Brion Vibber a écrit: I have doubts. Many images are indicated copyrighted, but that the author gave permission for use. And they are in Wikipedia. When we wrote the images copyright pages with Alex, this case was mentionned, and we have some images under that copyright. Again, we think that it is better than no image at all, and better than image under fair use. So, where would be the difference ? There is perhaps another possibility as well. That the description page of the image contains automatically the name of who uploaded it. At least, it would require that Anthony remove manually this information from all description pages before being able to claim copyright on them. Sure, I will contact a french lawyer, pay him 2 months worth salary, for him to tell me in 2 years, that though I am the owner of the copyright, I can sit on it, and look at someone else claiming he is. What are my legal rights upon contents on a website hosted in another country ? They are null, and I cannot do anything. That is equal, we can just pretend there is no problem, but keep on asking people to contribute freely their work under public domain at least. It will be more honest. We have thousand of images to remove then. Let's start now.

Yann Forget a écrit: Okay. So another option I see to ensure the gfdl is respected is to embbed gfdl copyright and author name in any picture uploaded. That was what Aoineko was initially doing, and I thought it a strange idea, but it may not be so strange after all. Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ACopyrights we write That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). We mislead people in thinking that this is true, when clearly this is not. And actually, when an author credit is *not* satisfied, we just say "well, your problem, you were nice to contribute. No, Wikipedia will not respect its engagement, you have to fight for your rights alone" Look, I spend hours in november and december writing the ecology article Look at the credit given to the five main authors http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Ecology&action=… That is interesting no ? Or why is the article on wheat entirely writen by one person ? http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Wheat&action=hi… Finally, there no references to authors, no reference to wikipedia, and no clear reference to gfdl, and that is ok ? And we should individually defend our rights, and the project, with no collective help whatsoever ? Sorry, but if we work together on a project, we somehow share both the benefits and the troubles together. We are stronger to defend ourselves together as well. Answering to people who stupidely read a sort of "charter" that well, yes, this is your problem right, won't make it. We know gfdl is broken, but when someone suggest to change it, people say, "oh but we can't do that to old contributors". True; So, to preverse a couple of old contributors, we just let the project be stripped. Right now, we need people to know us more, we need more contributors, we need to be trusted. Is telling contributors to take care of the infrigments all by themselves a good way to show that we care about them ? I do not think so. Is listing as the 5 (well 6) main contributors of the Antony project are by Daniel Mayer, Andre Engels, Bryan Derksen, Brion Vibber, Michael Hardy, Anthony DiPierro a good way to show people that we care about them, that we value their contributions ? I do not think so. But I am glad to discover that I am totally minor contributor compared to Anthony DiPierro. May I also attack him for violation of the gfdl as he is probably a lesser contributor than I ? Is it not a violation to just cite 6 people among thousands ? How did he judged these 6 people are the main authors of the encyclopedia ? I hope the 5 listed people feel confortable and happy at least. I disagree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ACopyrights if you read it, allows that type of mention. You also know that fair use does not exist in France for example. Now, if National Geographic allow us to use 500 absolutely great pictures we can't find anywhere else, I would support this use. When someone offers you something, you do not frown the nose. I think it is more reasonable to use a copyrighted images offered by its original author, that to just ask nothing, use it and hope that no one will ever discover the use in question. Changing minds is another issue. That would indeed be a great feature :-) I support this. Taking it seriously should mean taking position all together as a group. Not just answering people it is their problem. Yes, but the pictures will be less nice with a huge gfdl embedded mention in the middle of them :-)

Yann Forget a écrit: if the end user is the one reading wikipedia, there is *no* difference. If the end user is one who want to reuse the content in particular in a commercial project, it is likely that it will make little difference as well. If the image is properly labeled, it is his choice to take a risk in using a fair use image (for commercial reasons...), and his choice to contact the copyright owner of a "under permission" picture. And likely he won't have the permission. However, if the end user is one wanting to use the image for a personal website, or an educational website, I would rather recommand him not to his the fair use image. However, we may strongly suggest him to contact the copyright owner, to obtain permission to reuse the image. I guess that in case of personal websites, and educational ones, the permission will probably be granted quite easily, and the user will take benefit of this image use. In many websites, some pictures are displayed under copyright, but it is mentionned that with a link to the original picture, or mention of the original author, and just by asking, one may get the permission. I did that a couple of times (for wikipedia as well, for content), and I finally got the full freedom to use the content quite easily. In short, it is not perfect, but ihmo, with permission is sometimes better than no pictures at all. It requires more work from the end user, but if they really want it, it is better than no image at all. :-) I had a lot of pleasure reading that :-) I somehow agree with both of you on some points. Well, I talked about it with Anthony. And his comments were doubled. First, he said he was willing to try to import history of articles, history of image upload. But some people say he won't do that. If he is really willing and able to do that, that settles the case. He also said that that since I was only a pseudonyme, and a very minor editor, I had no say whatsoever, and there was no reason I be given any credit for the work I gave to Wikipedia. The credit of my work, be it in articles I wrote nearly alone or with other minor editors, or be it in pictures I took hours to get right, and that are entirely my work alone, was to be offered to the five main editors of Wikipedia, as a unique document. I guess I have the choice between admitting my work as a photographer and as an editor was in reality entirely done by Maverick, Brion, André, Brian and Anthony himself. Or I have to take care of protecting a little credit for the 2 years of hard work I offered to Wikipedia project myself. I would not feel so insulted I think if I were sometimes praised about what I do as an editor :-) But no praise, job credit given to other people, and perhaps even my images under Anthony copyright now, I find a little hard to swallow. So I could 1) pay an american lawyer or 2) try to see how I can get the website down myself or 3) behave like a vandal in his place. Admitely, I like option 2, but option 3 might be fun :-) Still, Anthony admitted that he did not care getting sued, since that would bring him fame. Seriously, (do not hit me :-)), we should finally do this french association asap, so we can at least try to protect the french wikipedia before it is too late.

Yann Forget a écrit: well...I am not sure I am the best choice on image copyright matter conflict. I mean, I have rather strong opinions on that And after all, did not I just deleted rules on the matter :-)))))) It is (or was) counting edits whatever the type of pages. Rambot is in the list, but was not counted by Anthony. The latter only kept real names. Whatever This type of page (most active contributors) is more dangerous than beneficial. At best, it should be just entirely neglected. You do not measure people by their number of save hit. You do not measure people that way. Some work more on the software, some on the articles, some doing promotion, some looking for vandals. And even on articles, there are so many types of different activities, providing content, organising information, fixing spelling, wikifying, checking facts...reverting vandalism, adding protection messages. All these activities are good and necessary. Not all this take the same amount of time, and measuring people involvment by the number of hits is just plain xxx And not only is it ridiculous, but dangerous as well look, if that page did not exist, how would anyone believing Wikipedia is one entire document be able to "respect" the 5 main authors rule ? Oh ! You noticed ? :-) I already helped to do this with the english wikimedia one. And that plain irritated me. I do not wish to be irritated these days. I need peace for a number of reasons. (good luck with Stuart ;-)) When I read the wikimedia bylaws, I concluded that what should link all the associations together was a common charter, to which all associations would agree. Here is a sentence I would have loved to see at the last item of a global mission statement we would all have adopted together We agree to * respect the autonomy of member associations, but require of all adherence to WikiMedia mission, and commitment to quality, openness and respect of members ...or anything similar ...with above description of WikiMedia mission I do not think there is much sense working on an association setting without discussing at the same time what unite us together. But when I suggested working on the charter, my... reactions were quite limited; So...I wait for better times :-)

Erik Moeller wrote: I guess I'm confused about option 2. How does banning him from editing Wikipedia in any way damage his ability to fork it? -Mark

Anthere wrote: But, I can help. This is my job, and this is what I view to be one of the most important roles for the Wikimedia Foundation, the defense of the freedom of our work. --Jimbo

To give people an idea of the scale of the problem Morwen and I did a survey this evening. The summary is on: User:Secretlondon/Images/Summary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Secretlondon/Images/Summary) We looked at all the images on articles of heads of state (from the [[List of national leaders]]), and all the images on articles on the 100 largest cities. We then looked to see what, if any, copyright info they had. On the heads of state - 28% were definitely public domain or free usage. (these were official US government photos or from the organisation of american states). Most of the US government ones feature the president of wherever shaking hands with Bush. Remember that most Governments claim copyright on images. The images of cities were similar - except that we got photographs taken by users. 46 were still unattributed and only 17 public domain and 13 gfdl. I hope this helps Caroline / Secretlondon Jimmy Wales wrote: