider, the WMF should at the very least have some very basic guidelines as to what content it is legally prepared to host.

It is clear to me that these are difficult questions that should not be decided without qualified legal advice. (The "choice of law" problem for copyright on the Internet, is, AFAIK, still subject to intense debate by scholars.) But eventually, the WMF should decide what its policies on these matters are.

As an interim solution, I personally (if I were on the Board) would push for a binding resolution requiring all projects to identify and tag "public domain" content they host that is not in the public domain in the U.S. since the U.S. does not apply the rule of the shorter term. This basically concerns all those foreign works that were still copyrighted in their source country (or source countries) on the URAA date, which is January 1, 1996 for most countries.

I would (were I a Board member) also continue to push for actually getting these issues sorted out properly, and then to have them published in a Board resolution.

I hope you don't consider my comments here presumptuous. If the Board should have been aware of all this, I humbly ask you to accept my apology for having had doubts. If the Board thinks this was completely wrong and the WMF should not make any statement on these matters, I ask you to forgive my ignorance. (Though in that latter case, I'd like to be told why. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the function and purpose of the WMF.)

Cheers, Lupo 08:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I forgot a couple of things. A clarification of these issues does not only affect post-1922 works of authors who died after 1926. It also affects a great many more works (or images, or images of works).

  • Freedom of panorama is an exception in the copyright laws of many countries that says that taking and publishing a photograph of a copyrighted (three-dimensional) artwork (such as a building, a sculpture, or a statue) is not an infringement of the copyright of the depicted artwork if that artwork is permanently installed in a public place. The U.S. copyright law recognizes this "freedom of panorama" only for buildings, but not for works of the visual arts (sculptures, statues). The Commons currently hosts such images, including images of statues located in countries where "freedom of panorama" applies (although the policy applied is unclear and inconsistent, see this extended discussion). So do many local non-English projects where their domestic laws allow it. If U.S. copyright law must be strictly applied, no Wikimedia project could use any photograph of a copyrighted sculpture or statue because publishing the photo would not be ok under U.S. copyright law. (Photos of buildings would be fine.) Except, of course, if the depicted work itself was freely licensed (highly unlikely), or the copyright holder agrees to freely licensing the photo (rare, but doable is some cases), or if local projects can set up EDPs to allow such images. The Commons, being barred from EDPs, could not host such images.
  • If U.S. copyright law must be strictly applied, all those PD-country tags that have proliferated across the various projects would need to state under what conditions works would also be in the public domain in the U.S., and works using such country-specific tags would need to be checked. A lot of work! Most existing PD-country tags only make a statement about the country they are about (see e.g. PD-Israel). Very few mention the U.S. status of the works, PD-Russia is an exception. But even there, the 1942/1946 U.S. date is generally ignored; people go by the 1954 date. At the English Wikipedia, others have tried to add similar notices to the country-specific "public domain" tags, see e.g. PD-Poland or PD-Italy. (At the English WP, there can IMO be no question about it: U.S. copyright law always applies.)

Sorry for the long posts. There are probably more examples like these two. Consider this just background information to better evaluate what the context of the problem is and what impact any statement might have. And again, please forgive my naiveness if the Board should already have been aware of all this. Cheers, Lupo 13:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Dear Lupo.

Your comments certainly are not presumptuous. You are perfectly right in my sense to ask this question. What happened is that three board members clearly stated they wanted 1, and Erik boldly stated that 1 was absolutely NOT a good idea. Others did not comment. So... what I intend to do is to draft a resolution on the topic, and see where we can go on this. If the board generally considers that we can host content which is illegal in the USA, I want it to be clearly stated, as I believe we would be held accountable in such situation. If the board generally thinks we should stay on the safe side, I want that to be clearly stated as well and clarified for the community. If the board decides to play blind, I want that to be equally stated. So, I thank you very much for the summary above (yes, I did not understand things quite well), and I will invite formally board members to express a position on the matter. It might take time, but I do not think it is a very big deal to take time to make this decision. My main concern is that I want a lawyer to formally look at that, and this might take time as well. Best Anthere 11:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That is pretty much what I had in mind, too. Remains the question of what to do in the "playing blind" case ;-) I'm quite aware that all this may take time, and also that the Board has lots of other things to do, so I appreciate your willingness to take this issue aboard even more. Lupo 13:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Having slept over this, and having seen the thread at foundation-l (inexplicably entitled "PD-Israel", it had escaped me) I think question #4 is indeed something the community could decide for itself once the WMF has defined the absolute bounds of what is allowed. But as I wrote elsewhere already, questions #1 to #3 are different from the usual disputes over license tagging. Quarrels over, say, PD-Soviet ;-), and similar stuff are just attempts by the community to define within the allowable limits what it wants to consider free content. (I notice that freedomdefined.org declares "for your work to be truly free, it must use one of the Free Culture Licenses or be in the public domain", without defining "public domain", and neither does the licensing resolution.) But questions #1 to #3 are not about what we want to do. They are about what we have to do in order to be able to do what we want (publishing free knowledge). Lupo 20:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
(How's that for a tag line: "Free knowledge for everyone!" :-) Whether "free" is an adjective or a verb is anyone's choice. And now I'll shut up and let you do your business.) Lupo 20:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I like that one ;o) Michelet-密是力 05:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Unfortunately, the pun doesn't translate very well. Maybe just "Knowledge for everyone" would be better. Or maybe "The power of knowledge" — that one might be quite appropriate if the foundation should be able to find a creative solution to the conundrum all this discussion is about. Lupo 09:04, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
One for all. All for one. Oh, I have another one We know. ant.

Consensus is not evil

There was a clear consensus on Commons that WMF should not take office action before have cleared the legal issues by an US court. It seems that it might be that the stuff in question is illegal but there is no court decision on the rule of the shorter term yet. There are some things which should be free (not only 10 things as suggested by Jimbo Wales). If the works were made by US citizen according the now valid 70 years pma term they would be free, and they are free in nearly all other countries. --Histo 23:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Michelet's presentation

Salut Anthère, j'espère que tu ne m'en voudras pas d'écrire en français (et de toute manière, Lupo comprend nettement mieux le français que moi l'allemand ;o). A ce jour, le point sur mes réflexions est le suivant:

  • On peut défendre a priori deux approches: (1) soit les droits de propriété intellectuelle sont indépendants d'un pays à l'autre, et pour être à l'abri de toute attaque et ne mettre en ligne que du contenu "libre", il faut se plier à la plus contraignante des lois (2) soit on peut faire valoir des règles internationales pour l'entrée dans le domaine public, et à ce moment il suffit de les suivre. Mon approche (OK, c'est du travail personnel, mais documenté) est de regarder ce que dit la doctrine en matière de droit international.

<cuisine juridique>

  • La question de savoir quand une œuvre tombe internationalement dans le domaine public est une question ouverte, sur laquelle la doctrine juridique ne donne que des avis indirects, et partagés; et sur laquelle il n'y a pratiquement pas de jurisprudence. (avéré, non polémique, facilement prouvable).
  • En termes juridiques, la question est ce qu'on appelle un "conflit de loi": dans une situation internationale, quelle loi faut-il appliquer à telle ou telle question? (avéré, c'est une approche de droit international et non polémique, pour ce que j'en comprends).
  • La doctrine et la jurisprudence récente (tant française qu'US, je n'ai pas d'autres exemples) tend à montrer qu'il faut distinguer: (1) Ce qui relève du lien entre l'auteur et son œuvre est soumis à la loi du pays de première publication. (2) Ce qui relève du lien entre l'œuvre et son utilisateur est soumis à la loi du pays où la défense du droit est demandée. (3) La règle n'est pas rigide et doit tenir compte de circonstances particulières (protection insuffisante du pays d'origine, multiplicité de l'origine,...) mais en gros, les cas simples sont réglés comme ça par les juges de nos jours, conformément aux approches usuelles en matière de droit international. (sources disponibles, mériterait une confirmation par un juriste international, mais amha correct).
  • La convention de Berne (référence internationale retenue par l'OMC) a deux articles (5-4-a & 7-8) qui indiquent que la référence retenue est celle du pays où la protection est la plus courte. (factuel)
  • On peut interpréter ça comme une règle sur le conflit de loi international susceptible de gouverner la durée du lien entre l'auteur et son œuvre: la convention de Berne indique alors que le "droit d'auteur" cesse quand la protection tombe dans l'un quelconque des pays de première publication: "domaine public dans la loi d'origine => domaine public partout pour la convention de Berne". (c'est mon interprétation, donc point original à faire critiquer par des juristes, mais amha largement défendable).
  • La convention de Berne prévoit qu'on puisse déroger au principe précédent. Mais dans l'interprétation précédente, ça signifie que la loi locale doit légiférer sur la manière de trancher un conflit de loi, non sur la durée de protection accordée par la législation nationale. Or, ça n'est (à ma connaissance) jamais le cas. Donc, la "rule of sorter term" peut s'appliquer universellement, sauf quand la législation nationale conduit à une autre solution dans le conflit de juridiction. (à faire relire par un juriste, pour voir si c'est défendable devant un juge sérieux: à mon avis oui).
  • Dans ce cas, la politique US en matière de durée du droit d'auteur est indifférente: à partir du moment où l'œuvre est domaine public dans le pays d'origine, elle est domaine public pour la convention de Berne, et l'analyse s'arrête avant que la loi US ne soit prise en compte - parce que les USA ont signé la convention de Berne, qui s'impose à leurs juges en matière de conflits de lois. (défendable si les étapes précédents sont acceptées).

Bon, tout ça c'est des affaires de spécialistes de droit international de la propriété intellectuelle et du domaine public, OK (et le fond du problème, c'est que c'est un secteur vide en pratique). La principale et seule question est: si on va au procès, est-ce que le juge est susceptible d'admettre ce raisonnement? (à évaluer par un juriste). </cuisine juridique>

Sur le plan politique de WMF, que peut-on dire? WMF peut adopter comme politique de déclarer explicitement que:

  1. La politique de WMF est de n'accepter que des œuvres libres de droit, soit qu'elles aient été déclarées telles par les ayant droits, soit qu'elles soient tombées dans le domaine public à l'issue de la durée légale de protection.
  2. WMF opère dans un contexte international. WMF a pour politique de respecter la légalité internationale, dans la mesure de ses connaissances; et cette politique est activement mise en œuvre par des dispositions de contrôle et de régulations internes. Cependant, WMF opère sur la base du volontariat, et ne peut pas revendiquer d'être strictement conforme à l'intégralité des législations de tous les pays atteints par internet. Pour cette raison, la politique suivante a été adoptée:
  3. WMF reconnaît les dispositions du traité de Berne, retenu par l'OMC, comme reflétant un consensus international sur la protection nécessaire au droit d'auteur, et déclare vouloir s'y conformer.
  4. WMF interprète les dispositions du traité de Berne (en particulier les articles 5-4-a & 7-8) comme signifiant qu'une œuvre entre dans le domaine public, pour les états signataires du traité, quand le terme de protection est atteint dans le pays de première publication accordant la protection la plus courte.
  5. WMF entend étendre cette politique pour décider du caractère "domaine public" de toutes les œuvres, y compris quand le pays de première publication n'est pas signataire du GATT ou du traité de Berne. Cette extension n'a pas pour but de profiter de délai de protection plus courts dans un pays non signataire; dans tous les cas le terme de protection ne pourra être inférieur au délai minimum accordé par le traité de Berne.
  6. WMF reconnaît que cette politique peut contrevenir au strict respect de la législation dans les états non signataires de ces conventions internationales, déclare vouloir accueillir avec bienveillance toute observation à ce sujet, et s’engage à rechercher un accord amiable sur tout litige à ce sujet.

Si une telle déclaration est adoptée, on "tue" toute discussion sur la "rule of shorter term": elle est adoptée par principe par WMF. Le risque juridique associé à la décision est amha nul: ce qui est DP dans le pays d'origine est rarement défendu ailleurs, et s'il y a un litige juridique, WMF peut arguer (1) la déclaration de bonne foi et cherchant un accord amiable, (2) une politique claire, cohérente avec la législation internationale, et localement respectée sous surveillance active des admins.

... Le reste est de la politique, chère présidente ;o) mais si tu as besoin d'éclaircissements, n'hésite pas. Je passerais le pont de l'Ascension à potasser le droit international de la propriété intellectuelle (côté maso, sans doute), si tu as des questions complémentaires n'hésite pas. Et merci pour ton implication, nettement supérieure à la mienne Michelet-密是力 20:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

(Michelet-密是力) Here's my position on Lupo's questions, if it may help:

  1. "Is it true that any content hosted on Wikimedia servers must be legal to publish in the U.S.?" > True, according to international usages, the law applied is the law where the "crime" has been made. In the internet context, it is disputable whether an offence is in the country of emission -USA- or in the country of reception of the file -anywhere in the world-. But to the least WMF should respect US law, because against a US plaintiff the US law will always be retained.
  2. "May local non-English Wikimedia projects still make an exception to that rule by applying only their local laws?" > Within limits, it may be admitted, especially when the language is clearly specific of a country or a group of countries that clearly exclude a wide US audience (birman, tamoul,...). In that case, the international usage would tend to apply the law of the target country, but this is not 100% sure. But I think it would be a bad policy anyway, since it would be interpreted as a "fraud on law localisation" if the local law is too permissive.
  3. "Confirm whether or not the WMF (and thus the Wikimedia projects) considers the U.S. to apply the rule of the shorter term." > See above, the formulation is inaccurate. To be admissible, the formulation should be "...the rule of shorter term is the default rule for conflicts of law on protection terms, under the Berne convention". With this formulation, the answer of the board can be "yes".
  4. "Is the Commons' rule for public domain works "a work must be in the public domain in its source country and in the U.S." good enough?" > No, it is incorrect one way or the other. ♦ If my interpretation is retained, the rule of shorter term makes it sufficient to consider the source country alone, to conform to legislation of all Berne parties (and now, for all WTO countries since Berne is now the reference). The outsiders can be left aside. ♦ If the rule of shorter term is not considered as a rule on conflicts of laws and cannot be applied, the protection that needs to be considered is that of all countries where a protection may be claimed, that is worldwide (at least, all countries that are thought not to apply the rule of shorter term). ♦ The Commons' rule is correct if the rule of shorter term is valid everywhere in the world, except in the USA, which is irrealistic.

The field "intellectual property rights + international + public domain + internet" is a legal desert (no legal cases, no theory, very little documentation), the only references that can be found on the net are ... wikipedian discussons! WMF has to adopt a clear position by itself: be bold or be shy? My position is therefore to recommand a policy saying "PD in the country of first publication = PD worldwide", and to justify this policy by the analysis that Berne convention should be interpreted as giving a solution for conflict of laws on duration terms, thereby binding for traty parties unless an alternative is imposed for the conflict of law (not the term of protection...). The arguments for this policy discussion are:

  • This is a pragmatic and practical approach, the alternatives are inpractical.
  • This seems to be the consensus in wikiWorld, the present approach is very often ignored anyway.
  • The formulation is easy to understand and easy to implement (taking aside cases where the country of origin is a tricky question).
  • The legal justification (above - if verified) is there for anyone to see, showing that by adopting this policy, WMF is respectful of legal international order.

If it came to a trial, this legal justification would be the official line of defence to be used, and may succeed - thereby creating the reference case we lack. But this is rather pointless: these PD questions are outside the big buisness preoccupations, and all PD-old materials can be justified on a "fair use" basis in the USA; so there is no reason a trial would be made in the first place. Michelet-密是力 05:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Anthère

Salut Florence,

Tu as créé ce compte fin 2005. Apparemment tu ne l'as jamais utilisé et il avait toujours les droits de sysop. J'ai retiré les droits car il me semble inutile (et potentiellement dangereux) de garder ce compte dormant avec les outils d'admin. Bien sûr, si tu estimes en avoir besoin, tu peux les remettre avec ton compte actuel de bureaucrate / steward.

Bises. guillom 10:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

oh, bien sur. Pas de probleme Anthere

Droit à l'oubli

Conformément à ce qui est expliqué ici : Droit de disparaître, j'ai choisi de quitter Wikipédia. J'ai donc blanchi toutes mes pages pzersonnelles ainsi que mes sous-pages. Puis j'en ai demandé la suppression aux administrateurs. Cette suppression m'a été refusée. J'ai alors tenté de renommer ces pages pour les faire disparaître mais uin administrateur m'a bloqué définitivement et a même bloqué mon accès à ma page de discussion. Après quoi d'autres admins ont décidé de "déblanchir ma page de discussion en y mettant une version périmée d'ailleurs.

Je demande à ce que mes pages de discussion soient supprimées afin de ne plus apparaître sur les moteurs de recherche.

L'atmosphère sur Wikipédia est devenue intenable. Je ne veux pas avoir de problème en particulier avec mion travail si quelqu'un tombe par une recherche google sur mon nom qui a été mélé à de nombreux démélés avec l'extrème-dreoite en particulier.

Je ne réclame que le droit à l'oubli. Il est indamissible que je ne puisse même pas blanchir ma page de discussion ! Même après avoir quitté l'encyclopédie, des petits cons d'admin continuent à chercher à me nuire. Il va sans dire que je me réserve le droit de faire toutes démarches nécessaires afin de faire respecter mon droit à l'oubli. Wikipédia n'est pas en dehors des lois.

Bonne chance pour faire cette encyclopédie avec autant de fiéffés cons. pour ma part, j'ai renoncé.

FH 14:53, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Meta:Administrators/confirm‎

Hello; just noticed your edits to that page. You added admins to be confirmed in April 2008... :-) --.anaconda 20:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

 ???? oh sh.... Anthere

Tag lines

You wrote above: [1]

One for all. All for one. Oh, I have another one We know.

My spontaneous reactions: the first is too trite, used by Les Trois Mousquetaires, as the traditional motto of Switzerland, and by several Sociétés d'étudiants.

That was on purpose ! But I only knew about the Mousquetaires...
Ah! So that one was meant to describe our efforts to find a tag line, not as a tag line itself?

The second: brief and to the point, pretty good, although it emphasizes more the community ("We") and thus may come across as too smug. Maybe better find something that emphasizes the knowledge? (Mine are no better, I guess :-) Lupo 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

True... Jan-Bart suggested "its yours... its ours... its everyone's! "
Not bad either, but too long, and I don't like the ellipses. Might work as a jingle in a commercial, though. But who would want to air commercials for the Wikimedia projects? But maybe just "It's yours!" or "For you" might work as a tag line. Lupo 08:07, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Licensing policy

Florence, I hate to bug you again with a boring licensing issue, but I think it'd be good if someone could offer a clarification on the licensing policy. It'd be a shame if several projects started to worry without cause, and well, if the worry is spot-on, then at least we'd know what the intended meaning of that policy is. Maybe you could take a quick look at commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Image:SilaTonga.svg, bottom half (in English); or at this mailing list thread. The issue originated at de:Wikipedia:Urheberrechtsfragen#Grundsatzfragen (in German) and concerns the question whether the definition of "Free Cultural Works" requires us to look beyond copyright. It's less fundamental than the "Must U.S. law be respected on all projects?" question above, but still a rather serious thing, because if these worries are true, it'd be a drastic departure from long-standing practices.

Therefore, if you had the time, I'd be grateful if you could take a quick look and see to it that someone who is responsible for that licensing policy (Erik?) could indeed offer some guidance.

Cheers, Lupo 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

it was commonly written by Erik and Kat. You might consider asking them help, they would be more suitable to help you. Free Cultural Works come from Erik if I remember well. Anthere
Ok. Done at User_talk:Eloquence#Licensing policy: request for clarification and at User_talk:Mindspillage#Licensing policy: request for clarification. Lupo 08:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
After three weeks and an unanswered polite Wikipedia e-mail to Erik, I conclude that my request for clarification has been met with deafening silence. Not even a simple acknowledgement of receipt or a statement that they'd think about it. Great to see that the communication between the board and the community works so well. Great to see that the people who wrote that licensing policy do care so much about it.
I'm inclined to think that this non-answer means that people don't care, and that either the perceived problem is a misreading of the licensing policy, or that it isn't, but the Wikimedia projects may safely ignore it all the same. Lupo 11:25, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

CheckUser policy

Greetings,

You may be the right person for this conversation, please. Himyeana 13:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Food Lion Non-Profit Information

Hiya Anthere, i'm writing to you today to inform you about a new program that Food Lion is implimenting, which allows non-profit organizations to recieve up to $350 per quarter derived from customer purchases. Customers would need to link thier MVP cards to the Foundation, but that should be no problem. Sign up at this website and then please inform the community so they can begin linking. Have a happy summer, Thunderhead 00:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

response

I've responded on my talk page. Swatjester 14:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Inscription sur le site de la Fondation

Comme tu l'as vu, j'ai proposé ma candidature pour l'OTRS mais je n'ai trouvé aucun interlocuteur pour m'ouvrir un compte sur le site de la fondation, et ce, depuis près de deux mois. Peux-tu m'indiquer la marche à suivre ?

En te remerciant par avance.--Bertrand GRONDIN – Talk 09:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Bertrand, Aphaia t'a répondu sur Request for an account on the Foundation wiki#Grondin. OTRS et wiki de la fondation n'ont rien à voir. guillom 10:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
C'est quoi donc la décision du Board du 22 avril 2007 ? --Bertrand GRONDIN – Talk 19:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

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

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

Anthere

2 ans sans wikipedia

Bonjour Florence. Comme tu n'es pas présente ce soir sur irc, je t'écris ici. Comme je ne suis pas trés bon en anglais tu n'as pas le choix, je t'écris en français, fôtes d'ortho comprises.


Avec deux ans de recul je vois certaines choses.

  1. Autour de soi on pense que wikipédia est une encyclopédie. Perso je suis loin de le penser et le fait qu'il ne s'agisse (pour l'instant) que d'un moyen de fabriquer, d'écrire une encyclopédie à venir est rarement mis en avant dans les médias;
  2. Techniquement, à part les tools ça marche plutôt trés bien;
  3. Au niveau du contenu libre, c'est toujours la même galère. Et c'est trés difficile d'y remédier. Les administrateurs, les ORTS, ne sont pas juristes, et la Fondation n'a pas vocation à se payer autant de juristes qu'il y a de législations. Par contre si la Fondation veut à terme héberger et promotionner un contenu libre, il va bien falloir agir. Mais comment ? Il y'a la tentation de considérer que l'important c'est la législation qui héberge les serveurs et le siège de la Fondation qui prime. C'est bonne solution qui pour l'instant permet de voir venir Et il y'a le fait qu'un contenu libre est un contenu réutilisable et du coup il faut bien considérer la réutilisation la plus probable. De ce point de vue nos règles sont claires, ok pour les serveurs et le lieu juridique de la Fondation et ok pour les réutilisations probables. Du coup il faut un collège de juristes spécialistes du droit arménien pour s'assurer que les contenus arméniens soient réutilisable autrement qu'avec la législation du pays qui héberge les serveurs et ou la Fondation. Ce choix il faut le faire maintenant car là on est dans l'impasse, au moins sur Commons, où les médias non libres semblent de plus en plus normaux. Petrusbarbygere 01:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Message from it.wikisource community about "Shorter term" and Italian law about texts

Dear Anthere,

starting from here a sourcewide discussion has been raised to gather consensus and awareness of possible copyright infringements for european texts in european language Wikisources. After this message we started a long discussione whose result is this common declaration:

Dear Anthere,

This text is the result of a full discussion envolving it.wikisource community, and therefore wherever the form "we" is used it is to be regarded as a broad consensus among it.source users.

First of all, we want to state clearly that we are going to respect WMF and its final decisions.

Even if in the recent past the Italian Wikipedia community showed a bad way of discussing about copyright issues (i.e. the PD-Italy case) we would like to demonstrate our different approach. In these days we discussed in a constructive way about the chances of having some of ours text deleted and we found the following common position:

  • Respect of the laws is a paramount value to this community and it would be quite strange to act against the laws just to defend our alleged local position.
  • As a logical consequence, if WMF decides to protect itself against future legal issues caused by American non-acceptance of the "rule of the shorter term", we shall delete every text published outside the US after 1922, or whose authors died after 1926.

Currently we have authors (some of them like Italo Svevo and Giuseppe Peano are very important in Italian literary culture) and about 20 texts. Before doing anything we would like to be informed about the final, definitive, authoritative decision from the WikiMedia Foundation. In the meanwhile those 20 texts are now frozen and we won't add any more works of banned authors and won't accept any work published after 1922. They are:

Authors Works
  1. Benedetto Croce († 1952)
  2. Benito Mussolini († 1945)
  3. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti († 1944)
  4. Salvatore Di Giacomo († 1934)
  5. Filippo Turati († 1932)
  6. Enrico Fruch († 1932)
  7. Dino Campana († 1932)
  8. Italo Svevo († 1928)
  9. Giuseppe Peano († 1927)
  10. Federigo Verdinois († 1927)
  11. Pierangelo Baratono († 1927)
  1. Camicia nera (1922)
  2. La Duchessa di Leyra (1922)
  3. La coscienza di Zeno (1923)
  4. Edgar Poe (1924)
  5. Italia - 3 gennaio 1925, Discorso sul delitto Matteotti (1925)
  6. Divieto dell'impiego in guerra di gas asfissianti, tossici e similari e di mezzi batteriologici - Protocollo, Ginevra, 17 giugno 1925 (1925)
  7. Italia - 4 novembre 1925, Discorso per il VII anniversario della Vittoria (1925)
  8. Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti pubblicato su Il Mondo l'1 maggio 1925 (1925)
  9. Sacra Bibbia (riveduta Luzzi 1925) (1925)
  10. Una burla riuscita (1926)
  11. La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla (1926)
  12. R.D. 16 agosto 1926, n. 1489 - Statuto delle successioni ai titoli e agli attributi nobiliari (1926)
  13. Manifesto della cucina futurista (1930)
  14. Decennale (1932)
  15. Italia - 18 ottobre 1932, Discorso per l'inaugurazione della città di Littoria (1932)
  16. Adua (1935)
  17. Italia - 9 maggio 1936, Discorso di proclamazione dell'Impero (1936)
  18. Italia - 29 ottobre 1937, Discorso per l'inaugurazione della città di Aprilia (1937)
  19. Il Fascismo e i problemi della razza, manifesto della razza pubblicato sul "Giornale d’Italia" del 14 luglio 1938 (1938)
  20. Razzismo italiano, manifesto della razza pubblicato su "La difesa della razza" del 5 agosto 1938 (1938)
  21. Italia - 26 settembre 1938, Discorso di Verona (1938)
  22. Italia - 10 giugno 1940, Annuncio della dichiarazione di guerra (1940)
  • After 1940 we have
    • About 50 text from national laws and international agreements (UN, UNGA, EEC/EU)
    • about 20 public speeches
    • 6 anonymous folk songs
    • 20 donated (GFDL) texts - af which two are graduation theses.

While waiting for your kind reply we gathered some questions and would like to have (if possible) clear answers about:

  1. Public speeches and laws: are they PD in USA
  2. Servers: is it possible to transfer Wikisource content to some servers in Europe? (some of them are already in Paris as far as we know)
  3. Reaction: What action could possibly be put forth to modify the present state of the matter? We won't be obstructive, but we are willing to follow any path to to let our project deal with recent texts.

On behalf of it.Wikisource community:

Hello,

Thank you for the summary. I'll raise that amongst board members + Mike (legal counsel) BUT I'll wait about 2 weeks to do so, because I would prefer Frieda is here (she just left for holidays for about 2 weeks if I understood well). As an italian, I think it will help if she is present.

Regarding servers

I can immediately answer about servers in Europe. We have no servers in Paris. We had 3-5 in the past, but this center has been closed. In Europe, some of our servers are hosted by Kennisnet, a dutch facility. All the servers over there are squids, which means they mirror the content. However, technically speaking, they do not HOST the content. This is done only on database servers. All the database servers are currently in Florida. If (when ?) we move databases to Holland, we will be submitted to Dutch law. I do not know how restrictive the dutch law is, but until now, we have felt best to host content only in the USA, so as to be seriously only liable to american law. Now, this is largely due to the law on free speech/libel, more favorable in the USA.
We could possibly open a database server in Holland, where to host wikisource. But this server would still be owned by an american organization, so submitted to american law. Which means even though the content is hosted in Holland, we still would have to respect american law. So, I am not sure it would be very helpful. However, I'll submit the issue to Mike and I'll come back to you.

Cheers

Anthere

Regarding public speeches

The answer below is from Mike Godwin

Most people who give a public speech proceed in one of two ways: (a) They write down all of their words in advance and essentially read their speech out loud, or (b) They use notes (or perhaps don't use notes) and give extemporaneous comments that may be recorded by someone else.

In cases like (a), the speech is not public-domain -- it's copyrighted. It became copyright-protected as soon as it was written down on paper (or typed into a computer, or whatever). This is true even if the speech is never delivered. The writing down of the speech is called "fixation," and nations that are signatory to the Berne Convention on copyright (including, e.g., the United States and France) hold that copyright protection begins at "fixation" of the creative work in a tangible medium (which, as I said, can include paper or a computer file or a Dictaphone recording).

In cases like (b) the actual words of the speech may not themselves be copyright-protected because the author hasn't committed "fixation" of the words in a tangible medium. (The notes to the speech may be copyrighted, but that may not mean much if the speaker isn't reading directly from the notes.) What if the speech is recorded by, say, radio or TV broadcasters? The view of the broadcasters is that they have a copyright in the recording of the speech, even if they don't have a copyright in the words of the speech themselves.

Again, this answer is generally correct for both the USA and the EU, as well as for other signatory nations to the Berne copyright convention.

Proposal to move Siberian Wikipedia to Wikia

Open Proxies

Hi!

I'm Wulfson of Russian WP.

I would like to check whether you could help me with my problem - or if not, whether you could direct me to someone else.

This is an issue of the Meta ban on the use of open proxies (Meta:No open proxies).

The main question is - should we regard this ban as a MUST, as an obligatory rule that must be enforced in every Meta project and in every national language WP? Or does every national WP community decide for itself whether it should enforce it - say, by taking a vote?

I hope my question does not seem ludicrous. A majority of our active community does believe this Rule to be binding upon us, and we are blocking open proxies whenever we can - yet we still have a large enough group of people who do not wish to be restricted by this Rule and who even say we may go against it (or part of it), if we so decide it among ourselves. So they doubt the validity and relevance of our sysops' resolute action against open proxy users (actually, the ones that were blocked were all sockpuppets and/or vandals). They, in particular, refer to the fact that many decent users in Russian regions get access to the web and, accordingly, to WP, through Internet providers which, in their turn, use anonymous proxies to concentrate their web traffic and reduce costs. So they say that, by banning these, we may deprive them of the opportunity to edit WP at all.

Our position, however, is that we (say, the ArbCom) can reasonably consider all such cases, whenever they arise, and take a decision in every individual case (or region by region, if need be).

Question 2 is - what is Jimmy Wales' opinion? The conflicting factions here cite his quotes (or alleged quotes) that seem to disagree.

Finally, Question 3 - can a national language WP community take a vote on a Rule of its own, which does not contradict the Meta Rule yet goes even further, saying that users who persistently use open proxies without any apparent reason (or without a permit from the ArbCom) shall be blocked?

Regards, Wulfson 12:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

"No Open Proxies" is a policy allowing us to simply block an open proxy if it's causing problems.

But of course not all open proxies should be blocked. E.g. for countries that can only reach us via proxies, it wouldn't make sense to block them.

Ant


Which countries are blocked? And why?

Some obvious suggestions about Wikimedia Foundation finances

Hi, I'm almost complete sure these have been brought up and looked into, but then again, as a Six Sigma "Black Belt" it is has been my experience that the "obvious" is sometimes overlooked.

I was reading some of a recent financial statement and was surprised to see ~$45,000 in PayPal fees and ~$76,000 in travel expenses. Am I reading these figures right? Holy cow. Have you negotiated lower than standard rates with PayPal? With the volumes of transactions you do, there must be a way to reduce the overhead of receiving donations. And the travel costs seem quite high as well...

Best Regards, --Aerik 03:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The paypal fees, OH yes we tried ! But with no results. This is why we also have the moneybooker system, which is far less costly, but alas, less known. And I agree, these fees are frankly too high. But we unfortunately have little lever here to negociate.

Travel. Seems high as well, but you must realise travel is not only board (board travel is always related to board job, so does not take into account travel costs to go to a conference, this is taken in charge by the organisations inviting us to talk). It is also all travel done by employees themselves (such as Delphine going to a wikimeet). It is also travel made to meet some potentiel content and business parters (this cost can not really be left aside. If we want to do business deals, we sometimes have to go and visit people. For example, I am invited to a meeting with Unesco people in may, my travel costs will be paid by WMF). Last, in travel is also included the travel support we gave to some people to go to Wikimania (this cost was actually supported by sponsors, but still appear in travel). So, when you add it up, yup, it comes to that amount overall. In all honesty, I do not think it is high. Since I became chair, the board met in Florida in november, in Rotterdam in January and will meet again in March. This is one trip every 2 months, but the amount of work we can get done when face to face is absolutely amazing.

Anthere 08:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes - there are definitely some things that are simply done more effectively in person! On the paypal/moneybooker thing... it looks to me (after only a quick look) like moneybooker moves the fees from the seller to the buyer, basically (?). At any rate - have you looked at direct credit card payment solutions? There are a lot of suppliers, and it looks like many of them are more expensive than paypal... I had a radical idea: Do a press release with a request for quotes for credit card processing suppliers - have them come to you. Someone might choose to take it on at a very low rate for the good PR.
How about Google Checkout? They are advertising no fees for all of 2007 (http://checkout.google.com/seller/fees.html) and even after than, it may be cheaper than paypal (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiving-fees-outside) depending on the volume. OR, maybe Google would be willing to cut you a discount when PayPal wouldn't.
Best Regards, --Aerik 00:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

sugestion: creating a Wiki-based family tree site under Wikimedia

such a open-source project is necessary and important. are you guys considering such a project? Acidburn24m 01:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nod. This has already been mentionned (see Proposals for new projects), but did not meet so much support.... Anthere

ComCom

Je ne comprend pas pourquoi on ne peux pas demander le ComCom le suivant:

What does the Wikimedia Foundation do to fight corruption in Wikimedia projects? Is there a place to report corruption? What point of view has the Wikimedia Foundation with respect to the goals stated by Transparency International?

Le page du ComCom dit

Statement of scope: .... Supporting and overseeing communication with the general public.

Ou est-ce que on peut demander cette question? Pourqoui les persons du ComCom peuve directement bourer le question sans dire ou il y a une endroit mellieur pour cette question? Tobias Conradi 84.190.55.228 19:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand this question :(( Can you explain which corruption you are talking about ?

Wikinews ArbCom election

Hello again, Anthere! Can you confirm the Wikinews ArbCom election results so that the users can be officially inducted into the ArbCom? --Thunderhead 21:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

what are we exactly supposed to approve ? ant
Perhaps I misread the policy, but aren't all arbitration committies to be approved by the Board? Thunderhead 05:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Politique corporative pour l'usage des logos

Sur une page utilisateur, on voit apparaître un logo émis par la fondation. J'ai été tenté de demander au contributeur de virer l'image, mais il n'y a aucun document de la fondation qui prévienne cette utilisation. Est-ce acceptable ?

Les Wikimedia visual identity guidelines se concentrent principalement sur l'utilisation du logo « principal » de WikiMedia. Selon mon interprétation du texte, il faudrait que chaque logo émis par la fondation soit accompagné au minimum du texte « WIKIMEDIA ». Or, Image:Wikiquote-logo.svg, par exemple, ne contient pas ce texte. Il en est ainsi pour plusieurs autres logos émis par la fondation. Est-ce voulu ?

Sherbrooke 15:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

J'ai supprimé toute occurrence du logo sur mes pages. Désolé que ça ait pu poser problème. /84•5/06.04.2007/06:58 UTC/

I hereby request permission to alter Wikimedia logos for my own public, non-profit use.

I know that those logos are copyrighted, so I am asking for permission before altering them in any way, or posting these alterations publicly. Also, I was told by a member of the WP Community to ask you, so here I am. I have created a Google Co-op Wikimedia search engine for my own use, and I would like to combine - meaning place side by side in one image - several project logos in order to create a title image to use in place of the default text supplied by Google: "Wikimedia Search". The Search Engine is located here: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=002002171166015021901%3Aiz3pyuxcryc w:en:User:Alex460, 18:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello, specific community logos have been developped specifically for this type of use. You may find the relevant one here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg. YOu are free to use that logo, not the Wikipedia copyrighted logo. Cheers and good luck. Anthere 21:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your help. The image I have created is posted here: http://pages.burgert.name/WikimediaSearch1.png Alex460; w:en:User:Alex460 07:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks - imprint

Hello, Mrs. Nibart-Devouard,

my name is Gert Blazejewski, I work as administrator for German wikibooks. One of our authors told us recently, that we have Jimbo Wales still called as general contact (pls. have a look at http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Impressum). Now the question is, whether we should change the German Wikibooks - imprint and give your address as general contact address instead of Jimbo Wales. I am not sure in this general legal question. Can you help me? Kind regards, Gert Blazejewski, 2007/04/22.

hmmmm. I see. I have no idea where that phone number goes. No idea what the address is (not the official one in any cases), and the email is wikia type. Ouch. At the same time, I do think the contact should be someone actually in the office (which is the case of neither JImbo, nor I). Let me check with other board members how we fix that. Thank you for mentionning it. It is not really a legal issue proper, but definitly an organizational issue :-) Anthere 22:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


Administrator permissions on ro.Wikibooks

Hi, my name is Emily, I am administrator on ro.wikipedia and I require administrator permissions for ro.wikibooks, because I want to correct the mistakes, translate the interface, do some cleaning and add new content, considering that the two admins of ro.wikibooks were not active in the last months. Thank you, Emily

Please make this request here. Thanks, Yonatanh 15:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Edition war

Hello, I have been blocked by a steward (guillom for 1 day.because I added a paragraph on Nicolas Sarkozy's french wikipedia page about his position on software pattern which is very particular. No other french politician has been telling such things about that. All other politicians which expressed themselves about that. Can you talk with the steward who blocked me about this issue ?

My discussion page : http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussion_Utilisateur:Le.iota

Can you please discuss with Guillom about this issue ?

TUM logo

The logo is in the public domain in Germany because of its ordinary and average design: design patent law (Geschmacksmustergesetz) applies as a lex specialis in such cases. Please refer your lawyers to BVerfG, 26. Januar 2005, Az. 1 BvR 1571/02, GRUR 2005, 410 – „Laufendes Auge“. I guess the logo is not registered as a design patent? Then there are no copyright-like restrictions on it. We use very many logos in the German wikipedia under this provision. The logo should also be in the PD anywhere else (except UK and other countries with sweat of the brow jurisdiction or provisions for "typographic copyright"), since it consists solely of design of letters, which is not copyrightable, see en:WP:PD#Fonts. --rtc 02:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

contrary to what you say, the logo is a registered trademark. This is not an argument to delete it though. However, the argument that it is not copyrightable does not seem to be widely accepted. And definitly not accepted by TUM. Anthere 19:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Please note that I was talking about w:design patent registration, not about w:trademark registration. I don't claim that the logo wasn't registered as a trademark. The argument about its copyrightability has been given in a very clear and unambigous wording by Germany's constitutional court; if it is not widely accepted then only because people don't know the decision. Please at least give the lawyer a hint about the decision I cited—I assume that he didn't know it. Further, I guess if TUM were explained the background of the PD status and that their interests are in no way affected by this status, then they wouldn't be so negative about the logo, if the trademark restrictions were pointed out more clearly on the logo's image description page. As a first step, and since we are using so many logos under this provision, I have suggested in the German wikipedia to change the logo template to include more explicit information about the PD status and said restrictions. It goes without saying that we shall respect your decisions, but I hope we can improve the situation for the other logos before it comes to further office actions. --rtc 21:27, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Nod. All this is noted. Mindspillage will follow up on this, as she is more versed in legal considerations than myself. Best Anthere

Conférences grand-public à Rennes les 4,5,et 6juillet : s'il vous plait, venez !

Bonjour, La région Bretagne organise les "Etes TIC de Bretagne" les 4,5 et 6 juillet à Rennes. Michel Briand et moi sommes les principaux concepteurs du programme dans lequel le grand-public pourra gratuitement assister à trois conférences.

Voici les intervenants pressentis :

- WIKIPEDIA : le savoir par tous et pour tous -> Mme Nibart-Drouard responsable du board de Wikipedia (Monde)

- web 2.0 et journalisme citoyen -> Carlo Revelli (fondateur AGORAVOX)

- Les enjeux de la gouvernance de l'internet -> M.Benhamou, représentant de la France au sommet mondial de la société de l'information et à l'Internet Gouvernance Forum.

Sinon j'ai une conférence sur "Mondes virtuels/mondes réels : stratégies", avec des professeurs de San José fondateurs du projet Library 2.0 dans second life (500 professeurs actifs, 6 campus virtuels véritablement utilisés en contexte de cours dans les universités) mais il faut faire la conférence depuis second life et techniquement c'est peu fiable...Je vais tenter de la faire à Aix dans le cadre du séminaire upfing.

Pour avoir un aperçu des "Champs Libres" dans lesquels se trouve la grande salle de conférence : [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ortille/158917359/]

Je vous sollicite donc urgemment pour intervenir à la date du 5 juillet 2007 de 16h15 à 17h30.

Le reste du programme est en cours d'élaboration sur un wiki. Le programme s'articule autour d'une rencontre des laboratoires francophones de recherche sur les usages (notamment avec Serge Proulx), de rencontres sur l'économie du web 2.0 et de rencontres sur les pratiques collaboratives. Les rencontres ont lieu en matinée et 9 ateliers ont lieu les après midis des 4 et 5. Deux soirées (carrefour des possibles et projets innovants en Bretagne) sont programmés les 4 et 5 au soir.

Ce serait un véritable honneur pour nous que vous acceptiez de venir présenter Wikipédia lors d'une de nos conférences pleinières !

Au fait, permettez-moi de me présenter : http://www.web2bretagne.org/wiki/HugAubin.

commons:Commons_talk:Licensing#Pros_and_Cons

Bonjour Anthère,

  • Le sujet est la "rule of shorter term", suivant laquelle quand une oeuvre artistique n'est plus protégée dans son pays de première publication, les pays signataires du traité de Berne le considèrent comme également domaine public, sauf disposition législative contraire.
  • Les USA ayant été considérés comme n'applicant pas la "rule of shorter term", Commons n'admet pas de travaux tombés localement dans le domaine public avant la limite légale US.
  • Suite à une contestation de ma part, j'ai souligné qu'il n'y avait pas de raison de dire que la "rule of shorter term" ne s'applique pas aux USA. La situation aux USA a été examinée un peu plus sérieusement, et la conclusion est ... qu'il n'y a rien de très conclusif ;o)
  • Du coup, il y a un débat pour savoir l'attitude à adopter sur Commons, y compris la possibilité de risquer un procès aux USA...

Je pense qu'il vaut mieux que tu y jettes un oeil. Michelet-密是力 10:19, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Si tu as besoin d'éléments d'analyse ou de contexte, je suis plus facilement joignable sur fr:utilisateur:Michelet ou commons:user:Micheletb Michelet-密是力 16:23, 6 May 2007 (UTC) et si tu es de passage à Paris on pourra toujours en discuter autour d'un pot - je n'ai guère l'occasion de passer à Clermont Ferrand :(

Having spoken with a member of Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. board it seems the best to communicate the consensus of the Wikimedia projects and especially of Commons via foundation-l to inform the WMF board about the opinion of the communities. For the small German Wikisource Community I can already communicate the clear consensus that the texts of authors like Karl Kraus or Kurt Tucholsky (which are as scanned books on Commons and as E-texts on German Wikisource) should remain on Wikimedia servers. The active users of Wikisource-de have voted for the option #3 in the "opinion section" on Commons. Best regards --Histo 14:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The discussion on Portuguese Wikisource is still ongoing, but apparently this is resulting on a consensus to keep all texts on this situation. All of these is going to receive a copyright disclaimer on their talk page (example) with instructions if a successor claims for copyright (the second paragraph of the header on s:pt:Wikisource:Violações de direitos autorais is specially devoted to it). The listing is still on the beginning, but in some weeks all talk pages from these problematic PD works can be listed on the category s:pt:Categoria:!Obras protegidas por direitos autorais nos Estados Unidos if in any time any emergency action is needed (but please, if Foundation receive any copyright claims on these works from pt.ws, send a friendly-warning before going to do some type of delete action, to make way to "move" from pt.ws to some external site). 555 17:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I thought there was an agreement. But apparently, there is not. I am not sure board members will agree on this topic anytime soon. I fear I will have no answer for you. I'll try to remember your warning 555, but usually, I am not the person doing the office action. You should mention it to Cary perhaps. Cheers Anthere 23:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Lupo's analysis

Florence, the board's non-response you posted and removed at the commons makes me suspect that the board maybe didn't quite understand where the problem is. (Complying with the laws of all countries is probably not what anybody would want, we'd end up using the maximum of the Mexican term of 100 years after an author's death or of the U.S. term of 95 years since publication. That's excessive.)

Let me try to put together an executive summary:

The problem arises in the context of public domain works hosted on Wikimedia servers. The public domain is different in different countries: a work may be in the public domain in one country, but may still be copyrighted in another country. Because the U.S. does not implement the rule of the shorter term, foreign works that are in the public domain in many foreign countries where copyright expires 70 years after an author's death are still copyrighted in the U.S. (where a copyright term of 95 years since the first publication applies for works published before 1978), if they were still copyrighted in their foreign source country on January 1, 1996.

The rule of the shorter term is a non-mandatory provision in the Berne Convention saying that if the copyright on a work has expired in its source country, other countries are allowed to also consider the work to be in the public domain. Notwithstanding Michelet's rather singular opinion above, there is strong evidence that the U.S. does not implement this rule: the U.S. grants all eligible works the copyright exclusively under the U.S. copyright law.

The WMF and its servers are in the U.S. They are subject to U.S. law. It is believed that this means that any content hosted on Wikimedia servers must be legal to publish in the U.S.

The commons therefore has the policy (commons:Commons:Licensing) that works that are used without a license but under a "public domain" claim must be in the public domain in both the source country of the work and in the U.S. However, as one can see, any attempt to enforce that policy is highly unpopular.

People would prefer to apply only the law of the source country, ignoring U.S. law for non-U.S. works. The dispute is ultimately about whether this is allowed.

Since public domain works are not licensed, the licensing resolution doesn't help at all to resolve that question.

The problem does not only affect the Commons, but also all the other Wikimedia projects, in particular the non-English ones. As I understand it, local projects would like to apply only their local laws, ignoring U.S. copyright law with its rather inconvenient copyright restorations.

This gives rise to a set of questions that the Board should seek to answer in a resolution on minimum requirements for hosting.

  1. Is it true that any content hosted on Wikimedia servers must be legal to publish in the U.S.?
    If the answer to that question is "no", we can stop right there. Local non-English Wikimedia projects could decide to apply only their local foreign laws, ignoring U.S. law, and the Commons could also change its public domain requirements to consider only the law of the source country. (For the commons, however, there'd still be the problem that e.g. an image that was in the public domain only in Switzerland could be hosted, but couldn't be used on any other Wikimedia project.) The commons would still need to tag images better to avoid that such "claimed public domain" images were used on projects where these images are not in the public domain under the local laws, but that's a perennial problem that we already have.
    If the answer is "yes":
  2. May local non-English Wikimedia projects still make an exception to that rule by applying only their local laws?
    I don't know if that'd even be possible. Maybe one could argue that since such non-English projects are clearly targeted at non-U.S. markets, the fact that the servers are in the U.S. is incidental and of no importance, and that the non-English projects may use the laws of their target countries instead. But again, I have no idea whether that'd be sound. Note, however, that if such an exception is not possible, there might be an increased incentive to fork for local projects, using servers based in their jurisdiction.
  3. Confirm whether or not the WMF (and thus the Wikimedia projects) considers the U.S. to apply the rule of the shorter term.
    If the WMF is prepared to defend the argument that the U.S. would need to apply that rule (following maybe Michelet's reasoning, for which there is no external confirmation, though), local projects again could operate basically under their local laws, and the commons also could consider only the source country of a "public domain" work. Otherwise, local projects (and the commons for "public domain" works) need to apply at least the local laws plus the U.S. copyright law. Take note of William F. Patry's comments on the U.S. and the rule of the shorter term.
  4. Is the Commons' rule for public domain works "a work must be in the public domain in its source country and in the U.S." good enough?
    Or does the Board really want the Commons to apply the rule "the work must be in the public domain in all countries"? Careful there; see above. The commons would also no longer be able to host pre-1923 U.S. works (which are not in the public domain in some other countries), it could no longer host many reproductions of old art (Bridgeman v. Corel doesn't apply everywhere), it couldn't host U.S. governmental works anymore (may in theory be copyrighted outside the U.S.), and so on. (I really don't think you'd want that.)

I truly think the WMF should clarify these points in a resolution on hosting. I know the WMF has traditionally avoided giving concrete guidelines, but as the operator of the servers and as the service provider, the WMF should at the very least have some very basic guidelines as to what content it is legally prepared to host.

It is clear to me that these are difficult questions that should not be decided without qualified legal advice. (The "choice of law" problem for copyright on the Internet, is, AFAIK, still subject to intense debate by scholars.) But eventually, the WMF should decide what its policies on these matters are.

As an interim solution, I personally (if I were on the Board) would push for a binding resolution requiring all projects to identify and tag "public domain" content they host that is not in the public domain in the U.S. since the U.S. does not apply the rule of the shorter term. This basically concerns all those foreign works that were still copyrighted in their source country (or source countries) on the URAA date, which is January 1, 1996 for most countries.

I would (were I a Board member) also continue to push for actually getting these issues sorted out properly, and then to have them published in a Board resolution.

I hope you don't consider my comments here presumptuous. If the Board should have been aware of all this, I humbly ask you to accept my apology for having had doubts. If the Board thinks this was completely wrong and the WMF should not make any statement on these matters, I ask you to forgive my ignorance. (Though in that latter case, I'd like to be told why. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the function and purpose of the WMF.)

Cheers, Lupo 08:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I forgot a couple of things. A clarification of these issues does not only affect post-1922 works of authors who died after 1926. It also affects a great many more works (or images, or images of works).

  • Freedom of panorama is an exception in the copyright laws of many countries that says that taking and publishing a photograph of a copyrighted (three-dimensional) artwork (such as a building, a sculpture, or a statue) is not an infringement of the copyright of the depicted artwork if that artwork is permanently installed in a public place. The U.S. copyright law recognizes this "freedom of panorama" only for buildings, but not for works of the visual arts (sculptures, statues). The Commons currently hosts such images, including images of statues located in countries where "freedom of panorama" applies (although the policy applied is unclear and inconsistent, see this extended discussion). So do many local non-English projects where their domestic laws allow it. If U.S. copyright law must be strictly applied, no Wikimedia project could use any photograph of a copyrighted sculpture or statue because publishing the photo would not be ok under U.S. copyright law. (Photos of buildings would be fine.) Except, of course, if the depicted work itself was freely licensed (highly unlikely), or the copyright holder agrees to freely licensing the photo (rare, but doable is some cases), or if local projects can set up EDPs to allow such images. The Commons, being barred from EDPs, could not host such images.
  • If U.S. copyright law must be strictly applied, all those PD-country tags that have proliferated across the various projects would need to state under what conditions works would also be in the public domain in the U.S., and works using such country-specific tags would need to be checked. A lot of work! Most existing PD-country tags only make a statement about the country they are about (see e.g. PD-Israel). Very few mention the U.S. status of the works, PD-Russia is an exception. But even there, the 1942/1946 U.S. date is generally ignored; people go by the 1954 date. At the English Wikipedia, others have tried to add similar notices to the country-specific "public domain" tags, see e.g. PD-Poland or PD-Italy. (At the English WP, there can IMO be no question about it: U.S. copyright law always applies.)

Sorry for the long posts. There are probably more examples like these two. Consider this just background information to better evaluate what the context of the problem is and what impact any statement might have. And again, please forgive my naiveness if the Board should already have been aware of all this. Cheers, Lupo 13:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Dear Lupo.

Your comments certainly are not presumptuous. You are perfectly right in my sense to ask this question. What happened is that three board members clearly stated they wanted 1, and Erik boldly stated that 1 was absolutely NOT a good idea. Others did not comment. So... what I intend to do is to draft a resolution on the topic, and see where we can go on this. If the board generally considers that we can host content which is illegal in the USA, I want it to be clearly stated, as I believe we would be held accountable in such situation. If the board generally thinks we should stay on the safe side, I want that to be clearly stated as well and clarified for the community. If the board decides to play blind, I want that to be equally stated. So, I thank you very much for the summary above (yes, I did not understand things quite well), and I will invite formally board members to express a position on the matter. It might take time, but I do not think it is a very big deal to take time to make this decision. My main concern is that I want a lawyer to formally look at that, and this might take time as well. Best Anthere 11:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That is pretty much what I had in mind, too. Remains the question of what to do in the "playing blind" case ;-) I'm quite aware that all this may take time, and also that the Board has lots of other things to do, so I appreciate your willingness to take this issue aboard even more. Lupo 13:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Having slept over this, and having seen the thread at foundation-l (inexplicably entitled "PD-Israel", it had escaped me) I think question #4 is indeed something the community could decide for itself once the WMF has defined the absolute bounds of what is allowed. But as I wrote elsewhere already, questions #1 to #3 are different from the usual disputes over license tagging. Quarrels over, say, PD-Soviet ;-), and similar stuff are just attempts by the community to define within the allowable limits what it wants to consider free content. (I notice that freedomdefined.org declares "for your work to be truly free, it must use one of the Free Culture Licenses or be in the public domain", without defining "public domain", and neither does the licensing resolution.) But questions #1 to #3 are not about what we want to do. They are about what we have to do in order to be able to do what we want (publishing free knowledge). Lupo 20:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
(How's that for a tag line: "Free knowledge for everyone!" :-) Whether "free" is an adjective or a verb is anyone's choice. And now I'll shut up and let you do your business.) Lupo 20:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I like that one ;o) Michelet-密是力 05:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Unfortunately, the pun doesn't translate very well. Maybe just "Knowledge for everyone" would be better. Or maybe "The power of knowledge" — that one might be quite appropriate if the foundation should be able to find a creative solution to the conundrum all this discussion is about. Lupo 09:04, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
One for all. All for one. Oh, I have another one We know. ant.

Consensus is not evil

There was a clear consensus on Commons that WMF should not take office action before have cleared the legal issues by an US court. It seems that it might be that the stuff in question is illegal but there is no court decision on the rule of the shorter term yet. There are some things which should be free (not only 10 things as suggested by Jimbo Wales). If the works were made by US citizen according the now valid 70 years pma term they would be free, and they are free in nearly all other countries. --Histo 23:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Michelet's presentation

Salut Anthère, j'espère que tu ne m'en voudras pas d'écrire en français (et de toute manière, Lupo comprend nettement mieux le français que moi l'allemand ;o). A ce jour, le point sur mes réflexions est le suivant:

  • On peut défendre a priori deux approches: (1) soit les droits de propriété intellectuelle sont indépendants d'un pays à l'autre, et pour être à l'abri de toute attaque et ne mettre en ligne que du contenu "libre", il faut se plier à la plus contraignante des lois (2) soit on peut faire valoir des règles internationales pour l'entrée dans le domaine public, et à ce moment il suffit de les suivre. Mon approche (OK, c'est du travail personnel, mais documenté) est de regarder ce que dit la doctrine en matière de droit international.

<cuisine juridique>

  • La question de savoir quand une œuvre tombe internationalement dans le domaine public est une question ouverte, sur laquelle la doctrine juridique ne donne que des avis indirects, et partagés; et sur laquelle il n'y a pratiquement pas de jurisprudence. (avéré, non polémique, facilement prouvable).
  • En termes juridiques, la question est ce qu'on appelle un "conflit de loi": dans une situation internationale, quelle loi faut-il appliquer à telle ou telle question? (avéré, c'est une approche de droit international et non polémique, pour ce que j'en comprends).
  • La doctrine et la jurisprudence récente (tant française qu'US, je n'ai pas d'autres exemples) tend à montrer qu'il faut distinguer: (1) Ce qui relève du lien entre l'auteur et son œuvre est soumis à la loi du pays de première publication. (2) Ce qui relève du lien entre l'œuvre et son utilisateur est soumis à la loi du pays où la défense du droit est demandée. (3) La règle n'est pas rigide et doit tenir compte de circonstances particulières (protection insuffisante du pays d'origine, multiplicité de l'origine,...) mais en gros, les cas simples sont réglés comme ça par les juges de nos jours, conformément aux approches usuelles en matière de droit international. (sources disponibles, mériterait une confirmation par un juriste international, mais amha correct).
  • La convention de Berne (référence internationale retenue par l'OMC) a deux articles (5-4-a & 7-8) qui indiquent que la référence retenue est celle du pays où la protection est la plus courte. (factuel)
  • On peut interpréter ça comme une règle sur le conflit de loi international susceptible de gouverner la durée du lien entre l'auteur et son œuvre: la convention de Berne indique alors que le "droit d'auteur" cesse quand la protection tombe dans l'un quelconque des pays de première publication: "domaine public dans la loi d'origine => domaine public partout pour la convention de Berne". (c'est mon interprétation, donc point original à faire critiquer par des juristes, mais amha largement défendable).
  • La convention de Berne prévoit qu'on puisse déroger au principe précédent. Mais dans l'interprétation précédente, ça signifie que la loi locale doit légiférer sur la manière de trancher un conflit de loi, non sur la durée de protection accordée par la législation nationale. Or, ça n'est (à ma connaissance) jamais le cas. Donc, la "rule of sorter term" peut s'appliquer universellement, sauf quand la législation nationale conduit à une autre solution dans le conflit de juridiction. (à faire relire par un juriste, pour voir si c'est défendable devant un juge sérieux: à mon avis oui).
  • Dans ce cas, la politique US en matière de durée du droit d'auteur est indifférente: à partir du moment où l'œuvre est domaine public dans le pays d'origine, elle est domaine public pour la convention de Berne, et l'analyse s'arrête avant que la loi US ne soit prise en compte - parce que les USA ont signé la convention de Berne, qui s'impose à leurs juges en matière de conflits de lois. (défendable si les étapes précédents sont acceptées).

Bon, tout ça c'est des affaires de spécialistes de droit international de la propriété intellectuelle et du domaine public, OK (et le fond du problème, c'est que c'est un secteur vide en pratique). La principale et seule question est: si on va au procès, est-ce que le juge est susceptible d'admettre ce raisonnement? (à évaluer par un juriste). </cuisine juridique>

Sur le plan politique de WMF, que peut-on dire? WMF peut adopter comme politique de déclarer explicitement que:

  1. La politique de WMF est de n'accepter que des œuvres libres de droit, soit qu'elles aient été déclarées telles par les ayant droits, soit qu'elles soient tombées dans le domaine public à l'issue de la durée légale de protection.
  2. WMF opère dans un contexte international. WMF a pour politique de respecter la légalité internationale, dans la mesure de ses connaissances; et cette politique est activement mise en œuvre par des dispositions de contrôle et de régulations internes. Cependant, WMF opère sur la base du volontariat, et ne peut pas revendiquer d'être strictement conforme à l'intégralité des législations de tous les pays atteints par internet. Pour cette raison, la politique suivante a été adoptée:
  3. WMF reconnaît les dispositions du traité de Berne, retenu par l'OMC, comme reflétant un consensus international sur la protection nécessaire au droit d'auteur, et déclare vouloir s'y conformer.
  4. WMF interprète les dispositions du traité de Berne (en particulier les articles 5-4-a & 7-8) comme signifiant qu'une œuvre entre dans le domaine public, pour les états signataires du traité, quand le terme de protection est atteint dans le pays de première publication accordant la protection la plus courte.
  5. WMF entend étendre cette politique pour décider du caractère "domaine public" de toutes les œuvres, y compris quand le pays de première publication n'est pas signataire du GATT ou du traité de Berne. Cette extension n'a pas pour but de profiter de délai de protection plus courts dans un pays non signataire; dans tous les cas le terme de protection ne pourra être inférieur au délai minimum accordé par le traité de Berne.
  6. WMF reconnaît que cette politique peut contrevenir au strict respect de la législation dans les états non signataires de ces conventions internationales, déclare vouloir accueillir avec bienveillance toute observation à ce sujet, et s’engage à rechercher un accord amiable sur tout litige à ce sujet.

Si une telle déclaration est adoptée, on "tue" toute discussion sur la "rule of shorter term": elle est adoptée par principe par WMF. Le risque juridique associé à la décision est amha nul: ce qui est DP dans le pays d'origine est rarement défendu ailleurs, et s'il y a un litige juridique, WMF peut arguer (1) la déclaration de bonne foi et cherchant un accord amiable, (2) une politique claire, cohérente avec la législation internationale, et localement respectée sous surveillance active des admins.

... Le reste est de la politique, chère présidente ;o) mais si tu as besoin d'éclaircissements, n'hésite pas. Je passerais le pont de l'Ascension à potasser le droit international de la propriété intellectuelle (côté maso, sans doute), si tu as des questions complémentaires n'hésite pas. Et merci pour ton implication, nettement supérieure à la mienne Michelet-密是力 20:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

(Michelet-密是力) Here's my position on Lupo's questions, if it may help:

  1. "Is it true that any content hosted on Wikimedia servers must be legal to publish in the U.S.?" > True, according to international usages, the law applied is the law where the "crime" has been made. In the internet context, it is disputable whether an offence is in the country of emission -USA- or in the country of reception of the file -anywhere in the world-. But to the least WMF should respect US law, because against a US plaintiff the US law will always be retained.
  2. "May local non-English Wikimedia projects still make an exception to that rule by applying only their local laws?" > Within limits, it may be admitted, especially when the language is clearly specific of a country or a group of countries that clearly exclude a wide US audience (birman, tamoul,...). In that case, the international usage would tend to apply the law of the target country, but this is not 100% sure. But I think it would be a bad policy anyway, since it would be interpreted as a "fraud on law localisation" if the local law is too permissive.
  3. "Confirm whether or not the WMF (and thus the Wikimedia projects) considers the U.S. to apply the rule of the shorter term." > See above, the formulation is inaccurate. To be admissible, the formulation should be "...the rule of shorter term is the default rule for conflicts of law on protection terms, under the Berne convention". With this formulation, the answer of the board can be "yes".
  4. "Is the Commons' rule for public domain works "a work must be in the public domain in its source country and in the U.S." good enough?" > No, it is incorrect one way or the other. ♦ If my interpretation is retained, the rule of shorter term makes it sufficient to consider the source country alone, to conform to legislation of all Berne parties (and now, for all WTO countries since Berne is now the reference). The outsiders can be left aside. ♦ If the rule of shorter term is not considered as a rule on conflicts of laws and cannot be applied, the protection that needs to be considered is that of all countries where a protection may be claimed, that is worldwide (at least, all countries that are thought not to apply the rule of shorter term). ♦ The Commons' rule is correct if the rule of shorter term is valid everywhere in the world, except in the USA, which is irrealistic.

The field "intellectual property rights + international + public domain + internet" is a legal desert (no legal cases, no theory, very little documentation), the only references that can be found on the net are ... wikipedian discussons! WMF has to adopt a clear position by itself: be bold or be shy? My position is therefore to recommand a policy saying "PD in the country of first publication = PD worldwide", and to justify this policy by the analysis that Berne convention should be interpreted as giving a solution for conflict of laws on duration terms, thereby binding for traty parties unless an alternative is imposed for the conflict of law (not the term of protection...). The arguments for this policy discussion are:

  • This is a pragmatic and practical approach, the alternatives are inpractical.
  • This seems to be the consensus in wikiWorld, the present approach is very often ignored anyway.
  • The formulation is easy to understand and easy to implement (taking aside cases where the country of origin is a tricky question).
  • The legal justification (above - if verified) is there for anyone to see, showing that by adopting this policy, WMF is respectful of legal international order.

If it came to a trial, this legal justification would be the official line of defence to be used, and may succeed - thereby creating the reference case we lack. But this is rather pointless: these PD questions are outside the big buisness preoccupations, and all PD-old materials can be justified on a "fair use" basis in the USA; so there is no reason a trial would be made in the first place. Michelet-密是力 05:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Anthère

Salut Florence,

Tu as créé ce compte fin 2005. Apparemment tu ne l'as jamais utilisé et il avait toujours les droits de sysop. J'ai retiré les droits car il me semble inutile (et potentiellement dangereux) de garder ce compte dormant avec les outils d'admin. Bien sûr, si tu estimes en avoir besoin, tu peux les remettre avec ton compte actuel de bureaucrate / steward.

Bises. guillom 10:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

oh, bien sur. Pas de probleme Anthere

Droit à l'oubli

Conformément à ce qui est expliqué ici : Droit de disparaître, j'ai choisi de quitter Wikipédia. J'ai donc blanchi toutes mes pages pzersonnelles ainsi que mes sous-pages. Puis j'en ai demandé la suppression aux administrateurs. Cette suppression m'a été refusée. J'ai alors tenté de renommer ces pages pour les faire disparaître mais uin administrateur m'a bloqué définitivement et a même bloqué mon accès à ma page de discussion. Après quoi d'autres admins ont décidé de "déblanchir ma page de discussion en y mettant une version périmée d'ailleurs.

Je demande à ce que mes pages de discussion soient supprimées afin de ne plus apparaître sur les moteurs de recherche.

L'atmosphère sur Wikipédia est devenue intenable. Je ne veux pas avoir de problème en particulier avec mion travail si quelqu'un tombe par une recherche google sur mon nom qui a été mélé à de nombreux démélés avec l'extrème-dreoite en particulier.

Je ne réclame que le droit à l'oubli. Il est indamissible que je ne puisse même pas blanchir ma page de discussion ! Même après avoir quitté l'encyclopédie, des petits cons d'admin continuent à chercher à me nuire. Il va sans dire que je me réserve le droit de faire toutes démarches nécessaires afin de faire respecter mon droit à l'oubli. Wikipédia n'est pas en dehors des lois.

Bonne chance pour faire cette encyclopédie avec autant de fiéffés cons. pour ma part, j'ai renoncé.

FH 14:53, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Meta:Administrators/confirm‎

Hello; just noticed your edits to that page. You added admins to be confirmed in April 2008... :-) --.anaconda 20:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

 ???? oh sh.... Anthere

Tag lines

You wrote above: [2]

One for all. All for one. Oh, I have another one We know.

My spontaneous reactions: the first is too trite, used by Les Trois Mousquetaires, as the traditional motto of Switzerland, and by several Sociétés d'étudiants.

That was on purpose ! But I only knew about the Mousquetaires...
Ah! So that one was meant to describe our efforts to find a tag line, not as a tag line itself?

The second: brief and to the point, pretty good, although it emphasizes more the community ("We") and thus may come across as too smug. Maybe better find something that emphasizes the knowledge? (Mine are no better, I guess :-) Lupo 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

True... Jan-Bart suggested "its yours... its ours... its everyone's! "
Not bad either, but too long, and I don't like the ellipses. Might work as a jingle in a commercial, though. But who would want to air commercials for the Wikimedia projects? But maybe just "It's yours!" or "For you" might work as a tag line. Lupo 08:07, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Licensing policy

Florence, I hate to bug you again with a boring licensing issue, but I think it'd be good if someone could offer a clarification on the licensing policy. It'd be a shame if several projects started to worry without cause, and well, if the worry is spot-on, then at least we'd know what the intended meaning of that policy is. Maybe you could take a quick look at commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Image:SilaTonga.svg, bottom half (in English); or at this mailing list thread. The issue originated at de:Wikipedia:Urheberrechtsfragen#Grundsatzfragen (in German) and concerns the question whether the definition of "Free Cultural Works" requires us to look beyond copyright. It's less fundamental than the "Must U.S. law be respected on all projects?" question above, but still a rather serious thing, because if these worries are true, it'd be a drastic departure from long-standing practices.

Therefore, if you had the time, I'd be grateful if you could take a quick look and see to it that someone who is responsible for that licensing policy (Erik?) could indeed offer some guidance.

Cheers, Lupo 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

it was commonly written by Erik and Kat. You might consider asking them help, they would be more suitable to help you. Free Cultural Works come from Erik if I remember well. Anthere
Ok. Done at User_talk:Eloquence#Licensing policy: request for clarification and at User_talk:Mindspillage#Licensing policy: request for clarification. Lupo 08:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
After three weeks and an unanswered polite Wikipedia e-mail to Erik, I conclude that my request for clarification has been met with deafening silence. Not even a simple acknowledgement of receipt or a statement that they'd think about it. Great to see that the communication between the board and the community works so well. Great to see that the people who wrote that licensing policy do care so much about it.
I'm inclined to think that this non-answer means that people don't care, and that either the perceived problem is a misreading of the licensing policy, or that it isn't, but the Wikimedia projects may safely ignore it all the same. Lupo 11:25, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

CheckUser policy

Greetings,

You may be the right person for this conversation, please. Himyeana 13:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Food Lion Non-Profit Information

Hiya Anthere, i'm writing to you today to inform you about a new program that Food Lion is implimenting, which allows non-profit organizations to recieve up to $350 per quarter derived from customer purchases. Customers would need to link thier MVP cards to the Foundation, but that should be no problem. Sign up at this website and then please inform the community so they can begin linking. Have a happy summer, Thunderhead 00:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

response

I've responded on my talk page. Swatjester 14:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Inscription sur le site de la Fondation

Comme tu l'as vu, j'ai proposé ma candidature pour l'OTRS mais je n'ai trouvé aucun interlocuteur pour m'ouvrir un compte sur le site de la fondation, et ce, depuis près de deux mois. Peux-tu m'indiquer la marche à suivre ?

En te remerciant par avance.--Bertrand GRONDIN – Talk 09:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Bertrand, Aphaia t'a répondu sur Request for an account on the Foundation wiki#Grondin. OTRS et wiki de la fondation n'ont rien à voir. guillom 10:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
C'est quoi donc la décision du Board du 22 avril 2007 ? --Bertrand GRONDIN – Talk 19:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

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

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

Anthere

2 ans sans wikipedia

Bonjour Florence. Comme tu n'es pas présente ce soir sur irc, je t'écris ici. Comme je ne suis pas trés bon en anglais tu n'as pas le choix, je t'écris en français, fôtes d'ortho comprises.


Avec deux ans de recul je vois certaines choses.

  1. Autour de soi on pense que wikipédia est une encyclopédie. Perso je suis loin de le penser et le fait qu'il ne s'agisse (pour l'instant) que d'un moyen de fabriquer, d'écrire une encyclopédie à venir est rarement mis en avant dans les médias;
  2. Techniquement, à part les tools ça marche plutôt trés bien;
  3. Au niveau du contenu libre, c'est toujours la même galère. Et c'est trés difficile d'y remédier. Les administrateurs, les ORTS, ne sont pas juristes, et la Fondation n'a pas vocation à se payer autant de juristes qu'il y a de législations. Par contre si la Fondation veut à terme héberger et promotionner un contenu libre, il va bien falloir agir. Mais comment ? Il y'a la tentation de considérer que l'important c'est la législation qui héberge les serveurs et le siège de la Fondation qui prime. C'est bonne solution qui pour l'instant permet de voir venir Et il y'a le fait qu'un contenu libre est un contenu réutilisable et du coup il faut bien considérer la réutilisation la plus probable. De ce point de vue nos règles sont claires, ok pour les serveurs et le lieu juridique de la Fondation et ok pour les réutilisations probables. Du coup il faut un collège de juristes spécialistes du droit arménien pour s'assurer que les contenus arméniens soient réutilisable autrement qu'avec la législation du pays qui héberge les serveurs et ou la Fondation. Ce choix il faut le faire maintenant car là on est dans l'impasse, au moins sur Commons, où les médias non libres semblent de plus en plus normaux. Petrusbarbygere 01:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Message from it.wikisource community about "Shorter term" and Italian law about texts

Dear Anthere,

starting from here a sourcewide discussion has been raised to gather consensus and awareness of possible copyright infringements for european texts in european language Wikisources. After this message we started a long discussione whose result is this common declaration:

Dear Anthere,

This text is the result of a full discussion envolving it.wikisource community, and therefore wherever the form "we" is used it is to be regarded as a broad consensus among it.source users.

First of all, we want to state clearly that we are going to respect WMF and its final decisions.

Even if in the recent past the Italian Wikipedia community showed a bad way of discussing about copyright issues (i.e. the PD-Italy case) we would like to demonstrate our different approach. In these days we discussed in a constructive way about the chances of having some of ours text deleted and we found the following common position:

  • Respect of the laws is a paramount value to this community and it would be quite strange to act against the laws just to defend our alleged local position.
  • As a logical consequence, if WMF decides to protect itself against future legal issues caused by American non-acceptance of the "rule of the shorter term", we shall delete every text published outside the US after 1922, or whose authors died after 1926.

Currently we have authors (some of them like Italo Svevo and Giuseppe Peano are very important in Italian literary culture) and about 20 texts. Before doing anything we would like to be informed about the final, definitive, authoritative decision from the WikiMedia Foundation. In the meanwhile those 20 texts are now frozen and we won't add any more works of banned authors and won't accept any work published after 1922. They are:

Authors Works
  1. Benedetto Croce († 1952)
  2. Benito Mussolini († 1945)
  3. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti († 1944)
  4. Salvatore Di Giacomo († 1934)
  5. Filippo Turati († 1932)
  6. Enrico Fruch († 1932)
  7. Dino Campana († 1932)
  8. Italo Svevo († 1928)
  9. Giuseppe Peano († 1927)
  10. Federigo Verdinois († 1927)
  11. Pierangelo Baratono († 1927)
  1. Camicia nera (1922)
  2. La Duchessa di Leyra (1922)
  3. La coscienza di Zeno (1923)
  4. Edgar Poe (1924)
  5. Italia - 3 gennaio 1925, Discorso sul delitto Matteotti (1925)
  6. Divieto dell'impiego in guerra di gas asfissianti, tossici e similari e di mezzi batteriologici - Protocollo, Ginevra, 17 giugno 1925 (1925)
  7. Italia - 4 novembre 1925, Discorso per il VII anniversario della Vittoria (1925)
  8. Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti pubblicato su Il Mondo l'1 maggio 1925 (1925)
  9. Sacra Bibbia (riveduta Luzzi 1925) (1925)
  10. Una burla riuscita (1926)
  11. La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla (1926)
  12. R.D. 16 agosto 1926, n. 1489 - Statuto delle successioni ai titoli e agli attributi nobiliari (1926)
  13. Manifesto della cucina futurista (1930)
  14. Decennale (1932)
  15. Italia - 18 ottobre 1932, Discorso per l'inaugurazione della città di Littoria (1932)
  16. Adua (1935)
  17. Italia - 9 maggio 1936, Discorso di proclamazione dell'Impero (1936)
  18. Italia - 29 ottobre 1937, Discorso per l'inaugurazione della città di Aprilia (1937)
  19. Il Fascismo e i problemi della razza, manifesto della razza pubblicato sul "Giornale d’Italia" del 14 luglio 1938 (1938)
  20. Razzismo italiano, manifesto della razza pubblicato su "La difesa della razza" del 5 agosto 1938 (1938)
  21. Italia - 26 settembre 1938, Discorso di Verona (1938)
  22. Italia - 10 giugno 1940, Annuncio della dichiarazione di guerra (1940)
  • After 1940 we have
    • About 50 text from national laws and international agreements (UN, UNGA, EEC/EU)
    • about 20 public speeches
    • 6 anonymous folk songs
    • 20 donated (GFDL) texts - af which two are graduation theses.

While waiting for your kind reply we gathered some questions and would like to have (if possible) clear answers about:

  1. Public speeches and laws: are they PD in USA
  2. Servers: is it possible to transfer Wikisource content to some servers in Europe? (some of them are already in Paris as far as we know)
  3. Reaction: What action could possibly be put forth to modify the present state of the matter? We won't be obstructive, but we are willing to follow any path to to let our project deal with recent texts.

On behalf of it.Wikisource community:

Hello,

Thank you for the summary. I'll raise that amongst board members + Mike (legal counsel) BUT I'll wait about 2 weeks to do so, because I would prefer Frieda is here (she just left for holidays for about 2 weeks if I understood well). As an italian, I think it will help if she is present.

I can immediately answer about servers in Europe. We have no servers in Paris. We had 3-5 in the past, but this center has been closed. In Europe, some of our servers are hosted by Kennisnet, a dutch facility. All the servers over there are squids, which means they mirror the content. However, technically speaking, they do not HOST the content. This is done only on database servers. All the database servers are currently in Florida. If (when ?) we move databases to Holland, we will be submitted to Dutch law. I do not know how restrictive the dutch law is, but until now, we have felt best to host content only in the USA, so as to be seriously only liable to american law. Now, this is largely due to the law on free speech/libel, more favorable in the USA.
We could possibly open a database server in Holland, where to host wikisource. But this server would still be owned by an american organization, so submitted to american law. Which means even though the content is hosted in Holland, we still would have to respect american law. So, I am not sure it would be very helpful. However, I'll submit the issue to Mike and I'll come back to you.

Cheers

Anthere

Proposal to move Siberian Wikipedia to Wikia

Dear Anthere,

I'm contacting you as a member of the board, as suggested by User:Pathoschild. Maybe you have heard of the proposal to close the Siberian Wikipedia. This Wiki is written in a non-notable constructed language, most of its content is non-encyclopaedic and some is highly insulting.

Under the current language proposal policy, this language, which has no degree of recognition whatsoever would under no circumstances be approved. Since the admins of ru-sib: have not managed to fix their POV and quality issues, neither to have their language stabilised and recognised, the best suggestion I have after some nine months of discussion is to relocate the project to Wikia.

The issue has been [brought up multiple times at foundation-l (see e.g. [3]), however both the board and the language subcommittee have declined to get involved. Therefore, I would like to ask you, whether the BoT would be opposed to transferring ru-sib: to Wikia, or if such a move would have your support. If the latter is the case, I would consider to ask the devs to take the necessary steps. Thanks! --Johannes Rohr 10:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Altes

I am new member of Wikipedia. I want to turn your attention to administrator Altes. He is not competent enough to restrict me. He is just 19 years old and how he can to agree or don't agree with doctors of sciences? His editing is not honest and not right. for example descendents of Chinggiskhan are not only from Kazahstan, also they are from Kirgizstan,Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Russia and other countries.

I solicit for deprivation administrator Altes the right of administration.

Best regards, Baikalia

Interviews

One more for you: Wikinews interviews Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Thunderhead 05:37, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikimania report

As I anticipated a few months ago, as leader of the budget committee for Wikimania can you provide me a detailed financial report for Wikimania, including but not limited to

  • Number of participants and their provenience
  • Number and value of the scholarship granted, and provenience of the people who obtained the scholarship. The names should be public anyway.
  • Expenses sustained bu WMF, sponsors, guests and by WM Taipei for the event
  • Financial end cash flow balance
  • Value of sponsorships and benefit granted to sponsors

Please use my personal e-mail if you don't want to publish that on a WMF website. Thanks --Jollyroger 08:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

ahah, I was not the *leader* of the budget :-) But I can provide you with some of the answers yet. Number of participants and provenance is available. All other things, I do not know, but I'll ask. We are currently polishing our financial statements for the audit, so I guess most of this should be available one way or another. Your questions are actually very good, and I'll ask that we work on a full public report on all this. I think all of this pretty much can be public, I do not think any of this info is in any way confidential (not sure about confidentiality of who got a scholarship).

Anthere

Actually, provenience of people who got a scholarship is a fundamental data to evaluate efficiency of the sholarship institute.
I wish WMF to adopt a policy of transparency on financial matters.
Please keep us informed about where these documents will be available, and if possible include in the documents the contacts to ask some questions. --Jollyroger 08:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that when the people made the request for a scholarship, they were told their request would stay private. We can not give names. In many cases, only one person came from a country. If we say one person from this country got a scholarship, then we really do not respect the privacy we promised. So, what we can do is

  1. provide the total number of scholarships
  2. provide the total amount of scholarships
  3. at most, provide the continent. Info is probably sufficiently aggregated that it is respectful of confidentiality.

I do not know what you mean by policy of transparency on financial matters. There are many financial matters. If you want some transparency, you need to clarify exactly which information you want to be transparent, so that we can tell you if yes or no we will do that. Note that I will not agree to a policy where the names of people who got scholarship is published, unless they agree. And I do not think either that providing publicly one's name should be mandatory to get a scholarship. Either you trust the people who select scholars or you do not. At best, you can ask which are the rules used to select names. But people have a right to not tell publicly that they are broke, and still get help.

Meanwhile, we discussed it on the planning list, and there is a general agreement to give the information I mentionned above, but not all financial statements are done, so THD indicated a few more weeks would be necessary until he can give the information for a report.

Anthere


At least the number of people from a country is needed (i.e: India: 4; USA: 35; and such). Names are not really important now.
With "transparency" I mean that ANYTHING related to WMF finances should be made public and included in reports available to anyone: a detailed report would be advisable (i.e: 2000$ - Jimbo's flight boston-taipei ; 5000$ paid to MrX for fund raising coordination )
No problem in waiting a couple of week more. --Jollyroger 08:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Joyeux anniversaire

Happy Birthday!
Angela 17:27, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Joyeux anniversaire avec un peu de retard
~Pyb 09:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

un gateau, des fleurs, tout pour le bonheur :-) Anthere 02:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthere"