---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yoni Weiden <yonidebest(a)gmail.com>
Date: 5 Dec 2007 11:50
Subject: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear Wikimedia Foundation people,
The page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon in commons includes
racist cartoons against a representative of the Jewish nation, and thus,
against the Jewish people themselves. I seems like Commons does not have a
NPOV policy and thus the pictures will be there until they manage to create
one. I do not agree that such pictures be presented in Ariel Sharon's page
and I think you should interfere (as commons community clearly don't have
the policies to deal with this case) and correct this serious offence before
it is released to the press in Israel.
Thanks,
Yoni Weiden
aka Yonidebest@hewiki
_______________________________________________
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Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hello everyone,
today one of my photographs was again published in a newspaper, without
attribution nor licencing. I phoned the newspaper and it turns out that the
photograph in question happened to be "in a photo database", without any
further information (How it popped up there like this is anyone's guess, and
I am investigating this question).
The interesting part is that the journalist told me that he had checked the
metadata before publication. Having found nothing, he went on saying "all
rights reserved". Hence the bit of interesting information:
*we should use metadata to specify licencing and attribution information.*
I'll sleep a little bit less stupid tonight.
--- Rama
> Earlier: "... I certainly didn't get the
> suggestion we should disregard the
> original argument due to it allegedly
> being racist out of what you said,
> and I doubt many people did..."
Peter Blaise responds: I did. Look at the subject line:
[Subject: Racism in Commons]
Doh!
This whole thread is about pointing the finger at racism.
As always, whenever we try to point something out, there are three
fingers pointing back. The original poster was trying to point out what
they thought was racism, yet I see the original poster's premise as
racist. So, I also found the original post racist. My Jewish friends
would only hope that the person propagating such racism should not
identify their cause as Jewish! There is nothing we know of in
Jewishness that is either "race" based, nor calls for suppression of
creative expression and dialogue, nor calls to protect anyone from
provocative intellectual challenge no matter how base (or not) they find
that challenge.
I believe the original poster's comments would be best taken up in
dialogue with the cartoonist (... I'd love to eavesdrop on that
conversation!), not with us. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:555/Latuff and
http://www.infoshop.org/graphics/latuff/LatuffSP.jpg As the "commons",
we're a publishing house, not the authors (though many of us may wear
both hats).
The cartoons are public record anyway, originally published elsewhere...
450 more at
http://images.google.com/images?&safe=off&q=Latuff&btnG=Search+Images !
How can anyone report on them and discuss them if we can't see them IN
our dialogs in the various wikis because one of us has closed their
minds, and wants the rest of us not to have the same chance to look at
them as the original poster has?
Hey, I GET the point of THIS one:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Free_Myanmar_by_Latuf
f2.jpg
More Carlos Latuff links:
http://www.matteo-ghione.it/latuff.htmhttp://www.matteo-ghione.it/matteo_ghione_comics_against_racism.htmhttp://www.matteo-ghione.it/no_racism_news.htm
</rant off>
... okay, okay, back to "commons" ...
HVALA ŠTO MI ŠALJETE POŠTU A JA JE NE ŽELIM ODAVNO.NITI JE MOGUĆE ODJAVITI.A POKUŠAVAO SAM VIŠE PUTA.S POŠTOVANJEM G.DIVAC
-----Original Message-----
From: commons-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: 2007-12-06 20:00:02 GMT+08:00
To: commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Commons-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 8
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Commons-l digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons (Pedro Sanchez)
2. Re: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons (Daniel Schwen)
3. Re: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons (Chris McKenna)
4. Re: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons (Oldak Quill)
5. Re: [Foundation-l] Requirements for a strong copyleft license
(Platonides)
6. Re: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons (Gizmo II)
7. Re: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons (Rama Rama)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 10:24:16 -0600
From: "Pedro Sanchez" <pdsanchez(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
<commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<9ac45b70712050824l340fc337uc28e75bedbb39f8b(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Dec 5, 2007 10:13 AM, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) This is the Commons mailing list. I would be grateful if comments could
> be made in English.
>
Thank you. I thought, since the website is multilingual, and the irc
channel is multilingual, I foolishly thought this would also be
multilingual
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 10:30:05 -0600
From: Daniel Schwen <lists(a)schwen.de>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <200712051030.05422.lists(a)schwen.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15"
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:PS
> "Private image collections and the like are generally not wanted.
> Wikimedia Commons is not a web host for e.g. private party photos,
Sorry, but I don't see how this applies to this specific case. Apart from the
holocaust-denial connotation of these so called cartoons, the contest which
they came out of was fairly well publicized in the media. So there is some
encyclopedic relevance to it.
And by the way I'd be the least worried that these images attack Ariel Sharon,
its scope is much broader.
Please compare this with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jyllands-Posten-pg3-article-in-Sept-30-2…
We sould apply the same standards to the holocaust-denial cartoons as we do to
the mohammed cartoons. That means showing them as a fair use version, and
thus due to licensing issues not on commons but on wikipedia, where they are
used in an appropriate context accompanied by a critical discussion.
--
[[en:User:Dschwen]]
[[de:Benutzer:Dschwen]]
[[commons:User:Dschwen]]
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 16:47:50 +0000 (GMT)
From: Chris McKenna <cmckenna(a)sucs.org>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0712051633340.22126(a)silver.sucs.org>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Daniel Schwen wrote:
> We sould apply the same standards to the holocaust-denial cartoons as we do to
> the mohammed cartoons. That means showing them as a fair use version, and
> thus due to licensing issues not on commons but on wikipedia, where they are
> used in an appropriate context accompanied by a critical discussion.
I'm a little out of date with the fair use policy on en.wp (and don't know
the policy on other wps), but as I understand it, if there is a Free
version available (which if the image was on commons I presume their
must be) then the view is that (Wikipedia/the Foundation) cannot claim
fair use.
If I am correct in this, then if the images have encyclopaedic merit and
projects want to inlcudem them, they need to be hosted on Commons.
In my opinion, we should not be censoring the Commons or applying double
standards to any content by removing material that is offensive to one
group of people and not removing content that is offensive to another
group of people. Almost every image of a person stands a good chance of
offending somebody somewhere, so we should either delete all the images
depicting humans or drawings of humans and anything else that offends
people or we should allow the inclusion of everything that meets the
Commons' inclusion policy (basically, anything useful for a Wikimedia
project that can be legally hosted by Commons).
Either directly or via the "disclaimers" or "About Wikimedia Commons"
links at the bottom of every page, we should make it clear though that
Commons is not censored and contains content that may offend. It should
also make clear that we do not encourage or support racism, sexism,
religious or any other form of discrimination, but that as such
discriminations exist, Commons may contain images that depicts them.
Chris
--
Chris McKenna
cmckenna(a)sucs.org
www.sucs.org/~cmckenna
The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes,
but with the heart
Antoine de Saint Exupery
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 17:29:33 +0000
From: "Oldak Quill" <oldakquill(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
<commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<54f6f2050712050929o317be9f2l20f859e9cd7e66bf(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On 05/12/2007, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 3) Not all Jews are Israelis, and not all Israelis are Jewish. Neither all
> Israelis nor all Jews agree with the policies of Ariel Sharon. Criticism of
> a policy, however disgraceful it is, does not amount to racism. That there
> are groups determined to identify any criticism of the Israeli government
> with antisemitism does not imply that such attacks should be tolerated on a
> mailing list unrelated to Middle East politics.
People who equate Israelis to Jews, Jews to Israelis, and claim that
the leader of Israel is the leader of the Jewish people are Zionists.
Zionists are themselves racist (the very notion of a racial state
(i.e. Israel) is racist) and there are many Jews who oppose Zionism.
Zionists often accuse any opponent of Israel as being anti-Semites (a
very powerful, emotive term). We shouldn't let the emotion of this
term interfere with rational discussion about political cartoons.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:32:51 +0100
From: Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Requirements for a strong
copyleft license
To: commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Cc: cc-licenses(a)lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <fj75e3$72p$1(a)ger.gmane.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Daniel Kinzler wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> [...]
>> After rereading the CC-BY legal code it does appear you (and others
>> who made this point) are correct, and I was quite mistaken about the
>> strength of the CC-BY license.
>> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
>> "You may Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work only under the terms
>> of this License."
>>
>> Indeed it seems CC-BY is already the "weak copyleft" I was thinking
>> CC-BY-SA is... CC-BY is much stronger than I realised. I thought CC-BY
>> just meant "include a byline with my name".
>
> No it isn't, there is one important difference: derivative work, i.e. modified
> versions. Again, compare to the LGPL: modified versions must be distributed
> under the same license (though larger works which use/incorporate clearly
> demarked LGPL components do not). This is not true for CC-BY: if i make a
> derivative of a CC-BY work, I have to attribute the author, but i can license my
> version under whatever conditions i like. That's not weak copyleft, that's no
> copyleft at all.
I like that concaption. However, as simple it is to differenciate when
it's a text/image issue, what happens when the modified version is also
an image, but breader. Eg. the virgin case. Is that a composition of
your photo with the text and background (it would have been composed in
layers) or simply a derivative work?
The LGPL doesn't either define the difference.
Daniel Kinzler wrote:
> something like "CC-BY-SA/commons-mod".
Don't call it so. People would start confusing it with Cc-by-sa. Maybe
CC-BY-LSA (Less Share-Alike) following LGPL sample?
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 18:48:43 -0300
From: "Gizmo II" <nahuel.gizmo(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Racism in Commons
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
<commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
<ce2adba40712051348j2cb9b6cep3d18f7f1f9820023(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Dec 5, 2007 12:41 PM, Santiago Becerra Carrillo <sanbec(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Estoy totalmente en contra de la eliminaci?n de la secci?n ?Cartoons? del
> art?culo de Ariel Sharon. Calificar esas vi?etas de racistas es tergiversar.
> ?Acaso no se se puede criticar a un pol?tico israel?? ?Si en vez de Sharon
> fuera Sarkozy, Zapatero o Bush alguien hablar?a de racismo?
>
> Lo sucedido en este caso es simplemente una censura absolutamente
> contraria al NPOV.
>
> Este cambio http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ariel_Sharon&diff=8840593&ol…
> me parece muy desafortunado
>
> La versi?n
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ariel_Sharon&oldid=8840580de… recuperarse
>
> Sanbec
>
>
No puedo dejar de estar de acuerdo con Sanbec, esta paranoia persecutoria y
la man?a que tiene la fundaci?n de querer quedar bien con todo el mundo ya
se va tornando irrisoria.
Las historietas son lo que son, historietas. ?Desde cu?ndo se pide que ?stas
sean pol?ticamente correctas? (siempre cre? que la sola idea era lo
contrario).
Creo que las im?genes deber?an dejarse junto a un comentario como
"historietas/im?genes anti-Sharon" o "que representan a Sharon
negativamente".
Rama: Pedro have already said it, Commons is multilingual, "the place where
all wikis collide". This is not en.wiki mailing list.
--
Gizmo
http://imperiogremlin.blogspot.com
On 03/12/2007, Gavin Baker <gavin(a)gavinbaker.com> wrote:
> > From: "Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com>
> > On 02/12/2007, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I do not believe there is any point to having a copyleft license for
> >> media which isn't strong. Does anyone here disagree?
> >
> > At the risk of being stoned... yeah.
> > I just don't consider an article that uses a photograph of mine as
> > illustration to be a a derivative of my work.
> > I don't want an article, blog or book author to have to license their
> > whole text under CC-BY-SA just because they use my image.
> > HOWEVER, I do want them to be obliged to make explicit the license of
> > my work, that is offer it to others under the same conditions. My
> > work, not theirs. That is how I think "weak copyleft" differs from
> > CC-BY or PD.
>
> Actually, this *is* how CC BY works. The requirements of CC BY include
> both attribution of authorship (including a linkback) and notification
> of the license.
After rereading the CC-BY legal code it does appear you (and others
who made this point) are correct, and I was quite mistaken about the
strength of the CC-BY license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
"You may Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work only under the terms
of this License."
Indeed it seems CC-BY is already the "weak copyleft" I was thinking
CC-BY-SA is... CC-BY is much stronger than I realised. I thought CC-BY
just meant "include a byline with my name".
I am probably not the only one who had this impression, because the
Wikimedia Commons summary as it stands is deeply misleading.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Cc-by-3.0
How embarrassing.
So, is this understanding correct: using CC-BY, a reuser could create
a derivative work that was not freely licensed, but provide info that
the source image was CC-BY (and provide link), and that would be
acceptable? Is that true?
Well... now I think shoring up CC-BY-SA to be a strong copyleft is a
good idea, since Greg is correct...if we can correct the
misperceptions of people like me then I don't see why this idea
wouldn't receive widespread support.
cheers,
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
On Dec 2, 2007 4:52 AM, Javier Candeira <javier(a)candeira.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > I do not believe there is any point to having a copyleft license for
> > media which isn't strong. Does anyone here disagree?
>
> I do, my photos are by-sa but newspaper using them for illustration doesn't
> have to be (that's my intention when licensing, at least them), as long as
> the photos themselves are labeled with the proper attribution and licensing.
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same
attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
The Definition of Free Cultural Works is in the process of being
translated into 20 languages -- it is the basis of the Wikimedia
Foundation's licensing policy.
http://freedomdefined.org/Definitionhttp://freedomdefined.org/Translations
Translations in Czech, Greek, Finish, German, and Swedish need final
review from an independent reader; other languages are in progress.
Please help to translate this key document into as many languages as
possible. :-)
Thanks,
Erik
Rama, nice post. :)
On 07/11/2007, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Yeah. Looking at his talk page makes me sad -- the usual round of
> scripted & stacked image deletion warnings for copyright reasons. We
> need socially more appropriate ways to deal with copyright issues.
The thing is...
Copyright is hard. It is a brick wall that is high, and I don't know
of any way of getting around it easily or quickly that isn't cheating,
ie fundamentally wrong, and likely to bite you on the arse in the
future. It's like weight loss, there is only one way that works - the
hard way.
You can be a great Wikimedian and not run into copyright for a long
time. You do not have to have a good understanding of copyright in
order to be a good contributor. This is because when you're only
contributing your own work, you don't run up against the copyright
wall. I'm giving my text up for free, OK, and anyone can use it
however they like, OK. But *as soon as* you want to include someone
else's work -- and for the vast majority of people, this is when they
want to include an image by someone else -- you meet the copyright
wall.
It's just so hard. Even if you wanted to minimise troubles and only
pick images from Flickr, you have to know which licenses are the
acceptable ones. Then - is this a derivative of anything else? Is it
reasonable that this user is in fact the copyright holder? Has this
user understood what they have agreed to by picking this license? What
if they change it? And this is an easy case. Pick up random-website
"attribution" like statements, or PD-age related questions and you can
soon give yourself a nice headache, trying to find the correct answer
when the fact is there is no one in the world that knows for sure what
it is, you only get that certainty with an expensive lawsuit.
There is no shortcut through these questions. There's no alternative
but to face each one as it comes and see how it applies to that
situation.
Given that Wikimedia = free content + anyone can edit, it seems that
by default it(we) must also take on the task of educating the general
public about copyright issues. No one else is doing it, and it's an
issue that has to be confronted, so it looks like it's up to us.
The instantaneous editing feature of Wikimedia conflicts with the
slower copyright learning process. It's pretty obvious that automated
templates are not the best solution to this overall dilemma but I
don't have any great ideas about where to next.
regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
(This is a posting to multiple lists.)
As you've probably read, the Wikimedia Foundation has agreed in
principle to support an update of Wikipedia content from the GFDL to
CC-BY-SA, pending a community approval of such a migration. The FSF
and Creative Commons are supporting us to make this transition
possible.
One open issue is the way both the GFDL and CC-BY-SA deal with
embedded media files like images, sounds, and videos. The FSF
interprets the GFDL so that e.g. a photograph embedded into an article
would require the article to be "copyleft" under the GFDL; Creative
Commons does not interpret CC-BY-SA in this fashion (at least
according to some public statements).
The actual clauses are very similar, however, and I believe what is
really needed is a license that gives authors the choice of "strong
copyleft" for embedded media: the work into which the media are
embedded (whether either work is text, sound, film, a rich media mix,
or whatever) should be licensed under a copyleft license.
Wikimedia could then allow contributors of multimedia to choose this
license, and to change files under the GFDL (as opposed to text) to
it.
>From _my_ point of view, the key requirements are:
* It should apply to any type of embedded media, i.e. not limited just
to photos embedded into text;
* It should, in principle, be very similar to the CC-BY-SA license,
except for its provision on "Collections";
* It should be adaptable to as many legal frameworks as possible;
* IMPORTANT - I believe it should allow mixing of similar licenses,
e.g. CC-BY-SA into BSD -- the Definition of Free Cultural Works
endorsed by Wikimedia could be a guideline as to which licenses can be
mixed: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
I would like to kickstart the discussion to get a first for such a
license - it could be called CC-BY-SA+ - written as soon as possible.
:-) Perhaps we should have a dedicated mailing list where stakeholders
from multiple projects can discuss it?
Best,
Erik Möller
Member of the Board, Wikimedia Foundation
On Dec 3, 2007 3:32 PM, Terry Hancock <hancock(a)anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> Of course, courts have in the past invalidated contracts on the basis
> that they make "unreasonable" or "unexpected" demands that were not
> understood by the party agreeing to the contract, and so invalidated
> contracts. So, there's probably *some* limit on copyleft. But I'm
> reasonably certain that "what could be considered a derivative under
> copyright law" is not it.
Without delving into the weeds of licenses vs contracts ... In the
absence of a license you have no right to distribute the covered work
at all. It is the all-rights-reserved default nature of copyright
that largely gives copyleft its teeth.
In the US at least, with the enormous dependence the software
industry has on EULAs, you can bet that any court verdict which allows
terms to be removed would be quickly 'solved' with the introduction of
new law from the lobbied^Wlegislative branch of government.
[snip]
> While I do find there are times when publishing free-licensed images
> alongside non-free text is desirable, this is not my main concern. For
> such functionality, the CC-By license is nearly as good as CC-By-SA
> anyway, so I agree with that point.
This has been my position. I've not yet figured out the gaps which
are preventing agreement from some others.
> For me, the main fear is a collision between various copyleft
> free-licenses, who all have essentially the same intent, but necessarily
> have different implementations, because they are designed for different
> creative domains.
[snip]
> So, we want to keep copyleft from crossing certain domain barriers and
> binding works in unreasonably restrictive ways. We risk making the
> "commons" as difficult to navigate as the fenced-in world of
> conventional copyright.
[snip]
The *ideal*, I think, is that copylefed works should be usable as
components in copylefted works, as well as in works which are licensed
in a manner which is strictly less restrictive (such as X11 licensed,
or CC-By) which results in the whole being effectively copylefted,
even if some of the parts are not when used separately.
Fully achieving that ideal may well be impossible because, as you
pointed out .. different types of work differ. What might be an
acceptable restriction on a piece of pure art might be considered an
unacceptable restriction from the perspective of purely functional
works (like we sometimes find in software).
That said, It would be useful if we could say with confidence we at
least know what the ideal is...
