Talk:Submissions/Freedom of panorama and Wikimedia Commons

Aim

Is this presentation for a new policy proposal, or general awareness..???...Captain......Tälk tö me.. 16:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal is to have a presentation of some kind from me reviewing the issue (or giving general awareness if you like), and then having a discussion on the issue for the correct way forward. No binding decision will be made, that can only be done on Wikimedia Commons itself. CT Cooper · talk 16:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

Effects of current policy

Certainly there has been thousands, not hundreds of images deleted under FOP "precaution", but how many exactly? Some research in the effects of the current policy would be useful: how many images have been deleted on Commons, how many on Wikipedias? --Elekhh 16:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good idea, and some statistics would be worth putting into the presentation. For Commons deletions, I could scan the history of Commmons' deletion requests and create some kind of estimate, though in the past many images have been speedy deleted for lack of FoP which are more difficult to track. I know the answer is likely to be in the thousands. To give an example, LoverOfDubai, an inactive account on Commmons, who uploaded loads of Dubai photos onto Commons, has fallen foul of the lack of FoP in the United Arab Emirates. The user unfortunately received no warning about the lack of FoP before going inactive in November 2008, and since January 2010 the deletion requests have been rolling in to the level of which I have maintained his/her user talk page myself for the benefit of those on slower connections. I've done a quick count and about 150 of the user's uploads have been deleted, though it would be about 300 if all those which were nominated for deletion were deleted. With such high numbers it does raise the further question on if current policy is changed, how will such a huge number of images be recovered. CT Cooper · talk 23:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not so long ago commons:Category:Russian FOP cases has been set up, now with over 200 entries, with over a dozen of them like commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Alexey Dushkin being mass deletions. This might be an answer to your question regarding count and potential move to another wikiproject or undelete. --Elekhh 13:06, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't currently one of these for the UAE, but I could set one up to make counting easier, and to allow easier restoration of images if it ever happens. CT Cooper · talk 23:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have now created a category which can be used for research at Category:UAE FOP cases. CT Cooper · talk 16:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can you separate the category into 'UAE-FOP-Deleted Files' & 'UAE-FOP - Nominated Files' , so that it will be easy to identify and discuss for a deletion or undeletion.--...Captain......Tälk tö me.. 05:42, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will look into it as you are not the first person to suggest that. CT Cooper · talk 11:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have now split the category into two parts, one for DRs which resulted in deletion, and another for those that did not. CT Cooper · talk 00:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly to the United Arab Emirates, in Israel also the issue of FoP has never been brought before court. Israel inherited the UK copyright statute (through the mandate system), and incorporated the UK concept of FoP into the new copyright statute that has recently replaced it. In practice, almost any creative work placed in, or visible from, a public place can be photographed and used even for commercial purposes, and no one has ever complained about it. In fact, the first time someone raised the issue of whether the Israeli law permits FoP photographs in certain cases was on Wikimedia Commons. Paradoxically, this was counter-productive to the goal of Wikimedia. If there is a public norm of lax copyright policy (even when not incorporated into the local law), why encourage a stricter policy by raising doubts and question that have never been raised in the certain community? DrorK 03:51, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The existing FOP page (commons:COM:FOP#Israel) gives Israel the all clear, unlike unfortunately the UAE. Israel is certainly a worthy case study for the presentation, given it is a host country. Many proposals can be put forward on relaxing the existing approach to FOP, one of which is to only give the issue attention if there is a history of court cases related to photographs being derivative works of architecture/artistic works in public places, as is the case in France. CT Cooper · talk 00:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That brings us to the question of whether the Commons should rely only on written laws or also on local customs. The Commons tried to go by the rule of "when in doubt do without", but my experience is that this rule is too problematic, and FoP issue stands out as the most evident problem. Beside leaving a lot of interesting useful material out of the free content repository, rejecting contributions based on a "dead letter law" discourages potential contributors ("you always come up with an excuse why my pictures are not good, leave me along"), and encourages the "revival" of this "dead letter" (it gives people the idea that they can sue or threaten with lawsuits, and it encourages judges to rule in favor of such complainants, because "if those free content enthusiasts think this is not allowed, why should I rule differently and be more Catholic than the Pope?") . Well, this is more-or-less my input about the subject, and I am waiting forward to hearing your talk. DrorK 12:49, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input and the support. I'm very pleased that interest is building up in this presentation. CT Cooper · talk 19:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]