On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Yann Forget <yannfo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
These are famous and valuable pictures, including two
featured
pictures on the Hebrew Wikipedia.
Lots of famous pictures are copyrighted. They can't be hosted on Commons
just because they're famous.
These files have already been
deleted and restored 3 times.
That would be because you undeleted them without taking them to Deletion
Review. And now you are taking the discussion to yet another inappropriate
forum. Why are you opposed to using Deletion Review?
When the URAA issue was not convincing
enough, a new reson for deletion was advanced: that publication
details were not given. Anyone with 2 bits of common sense can
understand that these famous pictures were published soon after they
were taken. There is no reasonable doubt about that. In addition,
publication is not a requirement for being in the public domain in
Israel.
Images on Commons must be public domain in both the source country and the
US. The images are definitely copyrighted in the US. The question is
whether they are copyrighted due to following US formalities or due to the
URAA. Without details about how they were published, it is impossible to
determine which is the case.
After I restored these images, I was threatem by LGA, who is a
delete-only account:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Us…
There, more contributors argue on this issue.
By asking absurb requirements about publication details, these
contributors threaten the project as a whole. If insisting, it will
lead people to upload pictures like these locally instead of Commons.
Then the idea of a central repository for all Wikimedia projects is
gone.
Deleting copyrighted images from Commons doesn't "threaten the project as a
whole". If you want to argue that they should be kept on the URAA
technicality, you should present a case at Deletion Review, preferably with
some evidence to support your case. Wheel warring over a small handful of
images does more to damage the project (by eroding trust good will between
participants) than deleting these images does.
I realize it is frustrating having to deal with the United States' absurd
copyright laws, but unfortunately, those are the laws we are stuck with for
the time being. Even if these files are ultimately kept on Commons, they
will still be vulnerable to deletion by complaint of the copyright owner
(presumably the government of Israel), regardless of which circumstances
they are copyrighted under. You might argue that the government of Israel
would never assert its US copyright over the images, but there is no way we
can be sure of that. Personally, I don't really care if we keep the images
or not, but we have deletion discussion forums for a reason. Commons
operates by consensus, not by unilateral force of will. In the future I
hope you will choose to utilize those forums rather than acting
out-of-process.
Cheers,
Ryan Kaldari