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Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump:

I don't give two damns about your Wikipedia:Image use policy. This is a policy created by half a dozen people out of the thousands using Wikipedia. It has NO LEGAL OR BINDING STATUS. This is an open website. I am not obliged to provide you or anyone with a statement as to its copyright status, permission, or any other thing a few people decide they want. The only obligation (and this was clearly stated already in discussions with Mr. Wales re DMCA) is to tick the box required in order to upload. NO MORE NO LESS. Stop interfering with people who actually make a contribution here. What you are doing is illegal harassment and interference. If you have any questions about this matter, please take them up with the ONLY authority, Mr. Wales who pays the freight.User:Black Widow (copied to the group's Village Pump.)

I'm sorry but copyright law has a legal status. Illegal content compromise Wikipedia. Ericd 03:20 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright violation is to Wikipedia as gambling is to baseball. The irony is that, although Wiki-policies have no legal or binding status, copyright laws do. One nasty lawsuit, and wikipedia could find itself sharing a tomb with Napster. Give a hoot, don't pollute. Kingturtle 03:22 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

The image use policy is not legally binding, but neither is the rule that says "don't replace every instance of 'Microsoft' with 'Microshit' in Microsoft QuickBASIC compiler" (to use a recent example). This website is "open" only in the sense that, if you don't like the rules, you can download the whole database and start your own encyclopedia. We have every right to revert, block or delete anything you do, if we don't like it for whatever reason. This is an encyclopedia project, not Freenet. -- Tim Starling 03:28 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright owners can get a TRO to shut down Wikipedia in a matter of days; if User:Black Widow is putting violating stuff up and lying about it in the upload box, thereby risking the time that I've put in, I think he/she/it should be banned immediately. People who want to do a copyright-violating wikipedia are free to snapshot the existing content and set up their own. Stan 03:34 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

<< Copyright owners can get a TRO to shut down Wikipedia in a matter of days . . . >>
This is categorically untrue. Where did you get such an absurd idea? -- NetEsq 22:37 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Here we go again. A small group, who actually contribute a microscopic amount of real content, espouse their qualified legal opinions. Which one of you is a member of which State or Provincial Bar? Obey the rules of the owners -- that's all that is required. And to Tim Starling, please edit and improve articles instead of wasting your time talking about something for which you have no qualifications. May Jesus bless and guide each and every one of you and fill your hearts with love and good deeds. User:Black Widow.

What allows you to say I have no qualifications ? Ericd 03:46 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'm happy to admit my legal qualifications run to a mere ~25 hours of formal lectures in an introductory course. Please, Black Widow, enlighten me with your awesomely superior legal knowledge. Why are we required to leave your images intact? Does it constitute harassment, for us to "edit or delete your uploads if [we] think it serves the encyclopedia", as the message on the image upload page warns we may? -- Tim Starling 04:27 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I don't really understand why Jesus should bless and guide us, Black Widow. May Jesus fill your heart with love and bring peace to Wikipedia. Ericd 04:35 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

content from wikipedia talk:Administrators

Please ask to reinstate the photo of John LeCarre. I will shortly be posting a list of her abuses on Wikipedia where she has used her so-called Administrator powers to put down, insult, and intimidate others. This is abuse and she should be removed from such an authority. In addition, she stalks people and formats things HER way. It might not be so bad if she could spell and had the ability to put together a complete sentence in the English language but she (or he?) cannot. I will post many, many examples. In the past few weeks I have put in more than 130 hours doing the "years in literature". And, if I may so say, it was a heck of a good and valued job. However, leave it to Zoe. She already started screwing it up. She drove User:Ron Davis away who, again in my opinion, was doing good work. Who is next? User:Black Widow.

User:Zoe is at it again. Now she has deleted the photo of Booker T. Washington. Her ability to discern matters here is evident. I don't know who posted the photo, but whoever did signed the ONLY legal requirement for posting a photo. Now, abusing Wikipedia Administrator powers, ZOE has illegally removed the photo this person placed. User:Black Widow Remember: Jesus loves the little children.

You've already been banned once, DW, and your actions of this evening will get you banned under this new name. I've already taken the entire issue to the mailing list. -- Zoe

BW, I wrote the image use policy (and for that matter, I wrote the software that enables you to upload images in the first place), but after I wrote it it was discussed, refined, and edited by the community at large to reflect the consensus of those of us who bear the responsibility of keeping this project focused on its goal. If you disagree with it or any other policy here, the appropriate place to discuss it is the talk page of the policy page itself. Until you do that, and the community accepts your arguments and changes the policy, it's reasonable for others to expect you to follow it, or at the very least give some compelling reason for violating it beyond a mere "I don't have to." LDC

TO: LDC - You mean to say that any Administrator (who Mr. Wales reminded is "no big deal") can arbitrarily decide to delete any photo because they want to? That hardly makes sense. And, you are saying that NO, the front page is wrong when it says you CAN EDIT RIGHT NOW. I shall communicate your dictum to Mr. Wales because that in fact defeats the purpose. While there certainly must be some control over undesirable, illegal, or offensive content, Wikipedia cannot claim to be open to anyone to edit if they must do it exactly and precisely a certain way. So that you don’t mislead users, perhaps you should change the Front page to read :YOU CAN EDIT RIGHT NOW BUT ONLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RULES OF A SELECT FEW WHO WILL CANCEL OR DELETE YOUR WORK WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION. You may have written the software but I fail to see how that has anything to do with the LAW. The legal requirement in accordance with Federal law and the California Civil Code (and CCP) is automatically met by any user otherwise the photo cannot be posted. Do you have a law degree and know something I don’t or that the Wikipedia owner doesn’t. Because Mr. Wales has followed the law as required under the DMCA. I am not destructive, I am in fact the most respectful and one of the hardest working contributors here but your "system" creates cliques allowing certain individuals to play God. With all due respect LDC, your comment made no sense to me and provided no answer to the question of arbitrary decision making AFTER a user has obeyed your software commands and met all posted legal requirements. User:Black Widow.

Funny how the ones who cause the most trouble always claim to be the most hard-working. -- Zoe

You seem to miss the very nature of a wiki: anyone can edit anyone else's work for any reason at any time. There's nothing special about administrative status in that regard, and all your legal arguments are irrelevant. Just because you post something here legally, that's no reason it should stay posted here--anyone else is free to disagree and change it. You can also change anything they have written. Admins additionally can delete. The goal here is not just to produce any old legal content--the goal is to produce the best possible content--free content, that can be redistributed under the GFDL--that a collaboration of authors can produce. If you're not willing to collaborate and want your contributions to remain unchanged, then you should contribute somewhere else. LDC

I'm going to adjust the arbitrary deletion rule, if people here agree. Basically, I'd like to say that if a photo has no copyright information on the image description page, and you suspect it may be a copyrighted photo, follow a similar process to the rule for suspected copyrighted text:

  1. remove all uses of the image from articles
  2. put some boilerplate text on the image description page
  3. specifically ask the person who uploaded the image for details on their talk page
  4. list the image on wikipedia:votes for deletion
  5. if no answer is forthcoming after a week, a different sysop can delete the image

This would basically parallel the rules (and common wikipedia practice) on potentially copyrighted text, and be a bit more forgiving than arbitrary deletion. Martin

I should add that one should only delete photos if there is suspicion - again, like text. IE, if you see the exact same photo on another site with a copyright notice. Martin
or, in the case of the Le Carre pic, you've seen it on the back cover of a paperback. I'm really getting tired of "cabal" accusations. It's at time like this I wonder why I sometimes spend upward of 3 hours a day wiki-weeding here. -- Tarquin 10:05 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)
there is no cabal...

If you see a photo of someone famous that was obviously not taken in the 1910 there is a very strong suspiscion that the photo has a copyright. It seems to me obvious that which such material the one who upload the picture should provide reasonable evidence that the picture is public domain.

I would resume by for recent work copyright is the rule public domain the exception.

I also wonder why I'm trying to make nice photos with my digital camera of anything interresting for wikipedia when it's so easy to make an image search on Google... Ericd 13:12 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Why bother with the wikipedia:boilerplate request for permission when you can just steal and plead the fifth?
Oh, I'm under the impression that repeatedly violating copyright (for both text and images) is a bannable offence - is that right? Martin
Martin, a contributor who repeatedly ignored Wikipedia policy on respecting copyrights -- and thus opened the project to the risk of expensive lawsuits -- would indeed be likely to be warned by Jimbo. And if they kept it up, Jimbo might even ban that user. (Note: I myself have no "right" to ban anyone.) --Uncle Ed
"Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum."
Ericd 13:29 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)
Have you seen how liberal interpretations of copyright laws worked for Napster ?
Ericd 13:36 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

It amazes me how some people continue to rant about matters on which they have no qualifications. Why not just read Wikipedia’s own article?

Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Title II : the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act neither Wikipedia nor its Online Service Provider can be held liable provided they have complied with the rules established by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Those rules include:

  • Providing a notice to Users concerning copyright laws and a notice that unauthorized use of copyrighted material is prohibited on the site;
  • establish a procedure to receive statutory notices from copyright owners about infringements;
  • comply with the removal requirements from a certified copyright infringement notice;
  • create a policy for termination of repeat offenders.

The law also grants immunity for Online Service Providers and flow-through organizations such as Wikipedia from third party user claims, provided there has been a good-faith compliance with the statutory rules. Further, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act recognizes the massive volume potential through technology on the Internet and therefore the Act does not compel someone such as Wikipedia to monitor material posted on their site. User:Black Widow

Wikipedia is not an Online Service Provider herberging personnal pages. Any mediocre lawyer will destroy this argument in a few seconds. Ericd 13:57 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

READ the article, it says: for Online Service Providers and flow-through organizations such as Wikipedia. User:Black Widow

ANd what if someone wish to distribute Wikipedia on CD-ROM ? Ericd 13:58 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I propose the following policy to be added to the page (I'll mention this on the village pump when we've battered it around a bit:

Please note: this is not the official copyright policy - merely a reminder and additional tips

It is not the job of rank-and-file Wikipedians to police every article for possible copyright infringement. However, if you suspect that an image is a copyright infringement (for example, if there is no information on copyright status on its image description page), then:

  1. remove all uses of the image from articles
  2. list the image on wikipedia:votes for deletion
  3. add the copyright infringement notice for images from Boilerplate text

The image can then be deleted after a week in the normal way - see wikipedia:policy on permanent deletion of pages.

Obviously there's a balance to be struck between scaring away contributors and keeping the encyclopedia open content, but that seems reasonable, and roughly in line with what we're doing for text. I'm going to try it tonight with all bar one of the non-GFDL Rachel Corrie photos (which will please user:Zoe, no doubt). Martin

Absolutely not. You have no right to overide Wikipedia.org policy and start judging what you guess or think is a copyright violation. Do that and you jeopardize Wikipedia through a lawsuit from a user. User:Black Widow

Are you a lawyer, Black Widow? Martin
People may be interested to know that Wikipedia is registered under the DMCA. Jimbo is the designated agent. I wonder if this info should be added to wikipedia:copyrights? Designated agent Martin

Somebody protected this page. They didn't say why here or at wikipedia:protected page, so I unprotected it. Martin (edited)

It wasn't anonymous: LittleDan just forgot to mention it here. He reported it on the mailing list. It's hard to remember where to report what, and sometimes you really have to report it in more than one place. --Uncle Ed 20:39 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)
Hmm, I should have been more careful expressing myself! I'll read the archives...

(from mailing list: "The image policy page is very important (if we get sued, it'll probably be from a picture) and shouldn't be changed by someone without some kind of authority."

I modified my proposed change to copyright to reflect this concern - IE, make it clear that wikipedia:copyrights is the official page on the subject. That way that page can concentrate on keeping lawyers happy and this page can concentrate on being clear. Martin

General comments on stuff above: I've had a look at the DMCA and some other bits and pieces, and it seems to me as if Black Widow is right: we're probably not legally compelled to check the copyright status of work submitted online. Of course if we feel for some reason we should check for copyright, there's nothing to stop us from removing suspected copyright material. In fact, if we notice something is copyright, and Jimbo somehow finds out, then Jimbo will be legally compelled to remove the content. That said,

  • Other distributions of the pedia do not have the same protection (e.g. CD), so we would be compelled to exhaustively check the entire encyclopedia if we wish to distribute it in another form.
  • International issues: most countries do not have such strong protection for website operators, therefore if Wikipedia contained copyright material, it could not be legally mirrored in such countries. Foreign copyright owners from such countries, whose rights are infringed by Wikipedia, would generally act against Wikipedia under US law, although there is some question as to whether the DMCA meets minimum protection standards imposed by the various copyright treaties.
  • Wikipedia's primary goal is to produce a copyright-free encyclopedia

For these reasons, I think it would be best if we maintain our vigilant copyright protection stance. That's my assessment of it, as a non-expert. It would be nice if Wikipedia's real law experts (Fred Bauder and Netesq) would give their opinion. -- Tim Starling 03:17 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Yahoo (I mean www.yahoo.com not wwww.yahoo.fr) has been sue in France under French law. Did you heard about Magnum, Sigma, Kappa etc... Major actors in the image business they are French companies. Magnum was founder by around 50%-50% of French and American photographers and they choosed do be French. It was obviously not not due reduced tax, French law is more protective. Make your own conclusion. Ericd 09:52 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

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