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Hi,
Le Monday 02 February 2004 08:43, Michael Snow a écrit :
Caroline Ford wrote:
> As always they are only talking about US copyright law. As far as I
> know we cannot do any of this in the UK, and I imagine it will be the
> same in France.
> Telephone directories are copyrighted in the UK, for example.
> This is why some of us are very unhappy about "fair use", as it means
> that we cannot ever host a mirror in the UK, or have a fork.
I think that we should use US law (fair use) as far as we can. We should also
write the images licence carefully, so that an automated selection can be
done if needed.
> We have no pictures of UK politicians for the
same reason.
>
> What would be nice would be actual advice as to what _we_ can do. I
> understand that German wikipedia has banned fair use images. I know
> that most of what has been suggested is illegal here and that British
> contributors are cautious because the international nature of the
> project never seems to be considered.
I don't see how a European user can be sued for using fair use in a project
hosted in the US. This is civil law, not penal law. But IANAL of course.
Caroline
(User:Secretlondon)
Speaking only for myself, I regret that my discussion is overly oriented
to US copyright law, because that's the law I'm familiar with. When it
Well again, US copyright law is what matters here.
comes to the UK and others, the extent of my knowledge
is having read
some of the applicable statutes. Do we have any barristers or solicitors
contributing who might be able to add their insight to the problem? With
better information, we could get an idea of potential liabilities and
not put all our eggs in the US-based "fair use" basket. For now, the
servers are physically in the US, and the foundation is incorporated in
the US, so any lawsuit would almost certainly be in US court using US
law. But we're talking about jurisdiction and choice of law issues here,
not just copyright law. And it means we need to be careful of the
implications of creating official chapters in other countries.
And again, as long as the project is hosted in the US, I don't see how a
European chapter can have copyright problems with Wikipedia.
The day we want to have a mirror in Europe (well in France for what I know),
we will have to review everything which is under fair use, and see if we can
have it under the "droit de citation" which is the nearest equivalent of fair
use in France.
Not being able to host a UK mirror is a problem, but I
for one have no
qualms about whether a group based in the UK can fork. For anyone who
exercises the *right* to fork, that only means they will not be subject
to any legal interference by Wikipedia; it doesn't protect them against
other legal consequences. We often focus on the GFDL as a license to
copy, but equally important is the accompanying disclaimer of
warranties. Specifically in this case, Wikipedia gives no warranty that
the material you copy won't infringe someone else's copyright. Anybody
who wants to, fork at your own risk, we'll neither stop you nor protect
you.
On some of these scenarios, I'm curious as to the specifics. If
telephone directories are copyrightable, great, but maybe the copyright
doesn't prevent someone from independently collecting and publishing the
same information, or does it?
What is copyrighted in telephone directories?
Is it the data or the way the data is published?
As for pictures of public figures, that's not
really about copyright law
- a face is not itself a creative mode of expression, and taking a
A face is certainly a creative mode of expression. But does it matter here?
picture is not making a copy (anyway, the person
didn't create the face
themselves, so shouldn't any copyright belong to their parents, or maybe
the plastic surgeon?).
And the copyright of the Creator then? ;o)
Interesting metaphysical implications...
We're really talking about the related issue of a
right of publicity. But there has to be some ability to use these
images, because the news media does, and of course paparazzi manage
somehow. I don't know what the basis is when applying non-US law, but if
other organizations can publish pictures of these people, there has to
be some way for Wikipedia to do so legally as well.
I think there is a confusion here. The news medias can publish pictures only
because they got the right to do so from the photographer (against money most
of the time).
I doubt that Wikipedia could publish any picture without this right.
Or it should be under fair use. I don't see any other way out.
--Michael Snow
Yann
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