On 26 June 2014 12:22, Chris McKenna <cmckenna@sucs.org> wrote:
THIS is the crux of the issue. You are insisting on statue or caselaw to prove that these files are Free beyond ALL conceivable doubt because the copyright outside Israel is legally ambiguous but in practice any copyright that may or may not exist is extremely unlikely to be enforced.

The Wikimedia Foundation lawyers have said that it is OK to host, and the majority of people complaining about Commons want Commons to host, files that are free beyond reasonable doubt unless and until a _valid_ takedown request is received that removes the doubt.

In the Israeli example, the positions can be summed up as:
Israeli government: We don't hold copyright on these images
Commons admins: You haven't explicitly disclaimed copyright outside Israel, we demand that you do.
Reasonable people: Only the copyright holder can disclaim copyright, the Israeli government say they do not hold copyright and so cannot disclaim it.
Commons admins: You're wrong, now go away and get teh Israli government to disclaim the copyright they say they don't have.
Reasonable people: But they can't!
Commons admins: We say they can, so they must be able to.
*Repeat*



The obvious problem with the ah  "Reasonable people's" argument is that the British government has done exactly that so "can't" clearly isn't correct. That aside the position is based on a falsehood. There is no real question that the isreali does in fact hold certian copyrights in countries that don't follow the rule of the shorter term. Claiming otherwise mostly indicates a lack of familularity with copyright. What we need is a statement that they either surrender those copyrights or that they won't enforce them.

Personally I think the problem is that the Israeli government hasn't been asked (I'm more than happy to provide help with the wording of the question if that's the problem for our Israeli wikipedians) but given the complexity of Israeli politics it would be impossible to rule out other possibilities until the question is asked.


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geni