View source for Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2008/Candidates/Questions/1

== Legal basic policy statement for Media ==

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 |question = At Commons we have now a really big collection of free media. But until today there's no strategy known by Wikimedia, how to handle a lot of different Licenses, Right Systems and so on. Will you be the person, who work in the Foundation for a ground, where we can stand the System? We need a legal basic policy statement. It'S not possible to work along like yet. But not only I think, the Foundation don't care about that. [[User:Marcus Cyron|Marcus Cyron]] 21:29, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Und nochmal auf Deutsch: Wir haben auf den Commons mittlerweile eine riesige Sammlung von Daten - vor allem Bilder. Aber wir haben auch ganz große Probleme aufgrund der verschiedenen Rechtsformen- und Normen in den vielen Ländern. Es gibt von Wikimedia bislang keine klare Linie, wie wir denn damit umzugehen haben. Bislang läuft vieles in Grauzonen ab. Es kann aber nicht Sinn der Sache sein, daß wir solange warten, bis die Blase platzt. Unser Ziel kann es nicht sein, so weiter zu machen, die Grenzen solange auszureitzen, bis wir irgendwann vor Gericht gezerrt werden. Wikimedia muß endlich eine Vorgabe machen, was geht - und was nicht. Welches Recht greift (nationales Recht, je nach Userherkunft, US-Recht aufgrund des Serverstandorts). Was lassen wir zu? Wer tut etwas gegen "Fair Use", was den Projektzielen (Freihei der Inhalte!) völlig widerspricht. Wer nimmt sich endlich diesen Dingen an, daß wir auf Commons endlich aufhören uns etwas zurecht zu basteln, ein fragiles Gebilde von Normen und Regeln, das zudem immer vom einstützen bedroht ist? Es geht so nicht weiter. Das ist in meinen Augen eines der vordringlichsten Problemen, die es derzeit gibt. [[User:Marcus Cyron|Marcus Cyron]] 18:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC){{translated comment|And again in german: meanwhile, we have an enormous collection of data on commons. But we also have big problems due to differing laws in the various countries. Wikimedia does not have a clear line on how to deal with this; much is in a gray area. It's not sensible to wait until the bubble bursts. Our goal can not be to continue as before until we are sued by someone. Wikimedia has to hammer out rules as to what can be done and what not. Which laws should be applied (national law per user, US law because the servers are in florida)... What do we condone? Who will do something against "Fair use", which is opposed to the project's aims (free information)? Who will finally deal with these things, so that we (on Commons) stop making it up as we go along, a fragile construction of rules and regulations that is in danger of collapse. It can't go on like this. This, in my view, is one of the most pressing problems we face.}}

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 |Huikeshoven   = A very great idea to develop policies. This one I like best: There are no rules. Project policies are the responsibility of the project community, not the Foundation, Board or Office. In general, I'm in favor of moving to CC-BY-SA. However, that is not something the Board can impose on projects, for well, uhm, legal reasons. And lastly, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. The legal basic policy is open/free content with a copy left license.
 |Bakharev      = I know that operations of Commons requires solving difficult and sometimes esoteric problems in the international copyright law. Sometimes we might need to seek a professional legal counsel on the matter. It is an important part of our mission. Obviously we do not want our Wikipedians nor WMF to be sued for copyright violations. Nor do we want to compromise our commitment to the copyleft development

On the other hand I would strongly oppose any motions to delete a significant amount of images for the sake of unification of our copyright licenses. So far as the license allows to freely use (including the commercial use) and modify the images they are good enough for us. 
 |Spurrier= 
Commons has a interesting problem of trying to manage the demands of many often contradictory international copyright laws. Despite the challenges, they appear to be doing a fairly good job at manging it. 

The question is a bit unclear and my German skills are too limited to make things much clearer. I think what is being asked is if the board should take a more proactive role in managing the copyright issues of Commons. I do not believe the board should. This issue would be best managed by WMF's general counsel. I would be very surprised if he was not already aware of the issues Commons is encountering. I can only assume that the lack of intervention, means either intervention would put the Foundation at more risk, or the current situation is judged to not be putting the Foundation at risk. Protecting the Foundation from legal risk is the WMF's general counsel job. Since we definitely have a good one, I believe the foundation should continue to stay out of it, unless Mike recommends otherwise. 

I can certainly understand the frustration of the Commons community with not getting much feedback on this issue from the Foundation. I would like to see if some sort of way could be found to provide more feedback without placing the Foundation at risk or overburdening the limited legal resources. 
 |Rosenthal     = It's not the role of a board member to be the legal counsel for the foundation. That said, as a law student, I would have an interest in working with Mike Godwin, the WMF's general counsel to review licenses, '''if that is needed'''. Whether it is needed or not, is a decision collectively for the board as a body to make, not as an individual member, or for Mike to make in his professional capacity. Now, all of that being said, I am under the impression that there is work being done currently by the office staff on the topic of licensing, specifically with regard to the GFDL and CC licenses and their interactions. With regard to a "legal basic policy statement", I do not understand the question, or rather, I do not understand what kind of statement you would be referring to. In any event, such a statement would be drafted by Mike for approval by the board as a body.
 |Kohs          = 
The Board approved $182,000 for legal counsel this year.  I would rather see the person(s) being paid $182,000 figure out "how to handle a lot of different Licenses, Right Systems and so on" than unpaid Board members who are instead responsible for the long-term vision and strategic guidance of the organization.
 |Cain          = 
Tja, Markus, eine schwierige Frage hast Du gestellt, und zwar leider ohne einfache Antwort. Urheberrecht ist ein ganz kompliziertes Thema, auf der internationalen Ebene sogar noch. Vom Foundation kann man nicht erwarten, dass es das ganze Thema für die ganze Welt löst. Solche Sachen dauern Jahrzente, und können vielleicht nur durch Organizationen wie die UNO gelöst werden. Bei uns soll man darauf acthen, soweit als möglich in die grauen Zone nicht hineinzutreten, sogar wenn das bedeutet, dass Commons weniger Medien beinhaltet. Die allgemeinen Regel dafür können vom Board her entworfen werden, sollen dann aber weiter von interessierten Editors in Commons aufgearbeitet werden.
{{translated comment|Yes, Markus, this is a very difficult question that you're asking, and also one without an easy answer. Copyright law is a very complicated matter, and when it gets to international issues it becomes even more complex. One cannot expect the foundation to solve this issue once and for all for the whole world. This stuff takes decades to, and possible solutions may come only from bodies like the UN. For the meantime, we should take as much care as possible not to enter the gray zones, even if it means that Commons will have fewer media items. The general guidelines on how to do this can (and should) be drafted by the board, but it's up for editors interested in these matters to work this out in detail inside Commons.}}


 |Heiskanen     = 
Sorry I won't be providing a German reply.

I will definitely not be the point man for a comprehensive Intellectual Property rights stance. But I will certainly bring my own perspective into the mix, and there are real red lines for me.
 |Weber         = 
 |Bisanz        = It s important that Commons remains the domain of free images, and that fairuse (which is not free) is prevented from staying on Commons per the community's expectations.  On en.wiki I have pushed to define fairuse issues where they remain ambiguous and support a rigorous interpretation of the [[en:wikipedia:NFCC|fairuse policy]].

If I understand it correctly, we define free as things in the public domain or things that meet some free license.  Right now the free license of preference is GFDL with specific Creative Commons licenses and other free licenses accepted.  I think the Foundation staff are working to better define Creative Commons in relation to the GFDL and believe it would be appropriate for the Foundation to opine in the general sense as to what licenses meet the GFDL level of freedom.  I am opposed to the Foundation imposing license changes that would alter the fundamental path of a project or the Foundation altering licenses in order to alter content.  

As far as choice of law goes, I believe the Foundation and the projects should generally act within the confines of US law, because that is where the Foundation and server farm is located, and would be the likely location of any realistic legal actions.  

Also, I think that projects can "make things up as they go along", most of the time, because that is part of the nature of the wiki, the grow based on the ideas of the masses of contributors. 
 |Williams      = I believe that this is something that needs to be taken up with the Foundation's Legal Counsel, not something the Board should "fix" until it has correct and proper legal advice on the matter.
 |Saintonge     = The problem here is that we are dealing with an extremely complex problem of international law.  My approach is to be cautiously aggressive, perhaps by housing parts of the database on servers in countries where the copyright status might be less problematic.  I don't know if a perfect licence is even possible. I believe in not only using free material, but in making material free that is not yet free.  I believe that we are much further from being sued than most believe, but changing that into a policy is not easy.
 |Postlethwaite = I think it should be of high importance for the board to speak to the projects and discuss the difficulties with the current licensing systems. It would be good if our free could all come under a standardised licence, but it’s clear that would be controversial. On commons, we have a number of different licenses which have to cover many different international copyright laws so it would be hard to have a global license. I would certainly be interested in getting Mike Godwin involved with looking at the licenses and it would be good for the board to listen to his views. The communities should also have a say before any resolution is made.
 |Klein         = Trustees should work actively with Commons and media developers to help describe and prioritize these problems, and to make sure there is followup on the best proposed solutions.  Solving them is not something the Board should do; {{anotcat}}.   
 |Smith         = 
 |Chen          = Sorry I must confess I am not aware that there is a problem here. If you can provide me more information I probably can work through it and work out a more found opinion.

As far as I know, commons only accept GFDL and compatible licensed materials. I think this is a good policy because it is the minimum of all the different copyright and authoring right laws we have in this world. If you use a media material from commons, you should be sure that there's absolutely no problem using it, where ever you are in the world, which ever project you are participating. This is the idea. If it is not so, if indeed we have stuff on commons which is not compatible with GFDL, I would suggest remove them from commons.

For every individual project the community set up a local rule according to the custom and law of countries, where most of the users and contributors of that project come from. There we have content of fair use. We have again and again users that misuse fair use, just as we have always people put on copyvio content. The local admins are responsible for removing these materials. As far as for zh-wp, where I am admin, I think it works very well. I can say that zh-Wikipedia has the most rigorous copyright policy of all chinese websites.

Hier meine Antwort mal auf Deutsch: Meiner Meinung nach gehört NUR GFDL und kompatiblen Inhalte auf commons. Sollte das nicht der Fall sein, sollte man hier die Policy ändern, hier ist tatsächlich die ein Feld, wo WMF tätig sein soll. Jedoch war bislang meiner Erfahrung, dass auf commons auch tatsächlich die Lizenzen sehr streng beachtet werden.

Auf den unterschiedlichen Wikipedia-Versionen gibt es lockelere Bestimmungen, was Fair-use betrifft. Dies sollte den lokalen Gesetzen entsprechen, oder mindestens das amerikanische Gesetz genügen. Die Admins in diesen Projekten sind dafür zuständig, dass in ihren Projekten ungerechtes Benutzen von Fair-use unterbunden wird. So weit ich sagen kann, funktioniert das bislang auf zh-wp recht gut. Ich kann behaupten, dass zh-wp wahrscheinlich die strengste chinesisch sprachige Webseite ist
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