subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyright of pictures and restrictions on the usage

body:
Hoi,
Can pictures that are given to be used within Wikipedia and outside Wikipedia only in combination of the Wikipedia articles, be used. The things that come to mind are business logo's and material that the giver wants to restrict in order for it to remain within a resticted band of use.

In my opinion this is a valid restriction that does allow for our own use and allows for the distribution of material to copied versions of wikipedia's.

Any reason why this can not to be done in this way ?
Thanks,
   GerardM


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Interesting comment Jimbo, which leaves open the possibility that we're
all suckers ("dumbasses") for voting for _any_ of these people as it
just encourages them. "Sincere interest in a fair presentation of the
facts" by those addicted to power is an awfully tenuous assumption
(hence you end up with organisations with oxymoronic descriptions such
as "Fox News - fair and balanced").

Christiaan

On 4 Aug 2004, at 5:23 am, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> It occurs to me that it is entirely possible that a Republican might
> praise the article precisely because it is neutral and factual.
>
> It is only natural for honest opponents of Kerry's election to feel
> that a factual description of his record, particularly a factual
> description that highlights facts that may be relevant but which are
> not widely discussed in the soundbite-friendly partisan media, helps
> to educate voters who, being honest, will naturally come to better
> understand why people oppose Kerry's election.
>
> I am quite sure that many Democratic activists (perhaps the sort who
> like to call their political opponents "dumbasses", not naming any
> names here) will read our Bush article with similar joy, due to it
> naming some facts that these partisans feel are scandalous, but which
> Bush supporters may greet with either a yawn or even admiration.
>
> The test of NPOV is not "does one side really like it?"  because that
> assumes bad faith, that the only reason someone could like an article
> is that it is biased.
>
> The test of NPOV is "do both sides like it?"  This is assuming good
> faith, i.e. that all sides of any controversial issue are typically
> good people who are not "dumbasses" and who have a sincere interest in
> a fair presentation of the facts.
>
> --Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] unfair blocking

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The odd thing here is that this implies that
> protecting a page is a more
> serious action than blocking a user.
>
> That seems backwards to me.  If a page is protected
> the user is still
> free to edit other articles.

Hmm: A restraining order vs. deportation...  The
difference is *slight, but perhaps you are correct.

S

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


list: foundation-l

from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: WFM : need fluent german :-)

body:
On Wednesday, August 04, 2004 2:02 AM
Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
>> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> .... I must remember we have to
>>> contact the current owner. Would you perhaps do it Mav ? Tell us if
>>> you do or do not please.
>>
>>
>> I could, but they will likely want us to pay for the domain name.  I
>> would prefer if somebody who speaks German fluently could conduct
>> those negotiations.
>
>
> Well, paying them for something they paid and could give us appears
> fair :-)
>
> OKay, is there a german person willing to contact the owner of
> http://www.wikimedia.com/ ?

I'll try to contact her.

-Arne (akl)


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Obnoxious art galleries...

body:
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:

>wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:
>
>
>>From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
>>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks at npg.org.uk: National Portrait
>>	Gallery	images on Wikipedia website]
>>
>>It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
>>preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?
>>
>I don't know about UK law, but the National Gallery of Victoria
>in Australia (with the shared legal tradition I believe the copyright
>laws are similar) seems to believe that they own the rights to any
>photographs of the artworks they own, even if the artworks themselves
>are in the public domain.  You will note the copyright notice on
>this Australian website:
>
>http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccubbin.htm
>
>This is despite the fact that McCubbin died in 1917.
>
>I have been meaning to get around to making further enquiries into this
>in the Australian context, but haven't got around to it.  Given this
>enquiry, it just got moved up my priority list.
>
I would be curious to know what policy these galleries apply with regard
to photography by individual visitors to the gallery.

I think too that there is a question of burden of proof involved.  Even
if their principle legal premise is correct they need to prove that our
picture was taken from their website, rather than us needing to prove
that it was from somewhere else.  Also if their premise is correct that
there is a copyright in these reproduction, an individual who has taken
his own photograph of a picture would not lose his own copyright on the
basis that he had violated a no-photography rule.

Another observation that I would make is that any copyrights to these
reproductions must be determined separately.  Without that, how can we
know the copyright date of a specific photograph?  Without the copyright
date, how can we know when the copyright expires?  What is meant by
publishing?  If the same photograph was used to produce a postcard in
1930 the copyright on that would certainly have expired.  Whose courts
have jurisdiction?

Naturally, taking a stand on this requires more research than these off
the cuff remarks.  Still I think that it is inevitable that as the
putative copyright holders see their revenue streams threatened they
will take action to protect those streams.  Sooner or later there will
be a legal confrontation; what we need to know is which actions are
worth defending.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking policy

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>But as with questions of whether judges in wider society can (or
>should) change policy, it's not so easy often to draw the line between
>"following the law" and "making the law".  This is particularly true
>when there are issues of interpretation and application.
>
>
Exactly.  Judges become seized of a case and MUST make a decision based
on the facts and the available law.  Politicians have the luxury of
waiting until the stars are right before they do something.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] new upload form

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>>>The Bostonians nearly threw my tea in the harbor about the new upload
>>>form. :-) When do we expect it to go live?
>>
>>When someone codes it.
>
> I was told in Boston that it's in CVS already but has not been made live.  Was
> that report in error?

I can't find it. All I can find is an alternate mode which removes (!)
the "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license
it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright" checkbox and adds these
boxes:

Copyright status: [                          ]
Source:           [                          ]

Is that what you're referring to? I was under the impression there's
some big fancy totally redone form that's been proposed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Obnoxious art galleries

body:
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:

>With regards to copyright protection of photos in galleries under
>Australian law, I've just been reading the Copyright Act.  Under the
>act, an "artistic work" is defined as:
>
>  (a)    a painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving or photograph,
>  whether the work is of artistic quality or not;
>
>and several other things.
>
>Section 31 of the act then goes on to state that:
>
>For the purposes of this Act, unless the contrary intention appears,
>copyright, in relation to a work, is the exclusive right to...
>
><snip>
>
>(b)    in the case of an artistic work, to do all or any of the following
>acts:
>(i)    to reproduce the work in a material form;
>(ii)    to publish the work;
>(iii)    to communicate the work to the public;
>
>If you took the above literally, that would appear to award copyright
>protection to photographs of artworks.
>
>However, one little bit of law I picked up recently is that whatever the
>literal meaning of specific words in legislation, there is something called
>the doctrine of purposive construction, where judges try and figure out
>what the law was *intended* to say rather than what it actually *says*.
>
>You might be able to mount an argument that the clear intention of that
>reproductions was to protect works where some creative effort was made,
>rather than merely protect an exact facsimilie of a creative work now
>in the public domain.
>
IANAL either but I'm sure that I can be just as argumentative. :-)

I can take the above quoted statutory text and arrive at the contrary
conclusion.  Notably "the exclusive right ... to reproduce the work in a
material form" suggests that this right is one held by the original
artist.  When the original painting goes into the public domain that
"exclusive" right would go there along with it.

Of course, I've always felt that the "public domain" was something more
than a copyright free-for-all.  I make the distinction that rather than
representing rights owned by nobody, it is really rights owned by
everybody.  This has implications in terms of being able to be
represented in the courts.  "Nobody" cannot have interests to be
represented, while "everybody" can.

Ec


from_name: Vít Zvánovec

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageCs.php again

body:
	Dear colleagues,
	thank you for all the changes you have made in LanguageCs.php. But
there are some mistakes:

NS_HELP=> "N?poveda",
NS_HELP_TALK=> "N?poveda_diskuse",

should be

NS_HELP=> "N?pov?da", #Nápověda
NS_HELP_TALK=> "N?pov?da_diskuse", #Nápověda_diskuse

	Since there is no wgMonthAbbreviationsCs, I propose this:

# Dates
'jan' => "1.",
'feb' => "2.",
'mar' => "3.",
'apr' => "4.",
'may' => "5.",
'jun' => "6.",
'jul' => "7.",
'aug' => "8.",
'sep' => "9.",
'oct' => "10.",
'nov' => "11.",
'dec' => "12.",

	There are no month abbreviations in Czech language, we use ordinal
numbers instead. There is a lot of examples:
http://www.abicko.cz/Clanek6602.htm
http://jyxo.cz/clanky/all-20040514
http://www.sovavsiti.cz/weblog/2003/12/31.html

			Yours sincerely,
					V?t Zv?novec, bureaucrat of :cs


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] new upload form

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I can't find it. All I can find is an alternate mode which removes (!)
> the "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license
> it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright" checkbox and adds these
> boxes:
>
> Copyright status: [                          ]
> Source:           [                          ]
>
> Is that what you're referring to? I was under the impression there's
> some big fancy totally redone form that's been proposed.

Hmm, my impression is the same as yours, but it is likely that this is
what the report I got was referring to.

O.k., so, it sounds like you're right, we need patches.  Does anyone
know where the "big fany totally redone form" proposal is, so that
someone can code to that spec?

--Jimbo


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
Anthere wrote:

> But for an american foundation, it makes sense to give priority to
> english language.

I'm disappointed! :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Patent nonsense proposal

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> So if the ogg pages on the net are unofficial and all scary looking,
> we can actually help out a great deal with that problem, while also
> helping to resolve our own dilemma (i.e. our concerns about
> inconveniencing users in our quest to evangelize for freedom).

I suppose we can fix the "scary looking" part, but I don't think we can
make it official.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Relevant British copyright act (was: Obnoxious
	art	galleries)

body:
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:

>With regards to the discussion on British galleries' rights to claim
>copyright over pictures of their PD artworks, I've dug up the relevant
>piece of legislation.  It is, frankly, a very dumb piece of legislation,
>but in my non-lawyer opinion here are the relevant clauses:
>
>>From the British Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988:
>
>In Section 4
>(1)In this Part "artistic work" means.
>(a)a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage, irrespective of
>artistic quality,
>...
>"photograph" means a recording of light or other radiation
>    on any medium on which an image is produced or from which an
>    image may by any means be produced, and which is not part of
>    a film;
>
>>From Section 17:
>  (1)The copying of the work is an act restricted by the copyright in
>  every description of copyright work; and references in this Part to
>  copying and copies shall be construed as follows.
>  (2)Copying in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or
>  artistic work means reproducing the work in any material form.
>  This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means.
>  (3)In relation to an artistic work copying includes the making
>  of a copy in three dimensions of a two-dimensional work and the
>  making of a copy in two dimensions of a three-dimensional work.
>
>Not very promising.
>
Pessimist!  I find that the copying by the galleries is clearly
restricted by 17(1) -- and thus an infringement of the copyrights owned
by the public domain.

Ec


body:
Delirium wrote:

> It's quite recent: about 10 minutes old.  I just updated my system, and
> the various MP3 playback things are all of course still in the official
> repository.  Debian pulls things pretty aggressively when legal troubles
> arise, and there's been a lot of discussion about MP3 but nothing's been
> pulled.  I didn't follow the discussion, but there was quite a bit two
> years ago when that Vorbis open letter came out, and I assume by the
> lack of action over such a lengthy period of time that the discussion's
> ended in favor of "no legal problems with MP3 playback".

So what exactly does that mean? Does it mean the MP3 decoding patent is
invalid, or does it mean that Debian can continue to use the software
that was written before the patent was enforced, or something else?


subject: [WikiEN-l] fair locking (was unfair blocking)

body:
S.Vertigo wrote:
>>Let them be stupid, and then just revert it
>>all 24 hours later. This will save you a lot of
>>grief.
>
> Nope; the article will be incorrect or ususable for
> the x amount of page hits that it gets that day and
> night.

In some cases, that's true.  But in the case in question, if I
understood it, the person was making a new article when we already had
one.  That new article would likely not be seen by anyone.

I do concede that leaving people alone for 24 hours rather than
reverting them instantly can be a judgment call depending in part on
the importance/popularity of the page in question.

> >*They live for that, remember.
>
> Yes, *they "hate our freedom."

Well, they do.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LanguageCs.php again

body:
V?t Zv?novec wrote:

> NS_HELP=> "N?poveda",
> should be
> NS_HELP=> "N?pov?da", #Nápověda

Fixed.

> 	Since there is no wgMonthAbbreviationsCs, I propose this:

$wgMonthAbbreviationsXX has been obsoleted. The month abbreviations are
now regular messages (thanks loads to Jens Frank for that). If the date
formats of your language never use the abbreviated month names, you're
set. Otherwise, use the MediaWiki namespace to change them.

Timwi


body:
Gerard.Meijssen wrote:

>Hoi,
>Can pictures that are given to be used within Wikipedia and outside Wikipedia only in combination of the Wikipedia articles, be used. The things that come to mind are business logo's and material that the giver wants to restrict in order for it to remain within a resticted band of use.
>
>In my opinion this is a valid restriction that does allow for our own use and allows for the distribution of material to copied versions of wikipedia's.
>
>Any reason why this can not to be done in this way ?
>
One needs to keep in mind the distinction between copyright law and
trademark law.  We can reproduce the Shell Oil logo to illustrate
articles, but we could not use it to promote the new string of Wikigas
stations.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Big new server order under way

body:
I have ordered some new servers.  I believe that they will resolve
several significant issues.

1. NFS Fileserver -- for now, only 1 of these, as I was told that
gwicke wants to do some tests before we buy 2 of them.

Dual Opteron 242
1 Gb ram (2x512), leaving 6 slots available
3Ware 9500S-8 8 port RAID controller
6x250GB drives (750GB HW RAID 10)
floppy
Sony 52x CDROM IDE
460W hotswap redundant power supplies
Fedora Core 2 for AMD64

2.  Search DB server --
same machine as above, except...

6x200GB drives (600GB HW RAID 10)
4 GB ram (4x1gb), leaving 4 slots available

3.  Apaches --

In what may be a slightly controversial decision, but supported by
Shaihulud and Jeronim in the irc room, and probably a tossup to most
people, I went with a "known quantity" and ordered 8 1U Pentium 4
machines.

P4 3.0GHZ - 1 MB Cache - HT - 800FSB
512MB (2x256) - leaving 2 slots available
80GB ATA100 hard drive

My thinking here is that this will roughly *double* our apache
capacity, thus definitively solving (for now) what has been a
longstanding issue.  This may expose something else as a bottleneck,
we don't know yet.

There was a lot of talk about going with dual opterons in this
capacity, and it was once decided.  But lately there has been some
concern about the performance of suda, and some difficulties
(possibly) with having a non-homegenous group of apaches.

I have seen arguments back and forth, and did not find any of them
definitive.  So, I made a decision.  That's what I have to do, and I
hope no one is mad about it.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] We might have been mentioned in a book - can anyone
	confirm this?

body:
How to gain power at work in the future: Give it away

By HARVEY SCHACHTER
Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - Page C3

The Future of Work

By Thomas Malone,

Harvard Business School Press,

225 pages, $44.95

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040804/CABOOKS04/TPBusiness/General

"Prof. Malone suggests three patterns will occur in the future:

Loosening the hierarchy: When Google Inc. starts a major project, it
doesn't create a huge new organization with lots of management layers,
it sets up a few autonomous engineering teams and sets them loose. The
Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia allows anybody to contribute to it, with
no centralized quality control. "Its success so far shows that amazingly
loose hierarchies can create impressively large and complex results,"
Prof. Malone says."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: unfair blocking

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> I detect an anomaly or contradiction in our policies.  An admin is not
> allowed to get into a fight with a user over the content of a page and
> then protect the page, but the admin *is* allowed to block that user
> after having fought with them?
>
> I offer no solution to this; I just pose it as a problem.

I don't see that as an anomaly, because page protection and banning are
two different pairs of shoes. In summary: I think protecting a page when
you're involved in an edit war is essentially declaring your version as
"better" or "more valid". Banning a user is declaring that the user has
acted against Wikipedia's interests.

In my mind, a sysop should be allowed to ban a user if common sense
tells us that the user is trying to work against Wikipedia's interests
(and not just against the sysop's taste). The Joaquin Phoenix case seems
like a clear breach to me: The user was banned because they were
attempting to circumvent the Wiki process.

In practice, of course, "common sense" and "Wikipedia's interests"
aren't well-defined, so please feel free to substitute rules and
policies for that.

Page protection is different. If the edits in question were clearly
vandalism, the user should be banned, and not the page protected. Hence,
when talking about page protection, we're dealing with edits that aren't
wrong or against Wikipedia's interests. The page should only be
protected if the reason for the edit war is that people disagree on the
content of the article, but both versions are legitimate articles (as
opposed only to vandalism). A sysop has no right to protect the page on
their version, thereby declaring it as "better" or "more valid", if the
other user did not commit vandalism.

One flaw I can see in my own argument is that if someone *else* protects
the page, they can also be seen as declaring the version they protected
as "better" or "more valid". Yes, I know we explicitly state all over
the place that this is never the intention of a sysop protecting a page;
but why does this only work for sysops that are not involved in the edit
war? The one time that I made this faux-pas (protecting a page where I
was involved in an edit war) it was my genuine intention to discuss the
issue with the user and unprotect the page again later.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageCs.php again

body:
V?t Zv?novec wrote:

># Dates
>'jan' => "1.",
>'feb' => "2.",
>'mar' => "3.",
>'apr' => "4.",
>'may' => "5.",
>'jun' => "6.",
>'jul' => "7.",
>'aug' => "8.",
>'sep' => "9.",
>'oct' => "10.",
>'nov' => "11.",
>'dec' => "12.",
>
>	There are no month abbreviations in Czech language, we use ordinal
>numbers instead. There is a lot of examples:
>http://www.abicko.cz/Clanek6602.htm
>http://jyxo.cz/clanky/all-20040514
>http://www.sovavsiti.cz/weblog/2003/12/31.html
>
>
However copious the examples, and whatever the current practice, it is
not accurate to say that these abbreviations do not exist.  I do have
the book "Anglo-American Cataloging Rules" (for libraries) which lists
these for several languages, including Czech.

Ec


from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: [Wikitech-l] EasyTimeline still not working

body:
Hi,

Erik complained here about 2 weeks ago that his EasyTimeline function
wasn't working. It still hasn't been fixed! The cached timelines are
shown, but de.wikipedia has been converted to utf-8, so every timeline
will have to be re-rendered there, which is not happening.

Regards,
Stephan

--
Stephan.Walter at epfl.ch  --  http://lart.info/~stw/  --  PGP: B2421799


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block #1

body:
> If you agreed to it voluntarily then why are you questioning it with
> "Fennec could have done something other than block me (such as speak to
> me first)"?

> Christiaan

What am I questioning?  I'm not saying Fennec wasn't able to do what he did.
I'm saying he shouldn't have.  It was completely unnecessary and
counterproductive.

Just because an admin has the ability to block first and ask questions never
doesn't mean they always should.  Frankly, when I made the agreement I
thought admins such as Fennec would have the common sense to realize that.

That said, I jumped to conclusions when I listed that page on VfD.  And as
it turns out the block was removed fairly soon after I realized I was
blocked anyway, so little harm was done.  So whatever, it's not the end of
the world.

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LanguageCs.php again

references:
<4110D644.18628.D104B3@localhost> <ceqi5t$neo$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ceqk2c$s5k$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> $wgMonthAbbreviationsXX has been obsoleted. The month abbreviations
>> are now regular messages (thanks loads to Jens Frank for that). If the
>> date formats of your language never use the abbreviated month names,
>> you're set. Otherwise, use the MediaWiki namespace to change them.
>
> Awesome.  But this isn't yet live, is it?  I looked in
> Template:All_system_messages.

Oh, sorry. Yes, you're right, it might not be live yet.


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] British copyright law != American copyright law

body:
Jimbo wrote: "but we don't publish pornographic pictures so this is
irrelevant to us."

...Are you seeking to open up debate on that topic? :)

--Mark


body:
Arne Klempert wrote:

> I sent her a mail (see below).

Wow. Very good writing, very professional tone, and very well-structured
paragraphing. I'm impressed!

Thanks for your effort!
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Need developer attention to fix problem in DB

body:
Hi,

if you look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Allpages/%27
you will see there's an article with the title:

	'''Why SPECT?''' Similar to X-ray Computed Tomography
	(CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Single Photon Emission
	Computed Tomography (SPECT) allows us to visualize functional
	information about a patient's specific organ or body system. '''
	How does

However, if you click on it, it will say the article doesn't exist.

The reason for this is that in the DB, the article title ends with a
'_'. These article titles are unreachable via the wiki.

Please could someone delete this entry from the DB directly?

	DELETE FROM cur WHERE cur_id=291499

Thanks!
Timwi


body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 12:52 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> > I have ordered some new servers.  I believe that they will resolve
> > several significant issues.
>
> Is a GigE switch ordered as well? The two FastE ones are a bottleneck
> currently which messes with the load balancing. All machines have GigE
> nics already.

It will be ordered by the end of today, I am shopping.

--Jimbo


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>The simple solution is that we need to find as many nicely printed art
>books from the PD era, and do some mass scanning and uploading,
>documenting carefully the sources.
>
>
We could also encourage some in-person photography by Wikipedians.  Some
galleries have obnoxious no-photograph rules, but many, especially those
owned by governments with some interest in freedom, don't.  To just take
two examples from my recent travels, the National Archaeological Museum
in Athens and the Prado in Madrid both permit no-flash photography.  The
main trick is how to get high-quality photographs of paintings without a
flash, since both do prohibit tripods.  But we can at least start
tackling some of them: photographs of statues and other artifacts are an
easier no-flash/no-tripod target.

-Mark


body:
On Wednesday, August 04, 2004 10:45 AM
Arne Klempert <wikipedia at klempert.de> wrote:

>> OKay, is there a german person willing to contact the owner of
>> http://www.wikimedia.com/ ?
>
> I'll try to contact her.

I sent her a mail (see below). If she doesn't respond until friday I
will try to reach her by phone.

-Arne (akl)

On Wednesday, August 04, 2004 2:20 PM
Arne Klempert [wikimedia] <akl at wikimedia.de> wrote:

> Sehr geehrte Frau Rohrer,
>
> ich wende mich an Sie, weil Sie die Domain wikimedia.com reserviert
> haben.
>
> Vielleicht kennen Sie die freie Internet-Enzyklop?die Wikipedia
> (wikipedia.org). Dieses Projekt hat es sich zum Ziel gesetzt,
> ausschlie?lich durch die Arbeit freiwilliger Autoren Enzyklop?dien in
> allen Sprachen der Welt zu erstellen und ist seit dem Start im Jahre
> 2001 diesem Ziel schon sehr nahe gekommen: mittlerweile existieren
> fast eine Million Artikel in ?ber 80 Sprachen, darunter ?ber 300.000
> in englischer und ?ber 100.000 in deutscher Sprache.
>
> Getragen wird dieses Projekt von der Wikimedia Foundation (eine
> gemeinn?tzige Stiftung mit Sitz in Florida, USA). Derzeit versuchen
> wir, die Au?endarstellung von Wikimedia auszubauen, um besser um
> Spenden f?r den Betrieb der Wikipedia und ihrer Schwesterprojekte
> werben zu k?nnen. Denn das Angebot soll auch in Zukunft kostenfrei
> nutzbar sein und ohne Werbung finanziert werden.
>
> In diesem Zusammenhang h?tten wir gro?es Interesse an der von Ihnen
> registrierten Domain. Wikimedia verf?gt bereits ?ber die Domain
> wikimedia.org. Leider ist die Endung .org aber f?r viele
> Internetnutzer sehr ungewohnt, und es kommt erfahrungsgem?? h?ufig
> vor, dass ungewohnte Endungen durch .com ersetzt werden.
>
> Zudem bauen wir derzeit eine internationale Organisationsstruktur auf
> (in Deutschland wurde bereits ein Verein gegr?ndet:
> http://wikimedia.de - andere L?nder folgen in K?rze), so dass auch aus
> diesem Grund eine Erreichbarkeit von Wikimedia unter allen verf?gbaren
> Endungen besonders wichtig ist.
>
> Wir w?rden uns deshalb sehr freuen, wenn Sie bereit w?ren, uns die
> Domain wikimedia.com zu ?bertragen. Der Dank von unz?hligen
> freiwilligen Mitarbeiter der verschiedenen von Wikimedia gef?rderten
> Projekte w?re Ihnen sicher. Sofern Sie dies w?nschen, setze ich mich
> auch gerne daf?r ein, dass Ihnen durch die Registrierung entstandene
> Kosten ersetzt werden.
>
> F?r R?ckfragen stehe ich jederzeit gerne zur Verf?gung.
>
>
> Viele Gr??e
> Arne Klempert
>
> * Freiwilliger Mitarbeiter bei Wikipedia
> * Zweiter Vorsitzender des Vereins Wikimedia Deutschland -
>   Gesellschaft zur F?rderung Freien Wissens


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking policy

body:
Actually the Arbitration committee at Wikipedia has at time accepted cases
but failed to come to a decision. No one has objected to that outcome.
(Actually courts have ways of shedding cases too).

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 11:44:25 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking policy
>
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>> But as with questions of whether judges in wider society can (or
>> should) change policy, it's not so easy often to draw the line between
>> "following the law" and "making the law".  This is particularly true
>> when there are issues of interpretation and application.
>>
>>
> Exactly.  Judges become seized of a case and MUST make a decision based
> on the facts and the available law.  Politicians have the luxury of
> waiting until the stars are right before they do something.
>
> Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Using a tripod (Re: Obnoxious art galleries...)

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> writes:
>
>
>>The main trick is how to get high-quality photographs of paintings
>>without a flash, since both do prohibit tripods.
>>
>>
>One can ask for an exception.  When I was a student I was allowed to
>take some pictures of Low Saxonian art objects with a tripod.  Some day
>I may find these old shots again.
>
The no tripod rule is often based on the experience that some kinds of
tripods can damage floors.

No flash can be justified because some of these old things can be
eventually be damaged by repeated exposure to bright lights.

The increasingly improved quality that can be achieved with digital
photography has the effect of making the rules about flashes and tripods
less relevant.

Ec


body:
I think the entire corpus of classified (classified by the governement as
secret, etc.) falls into that category. Much of this material is too
detailed for encyclopedic purposes, but much would be encyclopedic if we
knew it or were free to publish it.

More or less along the same line, considering the national security needs of
the United States with respect to the "War on Terror", certain photographs
and information, for example regarding the details of security precautions
and certain nifty destructive techniques might fall into this category.

Fred

> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:28:45 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] British copyright law != American copyright law
>
> p.s.  I would be interested in gathering examples of content that (a)
> we ought to have in the encyclopedia on editorial grounds but that (b)
> would not be legal for us to host in the United States.
>
> To my knowledge, virtually all examples of content that is not legal
> in the U.S., but which *is* legal elsewhere, are not really relevant
> to our encyclopedic mission.  The age of consent for models in
> pornographic pictures in the U.S. is 18 in the U.S., but lower in some
> other countries, but we don't publish pornographic pictures so this is
> irrelevant to us.


from_name: Carson, David

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery
	images on    Wikipedia website]

body:
On
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights/archive2#Adaptati
ons_of_public_domain_images , [[User:JamesDay]] argues that photographs
and scans of public domain materials (which these portraits surely would
be, given their age), with no creative work applied, do not grant
copyright to the photographer/scanner. But (a) he was talking about US
law, not British law, and (b) he might be wrong anyway, IANAL. :-)

David Carson

Senior Analyst/Programmer
Nine Network Australia
ph (02) 9965 2557
fax (02) 9965 2982

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2004 14:38
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org; wikien-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] [bhorrocks at npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery
images on Wikipedia website]

It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?

----- Forwarded message from Bernard Horrocks <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk>
-----

From: "Bernard Horrocks" <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 14:23:33 +0100
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website

Dear Sir,

We notice you have a number of images on your website (e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare;
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark ) which are of portraits in
the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.<?xml:namespace
prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

As we do not appear to have licensed copies of these portraits for use
on your website, we wondered whether you would let us know the source
from which you obtained the reproductions.

All photographs, scans, text and other material on the National Portrait
Gallery's website are protected by international copyright laws.
Unauthorised reproduction of such content may be an infringement of such
laws.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding this matter.

Yours sincerely,

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Bernard Horrocks

Copyright Officer

National Portrait Gallery  St Martin's Place  London WC2H OHE

Direct T +44 (0) 20 7312 2442  F +44 (0) 20 7312 2464  www.npg.org.uk
<http://www.npg.org.uk/>

click here <http://www.patronmailuk.com/bnmailweb/PatronSetup?oid=29>
to register for the Gallery's e-newsletter

This e-mail, and any attachment, is intended only for the attention of
the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying
is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy
all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

----- End forwarded message -----
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information contained in this e-mail communication may be confidential. You should only read, disclose, re-transmit, copy, distribute, act in reliance on or commercialise the information if you are authorised to do so. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail communication, please immediately notify the sender by e-mail and then destroy any electronic or paper copy of this message.

Any views expressed in this e-mail communication are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of TCN. TCN does not represent, warrant or guarantee that the integrity of this communication has been maintained nor that the communication is free of errors, virus or interference.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: N.T. Riche

subject: [WikiEN-l] Where are all the trolls?

body:
"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> Actually I have said so. Folks who declare an intent to be disruptive will
> reliably go on to be disruptive and damage will occur. There is no real need
> to wait while they do their thing.

O.k., well I had a different meaning in mind for "without a hearing". A temporary
ban on someone who is being disruptive should be followed by some kind of formal
hearing.

If I understood Nick correctly, he was raising the absurd strawman
argument that there is no middle ground between letting trolls do as
they please versus just getting rid of due process altogether.

Not true jimbo, all I want is some due process, I understand that this is private project, and that we are building an ecyclopedia so our standrands are different from Government, or publicly help Corps.

 Maybe
I misunderstood him, but he is a self-described troll out to disrupt
the site, so I think it's pretty safe to assume that he's going to
accuse people of things that they never advocated.

 I told you before jimbo I suffer from [[Bi-Poler Disorder]] (not an appeal to pity, sometimes I seriously am a different person w/o my Prozac). I do engage (at times) what might be considered bad behaveior but it's because I haven't taken my medicine. Jimbo I don't want to bother anyone, but my bad side tells me to "Troll, Troll, Troll, Keep the red faction page F--k with them!!" I understand Rick's and your opinion's, and I am seeing a shink so I will improve! :)

I remember when he was telling people in IRC that I had decided to
leave the project, for example.

I seriously thought you where leaving because I misread an e-mail, actually I wouldn't like it if you left.

--Jimbo

I really wish to thank everyone who has been kind to me on this site, becuase my bad side has been getting weaker thanks to you!

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery
	images on Wikipedia website]

body:
Exactly; and he's hoping we name someone we got them from that he CAN sue.

Out of curiousity; does anyone know the status under English law of
this type of thing?  There is US case law saying that a mere
photographic reproduction of a public-domain artwork does not have
sufficient expressive / creative content to create a new copyright
claim.  However, this may not be true worldwide.

One must be aware that owners of artworks (such as the NPG) routinely
claim rights under copyright law that they do not have, or at least
are based on readings of copyright law that currently have no actual
cases to back them up.

-Matt


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait
	Gallery images on Wikipedia website]

body:
There's an additional problem on non-english wikipedias. Since many
articles are translated form English to the local languages, the same
images are often re-uploaded with only a quick note "taken from the
English wiki" or something like that, despite multiple warnings that one
must note the original source.

Checking the status of those images requires looking them up in the
English wiki, which is not always trivial, and then following the usual
guidelines. Sometimes, if for example the English image gets deleted,
there's virtually no way of finding the original source.

I'm afraid this seems quite a common scenario :-(

Alfio

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Michael Snow wrote:

>All the more reason for us to get the new upload form up and running, so
>that people have to say what the source for an image is up front,
>instead of us chasing them down after the fact to find out where they
>got it. What are we waiting for at this point?
>
>--Michael Snow
>
>Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>>It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
>>preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?
>>
>>----- Forwarded message from Bernard Horrocks <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk> -----
>>
>>From: "Bernard Horrocks" <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk>
>>Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 14:23:33 +0100
>>To: <jwales at bomis.com>
>>Subject: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website
>>
>>Dear Sir,
>>
>>We notice you have a number of images on your website (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare;   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark ) which are of portraits in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>>
>>
>>
>>As we do not appear to have licensed copies of these portraits for use on your website, we wondered whether you would let us know the source from which you obtained the reproductions.
>>
>>
>>
>>All photographs, scans, text and other material on the National Portrait Gallery's website are protected by international copyright laws.  Unauthorised reproduction of such content may be an infringement of such laws.
>>
>>
>>
>>I look forward to hearing from you regarding this matter.
>>
>>
>>
>>Yours sincerely,
>>
>>
>>
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Bernard Horrocks
>>
>>Copyright Officer
>>
>>National Portrait Gallery  St Martin's Place  London WC2H OHE
>>
>>
>>
>>Direct T +44 (0) 20 7312 2442  F +44 (0) 20 7312 2464  www.npg.org.uk <http://www.npg.org.uk/>
>>
>>click here <http://www.patronmailuk.com/bnmailweb/PatronSetup?oid=29>  to register for the Gallery's e-newsletter
>>
>>
>>
>>This e-mail, and any attachment, is intended only for the attention of the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail.
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>----- End forwarded message -----
>>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Where are all the trolls?

body:
N.T. Riche wrote:
> I really wish to thank everyone who has been kind to me on this
>site, becuase my bad side has been getting weaker thanks to you!

Fine, well, I wish you the all the best.  Perhaps you could do one
small gesture of kindness and remove all that stuff advocating
trolling from your user pages?  It'll only take a second.

--Jimbo


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I think the entire corpus of classified (classified by the governement as
>secret, etc.) falls into that category. Much of this material is too
>detailed for encyclopedic purposes, but much would be encyclopedic if we
>knew it or were free to publish it.
>
>More or less along the same line, considering the national security needs of
>the United States with respect to the "War on Terror", certain photographs
>and information, for example regarding the details of security precautions
>and certain nifty destructive techniques might fall into this category.
>
>
Specific plans and precautions would be a problem, but books of
techniques have been protected by free speech.  In the 60s there was a
dispute over a book of techniques by "the man who trained Fidel Castro",
and that was eventually considered permissible.  The only technique that
I clearly remember had to do with flushing nail-filled balls of cotton
down the toilets of public buildings.  You would almost need to tear out
the plumbing to clear up the problem.  That book was mild compared to
some of the material that has been produced by sone far right private
militias, and they too have been ruled protected by the First
Amendment.  Even if the above listed items are not publishable in the
U.S., this does not establish a case for them being publishable elsewhere.

Ec


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

body:
On Wed, Aug 04, 2004 at 04:41:09AM +0000, wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org wrote:
> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 21:38:28 -0700
> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks at npg.org.uk: National Portrait
> 	Gallery	images on Wikipedia website]
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org, wikien-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <20040804043828.GM23467 at wikia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
> preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?
>

I don't know about UK law, but the National Gallery of Victoria
in Australia (with the shared legal tradition I believe the copyright
laws are similar) seems to believe that they own the rights to any
photographs of the artworks they own, even if the artworks themselves
are in the public domain.  You will note the copyright notice on
this Australian website:

http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_mccubbin.htm

This is despite the fact that McCubbin died in 1917.

I have been meaning to get around to making further enquiries into this
in the Australian context, but haven't got around to it.  Given this
enquiry, it just got moved up my priority list.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

This is a non-story. Pakistan is our ally in the war against terrorism.
They're the good guys. Nuclear weapons in the hands of the good guys are
NOT WMD's.
Now if it were learned that Saddam had access to designs for constructing
paper airplanes, THAT would be front page news.
--Beth, poster at http://atrios.blogspot.com, 31/1/2003, in response to
low-prominence media reports of an Israeli national arrested for selling
US nuclear technology to Pakistan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Where are all the trolls?

body:
You mean my red faction page. deal.

"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
N.T. Riche wrote:
> I really wish to thank everyone who has been kind to me on this
>site, becuase my bad side has been getting weaker thanks to you!

Fine, well, I wish you the all the best. Perhaps you could do one
small gesture of kindness and remove all that stuff advocating
trolling from your user pages? It'll only take a second.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Minority/majority question

body:
On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Ralesk Ne'vennoyx wrote:

> I think Jimmy's idea about the "hard links" was a good one.  I
> don't know hoit should look like on the site, but it's a great

It creates some problems with editing. If you change your mind and
want [[England]] to be an article of its own instead of #EQUALS
[[Great Britain]], where do you click to edit?  One way could be to
give the article text an ID number, so that both names refer to the
same article number (in Unix, a hard link associates the filename with
the file content's inode number).  When that article is displayed, at
the top of the page you list all its names as "synonyms" to the name
in the URL, with an edit link next to each name, separate from the
edit link to the article itself.  This is quite a different system
from what we have today.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] new upload form

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jimmy-
>
>
>>O.k., so, it sounds like you're right, we need patches.  Does anyone
>>know where the "big fany totally redone form" proposal is, so that
>>someone can code to that spec?
>>
>>
>A big totally redone form proposal is part of the Wikimedia Commons idea:
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Uploadform1.png
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Uploadform2.png
>
>This proposal seeks to provide a simple and quick solution for photos by
>Wikipedians while requiring all the necessary information for photos from
>outside sources.
>
>
If the claim is that something is already in the public domain there
should be no need to "choose a licence".  The "choice" to put something
in the public domain is only menaingful for one's own works, or for
works over which one has acquired full rights as by purchase or
inheritance.

The recent matter of the National Portrait Gallery pictures revolves
around whether those images are copyrightable.

Ec


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Linking to and collaborating with free databases

body:
Hi there,

(I just wrote the same on [[meta:Linking to databases]])

Wikipedia is not a database but an encyclopedia. And MediaWiki is not
designed to manage a relational database. But there are some free
database projects out there that are worth collaborating with. For
instance MusicBrainz and freedb collect information about bands, CDs and
songs. In Wikipedia there are also a lot of articles about bands. Few of
them are already linking to freedb or MusicBrainz. How about
consequently linking Wikipedia and selected free databases? Technically
it's not that complicated. I created an example on en: and de: linking
to MusicBrainz. See the articles [[en:In Extremo]] and [[de:In Extremo]]:

1. Create a template (see [[en:Template:musicbrainz]]
    and [[de:Vorlage:musicbrainz]])
2. Start using the template
2.1. Select an article of a band or song
2.2. Search for it at http://musicbrainz.org
2.3. Copy the part of the Permanent Link after http://musicbrainz.org/
      for instance "artist/8ebd161e-f45e-41b9-8019-fcbd094c327f.html"
2.4. Add a link to the External Links section using the follwing syntax:
      {{musicbrainz|artist/8ebd161e-f45e-41b9-8019-fcbd094c327f.html}}
3. Frequently get a list of all articles using the template
(Wahtlinkshere is your friend) and parse the template links
4. Send the list of Wikipedia article titles and MusicBrainz IDs to
    the MusicBrainz guys and convince them linking back to Wikipedia

It's only a little step further to get the following: If I start
listening a CD a browser window openes showing me the relating Wikipedia
article of the band or CD! It's that easy and everybody will profit - so
what are we waiting for?

BTW: We could also collaborate with the en:IMDb but "their" data is not
open content, so better not linking to them - maybe we better build up
Wikimovies instead.

Greetings,
   Jakob


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National
 Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website]

body:
Incidentally, Googling for "Bernard Horrocks" turns up some interesting
pages from the netherworld of copyright researchers, but no obvious
blackmail material, alas. :-)

Stan

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
>preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?
>
>----- Forwarded message from Bernard Horrocks <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk> -----
>
>From: "Bernard Horrocks" <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk>
>Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 14:23:33 +0100
>To: <jwales at bomis.com>
>Subject: National Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website
>
>Dear Sir,
>
>We notice you have a number of images on your website (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare;   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark ) which are of portraits in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>
>
>
>As we do not appear to have licensed copies of these portraits for use on your website, we wondered whether you would let us know the source from which you obtained the reproductions.
>
>
>
>All photographs, scans, text and other material on the National Portrait Gallery's website are protected by international copyright laws.  Unauthorised reproduction of such content may be an infringement of such laws.
>
>
>
>I look forward to hearing from you regarding this matter.
>
>
>
>Yours sincerely,
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Bernard Horrocks
>
>Copyright Officer
>
>National Portrait Gallery  St Martin's Place  London WC2H OHE
>
>
>
>Direct T +44 (0) 20 7312 2442  F +44 (0) 20 7312 2464  www.npg.org.uk <http://www.npg.org.uk/>
>
>click here <http://www.patronmailuk.com/bnmailweb/PatronSetup?oid=29>  to register for the Gallery's e-newsletter
>
>
>
>This e-mail, and any attachment, is intended only for the attention of the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery
	images on Wikipedia website]


from_name: Mike Halterman

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3 different issues

body:
Well, the first thing you bring up is very interesting and should be watched, definitely, if not just outright squashed right now.

About Neutrality, I really don't care what screen name a person has. I don't think it's that big of a deal. I'm a believer in picking your battles, and I think this is one that is relatively unimportant.

-Michael

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
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body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
>
>
>>If I were Jimbo, I'd be tempted to deliberately perpetuate an American
>>stereotype and tell the National Portrait Gallery to kiss our ass and
>>sue if they dare...but I'd perhaps want to get a real legal opinion
>>first.
>>
>>
>It is tempting, of course, but there are some puzzling additional issues here.
>
>One of our goals is to keep our content freely redistributable as
>widely as possible.  One unsettled question is the degree to which we
>are willing to alter our content to meet legal conditions which we
>regard as unjust.
>
That, and to what extent do we want to monitor a wide range of laws in
many countries.  It's just not practical.  Consideration of the host
country's laws and major international treaties makes sense, but if a
downstream user is going to republish material he must accept some
responsibility for his actions.

>Clearly, if we got an email from North Korea saying that any portrayal
>of their government in a negative light is illegal, and that anyone
>who redistributes our content there will get in legal trouble, we will
>just ignore it.  Altering the political neutrality of our content is
>pretty much out of the question.
>
It's unsafe to mix issues; the results are too unpredictable.  A more
appropriate question in regards to North Korea might have to to with the
copyrights to a portrait of Kim Il-sung, and whether we would respect
the copyrights of an identified North Korean photographer.

>But it is less clear to me how we should draw the line when the issue
>is relatively minor, and relatively content-neutral.  (To explain what
>I mean by content neutral: if we did not have these particular images,
>this would not introduce a major political or other bias in our
>articles in the same way that a demanded change of text would.)
>
In other words the acceptability of the picture in terms of NPOV policy
is a different issue from acceptability in terms of copyright policy.

>When the issue is U.S. law, our hands are more tied than in other
>cases, but fortunately, in a wide range of cases it turns out that
>U.S. law is better than other jurisdictions, particularly given the
>fair use doctrine, the DMCA "safe harbor" provisions, etc.  (But see
>my p.s. below.)
>
Agreed.  But that still allows us room to manoeuvre if we feel we have a
just cause.  Not all take down requests are justified.

>But I want people to be able to print books from Wikipedia content and
>then hand them out in the tube in London at rush hour if they like, so
>totally ignoring British law is not a viable option.
>
But Britain and the other developed countries are not where the
distribution would be most useful.  Some third world countries may have
ridiculously complicated laws but no means of enforcing them.  With the
British laws under discussion, more than one interpretation is
possible.  How do we determine which of two conflicting interpretations
is the right one?

>I would be interested in gathering examples of content that (a)
>we ought to have in the encyclopedia on editorial grounds but that (b)
>would not be legal for us to host in the United States.
>
>To my knowledge, virtually all examples of content that is not legal
>in the U.S., but which *is* legal elsewhere, are not really relevant
>to our encyclopedic mission.  The age of consent for models in
>pornographic pictures in the U.S. is 18 in the U.S., but lower in some
>other countries, but we don't publish pornographic pictures so this is
>irrelevant to us.
>
>
I can speak better of this in a Wikisource context.  The issue of the
copyrights on Hitler's Mein Kampf has been discussed.  A German language
edition would be perfectly legal in the United States but not in most of
Europe; the same could be said of any new translation.  The existing
major English language versions continue to be covered by copyrights in
both places.  In Canada all of these versions could be legally published.

The early works of Bertrand Russell (d. 1962 at age 98)  would, at least
in theory, still be covered by US copyright if they were never published
in the US even if the foreign publication was before 1923.

Project Gutenberg does include some material that is covered by US
copyrights, but has done so with an Australian server where the
publication is perfectly legal.  They merely advise US readers not to
view these pages because they may be breaking the law by doing so.

The porn issue ends up being a diversion from the complexities of the
copyright issue.  It would be wise to avoid situations that bring them
together.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Obnoxious art galleries

body:
With regards to copyright protection of photos in galleries under
Australian law, I've just been reading the Copyright Act.  Under the
act, an "artistic work" is defined as:

  (a)    a painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving or photograph,
  whether the work is of artistic quality or not;

and several other things.

Section 31 of the act then goes on to state that:

For the purposes of this Act, unless the contrary intention appears,
copyright, in relation to a work, is the exclusive right to...

<snip>

(b)    in the case of an artistic work, to do all or any of the following
acts:
(i)    to reproduce the work in a material form;
(ii)    to publish the work;
(iii)    to communicate the work to the public;

If you took the above literally, that would appear to award copyright
protection to photographs of artworks.

However, one little bit of law I picked up recently is that whatever the
literal meaning of specific words in legislation, there is something called
the doctrine of purposive construction, where judges try and figure out
what the law was *intended* to say rather than what it actually *says*.

You might be able to mount an argument that the clear intention of that
reproductions was to protect works where some creative effort was made,
rather than merely protect an exact facsimilie of a creative work now
in the public domain.

But then again, maybe you mightn't: IANAL... :)

I suspect the law in the UK is similar to the Australian situation
and this is what the British National Portrait Gallery is basing its
right to be narky on.

Of course, just because a work might be protected by copyright in
Australia or the UK doesn't mean it's copyrighted in the US - so it
it's quite possible it might be legal for an American Wikipedian to
download and add those Shakespeare images to the gallery, as long as
they're not going to visit the UK any time soon ;-)
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint): I'm a big girl.
Roger Thornhill (Carey Grant): Yeah, and in all the right places, too.
  -- "North By Northwest"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [Wikitech-l] new upload form

body:
The new form is in operation on the test wikipedia. Register and account and try to upload a file - you get the new upload form.

--Mark

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Relevant British copyright act (was: Obnoxious art
	galleries)

body:
With regards to the discussion on British galleries' rights to claim
copyright over pictures of their PD artworks, I've dug up the relevant
piece of legislation.  It is, frankly, a very dumb piece of legislation,
but in my non-lawyer opinion here are the relevant clauses:

>From the British Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988:

In Section 4
(1)In this Part "artistic work" means.
(a)a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage, irrespective of
artistic quality,
...
"photograph" means a recording of light or other radiation
    on any medium on which an image is produced or from which an
    image may by any means be produced, and which is not part of
    a film;

>From Section 17:
  (1)The copying of the work is an act restricted by the copyright in
  every description of copyright work; and references in this Part to
  copying and copies shall be construed as follows.
  (2)Copying in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or
  artistic work means reproducing the work in any material form.
  This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means.
  (3)In relation to an artistic work copying includes the making
  of a copy in three dimensions of a two-dimensional work and the
  making of a copy in two dimensions of a three-dimensional work.

Not very promising.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

Nicole Kidman and director Lars Von Trier had a famously difficult
relationship making the movie Dogville.
At the end of filming Nicole finally snapped, and tearfully asked Lars
"What do I have to do to make you like me?"
Von Trier's reply?
"F*&^ me and give me all your money."
 -- From "Popbitch", 2004-02-06
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposed Project: Old English

body:
Hello,
    I would like to propose a new wiktionary project for Old English, ISO
Code ang.

Thanks,

James
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body:
Hello,
    I would like to propose a new wiktionary project for Old English, ISO
Code ang.

Thanks,

James
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body:
Hello,
    I would like to propose a new wiktionary project for Old English, ISO
Code ang.

Thanks,

James
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body:
Hello,
    I would like to propose a new wiktionary project for Old English, ISO
Code ang.

Thanks,

James
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subject: [Foundation-l] Proposed Project: Old English Wikipedia

body:
Hello,
    I would also like to propose an Old English Wikipedia in addition to the
Wiktionary.  Its ISO Code is ang.

James
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body:
Hello,
    I would also like to propose an Old English Wikipedia in addition to the
Wiktionary.  Its ISO Code is ang.

James
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body:
Hello,
    I would also like to propose an Old English Wikipedia in addition to the
Wiktionary.  Its ISO Code is ang.

James
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body:
Hello,
    I would also like to propose an Old English Wikipedia in addition to the
Wiktionary.  Its ISO Code is ang.

James
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Thus a language-selection portal would be appropriate and expected for the
>foundation website. Not having it right away is simply due to the lack of a
>technically and aesthetically good implementation. A side benefit of creating
>such a portal would be adapting it for use at www.wikipedia.org and other www
>wikimedia project domains.
>
>
Unless we can get everyone translated accurately pretty quickly, we
might want to still give English primacy as the language in which
Foundation business is conducted.  This wouldn't be related to where the
Foundation is incorporated, just due to the fact that if we were to list
all languages that members understand at least somewhat, English would
almost certainly come out ahead by far, and it's the language most
commonly used for cross-borders business these days outside of Wikipedia
as well.  (If at some point it turns out that everyone learns Esperanto,
I'd be happy to move to that; or if people learn Latin again, we could
move back to using Latin as the international language of
correspondence, but for now it seems English has more speakers than any
of the alternatives).

Of course, instant high-quality translations would be even better, but
especially for sensitive things we have to be careful that the
translations actually all capture the same nuances of meaning.

-Mark


from_name: Jeff Warnica

subject: [Wikitech-l] Moving pages between Wikimedia projects

body:
On Mon, 2004-02-08 at 15:42 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Special:Import is not yet complete. If someone wants to have a go,
> please feel free. Otherwise I'll try to get to at some point, but can
> make no guarantees about when that will be.

I decided that this was a good place to get my feet wet, and did some
work last night. I have the form more or less done; files upload (though
not all error possibilities are checked for); and a first crack at XML
parsing (based entirely on actual Export produced XML, and
SpecialExport). Now comes the more difficult part, actually updating the
database. There are a number of issues:

- do we import revisions?
-- Article is not set up for revisions; you cant tell it what user,
timestamp, etc to use
-- Should Article be expanded, or should I just do SQL from there?
-- What about revision contributors? What if they don't exist in the
current Wiki?
-- How about rewriting the contributor line? ie: "OtherWikiUser
(imported by CurrentUser)" - only currentuser is a link. Or putting the
other sites user in the comment field?

-- How about this: put all the imported data in the archive, and dup the
most recent copy as cur. Attributed cur to the logged in user. All the
others to "importer", with the OtherWikiUser, and other time in the
comment.
-- if all the archives are imported at the same time (within one
second), how do we know the order?


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
On 4 Aug 2004, at 4:33 pm, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs wrote:
>> "Sincere interest in a fair presentation of the facts" by those
>> addicted to power is an awfully tenuous assumption
>
> Perhaps, but I think that the majority of people by far are not
> "addicted to power" and that a higher level of discourse is not only
> desirable, but possible.

Agreed, absolutely.

Christiaan


from_name: Wouter Vanden hove

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Obviously the nearly 400-year-old
> originals are going to be out of copyright, but the scans are from
> reproductions, which may have a valid copyright even if it's
> non-creative, depending on applicable law.

The Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd., Plaintiff, - versus - Corel Corporation,

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/art.html

"WHO WAS INVOLVED IN THE CASE & WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?
The Bridgeman Art Library had made photographic reproductions of famous
works of art from museums around the world (works already in the public
domain.)  The Corel Corporation used those reproductions for an
educational CD-ROM without paying Bridgeman.  Bridgeman claimed
copyright infringement.

WHAT DID THE COURT DECIDE?
The Court ruled that reproductions of images in the public domain are
not protected by copyright if the reproductions are slavish or lacking
in originality.

In their opinion, the Court noted:  ''There is little doubt that many
photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the
modest amount of originality required for copyright protection....  But
'slavish copying', although doubtless requiring technical skill and
effort, does not qualify.''

In other words, an exact reproduction of an image in the public domain
does not possess creativity itself.  Therefore, the reproduction is not
protected under copyright law. "

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Shakespeare.jpg
> http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=ss&sText=Shakespeare&LinkID=mp04051&rNo=0&role=sit

For old paintings, I think it's nicer to credit the original painter,
than the person who scanned it "slavishly".

Greets,
Wouter Vanden Hove


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] EasyTimeline still not working, but closing in

body:
We're making progress. We is four people who each solved a bit of the
puzzle.

It all started with a server reorg, after which the script had disappeared.
It is back, with proper privileges, synched to Apaches.

Still the script did not run.

Finally today we found out the script stumbles over new folder name
'wikipedia.org' in the executable path. It thinks all 60 or so chars after
the dot are a file extension. Oops.

I'll patch this tomorrow. After that it will still only run properly on iso
sites, but I'll add utf-8 support soon (for built-in european extended ascii
character set).

Later I will add support for full unicode character set, using external
fonts, but that will take one or two months, as I'm doing some other stuff
right now.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Peter Laurens

subject: [Wikitech-l] Accessing wiktionary content from standalone app

body:
Hello,

I understand that this may not be best suited to this mailing list, so
accept my apologies if this is so, I have tried extensively to find a
forum to ask this question however and this is the most suitable I
could find.

I am a student developer, and I wish to be able to access wiktionary
content from my app. For example, building a standalone app that looks
up definitions for words the user types into my app, for this I would
very much like to use wiktionary as my source.

Is there a structure for accessing the wiktionary webpage in a certain
way that will allow me to easily add this functionality? Indeed, would
this be seen as a non-proper use of the wiktionary content? I would
certainly attribute the definitions to wiktionary if I do manage to
build my app.

Thanks for any help offered, it's very gratefully received,

- Peter


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Patent nonsense proposal

references:
<1090466195.d66a863cuser_Jamesday@myrealbox.com>
	<20040804043328.GK23467@wikia.com> <ceqhla$luo$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Hi

Le Wednesday 04 August 2004 13:34, Timwi a ?crit :
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> > So if the ogg pages on the net are unofficial and all scary looking,
> > we can actually help out a great deal with that problem, while also
> > helping to resolve our own dilemma (i.e. our concerns about
> > inconveniencing users in our quest to evangelize for freedom).

I find this very interesting.
I think it will remove the last hurdle non-geeks users may find while using
ogg.

> I suppose we can fix the "scary looking" part, but I don't think we can
> make it official.

What does official mean? It doesn't make sense here.
We could provide the plug-in for our users. What needs to be "official"?

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


body:
Le Wednesday 04 August 2004 18:36, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit :
> I wonder if anyone can find the Debian discussion/official decision
> (do they publish official decisions on things like this?) on this.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2000/06/msg00089.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/08/msg00376.html

Some interesting URL on this subject:

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/openletter.html
http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=786

> --Jimbo

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Website

body:
mav wrote:
> If the whole website will be HTML-enabled, then page protection alone will not
> be enough to ensure security...

If HTML only on certain namespaces, or for protected pages only isn't
possible, and we can't limit the editing to trusted people only, what
other solution do we have? Shall we retain the current system which
allows certain pages to be exported from HTML even though that
involves someone with shell access adding new pages like this? In
theory, it shouldn't be much of an issue. The number of pages that we
need HTML for are very limited - basically the fundraising page and
membership application form - so once they are created, it would no
longer need shell access. It would just need someone who knows HTML to
edit the site.
This isn't as good as having HTML on the wiki where you can see how it
renders straight away, or as having a mixture of HTML and wikitext
would be, but if the option simply isn't available, I don't think we
should delay creating the new site while we wait for it to be
possible. We have to work with the tools available now, and
unfortunately that does mean editing isn't as easy as it normally
might be.

Yann wrote:
>What structure was decided regarding languages?
>What will be the home page in French f.e.?
>How are done links to other languages?

I think it is going to be possible to use interlanguage links that
point to pages within the same site.

Sj wrote:
> I would love to see a simple "pick your language" portal, a la
> http://www.easyjet.com/ .

I would rather this directed to the right page based on the language
settings in your browser rather than forcing you to choose a language.

Angela.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery images
	on Wikipedia website]

body:
On 08/04/04 04:38, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
> preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?

> From: "Bernard Horrocks" <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk>

> As we do not appear to have licensed copies of these portraits for use on your website, we wondered whether you would let us know the source from which you obtained the reproductions.

Fishing expedition. He wants us to provide evidence for his case.
If he was on secure legal ground, he'd name the images he considers
copyright violations.

Correct response: None. If you really want to help him, say that
if he thinks there are copyright violations, then under the DMCA
he should be naming them specifically.

i.e., shit or get off the pot.

He's trying to intimidate without actually making a claim. For some
reason, this sort of behaviour rouses my ire.

- d.


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait Gallery
 images on Wikipedia website]

body:
"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> writes:

> It would please me greatly to be able to respond that their claims are
> preposterous.  Shall we research this carefully?

It is not our turn to prove our innocence.

> From: "Bernard Horrocks" <bhorrocks at npg.org.uk>

> All photographs, scans, text and other material on the National
> Portrait Gallery's website are protected by international copyright
> laws.

Do they own the copyright?  The pictures they mention are in the PD.

> Unauthorised reproduction of such content may be an
> infringement of such laws.

It may, but maybe it is not - if he does not know it, it isn't our
problem.  A modern repro done by the gallery might be "protected" a
copyright.  It would be up to the officer to present some such facts.

> This e-mail, and any attachment, is intended only for the attention of
> the addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying
> is not permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please
> destroy all copies and inform the sender by return e-mail.

Oops.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Using a tripod (Re: Obnoxious art galleries...)

body:
Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> writes:

> The main trick is how to get high-quality photographs of paintings
> without a flash, since both do prohibit tripods.

One can ask for an exception.  When I was a student I was allowed to
take some pictures of Low Saxonian art objects with a tripod.  Some day
I may find these old shots again.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Jeff Warnica wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-02-08 at 15:42 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Special:Import is not yet complete. If someone wants to have a go,
> > please feel free. Otherwise I'll try to get to at some point, but can
> > make no guarantees about when that will be.
>
> I decided that this was a good place to get my feet wet, and did some
> work last night. I have the form more or less done; files upload (though
> not all error possibilities are checked for); and a first crack at XML
> parsing (based entirely on actual Export produced XML, and
> SpecialExport). Now comes the more difficult part, actually updating the
> database. There are a number of issues:

Just to make sure: you _are_ working from the existing SpecialImport.php,
right?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] de.wikipedia in utf-8

body:
As de.wikipedia is now in utf-8, can we have some reports how it's working now ? and pbs de.wiki had ?

Thanks

Shaihulud


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National
	Portrait Gallery images on Wikipedia website]

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

>http://www.mda.org.uk/mcopyg/bridge.htm
>
Yeah, we didn't really want to know about the sordid aspects of
museum operations, did we... The best part is the pious concern
about the "integrity" of reproduction, as if the barbarians outside
the gates are all doctoring photographs, and only the chosen few are
capable of producing a worthwhile image. Of course, if that were
the real issue, it could easily be solved just by digitally signing
the photos they put online. But no, it's just about making money.

Stan


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: [bhorrocks@npg.org.uk: National Portrait
 Gallery images on Wikipedia website]

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> All the more reason for us to get the new upload form up and running,
>> so that people have to say what the source for an image is up front,
>> instead of us chasing them down after the fact to find out where they
>> got it. What are we waiting for at this point?
>
> I'll just point out that people already have to say where they got
> their images from. You people *are* deleting images without source
> information, right?

Well, the way I would put it is that people are _supposed to_ give the
source, but I find it difficult to say they _have to_ when the current
upload form doesn't require it. As far as I know, at least on en:, image
deletion is focused on images that are obsolete and no longer needed. I
don't think much is being deleted for lacking source information, and
some new images are still being uploaded without source information.

My recollection of Jimbo's previous pronouncements on this issue is that
it he made it pretty clear that noncommercial-use-only images are out of
the question. But beyond that, with respect to images that are poorly
documented or debatable for other reasons like fair use, I had the
impression that we shouldn't start the deletion binge until all the
uploaders were clear about the policy, and had time to correct their
mistakes. As a result, I've been waiting for a new upload form before
actively pushing for deletion of undocumented images.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] The source of multiple bugs?

body:
I *think* I have tracked down the source of several bugs concerning
templates to Parser.php, line 1763. This caused (some) included
templates to be replaces by the UNIQ_PREFIX constant.

I have changed that in CVS HEAD, and it seems to work correctly now;
however, as I have only recently started bughunting again, I'm not that
familiar with the internals, especially of things like the template
system, the development of which I sorta missed.

Can anyone more familiar please check if I created a mess there? If not,
it will likely fix the "table params as a template" bug, the "__NOTOC__
in template" bug, etc.

Magnus


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Big new server order under way

body:
On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 12:52 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> I have ordered some new servers.  I believe that they will resolve
> several significant issues.

Is a GigE switch ordered as well? The two FastE ones are a bottleneck
currently which messes with the load balancing. All machines have GigE
nics already.
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] fair locking (was unfair blocking)

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> leaving people alone for 24 hours
> rather than reverting them instantly can be a
judgment call depending in part on
> the importance/popularity of the page in question.

OK, there seems to be some general agreement that
blocking is OK for vandalism and unreasonable
behaviour, while not OK for problems users regarding
particular pages; hence, too highly subjective to
leave to the whims of sysops, if recent squabbles are
any indication. Ill echo the claim that the page
protection policy needs some attenuation; to better
align it with the needs of the mod and arb processes.
IHMO.

> > >*They live for that, remember.
> > Yes, *they "hate our freedom."
> Well, they do.

If by "freedom," you mean "the illusion of greater
freedom shared among those of relatively greater
means, regardless of the means (free or not) by which
they are gotten," then I *totally agree.

S

__________________________________
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from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [WikiEN-l] British copyright law != American copyright law

body:
WRT the discussion here (mav, Jimbo) about the validity or otherwise of
the British Portrait Gallery's enquiry, I have posted on wikipedia-l about
the British (and Australian) legal situation; have a look at the recent
archives for the details. To cut a long story short galleries in
Australia, and now it seems Britain, think they have the legal right
to impose these restrictions under their own copyright laws, and
from my reading of the literal text they may be right (though there
may be precedents in the area that say otherwise, IANAL).

We may be in the situation where it might be illegal for a British
or Australian user to take an image from a gallery website of a PD
artwork, and put it on the Wikipedia, but not for an American user to do
so.  Then again, maybe they'd like to try to extradite the American
user in that situation...in other words, it's potentially a legal mess
and I'm not liking their chances of successfully pursuing us.
I suspect this could keep Larry Lessig and Eben Moglan amused for weeks.

If I were Jimbo, I'd be tempted to deliberately perpetuate an American
stereotype and tell the National Portrait Gallery to kiss our ass and
sue if they dare...but I'd perhaps want to get a real legal opinion
first.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go
wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
    --Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Danny has been nominated as our next Mediation
	Committee co-chair -- please weigh in!

body:
"Heavily underutilized", as I understand it, means the
simple default choice by Wikipedians to not use it.

The possible reasons are that the BBS format is
outdated; other threaded formats are cleaner and
easier to use.  I think the main reason that people
elected to "heavily underutilize" the BBS is because
its yet another distracting divergence from the wiki.

The other platforms are slow enough; though MLs are
basic and ubiquitous, and IRC is more UTTM. Any added
platform (should there be a choice) has to compete
with the utility of these others.

S
--- Brian Corr <BCorr at NEAction.org> wrote:

> Nope -- just "heavily underutilized" -- Thanks,
> Brian
>
> At 07:20 PM 8/4/04 -0700, you wrote:
> >I support the choice of Danny, but I thought that
> the
> >boards.wikimedia.org were defunct...
> >
> >S
>
>

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from_name: Finlay McWalter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: British copyright law != American copyright law

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> p.s.  I would be interested in gathering examples of content that (a)
> we ought to have in the encyclopedia on editorial grounds but that (b)
> would not be legal for us to host in the United States.

One entertaining example is satellite imagery of [[Area 51]].  Moreover,
  declassified CORONA and TERRA satellite images have either been "lost"
or have curiously vanished, even from Microsoft's Terraserver site.  I
regret not uploading the TERRA image earlier this year, when it still
was available.

So it might appear that other publishers, publishing unclassified
information in the US, have recently "elected" no longer to do so.

As an aside, if some American wikipedian were to submit a FOIA request
for CORONA (KH-4), TERRA, or better yet KH-11, imagery of 37?16'05" N
115?47'58" W - then I'm confident that would make for a great addition
to the article, and an interesting test of the lattitude afforded a US
publisher.

/me *double* wraps his head in tinfoil.
FIn

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
W.Finlay McWalter   [[User:Finlay McWalter]]   http://www.mcwalter.org
"With the thoughts you'd be thinkin', You could be another Lincoln..."


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/includes Parser.php,1.220,1.221

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>   			# Run full parser on the included text
> ! 			$text = $this->internalParse( $text, $newline, $assocArgs );
> ! 			# I replaced the line below with the line above, as it former seems to cause several bugs
> ! 			#$text = $this->stripParse( $text, $newline, $assocArgs );
>

What is the general opinion on the usefulness of such comments? In my
mind, it would seem that having CVS archive the old versions is
sufficient to document any change. Personally, I object to leaving
commented-out code in the files. (But then again, maybe I'm just copying
this tradition from LiveJournal.)

Of course, it would also be helpful if the commit message explained why
this change actually fixes the bug. I understand that you may not know;
you may have just experimented and found that this change happens to fix
one or more bugs. But I'm pretty sure that any information you can
supply about the effects of this change on the bug in question will be
helpful to other developers (especially people like myself who don't
know the code very well yet).

Timwi


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia for Old English

body:
Hello all,
    I would like to request and start a wikipedia for Old English.  The ISO
code is ang, and there are 3 mailing/discussion lists for the language.  If
anyone could help me out in getting it started, I'd appreciate it.

James
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] FW: Wikipedia for Old English

body:
Sorry - there have been about 6 million speakers at the height of usage of
Old English.  I guess it's like Latin in being a dead language, but just as
deserving of a Wiki.

James

  _____

From: James R. Johnson [mailto:modean52 at comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 11:31 PM
To: 'wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org'
Subject: Wikipedia for Old English

Hello all,
    I would like to request and start a wikipedia for Old English.  The ISO
code is ang, and there are 3 mailing/discussion lists for the language.  If
anyone could help me out in getting it started, I'd appreciate it.

James
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] new upload form

body:
Jimmy-

> O.k., so, it sounds like you're right, we need patches.  Does anyone
> know where the "big fany totally redone form" proposal is, so that
> someone can code to that spec?

A big totally redone form proposal is part of the Wikimedia Commons idea:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Uploadform1.png
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Uploadform2.png

This proposal seeks to provide a simple and quick solution for photos by
Wikipedians while requiring all the necessary information for photos from
outside sources.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Laurent GUERBY

body:
On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 22:47, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> > Is a GigE switch ordered as well? The two FastE ones are a bottleneck
> > currently which messes with the load balancing. All machines have GigE
> > nics already.
>
> It will be ordered by the end of today, I am shopping.

May be this will help:

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~joe/jumbo-clean-gear.html

In the cheapo but working with jumbo frames (translation: better
transfer performance) the guy lists the SMC 8505T/8508T:

<<
SMC 8505T/8508T (excllent inexpensive (<$200, yes, sub two HUNDRED
dollars) 1000baseT switch if you don't need SNMP management and can live
with an external "wall wart" power block)
>>

No personal experience.

Laurent


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3 different issues

body:
Righto. My 1st post to this list, I hope this is the right place.
3 different issues, in descending order of perceived seriousness. Here
goes:

- wikipaedia.org
	There is a HUGE issue (actually several issues) concerning the
Internet activities of a Dr. Martin Schlabeck, an apparent psychiatrist
based in Nuremburg-Erlangen, Germany.
	Please refer to the attached wikipaedia.html file for an account of my
concerns.
	I also wonder if I should repost this to foundation-l and/or
Wikipedia-l as well? Or maybe to a WikiDE-l? What do people think would
be right?

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- [[Falcon I]] , [[Falcon V]] (and [[SpaceX]] )
	User:Dschmelzer has contributed and mostly edited the above articles.
	He has included pricing information about commercially available
products/services in them and he has written them in a way that I
consider advertising language.
	I have edited the articles and aggressively commented on the
respective Talk pages (maybe a tad bit too aggressively).
	I have then contacted Dschmelzer here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:
Dschmelzer#Space_X_and_Falcon_rockets and vented my exasperation.
	Dschmelzer has replied on my own Talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ropers#Falcon_Rockets and
reverted the articles.
	While I certainly could have been more polite, what do people think of
the issues at hand?

- User:Neutrality
	I consider it wrong to allow any user to carry such a user name. I
have contacted Neutrality and explained my precise concerns here:
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Neutrality#Ropers_.7C_Username
	Neutrality's replies are also in that place.
	Again, what do people think?

- Oh, and again, is this list the right place to voice such concerns?
Am I doing the right thing in that?

Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers

There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the
ones who watch progress bars.
http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683
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from_name: Matt Brown

body:
IMO, a very self-serving 'opinion' in that piece of work.  The author
is playing to his audience.  Note that lawyers generally give their
clients or prospective clients a legal opinion they'll like.

They go on at length about how much skill goes into making a digital
reproduction of an artwork, and I can't argue with that, it might
indeed.  But skill is not what gets you copyright protection.
Creativity is.

And creativity is exactly what you do NOT want in making a digital
version of an artwork.  Instead, the process should be as
'transparent' as possible.  Copying is all about making as exact a
likeness as possible; a personal touch is in fact what the copier is
trying hard to avoid.

In fact, the flaw in their reasoning is quite easily demonstrated in
this: how can they even determine WHICH copyright you're infringing?
Unless they've only allowed one reproduction of the artwork ever, then
multiple copies exist.  If they are trying to sue over this supposed
subsidiary 'copying' copyright, then they MUST identify which
copyright you're infringing - after all, you're not infringing
copyright on the original, out-of-copyright work!

Which is why, probably, the individual from the NPG was so interested
in where we got the images from.  Without that information, a legal
case would be impossible.

-Matt (User:Morven)