subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/8/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> When JavaScript is off, you get both the normal disambig text and the
> transcluded disambig page, without the hide/show "link". (Tested using
> Firefox 2.0) I'd think that just the disambig text is what we'd like.

Yep.

> It would also be good, I think, to default to not showing the
> transcluded disambig page...currently it defaults to showing it.

Yep.

> Also, it would be good if the disambig footer were hidden when showing
> the transcluded disambig page.

Yep.

Totally agree on all three points. The third is likely to be the
hardest. I don't think it can currently be done without actually
editing all the disambig pages and replacing {{dab}} with
<noinclude>{{dab}}</noinclude>.

It may be possible to do it with some CSS magic, like putting a class
on the {{dab}} template, and somehow making that class invisible when
it gets transcluded.

I suggest that if there is consensus to actually start doing this,
that we introduce it slowly, page by page, adjusting the corresponding
disambig pages so they transclude nicely. If that proves to be
popular, then presumably the MoS will be updated to make a requirement
for disambig pages that they transclude nicely.

Though I'm dubious whether a page like [[Victoria]] would ever come
out well. Maybe we can get scrollbars in there?

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Cool Cat

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
Please kill of the flame war bordering nonsense and stay on topic.

On 2/8/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/8/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > All of it.  I do not have a religion, and I find it insulting to suggest
> > that I do.  I'm confident that I am not alone in that view.
>
> You're not.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
On 2/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 17:56, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:
>
> > but is this only because you have misrepresented it to them?
> >
> > I'd like to understand how you came to represent all of itwiki.
> >
> > With your loud and abrasive style, you do not appear to be someone I
> > would have selected to represent me.
>
> Sorry. I've just reposted the *whole* email of Kat, and made two
> statement.
> Everyone has been able to read it in his wholeness (even in a
> translated form *not made by me*), and to make their opinion.
>
> Gatto Nero
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I'll try to reword Gregory's argument since I think it's still not
clear to you (and for what I see, most it: people).

1. On italy, you're allowed to publish with permission but not under fair use.
2. So you can upload if you get permission
3. Once the file has been uploaded in italy with permission, USA
people can access it
4. Should the cirterion met, USA people can reuse the content under
fair use (since there, fair use applies no matter what the licencing
terms are (permission or not))

therefore he's suggesting you to tag your images with the text
* This image has been published in  Italy with permission (not under
nonexistent "italy fair use")
* This image *could* be used on some other countries as fair use where
those countries law allow it

Am I right greg? Did I explain it correctly?


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use" decision

body:
Kat Walsh said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Important_notice_regarding_fair_use_that_all_administrators_should_see

" There are some works, primarily historically important photographs and
significant modern artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be
released under a free content license, but that are hard to discuss in
an educational context without including the media itself. "

I do agree that there are various kinds of important situations that, in
order to be properly discussed in an educational fashion, need a
photograph (or at least, omitting one reduces significantly the interest
of the article).

To me, these include, among others:
* recent works of art
* military operations and hardware
* spacecraft
(this list is non exhaustive, I'm just taking examples).

In all the cases in the above list, we can include written descriptions
(this is what people used to do before it was easy to reprint pictures).
However, having images is profitable. Also, in all those cases, there is
little hope that we should get "free" photographs, simply because of we
will not obtain an authorization from the artist or because our
photographers will not be allowed to photograph inside the museum, or
inside a war theater, or a spacecraft.

The usual answer (at least on these mailing-list) on such cases is that
we should delete the pictures, and it's the fault of the artist or the
organizations that could have authorized some free pictures if we don't
have pictures in the article about their activities. In a sense, that
makes sense: we're effectively devoting some free space to describe what
they do, so they should be graceful and give us a photograph.

Now, it seems (but I may be mistaken, and this is why I'm asking for
precisions) that we may carve an exemption for "significant modern
artworks".

I suspect that the adjective "significant" was added so as to exclude
all the album covers and other "pop culture" artwork, and that what is
meant is that we should have, say, photographs of Picasso's Guernica and
similar works.

To me, this is troubling. An article discussing a painting on Wikipedia
is, in effect, free advertisement for a number of people:
* the museum owning the painting, because it attracts visitors
* the artist's family, in countries with a _droit de suite_ (this is a
clause in EU law that says that under some circumstances and within a
limited period of time, the artist or its heirs obtain a little share of
the resale price of the works of the artist).
These people can authorize free pictures.

Thus, I'm puzzled: it seems that we're doing a favor to museums and the
heirs of various "modern artists", and supporting the speculation that
declares that certain works are more "significant" than others, without
any support from the people whose work we promote.

As an example, I remember processing some emails on behalf of the
Foundation: some artist wanted us to carry pictures of his work, but at
the same time didn't want to give a free license. In short, he wanted us
to give them free promotion without giving something back. (I'm unsure
whether this artist would be considered "significant", but he apparently
considered himself to be so.)

I would thus be glad if we could have some clarification about the
extent of this exemption for fair use, and why we seem to give 'carte
blanche' for "significant modern art".


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use" decision


body:
On 2/8/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> GerardM wrote:
>
> >I think Erik said "please wait until the official resolution"... So do quote
> >only a snippit of what he wrote and do continue theorising what he meant.. I
> >think the bit you forgot to copy was.. please WAIT..
> >
> >
> To be more precise:
>
> >Please wait for the official resolution. In my view, there is
> >absolutely no reason to delete pictures like logos or album covers.
> >
> The important point in this is to avoid having people jump to
> conclusions.  We have no shortage of people willing to boldly find an
> excuse to embark on some kind of deletion campaign.
>
> Ec
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

/me starts warning the deletion machine...


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > When JavaScript is off, you get both the normal disambig text and the
> > transcluded disambig page, without the hide/show "link". (Tested using
> > Firefox 2.0) I'd think that just the disambig text is what we'd like.
>
> Yep.

This is probably going to require some custom coding - the existing
templates all work on the assumption that you want the text to appear
if JavaScript is unavailable.

> > It would also be good, I think, to default to not showing the
> > transcluded disambig page...currently it defaults to showing it.
>
> Yep.

Turns out to be not too hard. I've now got three methods for doing the
showy/hidey thing (one donated by someone else). The third one, using
the {{hidden}} template is IMHO the prettiest and least intrusive.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] An expanded-topic Mailing List

body:
On 2/7/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> I realize this List is restricted to subjects directly related to all things
> Wikipedia. What would you think, and how would you feel about creating a
> similar Wikipedia-community-based Mailing List in which broader
> sociocultural issues are discussed?
>
> Would you participate in such a group?
>
> Your thoughts?

I would be pleased if some of the broader sociocultural issues (if you
mean flames about Parker Peter etc) were discussed somewhere else.
This list gets too much traffic as it is.

Steve


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/2/8, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com>:
>
> Don't forget about parody. It's a subset of fair use *defined* by its
> derivative nature.

And your point is? If you take a work included as fair use and parody it,
your fair use claim is not stronger than when you take a work included under
an ND license and parody it.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


list: wikitech-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Mail archives

body:
The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
are causing problems ...

- d.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
Date: 19-Jan-2007 14:46
Subject: [Foundation-l] Mail archives
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

I wanted to look up the detailed report that was
posted to the list after the Frankfurt retreat.  I
have entually found it but in the process had some
troubles because not realizing that Anthere has been
using two different email addresses caused me to miss
seeing it when searching by "Author".  If any of you
are familiar with using our archives, you realize how
frustrating it can be to find (or not find) a message
you half remember.

The thing that I realized while looking for this
information is that everyone is relying much to
heavily on these archives.  I knew that that all the
links from the past list summaries had been scrambled.
 I went to the WMF website hoping to find the
information there after my failure in the archives.  I
found that the WMF website also uses links to the
archives. [1]  All of these links have been scrambled
in the past week and the archive is gernerally not
something that can be expected to be stable.

I ask you to consider making an effort to mirror any
offcial messages or detailed reports either on the WMF
or Meta instead of simply repairing the existing
links.  These messages become rather hard to find once
the links go bad.  If this is decided to be a bad idea
for some reason; then please consider using a
standardized subject for such messages.  Everyone
should think twice about linking to the archive in
general.  If you expect people to be reading what
write in six months, I would encourage you to quote
the message instead of linking.

Birgitte SB

[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
(See: "Wikimedia Board reorganization" read more link)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Project as namespace

body:
On 2/6/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> If the English Wikipedia wants it, we'll enable it there too. Personally I
> could never see the point in having a proliferation of namespaces, but
> it's not up to me, it's up to the community.

In this case, it would make life easier: Wikiproject:Beer rather than
Wikipedia:WikiProject beer (note the capital P). We effectively have a
double namespace now: Wikipedia:WikiProject, which is pretty annoying.

Steve


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject:
[Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media
	licensing policies

body:
This email from Kat Walsh, who was recently appointed to the WMF
board, is great news for Commons in my eyes. To me it confirms that
our basic "careful, cautious" approach has been correct.

However note this line:
===
However, no project may have content policies less restricive,
or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons
and limited fair use.
===

That means when we toss out PD-Italy, PD-Soviet, etc, we are
effectively tossing them out for all projects (I think in these cases,
some local projects chose to upload some materials locally - true or
false?).

This probably means that when we delete a longstanding license such as
PD-Soviet in the future, we will need to announce the case on
foundation-l when it starts and closes (and pray that not too many
trolls decide to come).

I also wonder how the German logo thing fits in with this, since they
are effectively "less restrictive" than we are when it comes to logos.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kat Walsh <kwalsh at wikimedia.org>
Date: 08-Feb-2007 13:57
Subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

Greetings!

Because licensing has been an active topic in the community, the Board
has discussed the issue at its recent meetings; thank you to those
whose thoughtful input furthered the discussions.

A formal declaration in the form of a Board resolution has not yet
been made and will be forthcoming; however, we hope that this longer
message will provide the explanation behind the resolution. The
resolution will seek to clarify something that has been true for some
time but may not have been stated in a clear enough form as guidance
for the various communities to follow.

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop educational
content under a free content license or in the public domain. For
content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal
restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the
content for any purpose.

It is therefore vital that all projects under the Foundation umbrella
use these standards, not only because of our desire to enable the
creation of free reference works, but also because of our commitment
to allow those works to benefit everyone who wishes to use and reuse
them. Because of this, all media we allow on our projects must be free
for all users and all purposes, including non-Wikimedia use,
commercial use, and derivative works. (Some media may be subject to
restrictions other than copyright in some jurisdictions, but are still
considered free work.)

There are many different licenses that allow these freedoms. The
licensing page on the Wikimedia Commons,
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing>, discusses some
of these license terms and gives links to the many licenses that are
acceptable to use.

While we appreciate the goodwill of those who give special permissions
for Wikimedia to display a work, this does not fulfill our greater
purpose of giving others the freedom to use the content as well, and
so we cannot accept media with permission for use on Wikimedia only.
Derivative uses are also important. The value of allowing
modifications becomes clear to anyone who edits the projects, as new
work builds on the work of others, and work you cannot change to meet
your needs and purposes is not free.

Commercial and non-commercial use is more controversial, as many
people are concerned that allowing commercial uses allows others to
abuse their generosity. But ultimately Wikimedia's longstanding and
carefully considered position is, as with many other organizations
devoted to free content, that disallowing commercial use does not
provide significant benefit to the content creator or to the public.
Non-commercial licensing stops many valuable uses that help distribute
and support free works, and hence does not further our mission. Where
commercial use spreads the works without taking away others' rights to
use and distribute them for free, it helps our purpose of making the
content as widely available as possible. This is a long enough message
without going deeply into detail, but Erik Moeller's essay at
<http://www.intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC> is a thorough and
clear explanation of the reasons why the harm is more than the
benefit, and so why non-commercial content is not something we use.

It is for these reasons, which we have long supported, that all media
on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that specify
non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission for
Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out and replaced with media that
does not have these restrictions.

Some Wikimedia projects use media that is not free at all, under a
doctrine of "fair use" or "fair dealing". There are some works,
primarily historically important photographs and significant modern
artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be released under a
free content license, but that are hard to discuss in an educational
context without including the media itself. Because the inability to
include these works limits scholarship and criticism, in many
jurisdictions people may use such works under limited conditions
without having license or permission. Some works that are under
licenses we do not accept (such as non-derivative) may meet these
conditions. Because of our commitment to free content, this non-free
media should not be used when it is reasonably possible to replace
with free media that would serve the same educational purpose.

Since individual projects have differing community standards and there
are potentially legal issues in different jurisdictions, individual
projects may choose to be more restrictive than Foundation policy
requires, such as the many projects that do not allow "fair use" media
at all. However, no project may have content policies less restricive,
or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons
and limited fair use.

We hope this clears up some of the uncertainty about what types of
material may be uploaded to and used on the projects as well as why we
take this position.

Thanks to everyone for your input and hard work.

For the Wikimedia Foundation,
Kat Walsh

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Project as namespace

body:
On 2/7/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> So in other words - you find typing Wikipedia:WikiProject <xxx> a PITA
> and want to type Wikiproject:<xxx>.

Hey, that's my argument, too.

>Not entirely an invalid point but I don't think we create namespaces
for the purposes of typing
> convenience.

Oh? Why not? How about manageability, memorability etc.

>The content of WikiProjects is quite validly within the
> definition of what the Wikipedia: namespace is supposed to be, so I
> don't see an issue there.  We created Portal: because portals aren't
> really part of the encyclopedia proper but are content for the users,
> not for the project, so placing them in Wikipedia: didn't really work.
>  We split Template: from MediaWiki: because templating is different
> from interface string localization.

WikiProjects are really different to the Wikipedia namespace in
general. They're strictly about content. They are strictly divided by
theme. They deal very explicitly with actual articles. They provide
oversight. They provide people to contact about certain topics (WP:TOL
is a frequent "go to" page for identifying wildlife).

Wikipedia: covers a much broader range of topics, like user behaviour,
policy, processes such as deletion and creating adminships, and even
junk like deleted nonsense, lamest edit wars etc etc. Lots of very
much "off-topc" discussion.

They are pretty different.

Steve


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> I actually wasn't thinking of working it into the software, but rather just
> removing the white spaces in the main monobook css file (which is all most
> users load anyway).

... Yeah, and the rest! ;-)

--------------------------------
root at bling:~/tmp# curl --silent --include "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" | grep -i "css"
                <style type="text/css" media="screen,projection">/*<![CDATA[*/ @import "/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?55";
/*]]>*/</style>
                <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="/skins-1.5/common/commonPrint.css?55" />
                <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="/skins-1.5/monobook/handheld.css?55" />
                <!--[if lt IE 5.5000]><style type="text/css">@import "/skins-1.5/monobook/IE50Fixes.css?55";</style><![endif]-->
                <!--[if IE 5.5000]><style type="text/css">@import "/skins-1.5/monobook/IE55Fixes.css?55";</style><![endif]-->
                <!--[if IE 6]><style type="text/css">@import "/skins-1.5/monobook/IE60Fixes.css?55";</style><![endif]-->
                <!--[if IE 7]><style type="text/css">@import "/skins-1.5/monobook/IE70Fixes.css?55";</style><![endif]-->
                <style type="text/css">/*<![CDATA[*/
@import "/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=2678400";
@import "/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=2678400";
@import "/w/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=2678400";
root at bling:~/tmp#
--------------------------------

That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if you're using IE.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: jayjg

body:
No, it was not a sarcasm. When used as a verb or adverb, "Jew" is
offensive. When used as a noun, it is not, and, as the American
Heritage Dictionary points out, implying that the word "Jew" is
inherently "vulgar" can, in itself, be offensive. There's nothing
wrong with the noun "Jew", let's not be afraid to use it
appropriately; there's no need for wordy circumlocutions like "Jewish
person" when "Jew" works just fine.

On 2/8/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> Was that sarcasm? I am a bit confused. Based on that the usage of the word
> Jew can be used in a vulgar manner, something we clearly want to avoid.
>    - Cool Cat
>
> On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 2/5/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_2#Category:Jews
> > > >
> > > > I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add
> > "people"
> > > > to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose"
> > votes. What
> > > > do you think?
> > >
> > > For what it's worth, I do find the formulations "Jews", "American
> > > Jews" etc rather awkward and find they have unfortunate connotations.
> >
> > "It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in
> > phrases such as 'Jew lawyer' or 'Jew ethics', is both vulgar and
> > highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable
> > possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this
> > construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a
> > noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as
> > 'There are now several Jews on the council', which is unobjectionable,
> > the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of
> > Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply
> > that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun."
> >
> > The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> > Edition.  2000.
> >
> > "Jew" is not a dirty word.
> >
> > Jay.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Piero wrote:

>Waiting for the official resolution, I still do not understand why an
>image under fair use should be used in en.wiki (and probably only in
>en.wiki) and an image with permission and non-commercial should not be
>used on a project where the fair use is "de facto" illegal.
>Assuming that both images with permission and fair use images have to be
>limited *only* for uses that request necessarily an image and when no
>free images are available.
>I do not think that even a strong fair use image may be re-used for
>commercial purposes.
>Moreover considering that images with permission are checked to assure
>that they are used only for allowed case (through OTRS), and fair use
>images are not.
>
As long as you keep trying to conflate fair use and the different
varieties of licence it is inevitable that you will not understand.

"Fair use" is a right that derives from law.

A "licence" is a right granted by one person to an other.

Neither needs to depend on the other.  In any given circumstances either
or both may apply without regard to whether the other applies.

WMF may choose to apply a restricted version of either.

Something is "legal" if it is not specifically prohibited.  Failure to
mention something in the law does not imply that it is "illegal".  There
is a subtle but important difference between the terms "illegal" and
"not legal".

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is probably going to require some custom coding - the existing
> templates all work on the assumption that you want the text to appear
> if JavaScript is unavailable.

Hey, it turns out the Hidden template degrades the way we want: if
JavaScript is off, you just get the disambig line, no transclusion.
Brilliant!

So this wikicode is basically perfect by itself:
{{Hidden|1={{otheruses|He Said, She Said (disambiguation)}}|2={{:He
Said, She Said (disambiguation)}}|ta1=left|fw1=normal}}

The only problem left is the undesirable extra {{dab}} link showing
up. But we can solve that on a page-by-page basis to begin with.

Steve


body:
Geni said:
> >/ To me, these include, among others://
/>/ * military operations and hardware
/
> US military photos and trade fairs. Also various open days. About the
> only think you won't get is NK stuff such as Ch'onma-ho

So, only US hardware and activities. So much for NPOV. (There are tons of interesting things
that you won't see unless you're in operations. Trade fairs will show only small arms.)

>/ * spacecraft
/
> NASA for a lot of stuff and countries tend to put a lot of their space
> hardware on display

NASA => only US

You've therefore made the point that our current policies favor the broadcasting of the
activities of the US government. So much for NPOV. :-)


from_name: Timwi

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
> are causing problems ...

Yeah, I still don't get why you guys are blocking Google from indexing
it. Can you not remove that noindex tag again?

Timwi


from_name: Arne Klempert

body:
On 2/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 2/8/07, Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Italian community is not a lawyer. But WMF is free to pay a lawyer to
> > find an acceptable compromise, isn't it?
>
> That would be worth considering. The Italian chapter could play a
> coordinating role in such a project. A similar legal expertise was
> funded by the German chapter a while ago.

Oh, and since then it can be assumed common knowledge that a lot of
Wikiquote's content  is illegal in Germany. Not that anyone seems to
care... Great example ;)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rechtsfragen_M%C3%A4rz_2005#III._Nutzung

4) Sind Zitaten- und Aphorismensammlungen zul?ssig, wenn die Texte
urheberrechtlich gesch?tzten Werken entnommen werden?

Cheers,
Arne


list: textbook-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Textbook-l] Offer to upload a book, subject to conditions

body:
On 2/8/07, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> It's a little pretentious to think that wikibooks should change itself, or
> that it should be changed by the WMF to allow any one particular book. Since
> it's inception, Wikibooks (and all WMF projects for that matter) have been
> primarily concerned with open content and collaboration. The rejection of
> one or both of these ideals is not one that should be encouraged or
> accepted.

It would indeed be pretentious to think that Wikibooks should be
changed for a single textbook.  It would not be pretentious to say
that accepting certain conditions for a textbook is more in keeping
with Wikibooks' ultimate goals than not accepting them, and that if
Wikibooks policy currently doesn't allow it it should be changed.
That's debatable, but it's not pretentious.

WMF projects have not only been about public collaboration.  The
earliest project that could roughly be said to fall into the history
of the WMF (even though the Foundation didn't exist then), Nupedia,
permitted only very tightly controlled editing.  Its content was still
open and free, in that anyone could reuse or modify it, just as
MediaWiki is free software but very few people have commit access
(which is comparable to my original suggestion).  Anyone can use or
modify, but that doesn't mean you can modify the master copy.

The open-content part of the WMF's philosophy is not negotiable, and
will never be violated.  Nor should it be.  But the collaboration part
was only ever a means to an end, and is most assuredly negotiable.
Stable versions, when they come, will significantly cut down on public
collaboration, and as the general quality of the projects improves, I
predict that changes will be clamped down further.  Remember that if
Nupedia had worked better, Wikipedia would have been shut down.
Wikipedia is only a wiki because it advanced the goal of free content
better.  The means should not be mistaken for the end.  Instead, in
each case evaluate whether the means better advances the end.

And indeed, more concretely, it's perfectly possible for a Wikisource
contributor to copy an entire work and have it permanently locked from
editing.  There, the collaborative part is optional.  Because it
doesn't serve the goal as well.

But this is hopefully not an argument we need to continue, because I
think everyone will be happy with Wikibooks having a modifiable copy
and linking prominently to the main copy.  I think that the focus on
editability and collaboration is not as suitable for Wikibooks as for,
say, Wikipedia, and that in the long run it won't do the project any
good to reject requests like this, but it's probably not going to be
an issue that directly affects me right now, and I have other things
to do than to pursue it.  So for now, I'm not very interested in
continuing that branch of the discussion, assuming everyone is fine
with a modifiable copy with links.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
	(some important points)

body:
On 08/02/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 16:06, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> > Under Italian law you are permitted 'abridgment, quotation or
> > reproduction of fragments or parts of a work for the purpose of
> > criticism or discussion, or for instructional purposes.'
> > (see Italian Copyright Act Article 70; Nimmer and Geller (1998-),
> > Italy, ?8[2][a])

> Oh nice: I'll upload a lot of "fragment" of IMAGES.
> Now I know I can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point

I'd be amazed if there isn't a similar page on it:wp.

- d.


body:
This is a great mail to receive, thanks for your work, Kat.

On 08/02/07, Kat Walsh <kwalsh at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Since individual projects have differing community standards and there
> are potentially legal issues in different jurisdictions, individual
> projects may choose to be more restrictive than Foundation policy
> requires, such as the many projects that do not allow "fair use" media
> at all. However, no project may have content policies less restricive,
> or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons
> and limited fair use.

There have been some recent deletion debates on Common, primarily
concerning "country-specific" PD tags, which might require further
comment on this point. (see below)

Also, the wording here implies that "Foundation policy" can be equated
with "licenses allowed on Wikimedia Commons". One one hand, the WMF is
unlikely to want to start handing out an explicit list of acceptable
licenses, so that is understandable. But on the other it means that
the nuances of Foundation policy are being decided on one wiki and
having conseuqences for all wikis. Correct me if I'm wrong but this is
the first time this happens, I think.
If this is correct, will the WMF be supplying some legal assistance
from time to time for Commons? (such as the cases that follow)

Note: these debates were unsurprisingly quite heated, but they are
closed for now, and I would appreciate it if we could avoid re-hashing
the debate here.

1. First case is PD-Italy, which was deleted.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Italy
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-Italy

I believe that IT.wp chose to upload many of the Commons PD-Italy
images locally. Please  see the wording on their template:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Italia

At the time I think we all thought this was an OK solution, since the
laws are not easy to interpret, and each project (Commons and IT.wp)
was just making the best interpretation they could.

Given your above statement, is this in fact acceptable or not?

2. Another big case was PD-Soviet. (it now RDRs to {{copyvio}})
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-Soviet

Lots and lots of discussion about this one:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:PD-Soviet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:PD-USSR

It appears to me that RU.wp chose to follow the Commons' solution and
depreciate the template, rather than upload files locally. See
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD:PD-Soviet
(PD-old and PD-Russia are both accepted on Commons)
I am not sure if other Wikipedias depreciated the template or uploaded locally.

3. German logos.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo-Germany
DE.wp has a lot of logos tagged as "PD-ineligible" which American or
British readers would be baffled to believe. (Probably other
jurisdictions too. These are only two that I know for sure, do not
treat logos in the German way.)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:Logo-Germany

Trademarks have always been a very hairy case for Commons. We choose
to follow a stricter interpretation than DE.wp, but I think it is a
big enough wiki with enough sensible people that their interpretation
is probably correct for Germany. So they are being "less restrictive"
than Commons, but is that OK or not?

regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
 >"fair dealing" / "fair use"

Any equiverlence between the two is nominal at best. If we restricted
en to fair dealing we would probably be deleting 1/4 million images
(movie posters album covers pics of people basicaly everything except
art and some screenshots)

--
geni


from_name: Christof Sperl

subject: [WikiEN-l] Subject: Re: Project as namespace

body:
As the old saying goes, "never touch a running system" :D

Although surely a project namespace would be convenient, I don't think it is
worth all the workload.

Regards, Aetherfukz

On 08/02/07, Larry Pieniazek <lar at miltontrainworks.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to see this as a separate namespace for the reasons given by
> the proponents, but I share the concern about the disruption in switching
> over. I suspect it would be a lot of work, even with a lot of bot help. I
> suggest more analysis about how exactly the conversion would be done might
> help.
>
> Larry Pieniazek
> Work mail:   lpieniaz at us.ibm.com
> Hobby mail:  lar at miltontrainworks.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
jayjg wrote:

>The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
>Edition.  2000.
>
>"Jew" is not a dirty word.
>
>
While true, that's a different question than presented here.  "Greek" is
not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at [[:Category:Greek
people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].

-Mark


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>The text itself is tricky:
>
>    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/
>
>"#  No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work."
>
>    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/legalcode
>
>b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work
>and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
>arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version,
>sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any
>other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted,
>except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
>considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. For the
>avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition or sound
>recording, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a
>moving image ("synching") will be considered a Derivative Work for the
>purpose of this License.
>
>
I would be exceedingly surprised if any court were to hold resized
images to be a derivative work, rather than a verbatim copy.  The
license allows you to reproduce a digital image in, say, a book, and
doesn't specify any particular size at which you must reproduce it.
It's more akin to printing a CC-ND text in a different font (permitted)
than to summarizing it (not permitted).

-Mark


body:
2007/2/8, Kat Walsh <kwalsh at wikimedia.org>:

> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop educational
> content under a free content license or in the public domain. For
> content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal
> restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the
> content for any purpose.
>

There's been some discussion about this phrase on the Dutch IRC channel. In
general, I did not agree. In my opinion, free content is the mission, free
licenses and public domain are the means, not the goal itself.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


body:
On 2/8/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
>
> >The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> >Edition.  2000.
> >
> >"Jew" is not a dirty word.
> >
> >
> While true, that's a different question than presented here.  "Greek" is
> not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at [[:Category:Greek
> people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].
>
> -Mark

Steve Bennett specifically said that he finds the word "Jew" to be
"awkward" and have "unfortunate connotations". The response was made
in that context.

Jay.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia futurology

body:
> Well, considering that he was sitting only a few feet away from me & that I
> corrected him immediately, I'd say I'm pretty sure. All assembled had
> a moment's laugh at his slip of the tongue.
>
> If you still don't believe me, all I can say is "No, I was not abusing any mind-altering
> drugs, so I can't share them with you."

I guess I'll have to take your word for it, then... you've got a good
anecdote there.


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
 (some important points)

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>
>***Your claim that Italian copyright law does not permit fair dealing
>is incorrect: ***
>
>Under Italian law you are permitted 'abridgment, quotation or
>reproduction of fragments or parts of a work for the purpose of
>criticism or discussion, or for instructional purposes.'
>(see Italian Copyright Act Article 70; Nimmer and Geller (1998-),
>Italy, ?8[2][a])
>
>
IANAL, but I'm not sure this can be applied to works of art, photographs
and all the non-text things we're talking about. Last months SIAE
(Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) enforced copyright on an
amateurial art website which was showing contemporary paintings. The
website was describing and commenting these works, so the use of the
pictures was "to illustrate what it was talking about". Still, this is
copyright infringement under the Italian Law. Instructional purposes
means that a teacher can distribute N copies of a copyrighted media to
his/her students, but if you print a book well you have to pay the
copyright owner his/her fair royalty.

>I would rather we not mention the ND license for an image that we use
>as fair use. By doing so we would be sending the wrong message: That
>ND licenses are somehow acceptable to us, even if only
>conditionally... that they aren't usually a result of a
>misunderstanding, and that we don't think the creative commons has
>made a mistake by mixing Free Content licenses under the same brand as
>far more restrictive licenses.  We face a constant issue where people
>ask us "Why did you delete this? I released it under creative commons
>licensing so it is free!".   People submit what they see, and if they
>see ND they will submit more of that.
>
>Although, I don't think it's the end of the world that we do mention
>it.. it is a matter of fact, and because most of our permissible
>non-free images will come from the all-rights-reserved camp, I
>seriously hope we'll never see many NC / ND + "fair use" images.  If
>we do, then we will know what a grave mistake for the world that the
>Creative Commons folks made by introducing so many licenses which are
>not free enough.
>_______________________________________________
>
>
Fair use is NOT a license. It's a way to defend yourself when challenged
about copyright infringement. If you have a NC media used in Wikipedia
under fair use, why  should someone who wants to use it non-commercially
be tricked into thinking that it is (c)All rights reserved when the
media is actually a bit more free? Ok, not free enough for Wikimedia,
but hey someone else may have other interests out there...

Marco (Cruccone)


from_name: Cool Cat

body:
Buddhists should also be named [[Buddhist people]] to be consistent.
   - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/5/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_2#Category:Jews
> >
> > I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add
> "people"
> > to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose" votes.
> What
> > do you think?
>
> For what it's worth, I do find the formulations "Jews", "American
> Jews" etc rather awkward and find they have unfortunate connotations.
> Is it preferable to have "Jewish people" inconsistent with
> "Buddhists"? I don't know.
>
> I do know that tags instead of categories (which is what these really
> are) would make this easier: "Jewish", "American".
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 2/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/8/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  >"fair dealing" / "fair use"
> >
> > Any equiverlence between the two is nominal at best. If we restricted
> > en to fair dealing we would probably be deleting 1/4 million images
> > (movie posters album covers pics of people basicaly everything except
> > art and some screenshots)
>
> You yourself admitted to me that, so long as we are
> discussing/commenting on/criticizing the posters or album covers, that
> they are fine.
>

Sure. So we will have maybe 6 covers that are not deleted. This covers
only a timy percentage of our images. Most are without commentry

> I think your mistake is thinking that they are fine without discussion
> under US law. Even with a most hopeful reading of the case law in the
> US it's still clear that our position is stronger when we discuss.
>

I know this. I also know that that is a battle I cannot win on en as
things stand.

> In any case, it makes more sense in the long run to solve those cases
> by including some discussion rather than by deleting the images....
> if the image really is so boring that it deserves no discussion, then
> I do not think we lose much by deleting it.

Tried that. The wikiproject albums people had a fit. I don't want to
try this with the movie people I'm not usre I can afford to be that
unpopular right now.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] If you don't object to this, you're consenting

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem/Factual_error_%28from_enterprise%29

I posted about this to both these lists and have had no replies or
comment whatsoever so far.

So unless someone comes up with really convincing reasons not to push
this as the place to send companies with article concerns - and I mean
as in, sending out a press release - then that's precisely what's
going to happen.

In particular, are there any OTRS volunteers who can tell me if that's
the best way to raise a substantial legal concern about something on
en:wp?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] If you don't object to this, you're consenting


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
Greg said:

> The ESA has chosen a copyright policy which limits the freedom the
> world can take with work, presumably they have good reasons for this,
> but their decisions have negative consequences as well.  One of those
> negative consequences is a reduction in how widespread information of
> their work can travel, and Wikipedia is just a single symptom of that.

Fine with me, but the same is true of museums or heirs of artists who chose not
to allow free reproductions of their works of art.

There cannot be two rules, two measures. One of the negative consequences,
for an artist, the heirs thereof, or museums or libraries or whatever owning
rights to the works, of not allowing free photographs, is to reduce exposure
of these works to the world, and thus deprive themselves of a kind of
advertisement on a site in the first pages of Google. They'll have to assume that.

Thus, again: Why that exemption for so-called "modern art"?


subject: [WikiEN-l] "About Wikipedia" in navigation sidebar

body:
Sandra (the Foundation communications person) suggested an "About
Wikipedia" link go in the sidebar, not just at the bottom of each
page. So I floated it on [[MediaWiki Talk:Sidebar]], got no objections
and put it in today. This is to be the sort of "about" link lots of
websites have.

The link goes to [[Wikipedia:About]]. I ask the august embattled
wikiveterans of this list to hack at said page until it's actually the
sort of thing a completely fresh visitor would expect to see linked
from "About Wikipedia." At the moment it strikes me as about twice as
long as it should be and entirely peppered in caveats ... thoughts
plz.

- d.


from_name: Claudio Mastroianni

body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 15:40, Andre Engels ha scritto:

> There's been some discussion about this phrase on the Dutch IRC
> channel.

There are a lot of discussion on #wikipedia-it, #wikimedia, and the
bar of wikipedia.
The *totality* of italian people I've read of, for now, totally
disagree with the decision of WMF.

Gatto Nero


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 16:06, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> Under Italian law you are permitted 'abridgment, quotation or
> reproduction of fragments or parts of a work for the purpose of
> criticism or discussion, or for instructional purposes.'
> (see Italian Copyright Act Article 70; Nimmer and Geller (1998-),
> Italy, ?8[2][a])

Oh nice: I'll upload a lot of "fragment" of IMAGES.
Now I know I can.

Gatto Nero


body:
On 2/8/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps their position will change now that they see high level
> support for being more careful about what we include?

I doubt it.

> ... This is the
> advantage of being somewhat strict about our "big goals": People who
> do not care if Wikipedia is free will now help make it more free,
> because they must in order to achieve the pretty articles they desire.
> :)
>
> It's my view that it's a little counter productive for you to only
> point out the negative "We must delete a zillion images" rather than
> saying the more useful "We must add a lot of discussion to wikipedia
> or remove images" just because you think people will not do it. Have
> some confidence in our communities. :)
>

these were all tagged over a month ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Album_covers_with_no_commentary

> I don't know why it's so hard, at least on enwiki  that we must
> discuss has long been an established requirement.  This is why enwiki
> does not permit fair use galleries.
>
> When you run into these discussions, please invite me.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums/Archive_11#Album_covers_and_fair_use

--
geni


body:
No, the exact opposite.

On 2/8/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure jayjg was agreeing with you, saying that the category should
> be named Jewish People.
>
> On 2/8/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I see where you are getting at. But what do you think of the consistency
> > issue?
> >
> >     - Cool Cat
> >
> > On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 2/8/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > jayjg wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> > > > >Edition.  2000.
> > > > >
> > > > >"Jew" is not a dirty word.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > While true, that's a different question than presented here.  "Greek"
> > is
> > > > not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at [[:Category:Greek
> > > > people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].
> > > >
> > > > -Mark
> > >
> > > Steve Bennett specifically said that he finds the word "Jew" to be
> > > "awkward" and have "unfortunate connotations". The response was made
> > > in that context.
> > >
> > > Jay.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Ralph Waldo
Emerson in "Self-Reliance".

On 2/8/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see where you are getting at. But what do you think of the consistency
> issue?
>
>     - Cool Cat
>
> On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/8/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > jayjg wrote:
> > >
> > > >The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> > > >Edition.  2000.
> > > >
> > > >"Jew" is not a dirty word.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > While true, that's a different question than presented here.  "Greek" is
> > > not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at [[:Category:Greek
> > > people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].
> > >
> > > -Mark
> >
> > Steve Bennett specifically said that he finds the word "Jew" to be
> > "awkward" and have "unfortunate connotations". The response was made
> > in that context.
> >
> > Jay.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 16:20, David Gerard ha scritto:

>> Oh nice: I'll upload a lot of "fragment" of IMAGES.
>> Now I know I can.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point
>
> I'd be amazed if there isn't a similar page on it:wp.

There is.
But here in Italy we have a nice attitude toward IRONIA.
The not-ironic answer should have been "You are talking of something
you don't understand. Don't think to know an italian law better than
an italian person".
But that would have not been really kind.

That's why I've decided in an ironic way.

Gatto Nero


body:
>  I know ESA releases their images under a non-commercial
> use only license, but there have been attempts to try and open that
> licensing up a bit more to something more akin to the standard CC-by-SA
> type license.

"Standard" is overrated. It's "standard" in our little world of free
content providers. :-)
Never forget that most people in the real world have never heard of
content "licenses".

Having been personally involved in the attempts that you mention, I can
tell you that
the issue is really complex. Any attempt at comparing ESA and NASA
completely
misses the difference between legal systems and operating environments.

> trying to milk every last drop of money from
> content produced by salaried employees of these governments

There's something to that but it's not the main issue in the case of ESA.


body:
So the clarification seems to be:

Replace
"There are some works,
primarily historically important photographs and significant modern
artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be released under a
free content license, but that are hard to discuss in an educational
context without including the media itself."

by
"There are pictures that are very useful to illustrate articles and for
which we cannot
realistically expect to get a free alternative. These include
historically important
photographs and significant modern artworks, as well as pictures of
objects and activities
out of bounds for people able to take free pictures."

Or did I misunderstand?

I really cannot understand a "fair use" allowance that would include
"modern art" but
not activities such as seeing the inside of a space craft, or being
inside a combat unit,
for which access is inherently restricted.

> After seeing all these I really wonder if we
> haven't been misthinking our approach to ESA images.

Please expand. I'm interested in hearing your opinion, since I actually
met ESA and CNES
about the issue and you did not.

(One thing is, for many ESA images, we don't even quite know whether
they're copyrighted
and by whom. But that's a bit complex to explain.)


body:
> And trying to decide what a notable or significant artwork might be
> seems to smack with the same problems that plagues Wikipedia in terms of
> notability of people.

The Foundation already daily receives complaints about deletion of
articles about various artists,
works of art, web comics.

I can understand where Mindspillage et al are getting at (Guernica or
similar works are notable, others aren't)
but, as you rightly point out, this will be fraught with questions like
"why do you have a picture of <insert artist's work>
and not of <insert artist's work>"?

This will be especially acute since, at least I suspect, some comics are
much better known among the people who
read Wikipedia than some allegedly "important" modern artists.

And finally, I don't see why we make an exemption for modern artists and
museums, who live off self-promotion.


from_name: Jim

subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
	- What about a "Collection License"

body:
On 2/7/07, Kat Walsh <kwalsh at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> ...
> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop educational
> content under a free content license or in the public domain. For
> content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal
> restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the
> content for any purpose.

One type of licensing that I think the WMF should consider that would meet
this criteria while still allowing the creation of totally free content is
what I consider a "only in a *Collection License"*.

What I mean by this is that someone should be able to license an
image/video/sound bite, etc to be used freely by the wikimedia community and
any others utilizing wikimedia community content *AS LONG AS *it is part of
a collection and not being redistributed individually (or the works of a
single artist are not the only content distributed).

*WHY*
This type of licensing meets our goals - to provide free educational content
that can be reused and freely distributed. The encyclopedic usage would be
fine, subsets of the encylopedia would be fine. Usage in Wikibooks,
Wikiquote, etc would be allowed. Someone could make derivative works that
are then licensed similarly to the wikimedia foundation. Commercial groups
could make products that use the content such as a Book on Cats, or a CD
version of Wikipedia, etc.

The only restriction would be those seeking to profit from a specific work
(or small group of works) of art. And since selling the individual art IN NO
WAY supports the mission of WMF, this restriction does us no harm.

For example, I can imagine someone who sells prints (or a photographer that
works for a newspaper) being willing to grant the community a license to use
their works to illustrate an appropriate subject while still retaining the
right to be the sole provider of the work of art to other newspaper or for
t-shirts or other consumer products that are made up of solely (or
substantially) the donated work.

Similarly, stock photo sellers might be willing to license some unique
photos to the community if they knew that someone couldn't setup a
compteting business using their stock photos from commons.

*ANOTHER ADVANTAGE - Can replace Fair Use in some cases*
This would also be a way that large organizations which own valuable photos
that have historic significance (such as AP or UPI in the US) could grant
the community a license to use the work without losing control of the photo.
Thus the community would then have permission (a license) to use the work
and would no longer have to justify the use of the work under Fair Use for
each individual language/jurisdiction. The organizations (and individual
artists) who want to support our mission could do so without significantly
undermining the value of their art.

--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
"Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
- Neal A Maxwell-


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
On 2/8/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve,
>
> What you've done is great. However, I did discover an issue (you may
> already be aware of this)...If the transcluded disambig page has
> sections, then those sections show up in the TOC of the transcluding page.
>
> No obvious solution comes to mind, short of eliminating sections from
> disambig pages.
>
> -Rich

That is a problem with using only wikicode. I'd suggest instead using
an ajaxy (not really, but kinda) solution where a javascript loads the
HTML from the target page and displays it in the box (I'm thinking of
the popups addon, it does that, right?) That would ensure that the
headings doesn't appear in the article, since it is added after the
page has been rendered by mediawiki.

Also, it would hide the code from non-javascript capable browsers.

--Oskar


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
> > That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if you're using IE.
>
> Actually just four and five, respectively.  The media-specific
> stylesheets will probably not be loaded by clients that aren't using
> that medium.

I can only speak to what Firefox and IE are actually doing.

My proxy logs for doing a shift-F5 refresh on a local test wiki
install include the following get/response headers for Firefox:

========================================================
+++GET 1595+++
GET /wiki/skins/monobook/main.css?55 HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.0.64
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Accept: text/css,*/*;q=0.1
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Referer: http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test
Cookie: wikidbUserName=Nickj; wikidb_session=178df0fe68c75834643af65dec9ec98a; wikidbLoggedOut=20070208020154
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
Browser reload detected...

+++RESP 1595+++
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:02:41 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:57:09 GMT
ETag: "709d-428c37389ff40"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Content-Encoding: gzip
Cache-Control: max-age=2592000, public
Content-Length: 7763
Content-Type: text/css
+++CLOSE 1595+++
BlockList 1596: in Bypass, line 69

+++GET 1596+++
GET /wiki/skins/common/commonPrint.css?55 HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.0.64
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Accept: text/css,*/*;q=0.1
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Referer: http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test
Cookie: wikidbUserName=Nickj; wikidb_session=178df0fe68c75834643af65dec9ec98a; wikidbLoggedOut=20070208020154
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
Browser reload detected...

+++RESP 1596+++
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:02:41 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:57:09 GMT
ETag: "1479-428c37389ff40"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Content-Encoding: gzip
Cache-Control: max-age=2592000, public
Content-Length: 1731
Content-Type: text/css
+++CLOSE 1596+++
BlockList 1597: in Bypass, line 69

+++GET 1597+++
GET /wiki/skins/monobook/handheld.css?55 HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.0.64
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Accept: text/css,*/*;q=0.1
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Referer: http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test
Cookie: wikidbUserName=Nickj; wikidb_session=178df0fe68c75834643af65dec9ec98a; wikidbLoggedOut=20070208020154
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
Browser reload detected...

+++RESP 1597+++
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:02:41 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:57:09 GMT
ETag: "5bc3-428c37389ff40"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Content-Encoding: gzip
Cache-Control: max-age=2592000, public
Content-Length: 6631
Content-Type: text/css
+++CLOSE 1597+++
BlockList 1598: in Bypass, line 69
========================================================

... which is also reflected in the apache logs:

========================================================
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:20:38 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/monobook/main.css?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 7763
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204
Firefox/2.0.0.1"
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:20:39 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/common/commonPrint.css?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 1731
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204
Firefox/2.0.0.1"
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:20:39 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/monobook/handheld.css?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 6631
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204
Firefox/2.0.0.1"
========================================================

Similarly for IE 5.01:

========================================================
+++GET 1610+++
GET /wiki/skins/common/commonPrint.css?55 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Referer: http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test
Accept-Language: en-au
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Host: 192.168.0.64
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive

+++GET 1611+++
GET /wiki/skins/monobook/main.css?55 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Referer: http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test
Accept-Language: en-au
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Host: 192.168.0.64
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
BlockList 1612: in Bypass, line 69
Browser reload detected...

+++GET 1612+++
GET /wiki/skins/monobook/handheld.css?55 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Referer: http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Test
Accept-Language: en-au
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Host: 192.168.0.64
Pragma: no-cache
Connection: keep-alive
========================================================

... which is also reflected in the apache logs:

========================================================
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:21:53 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/common/commonPrint.css?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 1731
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:21:53 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/monobook/handheld.css?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 6631
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:21:53 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/common/IEFixes.js?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 1344
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
192.168.0.2 - - [08/Feb/2007:16:21:53 +1100] "GET /wiki/skins/monobook/main.css?55 HTTP/1.1" 200 7763
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
========================================================

I.e. both browsers fetch all 3 media variant stylesheets, at least on a full refresh.

... and exactly why both browsers feel the need to load a media="handheld" stylesheet
whilst running on a distinctly non-handheld device is a question that's probably best
directed at the authors of those browsers ;-)

All the best,
Nick.


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>
>I hope, we will make our decisions based on reasoned thought and
>research, and not based on who can scream the loudest.  To that end,
>wouldn't it be better if we did as suggested and sought guidance from
>experts on how best to set the policy for itwiki?
>
>Please stop to consider for a moment:  In no way does the board only
>allowing image which would be fair use/fair dealing preclude itwiki
>from getting permission.
>
>Lets assume for a moment that under Italian law, there is no exception
>for excerpting for education.  So, itwiki does not permit this
>exception.  Instead, itwiki users will go obtain permission.  This is
>fine, you can continue to do this, the foundation already said you may
>be more restrictive than they require and many projects already are.
>However, even with permission you may still only submit images which
>the rest of the world, which has the concept of fair dealing, could
>use as fair dealing.  This ensures that itwiki are not getting
>non-free permission for images which we could easily create as free
>works ourselves, and it ensures that the work is maximally free.
>
>Why does this make you mad? What do you think you are losing?
>
>All I can see is itwiki losing images which are non-free and could be
>replaced with free ones... and that is a gain for everyone.
>
>_______________________________________________
>
>
I agree with this view, personally I think it satisfies both the needs
of being free in the US (because of the fair use) and being acceptable
in those unfortunate countries where you need permission. But, ehm, in
the previous email you said that you shouldn't say that the author
authorizes every ND or NC use, so where are we going to write that we
have the explicit permission to use that media?

Marco (Cruccone)


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 16:41, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> So you think Wikipedia must reproduce whole unabridged and high
> resolution copies of copyrighted works which suitable for replacing
> the commercial value of these works, in order to educate people?
>
> If that is your view I really believe it is mistaken.

It's starting to be tiring.
I *don't* think we should admit "images with permission" AND "fair
use images" TOO.
I *do* think that is utterly stupid to make a not-existent
distinction between the freedom of a permission image and a fair use
image. Cause they're similarly unfree. Worst: it seems that fair use
images are less free than permission images.

Second.

Your references to an italian law was uncorrect.
What you're talking about is "diritto di citazione" ("right of
quotation"), that's not appliable to images.
What are we gonna going to upload? An eye of the Guernica paint?

> This
> includes providing only crops or low resolution versions
> ('fragments')...

Low resolution versions are not considered "fragments". Not in Italy,
at least.

> The statement under Italian law is not all that different from the
> laws of other nations. Nor should it be, since all people everywhere
> have the same need to discuss and educate people about copyrighted
> works.

I continue thinking that you're talking about something that you're
not able to catch in his totality, I'm sorry.

Gatto Nero


from_name: senpai

body:
Ok, no NC, no ND... but yes for Fair Use.

Than, only free images but with some "adjusting" for en.wiki.
Do you think it's a free image an image that is not editable (fair use like
ND) ? That you can't use for commercial use except publish in a "To payment
paper wikipedia" (because you can't put a fair use image on a bag, on a
pc... fair use like NC) ?

Do you really think that a fair use image it's free and an nd-nc not ?

Ok... may be, WMF will delete the italian protected images but,

"it's easy to be gay when dealing with somebody else's ass"

Senpai


from_name: Jens Frank

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Why in some case the "/" in article title fail to
	work?

body:
On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 11:48:52PM +0800, Liang Chen wrote:
> HI,
>    I tried to add an article behind another article following by a
> "/", like "Abacus/TOEFL", and "User:BiGreat/Gaokao2".
>
>    However, in the second page "User:BiGreat/Gaokao2", there will be a
> "< User:BiGreat" below the title, but in the first page
> "Abacus/TOEFL", there isn't a "< Abacus".
>
>    I don't know why. Could somebody help me?
> The two page at:
> http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/Abacus/TOEFL
> http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/User:BiGreat/Gaokao2
>
The feature you're using is called "subpage". By default, subpages are
only available in some namespaces, e.g. User.

In your LocalSettings.php, set

$wgNamespacesWithSubpages = array(
     NS_MAIN           => true,
     NS_TALK           => true,
     NS_USER           => true,
     NS_USER_TALK      => true,
     NS_PROJECT_TALK   => true,
     NS_IMAGE_TALK     => true,
     NS_MEDIAWIKI_TALK => true,
     NS_TEMPLATE_TALK  => true,
     NS_HELP           => true,
     NS_HELP_TALK      => true,
     NS_CATEGORY_TALK  => true );

to enable subpages in these namespaces.

Regards,

	jens


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
As much as it generally annoys me when people quote a whole message
just to say "me too", me too. I really like the way this is put.

-Kat

On 2/8/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I'll use this message to try to clarify a few points.
>
> The idea of "special permission" for Wikipedia is inherently harmful
> and utterly antithetical to our mission. The Wikimedia Foundation is
> _not_ just running a bunch of cool websites, it's trying to help
> people spread free culture across the planet. In its impediment of the
> spread of free culture, "special permission" is much more noxious than
> even the least free Creative Commons license. If we want to reach
> those who need free educational content the most, collaboration with
> organizations (and companies or local entrepreneurs) is imperative.
> Special permission content is utterly useless in this context. It is a
> waste of our time.
>
> Fair use is somewhat different in that many third party uses,
> especially educational ones, will be permissible as well. Beyond that,
> fair use and similar exemptions are a good way to describe a set of
> content which we, pragmatically, will accept, but which we can
> communicate clearly as being philosophically incompatible with our
> core mission. The important point is that there is a clear division
> into two spheres:
>  * fair use / fair dealing and similar exemptions
>  * free content
>
> These two spheres are very different. Files under fair use exemption
> are essentially on constant parole. They cannot be put in Commons.
> They will be wiped out when orphaned. They require an article context.
> They may not be put in galleries. They can and should be replaced
> whenever possible with freely licensed ones. They need a rationale.
> And in many cases, we will immediately remove them if there is the
> slightest problem with them.
>
> Free content, on the other hand, is free in every sense of the word.
> It can be used throughout our projects, and we encourage its creation
> wherever possible. We systematically do everything we can to liberate
> as much useful content as possible.
>
> Allowing files under special permission, NC, ND, or any other non-free
> license, erodes this wall of separation. This is not hypothetical; it
> has happened wherever such licenses have begun to proliferate. They
> were used without care, without distinction. Non-free and free were
> treated the same. This then reduces the incentive for our community
> members to use free licenses. It confuses the public. It advertises
> bad licensing choices.
>
> A genuine free culture movement depends on establishing and following
> a standard of freedom: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition - without
> such a standard, what you end up with is something like Creative
> Commons. Not a movement, just a hodgepodge of licenses. Creative
> Commons is about giving choices to authors within a legal framework.
> Wikimedia is about building free culture.
>
> This is to me the key point of an official licensing policy:
> hardcoding the distinction between free and non-free, and clearly
> emphasizing one over the other. We can talk, if need be, about putting
> some things explicitly in the non-free sphere if a legal system leaves
> us no other option. But I'd prefer to always make that decision
> implicitly if at all possible, to never mention that a fair use image
> is also ND or NC, because these licenses, "Creative Commons" or not,
> are in fact an enclosure of the commons. They are anti-commons; they
> relate to free content like shareware and freeware relate to open
> source software. They should not be advertised.

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone


from_name: Boris Eetgerink

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Why in some case the "/" in article title fail to
 work?

body:
Liang Chen wrote:
> HI,
>    I tried to add an article behind another article following by a
> "/", like "Abacus/TOEFL", and "User:BiGreat/Gaokao2".
>
>    However, in the second page "User:BiGreat/Gaokao2", there will be a
> "< User:BiGreat" below the title, but in the first page
> "Abacus/TOEFL", there isn't a "< Abacus".
>
>    I don't know why. Could somebody help me?
> The two page at:
> http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/Abacus/TOEFL
> http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/User:BiGreat/Gaokao2

That is because some namespaces allow subpages, others don't. Check
includes/DefaultSettings.php on line 1398, you'll see that by default
Talk and User pages (among others) allow subpages, but NS_MAIN doesn't.

Just add NS_MAIN => true to the array in LocalSettings.php, or better,
put this in LocalSettings.php:

     array_push($wgNamespacesWithSubpages, array(NS_MAIN => true));
(Might not correct code, I haven't tested it)

The array in DefaultSettings.php:
$wgNamespacesWithSubpages = array(
	NS_TALK           => true,
	NS_USER           => true,
	NS_USER_TALK      => true,
	NS_PROJECT_TALK   => true,
	NS_IMAGE_TALK     => true,
	NS_MEDIAWIKI_TALK => true,
	NS_TEMPLATE_TALK  => true,
	NS_HELP_TALK      => true,
	NS_CATEGORY_TALK  => true
);

Boris


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
David Monniaux wrote:

>>US military photos and trade fairs. Also various open days. About the
>>only think you won't get is NK stuff such as Ch'onma-ho
>>
>>
>
>So, only US hardware and activities. So much for NPOV. (There are tons of interesting things
>that you won't see unless you're in operations. Trade fairs will show only small arms.)
>
>
>>/ * spacecraft
>>
>>
>/
>
>
>>NASA for a lot of stuff and countries tend to put a lot of their space
>>hardware on display
>>
>>
>
>NASA => only US
>
>You've therefore made the point that our current policies favor the broadcasting of the
>activities of the US government. So much for NPOV. :-)
>
>
Perhaps there is some merit to the philosohpy that the U.S. Federal
Government has that all of its publications are released to the public
domain.  What value crown copyright actually gives the government in the
UK is beyond me, but perhaps by showing some of the other governments
that they don't need to be so paranoid about copyright (including many
U.S. state governments) and trying to milk every last drop of money from
content produced by salaried employees of these governments that perhaps
there are some strong benefits to their own citizens and to their
country as a whole if they would "lighten up" and allow some sort of
free usage of this sort of content.

Is NASA really the only national space agency that releases images that
can be used under terms compatable with the GFDL and Wikimedia Commons
restrictions?  I know ESA releases their images under a non-commercial
use only license, but there have been attempts to try and open that
licensing up a bit more to something more akin to the standard CC-by-SA
type license.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 08/02/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> You might like to also mention pages such as [[foundation:designated
> agent]] where the Foundation contact page is mentioned.

That's [[wikimedia:Designated agent]] :-) I've added a link to
[[wikimedia:Contact us]].

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 08/02/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>How does ND exclude and fair use not? What does fair use enable? If done
>>well, the same image in the same way can be used in the same article and
>>also in changes to the article provided they are not major. If there were
>>not a fair use image, but an ND one, you could do that AND MORE.
>>
>>
>Define "derivative" for the purposes of "no derivatives." e.g.
>Resizing is a derivative. "ND" is deeply flawed.
>
I suppose that so too would using only part of a photograph, as when you
trim a full-length photo of someone down to a head shot.  The problem
with these licensing restrictions is that they reflect conditions that
we don't need to accept, and which would be difficult to control.  If we
were to accept them they would still need to follow a standard
agreement, or we could be stuck with a all sorts of subtle conditions
that nobody knows about except the individuals involved with drafting
the licence.  These could come back to haunt us years from now.  Do we
really want to start tracking masses of licensing agreements for a
century or more?

At least with fair use there is accessible law there that can be used in
a legal argument.  That law may not be the best possilble, but you avoid
the pitfalls that can come out of writing contracts.

Ec


body:
David Monniaux wrote:

>Fine with me, but the same is true of museums or heirs of artists who chose not
>to allow free reproductions of their works of art.
>
>There cannot be two rules, two measures. One of the negative consequences,
>for an artist, the heirs thereof, or museums or libraries or whatever owning
>rights to the works, of not allowing free photographs, is to reduce exposure
>of these works to the world, and thus deprive themselves of a kind of
>advertisement on a site in the first pages of Google. They'll have to assume that.
>
>Thus, again: Why that exemption for so-called "modern art"?
>
>
I don't understand this one either.  To me, reproductions of 2D art,
especially when it is the entire artwork that is reproduced even in
reduced resolution, essentially reproduced the entire artwork.  The only
legitimate "fair-use" example I have seen for this that has been
accepted in U.S. common law is for a thumbnail gallery, such as is done
on google images.  And even then it is to provide a link to content that
appears elsewhere that is legal to use.  Usage of this kind of content
in a Wikipedia article just doesn't seem to fit the same sort of
criteria, and requires multiple clicks to get to the "original" image
and information about the actual copyright owner of the photo.

And trying to decide what a notable or significant artwork might be
seems to smack with the same problems that plagues Wikipedia in terms of
notability of people.  The one argument I've seen made regarding notable
people being listed on Wikipedia is that as Wikipedia grows, people who
would not have been considered notable when Wikipedia only had 100,000
articles can be considered marginally notable with 1.5 million articles.
 Does the same logic apply here for notable works of art?  That
eventually there will be no line drawn as to notability?  And notable in
what community or setting?

To me, this seems to be a rationalization of copyright violation rather
than a serious attempt to try and find a legitimate fair use application.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] For your consternation...

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> For your consideration and consternation...
>
> Is it:
> A) Ilegal
> B) Immoral
> C) Fattening
>
> ...if US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Agency
> staffers remove an image repeatedly from a Wikipedia article, which
> came from a Department of Energy press photo, showing the Q clearance
> badge of the now-former head of NNSA.  The claimed reason for deletion
> is that it's illegal to show the badge,

/me goes to get a copy and put it up at http://thisimageisillegal.ytmnd.com/

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/2/8, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:

> If they are releasing under and ND license, it may even be because we
> already talked to them and failed to help them understand that a basic
> strong copyleft licenses will take care of most of the things that
> they really care about, such as preventing the fraud of someone making
> new versions and blaming them on the original author.. Whenever we see
> ND (and NC alike) we are seeing evidence of our own failure to
> advocate truly free licenses.

If every ND license is such a failure, we are truly in a horrible state,
because the text of the GFDL itself is under an ND license, and thus we are
not allowed to put it on a Wikipedia page, except for the fact that we
must....

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> *Fair use/fair dealing* doesn't exist outside UK/US (and other 4
> commonwealth country)
>

Fair dealing is very different from fair use. Do not lump them
together. It makes about as much sense as lumping Italian law together
with French.

Fair dealing is pretty standard throughout the former british empire.
So india uses a version of it and I suspect most of our former african
holdings do. That is about 25% of the earth's surface and probably a
simular amount of it's population.

By comparision fair use exists in the US and the philippines.
--
geni


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 17:21, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> You are incorrect.   For example, If I fork Wikipedia I must instantly
> delete every single with permission image, but I would be no worse off
> than Wikipedia in keeping fair use images.

If *I* fork Wikipedia, I must istantly delete every single fair use
image, too.
*Fair use/fair dealing* doesn't exist outside UK/US (and other 4
commonwealth country)

> Surely someone who so
> frequently screams about the foundation can appreciate the importance
> of the right to fork? :)

Some it.wikiers thought about this possibility.
Not me, for now, but I'm starting to doubt about the correctness of
my opinion.

>> Second.
>> Your references to an italian law was uncorrect.
> I am reasonably confident that it is not.

Lucky you.
That means that you know italian laws better than italian people.

> I hope, we will make our decisions based on reasoned thought and
> research, and not based on who can scream the loudest.  To that end,
> wouldn't it be better if we did as suggested and sought guidance from
> experts on how best to set the policy for itwiki?

This is not a question of "who scream the loudest", but a question of
reality/unreality.
Italians can't use fair use images. Period.
Other people from other countries can't use fair use images. Period.
Fair use images are not free. Period.

> Please stop to consider for a moment:  In no way does the board only
> allowing image which would be fair use/fair dealing preclude itwiki
> from getting permission.

I *do* think you've not read the first mail.
There's no other explanation.

"It is for these reasons, which we have long supported, that all
media on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that specify non-
commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission for Wikimedia
only, need to be be phased out and replaced with media that does not
have these restrictions."

*need* to be *phased out*

> Lets assume for a moment that under Italian law, there is no exception
> for excerpting for education.

There is, for text.

> So, itwiki does not permit this
> exception.  Instead, itwiki users will go obtain permission.
> This is
> fine, you can continue to do this, the foundation already said you may
> be more restrictive than they require and many projects already are.

Read the quote here above. WMF considers "having a permission" to be
*less* restrictive.

> However, even with permission you may still only submit images which
> the rest of the world, which has the concept of fair dealing, could
> use as fair dealing.  This ensures that itwiki are not getting
> non-free permission for images which we could easily create as free
> works ourselves, and it ensures that the work is maximally free.

Probably I've not understood this piece.

> Why does this make you mad? What do you think you are losing?
> All I can see is itwiki losing images which are non-free and could be
> replaced with free ones... and that is a gain for everyone.

Let's repeat.
Images with permission? Not allowed.
Fair use images? Allowed.

What make me "mad" - better, what are making a lot of it,wikiers
pissed off - is that there is an evidence of not equity in this
statement.
"Non free images are not permitted, but ehy... uhm... considering
that en.wiki makes a large usage of non-free images we are gonna
allow fair use images".

Gatto Nero


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
Cool Cat wrote:
> So do you have a suggestion to tackle/quick attack the problem? CfD is a
> slow and inefficient procedure to get rid of nonsense. Too many
> panic/contradictory "Keep" votes just pile up in almost an instant.

How do you distinguish the "panic/contradictory" keeps from the
"reasoned/consistent" keeps?

If you really think a category should go, take the time to write a full
argument for it and don't worry so much if the CfD ends up going the
other way. There was once a category on Wikipedia that I felt was
deserving of deletion and I spent a lot of effort banging my head
against a wall on CfD trying to convince some "keep" voters of my
correctness, without success. But ultimately a year or so later, after
everyone had wandered off to other things, someone else came along and
CfDed it again and the category quietly passed away. If a category is
truly deserving of deletion then eventually it's going to happen. We're
not on a deadline.


from_name: Marco Chiesa

body:
Claudio Mastroianni wrote:

>There's no way for an italian (or other people from other countries
>which don't have fair use/dealing) to upload an image "under fair use".
>The only way to upload these images, is by permission. But permission
>doesn't mean "You have the right to use it in every way you want":
>permission means "You can use it in these precise conditions".
>Then: it's impossible for a "image with permission" to be tagged as
>"fair use", cause a tag like this would not respect the deal who
>brought to the permission.
>
>I'm not sure if I've been clear.
>
>The way permission works is:
>"Ehy, copyright holder, could we use an image of your *whatever* on
>Wikipedia?"
>"Yes, wikipedian. You can use it ON http://it.wikipedia.org, but no
>printing" (or similar)
>
>That's why, if I put a "fair use tag" or permitt another one to use a
>"fair use tag", the deal is broken.
>
>

Gatto, the point is: an Italian person which will like to reuse that
media will have to ask the copyright owner: "Hey, I saw this picture on
Wikipedia, I'd like to use it in Lumacapedia, can I?" An American person
will be able to use it in Snailpedia and print and sell the Snailpedia
DVD in the US and some other countries without asking the copyright
owner. That's it.

Now, I understand there will be guidelines on what fair use is going to
be allowed in Wikimedia. I guess a low-res reproduction of Guernica by
Picasso will be allowed on the articles about Guernica by Picasso, while
probably a promo photograph of Britney Spears will not be allowed. As
soon as this is clarified, an Italian user may need to ask permission to
Picasso's heirs to upload the picture of the painting, and say that
where it applies the image is used under fair use. Plus you have the
copyright owner's placet, in case you can't claim fair use.

As far as the Italian wikipedia is concerned, I think that many images
we use with permission will qualify for Wikimedia fair use. Coat of arms
of communes, paintings in the museums of Florence, maybe comics
characters. For the copyrighted photos of places, well, a free
alternative is possible, so it doesn't seem unreasonable not to use them.

Marco (Cruccone)


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work
>and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
>arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version,
>sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any
>other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted,
>except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
>considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. For the
>avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition or sound
>recording, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a
>moving image ("synching") will be considered a Derivative Work for the
>purpose of this License.
>
>(Is a resizing an abridgement? A condensation? Is it "any other form"?)
>
If resizing creates a disallowed derivative, and you and I are viewing
the picture on different sized monitors, which of us is breaching the
contract? :-)

Ec


subject:
[Foundation-l] ESA / NASA (was: precisions about the recent WMF
 "fair use" decision=

body:
> Incidentally, while looking for an example for my reply I noticed that
> may enwiki articles for ESA subjects have free images. For example
> take a look at [[ERS-1]]. After seeing all these I really wonder if we
> haven't been misthinking our approach to ESA images.

I emailed my ESA and CNES contacts with a summary of the issue. I value transparency.


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 17:54, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> I am not responding to the rest of your email right now. Not out of
> disrespect but instead because I think we can go much further once one
> misunderstanding is cleared up.
>
> On 2/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero a gmail.com> wrote:
>> Let's repeat.
>> Images with permission? Not allowed.
>> Fair use images? Allowed.
>
> Images which would be fairuse/dealing in places where that is
> permitted (which is far more than 4 or 5 countries) plus permission?
> Allowed.

How are you going to obtain it?
There's no way for an italian (or other people from other countries
which don't have fair use/dealing) to upload an image "under fair use".
The only way to upload these images, is by permission. But permission
doesn't mean "You have the right to use it in every way you want":
permission means "You can use it in these precise conditions".
Then: it's impossible for a "image with permission" to be tagged as
"fair use", cause a tag like this would not respect the deal who
brought to the permission.

I'm not sure if I've been clear.

The way permission works is:
"Ehy, copyright holder, could we use an image of your *whatever* on
Wikipedia?"
"Yes, wikipedian. You can use it ON http://it.wikipedia.org, but no
printing" (or similar)

That's why, if I put a "fair use tag" or permitt another one to use a
"fair use tag", the deal is broken.

> Wikimedia is an international project. Where the laws of nations
> differ we must deal with a few hard constraints (the laws of where the
> WMF itself legally operates) and otherwise try to strike a balance
> which makes the most sense in most of the world.

That's the point. UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
Singapore are not "the most of the world".
Surely we can't allow copyrighted images, that's why we can't allow
fair use images.

> Yes, the foundation sees permission as more restrictive than fair
> dealing, because it is for the foundations larger goals.

Making money in the Commonwealth?
Distributing information in the Commonwealth, where fair use images
are legal?

> Itwiki is
> still able to accept permission, it only must also make an effort to
> make sure these images would be fair use/fair dealing in the places
> where these concepts are codified in law.
>
> Again, what do you lose?

Again, "all media on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that
specify non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission
for Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out and replaced with media
that does not have these restrictions"

Gatto Nero