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

Wed Aug 4 23:14:15 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ec