Hi Balasankaran, and Gautam (in continuation of your discussion from 2011!),
Yann forward me the Wikisource page for Gandhi's book "Experiments with
Truth" (published 1927) which is pretty much a perfect example of the
problem in question (ie. a text that is PD in India and copyrighted in
the US).
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experimen…
So, while the source document is hosted on Wikilivres, Wikisource has a
nice page with some basic information, the copyright story, and an
external link - thereby allowing people from within the Wikimedia
community who reach it to access the full text outside. In the interim,
this seems like a great way to get around US copyright law, and the
Wikisource community seems to like it fine. Presumably, something like
this can be done on Commons too.
Thank you Yann.
Cheers,
-Achal
On 05/10/2013 08:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> From: arun vm <arunwebber(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia India Community list
> <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimania proposals about India
> Why cant you include submission for technical persons also
> i am a php programer i am not found any intresting catagory to me
Arun,
Hi there. Because this is the Wikimedia India community mailing list, I
wanted to point out several proposals specifically interesting to the
Wikimedia India community. It would be a waste of most subscribers'
time for me to list out this year's many Wikimania submissions that are
specifically about technology:
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submission_review#Technology_and_I…
You might also like to attend the pre-Wikimania DevCamp:
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/DevCamp
Best wishes,
Sumana
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Hey,
We just concluded a week long Tamil Wikipedia outreach in Srilanka.
April 25 - Seminar on free content, creative commons and Tamil Wikipedia
organized by Noolaham foundation (meaning the Library foundation that works
for documenting Srilankan Tamil knowledge resoureces), Colombo. Students
from the Engineering faculty of Moratuwa University participated. The
discussion was also slightly off-beat as we discussed how transparency and
community building is done in Tamil Wikipedia and how it could be applied
to similar non-profit and volunteer based projects. Details and pictures at
http://ta.wikipedia.org/s/2swy
April 26 - Tamil Wikipedia introduction at National Arts and Literature
front, Colombo. Details and pictures at http://ta.wikipedia.org/s/2qdq
April 29 - Tamil Wikipedia introduction for students of Jaffna University's
campus at Vavuniya city. Details and pictures at
http://ta.wikipedia.org/s/2rk9 .
Besides this, few of us also participated in the Tamil Documentation
conference held during April 27, 28 and spread the news about Tamil
Wikipedia projects among the various scholars who came for the conference.
An informal discussion was also held with the members of Noolaham
foundation on ways to colloborate.
A huge share of contributions to Tamil Wikipedia comes from Tamils in
Srilanka and their diaspora. In this context, I find these meetings
important and hope to see increased activity from this region in the
future.
Ravi
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia
Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca)
Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 22:03:41 -0700
From: Geoff Brigham <gbrigham(a)wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
*
Hi Theo,
Thank you for your email. I'm truly sorry that you feel this way. I have
been thinking for some time about the issue of finding alternative
solutions to Golan-type issues, and frankly I have not been too optimistic
in the past. I think it is an important issue to our mission, however, and
I would like to take a closer look to make sure there is not a better
solution out there. Achal did contact me about it. Although I have
tremendous respect for Achal, his contact was not the reason for my desire
to look into this further with the community. As General Counsel, I tend
to exercise my own independent judgment. I have received a number of
inquiries and I am aware of the past discussions, and, to be honest, the
issue has been bugging me for some time: I’m not at all sure there is a
solution but I would like to look more closely, especially given the
ongoing community concern and available resources the coming month. If you
- or any other community member - had contacted me directly, that, in
addition to the community discussions, would have been important to me as
well. If the community feels this is a bad use of my resources, I am more
than willing to reconsider, but I don’t believe that is what people are
saying.
It is true that I do not post substantive statements on wikimedia-l
anymore. I focus on my team leaving more detailed and comprehensive
responses on wikilegal [1], our legal blogs [2], or on the wikis [3]. From
my point of view, these venues allow for a more comprehensive development
of sometimes difficult legal issues, serve as a more permanent source for
future reference and cross-links, and allow for greater community
participation on the issue at hand. I do try to announce and cross-link to
important legal postings via announce-l and wikimedia-l.
I was surprised to hear that individuals and committees are waiting weeks
for responses from Legal. We try to be as responsive as possible.
Sometimes people ask tough questions, and it takes time for us to figure
out the issue with the individual or committee at issue. But we stay in
close contact with those people, often sharing our thinking or drafts and
incorporating their feedback. With AffCom, for example, we have been quite
interactive as we try to figure out the naming issue and other legal
issues. Sometimes the discussion takes longer than we all would like, but
our practice, I believe, is to stay responsive and interactive as we work
out the solutions with our community members.
If you want to discuss with me offline or on the telephone, I will be more
than happy to do so (as I would with anybody in our community).
Take care,
Geoff
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal
[2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/legal/
[3] See, e.g.,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations#Though…
*
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Theo10011 <de10011(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sun, May 12, 2013 at 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia
Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca)
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:46 AM, Geoff Brigham <gbrigham(a)wikimedia.org
>wrote:
> As Achal pointed out, we will put resources into researching this issue in
> depth and hopefully finding a solution that may work. It will probably
> take a month or two to ensure we are looking at all possibilities to see
if
> this is possible. If you have any great ideas, please feel free to send
> them to me, and I will ensure our team will consider them fully.
>
> This will be an interesting project, and I greatly appreciate everyone's
> interest in finding a lawful solution that ensures the distribution of all
> materials in the public domain.
Well, this was interesting to note. In stark contrast to the other thread,
this email was disappointing for the wrong reasons, maybe it's for me
alone. It took about 70 emails and 3 threads, and 2 days of waiting to get
a reply from the concerned staff members, but I believe Achal forwarded
this to Wikimedia-l less than 12 hours before you responded on a Sunday and
agreed to devote a month's resources to it. I don't think more than 2-3
people responded to the issue either on this list or the Indian one. I
guess that's the sole difference of the position he occupies, speaking of
which, the advisory board appointments seem indefinite, and the list
doesn't seem to have been updated - for the past 2 years I have only seen
Achal identify himself as that. As far as I know Mr. Prabhala has not even
logged in to an existing wikisource project, or uploaded anything on
commons beyond anything relevant to the last grant.
I ask because this issue was brought up a couple of years ago on the same
list[1] and received a lot more attention locally than this time.
Completely regardless of the issue itself, I know of several individuals,
and committees waiting for answers from the legal department, and actually
expect to wait weeks. I barely see you respond directly on a list these
days, and you are agreeing to devote a month's resources at his behest
alone so quickly.
Glad to be reminded how somethings change and somethings stay the same. And
speaking for me alone, it's disappointing to note the difference in tone
above vs. the one being employed on the other thread.
-Theo
[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-August/004080.ht…
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
--
Geoff Brigham
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6750
gbrigham(a)wikimedia.org
*California Registered In-House Counsel*
*This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in
it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let
us know about the mistake. For legal reasons, I may only serve as an
attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation. This means I may not give legal
advice to or serve as a lawyer for community members, volunteers, or staff
members in their personal capacity.*
_______________________________________________
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Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia
Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca)
Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 13:16:20 -0700
From: Geoff Brigham <gbrigham(a)wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
As Achal pointed out, we will put resources into researching this issue in
depth and hopefully finding a solution that may work. It will probably
take a month or two to ensure we are looking at all possibilities to see if
this is possible. If you have any great ideas, please feel free to send
them to me, and I will ensure our team will consider them fully.
This will be an interesting project, and I greatly appreciate everyone's
interest in finding a lawful solution that ensures the distribution of all
materials in the public domain.
Geoff
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
We had several applicants to Google Summer of Code this year who come
from India, so I asked them to also please join this list to keep up
with the Wikimedia community in India. Hello to users Grv99, Prageck,
Rtdwivedi, Rahul21, Nilesh.c, Puneet kaur, and anyone else who has
joined. :-)
The Indian Wikimedia community is eager to share knowledge, host
technical events, and generally improve the sites and their content.
These new contributors are interested in helping specifically with the
tech side, so if you'd like to ask them for help with something, now is
a good time! (Except that many of them have exams.) :)
Thanks for joining the Wikimedia community!
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi David,
On Sunday 12 May 2013 07:33 PM, David Cuenca wrote:
> Hi Achal,
>
> For those cases there is a Wikisource clone called Wikilivres, whose server
> is in Canada and it is operated by a Canadian citizen.
> http://wikilivres.ca/
Thank you - I've seen it, and think it's great.
> It is not very fast, but it serves as storage for such cases since the
> Canadian copyright law is quite permissive in that regard (50 years after
> author/translator death).
> Then you can link the works from the Wikisource author page to the work
> page in Wikilivres as some Wikisources do.
So while I'm glad there's a relatively central source for such things, I
guess there'd be no problem hosting such content on Indian servers, say,
for work that's gone into the public domain on the basis of Indian
copyright law. My earlier email (and the originating question) was to
how to mesh Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource with such work - and
whether we could. Hence the interest in the law and its workarounds.
>
> If you have time, take also a look to the proposed improvements for
> Wikisource. Thanks!
> https://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_vision_development/Applying_the_WS_v…
This looks great, and I was wondering if the last point on the list
(working with other entities) also includes finding a way to placehold
works that have gone out of copyright in other countries, and are hosted
on, say, Wikilivres. That is, for people who consider themselves to be
working on Wikisource, and are dealing with such works, is there
anything you can offer them even if they have to host elsewhere?
>
> David ---User:Micru
>
>
> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 5:27 AM, Achal Prabhala <aprabhala(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Of relevance here: http://www.publicdomainday.**
>> org/sites/www.publicdomainday.**eu/files/World_copyright-**terms.jpg<http://www.publicdomainday.org/sites/www.publicdomainday.eu/files/World_cop…>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright
>> Issues
>> Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 14:51:27 +0530
>> From: Achal Prabhala <aprabhala(a)gmail.com>
>> To: Wikimedia India Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.**
>> wikimedia.org <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Balasankar,
>>
>> The question you raise is a very important one. The solution, however, is
>> not likely to be to host content in India (I don't speak for the Wikimedia
>> Foundation, but there are sound legal reasons why all Wikimedia content is
>> hosted in the US; mostly liability risk and freedom of expression and this
>> is unlikely to change).
>>
>> The default across Commons and Wikisource, the two projects that host the
>> bulk of public domain content (images, videos, sounds, books) in Wikimedia,
>> is the US copyright term - it's the only yardstick that matters for what
>> qualifies as public domain by virtue of being out of copyright. You are
>> absolutely right, however, in that there's a big difference btw US
>> copyright terms and those of other countries, for instance:
>>
>> For photographs, while the binding limit (Berne/TRIPs) is 25 years from
>> the making of the work, India is life of photographer + 60 years after
>> death, and in the US it is life + 70.
>>
>> For literary works, the binding limit (Berne/ TRIPs) is life + 50 years,
>> whereas in India it is life + 60, whereas in the US it is life + 70 or
>> 120/95 if made on work for hire.
>>
>> (The binding limit is the WTO mandated term that country members - US and
>> India and 150 others - have to follow. As you can see, typically, most
>> countries exceed the limit for reasons of their own, which they are allowed
>> to do, with the US exceeding in far greater amount than India.)
>>
>> In short, there can be a difference of between 10 and 40 years between the
>> time a work goes into the public domain in a country with shorter terms
>> than the US (any number of countries in the non-Anglo-European world) and
>> the US. This seriously affects even 'Indian' works (where India is the
>> first country of publication) because of the copyright protection granted
>> to such works in the US, thus effectively placing them under copyright for
>> our purposes within Wikimedia long after they've gone in to the public
>> domain in their source country.
>>
>> The case to consider here is Golan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
>> Golan_v._Holder <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder>
>>
>> A summary of the US Supreme Court decision in this case is - US law trumps
>> international agreements, so the US copyright term holds within US
>> territory, and restores copyright protection to any works that have gone
>> into the public domain by virtue of a shorter copyright term in another
>> country. Because Wikimedia servers are based in the US, Golan applies to us.
>>
>> But your question is an extremely pertinent one, and if we were to find
>> unusual solutions to it, they would seem to lie in:
>>
>> 1) Whether hosting on US servers for a global audience makes any
>> difference, since we do not serve readers only bound by US law (Wikimedia
>> reader numbers bear this out, ie US readership = minority percentage of
>> whole) and whether we specifically have anything special on the basis of
>> which to mount some kind of strategic litigation on the issue of allowing
>> us to exploit the shortest possible route to public domain anywhere in the
>> world for all or some of our readers.
>>
>> 2) Whether hosting on US servers but using publicly audited geolocation to
>> switch off for readers from IP addresses where the material in question is
>> still under copyright is a legally and operationally feasible workaround
>> (connected to whether Wikimedia Tech thinks this is both doable and worth
>> our while to do)
>>
>> 3) Whether, if all fails and there is no getting around this in any way,
>> Commons and Wikisource (if there is sufficient interest in those
>> communities) should be interested in looking at a way of allowing external
>> links to chapter-managed local sites from the US-served base to see the
>> material in question; and if this is something, say, the India chapter
>> wants and is willing to do, whether this route poses any legal risks.
>>
>> In any case, I passed around your question to a few friends for comments
>> and suggestions - as well as to Geoff Brigham at the Wikimedia Foundation,
>> who is not too hopeful for a solution but is very receptive to looking into
>> it and getting back to us - and I'll tell you when I know something.
>>
>> Meanwhile, if you have other ways of looking into creative solutions
>> around this problem (not at all easy to crack, but the benefits are
>> significant) - or if anyone else on this list does - you should.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Achal
>>
>>
>>
>> On Friday 10 May 2013 10:20 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Srikanth,
>>> I didnt quite understand what you meant by example.
>>> An example for a work which is in public domain in India and not in US -
>>> Works by Changampuzha Krishnapillai ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**
>>> Changampuzha_Krishna_Pillai<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changampuzha_Krishna_Pillai>).
>>> He passed away in 1948, and hence it is 65 years after the author's
>>> death. So the books are copyright-free in India as of now (in pubic domain).
>>> But they
>>>
>>> 1. were not published before 1923
>>> 2. were not in the public domain in India as of 1 January 1996 (
>>> because criteria of "60 years after author's death" not satisfied
>>> on 1996)
>>>
>>> Hence they are not in public domain according to US Laws. So we cannot
>>> store them in US servers.
>>>
>>> The main problem is India considers copyright based on date of author's
>>> death and US does it based on date of publication.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Balasankar C
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2013/5/10 Srikanth Ramakrishnan <srik.ramk(a)wikimedia.in <mailto:
>>> srik.ramk(a)wikimedia.in**>>
>>>
>>> Hi Balasankar,
>>> Can you point out specific instances and show when and where the
>>> book or publication was first published? If the works are still
>>> copyrighted in India, then they should be copyrighted in the US as
>>> well, generally speaking. The term India awards to creators is
>>> lesser than the one provided in the US under copyright laws.
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath
>>> <c.balasankar(a)gmail.com <mailto:c.balasankar@gmail.com**>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>> As most of you know, the Indian copyright law says that a book
>>> gets relieved of copyright after 60 years from the author's
>>> death. But this is not the case with US Law. As given here
>>> <https://upload.wikimedia.org/**wikipedia/commons/9/9b/**
>>> Copyrightterm.pdf<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Copyrightterm.pdf>
>>> , of all the works published outside US, only those published
>>> before 1923 are directly in the public domain. The ones
>>> published between 1923 and 1977 without compliance to the US
>>> formalities will be in the public domain only if they are in
>>> the public domain in their source country as of 1 January
>>> 1996. Almost all the other categories of published works will
>>> not be in the public domain until 95 years after publishing.
>>>
>>> This induces a confusion and when looked in a legal
>>> perspective, most of the books in Indian Wikisources, are
>>> still not in public domain and hence must be removed. This
>>> makes a huge negative impact on the hard work done by
>>> contributors. Their contributions are wasted which may cause
>>> them to stop contributing. In short, this may be a negative
>>> impact on Wikimedia's image in the society.
>>>
>>> The only solution to this problem is to *host the servers of
>>> Indian Wikimedia services in India*, so that the data we
>>> upload is stored under Indian Laws. Can Wikimedia India
>>> Chapter do anything on this? We can plan and conduct a
>>> fundraiser in India to raise money for the hosting expenses.
>>>
>>> Please consider this issue with maximum priority as it
>>> involves legal procedures and related headaches.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Balasankar C
>>> https://ml.wikisource.org/**wiki/User:Balasankarc<https://ml.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Balasankarc>
>>> Regards,
>>> Balasankar C
>>>
>>>
>>> ______________________________**_________________
>>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.**wikimedia.org<Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@**lists.wikimedia.org<Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences
>>> visit
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/**wikimediaindia-l<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Srikanth Ramakrishnan
>>> Treasurer,
>>> Wikimedia Chapter [India]
>>>
>>> Donate to the Wikimedia India Chapter today
>>> <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/**Donations<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donations>
>>> ______________________________**_________________
>>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.**wikimedia.org<Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@**lists.wikimedia.org<Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/**wikimediaindia-l<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ______________________________**_________________
>>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.**wikimedia.org<Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visithttps://
>>> lists.wikimedia.**org/mailman/listinfo/**wikimediaindia-l<http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.**org <Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l>
>>
>
>
Hi all,
As most of you know, the Indian copyright law says that a book gets
relieved of copyright after 60 years from the author's death. But this is
not the case with US Law. As given
here<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Copyrightterm.pdf>,
of all the works published outside US, only those published before
1923
are directly in the public domain. The ones published between 1923 and 1977
without compliance to the US formalities will be in the public domain only
if they are in the public domain in their source country as of 1 January
1996. Almost all the other categories of published works will not be in the
public domain until 95 years after publishing.
This induces a confusion and when looked in a legal perspective, most of
the books in Indian Wikisources, are still not in public domain and hence
must be removed. This makes a huge negative impact on the hard work done by
contributors. Their contributions are wasted which may cause them to stop
contributing. In short, this may be a negative impact on Wikimedia's image
in the society.
The only solution to this problem is to *host the servers of Indian
Wikimedia services in India*, so that the data we upload is stored under
Indian Laws. Can Wikimedia India Chapter do anything on this? We can plan
and conduct a fundraiser in India to raise money for the hosting expenses.
Please consider this issue with maximum priority as it involves legal
procedures and related headaches.
Regards,
Balasankar C
https://ml.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Balasankarc
Regards,
Balasankar C
