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Probelms with images published in the Soviet Union prior to March 23 1973.
User Lupo, since January began assaulting a tag that he thought (ie Original research) is not applicable to thousands of images that currentely uses it. Those images can be found in all foreign press and prints, however he though otheriwise. Back in mid-february, without any mention on Portal:Russia, or Portal Ukraine (as well as other relevant community portals), he proposed the wiki tag for deletion. wikipedia community responded accordingly with a majority of "keep".
On 12 May 2006, User:Lupo, on its own initiative and without getting nor an official WP approval or even a clear consensus on the subject, edited the {{ PD-USSR}} template and [ replaced it] with a mesage saying that this tag was deprecated and should no longer be used. No valuable evidence was provided to justify such an edit.
Moreover, User:Lupo abused his admin privileges by editing the semiprotected MediaWiki:Licenses page and removing the reference to the corresponding template in the template list.
Furthermore, User:Lupo edited the Category:Pre-1973_Soviet_Union_images category and added the same style of message.
Additionally, User:Lupo attempted to realize the same operation on Commons, once more without any sensible evidence.
It has to be noticed that like User:Lupo said here, "I believe this template is completely wrong.". So he just believes so and has no evidence to prove it, just his personal beliefs that, just like anyone personal beliefs, are not worth much legally-wise.
What is more, such a move was attempted without even trying to evaluate its impact on English Wikipedia.
Finally, despite a heavily negative reaction on such a move both on English Wikipedia and on Commons, User:Lupo kept on reverting the template back to his version.
A good summary of the subject was made by User:Alex_Bakharev (see here)
“ | Huge number of people use pre-1973 Soviet publications as the public domain works. Many use them commercially. The legal reasons to depreciate the tag are obscure and certainly are untested in the USA courts. I can not imagine that the first test case will be Wikipedia (noncommercial organization working for the common good). Depreciating the tag will be a catastrophe for a whole section of wiki and the risk is most probably just our imagination. I would suggest to stop the self-harming actions until a real danger (test case) will be present | ” |
Edit of admin only articles [1], absolute ignorance of other communities who use those images, by twice having the tag deleted both times, convinientely forgetting to put those communities at notice.
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What a load of nonsense. First off,
MediaWiki:Licenses is not protected, so there cannot be any talk of "abuse of admin power".
The root of the problem is the refusal of some editors to accept that {{ PD-USSR}} is just plain wrong. For the detailed reasoning, see this summary. Note that I didn't invent that reasoning; there are several U.S. experts who say so; and Russian and Ukrainian experts also agree, and I even discussed the issue with Jean-Baptiste Soufron, our very own Wikimedia foundation lawyer specialized on international copyright issues. What I find most annoying is that none of these editors has participated in the discussions about this template during the past months, although they most certainly were aware of the issue. [3] None of them ever brought forward any rational argument why the template should be right; all I ever got were gross personal attacks and threats.
In particular User:Kuban kazak's behavior is very deplorable, covering the whole range from gross violations of WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, and the "no threats" policy (see "you will regret this", calling me a "parasite" or a "nazi" twice, or stating that he "will make my life more miserable".)
These editors willfully want Wikipedia to spread misinformation by opposing a dearly needed correction of a wrong image license template. These editors also have chosen not to participate in the discussions, although they were aware of it. These editors have not presented a single argument in favour of the wrong "pre-1973" version (except "we like it"), whereas my summary is extensively sourced.
The longer we wait to correct the tag, the more work will it be to clean up afterwards. Deprecating it (see my text) and removing it from MediaWiki:Licenses just appeared as common sense, and I still think it is the appropriate action.
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Alright, this is my first time participating in any RfC or Mediation, so excuse me if I do something wrong. First, I am uninvolved 3rd party. Quite a while ago I noticed the tag and thought it would be one of the most convenient things; however I also noticed all the discussions and disputes on the talk page. I did a bit of research and found out that it is an extremely complicated matter. It involves all kinds of domestic & international laws passed in the 20th century. There is no simple Yes or No answer and I respect Lupo for going into all the nasty details. The template was disputed many times before, just no one really showed any interest. Lupo posted his reasoning many times over and over again on different talk pages. I have yet to see the same detailed reasoning from the opposition. Saying "oh, others do it" is no good.
Nominating a template for deletion is no violation. Not notifying Portals (?!) is no violation. Editing a template is no violation. Being bold and trying to prevent copyright violations is no violation. I believe Lupo did his best to attract attention to the problem and spark discussions to reach consensus. But it did not happen and he took more drastic measures. It did spark the controversy, just its direction is very wrong.
Just because the template is very convenient does not mean it should be used.
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This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.
I'd like to express my full and absolute support for Lupo in this situation. I'm going to divide and enumerate through each accusation made by the filers of this RfC.
In summary, you've misrepresented him, personally attacked him, been uncivil to him, made unsupported assertations against him, and yet you still see fit to open a Request for Comment on his behaviour, when an RfC would have been far more justified to be going the other way. Werdna T c @ b C m L t 18:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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I don't know who is right and who is wrong here. What I do know is that no amount of discussion and "community consensus" can trump copyright law.
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I think the issues like this cannot be decided by the will of one or a few persons. The decision should be made after a thorough research of the respective copyright laws with participation of professional lawyers. The community should be informed about such important changes, because it affects many articles, especially those that are dedicated to the history of the territory of former USSR. Most of them would have no illustrations at all, if the 1973 tag changed. So before taking any measures it would be advisable to assess the impact they may have to the quality of the articles and also have a clear legal basis for any such changes of the policies.
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Let me first start that I see no reason not to assume Good Faith from the User:Lupo or any abuse of the admin privileges by him, but I would like the matters over the PD-USSR template to be done differently in the future. Maybe we should have a special RfC over this template.
Lets briefly see the problem, how I understand it. Soviet Union considered public domain all the works published abroad before 1973. Reciprocally, most of the other countries considered public domain all the works published in Soviet Union before that date. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was negotiated that all the international assets and liabilities of the Union went to Russia. Since the copyright policy of Russia has not changed, so most of the people considered that nothing has changed there and continue to publish pre-1973 Soviet works as public domain. It is a good faith assumption that was never challenged in US courts. Wikipedia follows this policy and has thousands of images labelled as PD-USSR. Not a single x-USSR copyright holder complained so far, many actually see promotion of their work on Wikipedia as a thing that increases the value of their rights.
On the other hand some bright legal minds see the situation as potentially challenge-able. They see the copyright as something different from the other assets inherited from the Soviet Union. As such they want to check the laws of the other successors of the Soviet Union. All of them continued the Soviet/Russian practice or did not recognize western copyright at all (as Belarus) but Georgia (country) formally declared in 1991 that it recognized copyright as the author's death-date+70 years. In practice the law is usually not enforced there yet. Thus, there is a theoretical possibility that somebody can challenge the public domain status of n image published say in Moscow on the grounds that it should be evaluated on the basis of the Georgian law. Been theoretically a possibility I don't believe such a case would have a real perspective in the court. The potential test case would have even less chances to succeed if the first target would be Wikipedia - a non-for-profit site, run by volunteers with good public standings.
So what we have now - a good faith assumptions of a public domain status of the images with a very remote possibility to have this assumption challenged. On the other side there are thousands of articles that use these images. Some of them, like the articles about Russian Avant garde painters, are loosing any meaning without reproductions of paintings.
I think in this situation it is simply wrong to over-react and depreciate the tag all together. Instead we might negotiate a compromise between a remote possibility that we are wrong assuming the PD status of the pre-1973 Soviet images and the interests of developing our Wikipedia. In my opinion, the best compromise will be to continue the current practice until any test case in the court will surface. Meanwhile we can remove any PD-USSR by any request of the owner of the rights in the Soviet Union (so far there was none of such requests). Maybe we can go father and stop uploading of images first published in Georgian SSR. Any proposal for such an action should be at the very least announced on Portal:Russia, Portal:Ukraine and Portal:Belarus. Any actions to completely depreciate the tag or remove the images should be adopted by the WikiBoard due to the shear volume of the images involved. Sorry, but it is absolutely outrageous to have such a drastic action as depretiation of a PD tag used by thousands of images all over Wikipoedia taken by a single administrator without prior discussion with the all involved parties. abakharev 18:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
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If there is a possibility that pre-1973 Soviet images will be found to be copyright in some way, it makes sense to retain the tag, so that images whose sole claim to being PD is that they were produced in the Soviet Union before 1973 can be easily identified for removal or status change at such time that there is a case which verifies that pre-1973 Soviet images are not public domain. Without any such ruling that those images are not PD, the tag, and the images, should remain. Argyriou 22:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Nothing cited above, much of which appears to be inaccurate, rises to the level of an RfC. All that should come of this is renewed discussion on the appropriate talk pages.
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From what I read on peoples comments, nobody seems to have a clear understanding of the rules, and the point of this RfC was that Lupo forgot (let's assume that word) to inform the people who he knows would be directly affected by such an action to have their rightful say. Ok if that might have not been totaly bad faith but it was certainly not good faith. Hence this RfC. Now I don't want to continue this debate in circles so I ask the wiki admin community to a) Participate in the discussion on the fate of the tag and the template. b) Full security to the images until a consensus be reached. c) No premature decision at present d) That Lupo (and all others) in the future would keep respecitve communities notified of major changes to the patterns that will have a direct affect on them. If he can do the latter, than I shall apologise to Lupo for some of my earlier insults and withdraw my accusations from this RfC. --
Kuban Cossack
12:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.
Good points have been made on both sides.
From reading this page, and a number of the previous discussions on this topic, it appears that we don't know that there is a case of copyright infringement here. It might be that we can't know this without a copyright lawyer's professional advice, or more likely, without referring to the precedent of a court case. And it's possible that no relevant precedent exists at all.
Given this situation, since there has been no legal claim by a copyright holder against Wikipedia, nor even a request to take down any allegedly copyrighted work, there is no real evidence that copyright infringement exists, and therefore no reason to take down the materials in question. The assertion that we need to do this to protect Wikipedia from lawsuits seems to be without legal basis, given the facts that I have seen.
On the other hand, it does seem that the assumptions made in the template PD-USSR may be wrong, so further investigation or clarification is necessary. — Michael Z. 2006-05-15 04:44 Z
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I'd like to address two particular points in the accusation. At no time did Lupo abuse his admin privileges. His edit to the mediawiki namespace was perfectly acceptable within Wikipedia policies (and exactly the sort of thing endorsed by Be bold); when it was reverted, he exercised commendable constraint in leaving it be. Also, the accusation of "original research" is nonsensical--that policy is explicitly meant to apply to articles, not to discussions of copyright. We need more research on this issue, not less.
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I don't know if this is the right place to put this, but... Without taking a position on the case, I would like to point out that Be Bold specifies that you should be bold in updating articles, and goes on to note that boldness should be avoided when dealing with templates and categories, since changing them will affect a large number of people; it furthermore states that such edits should generally be discussed with the people who will be affected. Far from endorsing those sorts of actions, Be Bold specifically warns against them. -- Aquillion 21:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
This dispute is about a complex legal question that nobody knows the answer to and only a court can decide, and then only in its own jurisdiction. Alex Bakharev claimed that lots of people are using this pre-1973 material, commercially and otherwise, without getting hassled. The "legal research" conducted by nonspecialist users looks useless and if anything will do more harm than good. Such research, if done, should take the form of an opinion given by the WMF's counsel to the WMF. There is practically nothing that WP does that's completely free of copyright risk (e.g. the amount of dubious fair use images on en, the retention of definite copyvios in article histories etc) so it's a question of what is tolerable. "Be bold" in this situation means leave the template alone and keep using the images unless/until there's an actual problem, rather than trembling at the theoretical possibility of a problem arising. If the WMF wants WP to use a more paranoid approach, then it can announce one; at the moment, it apparently finds the status quo acceptable, so we should do the same. Phr ( talk) 08:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Btw, MediaWiki:Licenses is definitely a protected page. Phr ( talk) 09:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
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If someone corrected a spelling error and got called a "spelling Nazi", then had an RfC filed against them because they were only correcting spellings on a particular topic (being selective and therefore biased against the work of certain users) there'd be outrage. For someone who, in utmost good faith, and citing substantial evidence in support, tries to correct what they believe (after diligent research) is a copyright problem - a far more vital issue for our "free" encyclopedia - to be called a "copyright Nazi", have an RfC placed against them, then get criticised for not having tried to address all of WP's other copyright issues as well... this is distasteful, disgraceful, and hostile both to the notion of Wikipedia as a "free" encyclopedia and to the establishment of the supportive, co-operative, pro-active community we need to build it.
Wikipedians have to fix our own problems. People who try, in good faith, to fix problems are our most vital asset.
We can't always just wait for the board to sort things out. The Foundation has legal advice available but that doesn't mean we have a lawyer on call for all user disputes, or that he'll prove to be an expert in Georgian/Ukrainian/Russian copyright law (let alone Polish or Italian...). Most of all, we can't afford to scare off users who try to fix these problems, or criticise them for not attempting to solve all of Wikipedia's problems at once.
Neither should we apply "innocent until proven guilty" to uploaded media. When we upload media as PD we are making a very striking assertion: that they are no longer anybody's intellectual property (at least as far as U.S. law is concerned). It's that assertion that should be backed up: for instance, information about the exact source has to be given or the image is deleted (hardly "inncocent until proven guilty" here). Lupo collected and documented a substantial body of evidence that strongly suggests that many of these good faith assertions were based on a false premise. The burden of proof surely reverts to the uploaders: their good faith is not in question, but the correctness of their original assertions is in severe doubt. The continued existence of this template and category may be prolonging a false premise - at the very least the template should keep its warning sign. I emphasise "may" because the issue is a complicated one. Some stronger legal advice would be welcome.
However, as far as the law is concerned: consensus can't override copyright law, "ignore all rules" doesn't apply to copyright law, "nationality X gets away with it so why can't nationality Y, stop picking on us!" doesn't apply to copyright law, and usefulness to Wikipedia certainly doesn't make a copyright violation okay. If we are striving for a genuinely free encyclopedia, we ought to be extremely cautious in making assertions that work is PD if that assertion is reasonably (in good faith, and with supporting evidence) disputed. I can understand the "it's complicated, so we'll just ignore it until something else crops up" approach, but don't believe that it benefits the project. On a wider view, this RfC highlights the deficiency of our current way of dealing with copyright law. But it also highlights the possibility of abuse of the RfC system. TheGrappler 21:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
There being absolutely no evidence of anything other than good faith, a sincere commitment to the project and a substantial amount of hard work on Lupo's part, there is no realistic chance that there would be any community sanction against Lupo based on this complaint. This RfC should be closed and discussion of the substantive issue continued in the relevant place.
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As an ininvolved party, and seeing that this RFC is over 4 months old and essentially stale, I'm going to archive it and remove it from the main RFC page. Thatcher131 19:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
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In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this sysop and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 18:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 05:01, 19 July 2024 (UTC).
Please note: This template is for listing disputes about actions that are limited to administrators only, specifically these actions:
For all other matters (such as edit wars and page moves), please use the template at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example user.
Probelms with images published in the Soviet Union prior to March 23 1973.
User Lupo, since January began assaulting a tag that he thought (ie Original research) is not applicable to thousands of images that currentely uses it. Those images can be found in all foreign press and prints, however he though otheriwise. Back in mid-february, without any mention on Portal:Russia, or Portal Ukraine (as well as other relevant community portals), he proposed the wiki tag for deletion. wikipedia community responded accordingly with a majority of "keep".
On 12 May 2006, User:Lupo, on its own initiative and without getting nor an official WP approval or even a clear consensus on the subject, edited the {{ PD-USSR}} template and [ replaced it] with a mesage saying that this tag was deprecated and should no longer be used. No valuable evidence was provided to justify such an edit.
Moreover, User:Lupo abused his admin privileges by editing the semiprotected MediaWiki:Licenses page and removing the reference to the corresponding template in the template list.
Furthermore, User:Lupo edited the Category:Pre-1973_Soviet_Union_images category and added the same style of message.
Additionally, User:Lupo attempted to realize the same operation on Commons, once more without any sensible evidence.
It has to be noticed that like User:Lupo said here, "I believe this template is completely wrong.". So he just believes so and has no evidence to prove it, just his personal beliefs that, just like anyone personal beliefs, are not worth much legally-wise.
What is more, such a move was attempted without even trying to evaluate its impact on English Wikipedia.
Finally, despite a heavily negative reaction on such a move both on English Wikipedia and on Commons, User:Lupo kept on reverting the template back to his version.
A good summary of the subject was made by User:Alex_Bakharev (see here)
“ | Huge number of people use pre-1973 Soviet publications as the public domain works. Many use them commercially. The legal reasons to depreciate the tag are obscure and certainly are untested in the USA courts. I can not imagine that the first test case will be Wikipedia (noncommercial organization working for the common good). Depreciating the tag will be a catastrophe for a whole section of wiki and the risk is most probably just our imagination. I would suggest to stop the self-harming actions until a real danger (test case) will be present | ” |
Edit of admin only articles [1], absolute ignorance of other communities who use those images, by twice having the tag deleted both times, convinientely forgetting to put those communities at notice.
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What a load of nonsense. First off,
MediaWiki:Licenses is not protected, so there cannot be any talk of "abuse of admin power".
The root of the problem is the refusal of some editors to accept that {{ PD-USSR}} is just plain wrong. For the detailed reasoning, see this summary. Note that I didn't invent that reasoning; there are several U.S. experts who say so; and Russian and Ukrainian experts also agree, and I even discussed the issue with Jean-Baptiste Soufron, our very own Wikimedia foundation lawyer specialized on international copyright issues. What I find most annoying is that none of these editors has participated in the discussions about this template during the past months, although they most certainly were aware of the issue. [3] None of them ever brought forward any rational argument why the template should be right; all I ever got were gross personal attacks and threats.
In particular User:Kuban kazak's behavior is very deplorable, covering the whole range from gross violations of WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, and the "no threats" policy (see "you will regret this", calling me a "parasite" or a "nazi" twice, or stating that he "will make my life more miserable".)
These editors willfully want Wikipedia to spread misinformation by opposing a dearly needed correction of a wrong image license template. These editors also have chosen not to participate in the discussions, although they were aware of it. These editors have not presented a single argument in favour of the wrong "pre-1973" version (except "we like it"), whereas my summary is extensively sourced.
The longer we wait to correct the tag, the more work will it be to clean up afterwards. Deprecating it (see my text) and removing it from MediaWiki:Licenses just appeared as common sense, and I still think it is the appropriate action.
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This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.
Alright, this is my first time participating in any RfC or Mediation, so excuse me if I do something wrong. First, I am uninvolved 3rd party. Quite a while ago I noticed the tag and thought it would be one of the most convenient things; however I also noticed all the discussions and disputes on the talk page. I did a bit of research and found out that it is an extremely complicated matter. It involves all kinds of domestic & international laws passed in the 20th century. There is no simple Yes or No answer and I respect Lupo for going into all the nasty details. The template was disputed many times before, just no one really showed any interest. Lupo posted his reasoning many times over and over again on different talk pages. I have yet to see the same detailed reasoning from the opposition. Saying "oh, others do it" is no good.
Nominating a template for deletion is no violation. Not notifying Portals (?!) is no violation. Editing a template is no violation. Being bold and trying to prevent copyright violations is no violation. I believe Lupo did his best to attract attention to the problem and spark discussions to reach consensus. But it did not happen and he took more drastic measures. It did spark the controversy, just its direction is very wrong.
Just because the template is very convenient does not mean it should be used.
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This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.
I'd like to express my full and absolute support for Lupo in this situation. I'm going to divide and enumerate through each accusation made by the filers of this RfC.
In summary, you've misrepresented him, personally attacked him, been uncivil to him, made unsupported assertations against him, and yet you still see fit to open a Request for Comment on his behaviour, when an RfC would have been far more justified to be going the other way. Werdna T c @ b C m L t 18:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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I don't know who is right and who is wrong here. What I do know is that no amount of discussion and "community consensus" can trump copyright law.
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I think the issues like this cannot be decided by the will of one or a few persons. The decision should be made after a thorough research of the respective copyright laws with participation of professional lawyers. The community should be informed about such important changes, because it affects many articles, especially those that are dedicated to the history of the territory of former USSR. Most of them would have no illustrations at all, if the 1973 tag changed. So before taking any measures it would be advisable to assess the impact they may have to the quality of the articles and also have a clear legal basis for any such changes of the policies.
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Let me first start that I see no reason not to assume Good Faith from the User:Lupo or any abuse of the admin privileges by him, but I would like the matters over the PD-USSR template to be done differently in the future. Maybe we should have a special RfC over this template.
Lets briefly see the problem, how I understand it. Soviet Union considered public domain all the works published abroad before 1973. Reciprocally, most of the other countries considered public domain all the works published in Soviet Union before that date. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was negotiated that all the international assets and liabilities of the Union went to Russia. Since the copyright policy of Russia has not changed, so most of the people considered that nothing has changed there and continue to publish pre-1973 Soviet works as public domain. It is a good faith assumption that was never challenged in US courts. Wikipedia follows this policy and has thousands of images labelled as PD-USSR. Not a single x-USSR copyright holder complained so far, many actually see promotion of their work on Wikipedia as a thing that increases the value of their rights.
On the other hand some bright legal minds see the situation as potentially challenge-able. They see the copyright as something different from the other assets inherited from the Soviet Union. As such they want to check the laws of the other successors of the Soviet Union. All of them continued the Soviet/Russian practice or did not recognize western copyright at all (as Belarus) but Georgia (country) formally declared in 1991 that it recognized copyright as the author's death-date+70 years. In practice the law is usually not enforced there yet. Thus, there is a theoretical possibility that somebody can challenge the public domain status of n image published say in Moscow on the grounds that it should be evaluated on the basis of the Georgian law. Been theoretically a possibility I don't believe such a case would have a real perspective in the court. The potential test case would have even less chances to succeed if the first target would be Wikipedia - a non-for-profit site, run by volunteers with good public standings.
So what we have now - a good faith assumptions of a public domain status of the images with a very remote possibility to have this assumption challenged. On the other side there are thousands of articles that use these images. Some of them, like the articles about Russian Avant garde painters, are loosing any meaning without reproductions of paintings.
I think in this situation it is simply wrong to over-react and depreciate the tag all together. Instead we might negotiate a compromise between a remote possibility that we are wrong assuming the PD status of the pre-1973 Soviet images and the interests of developing our Wikipedia. In my opinion, the best compromise will be to continue the current practice until any test case in the court will surface. Meanwhile we can remove any PD-USSR by any request of the owner of the rights in the Soviet Union (so far there was none of such requests). Maybe we can go father and stop uploading of images first published in Georgian SSR. Any proposal for such an action should be at the very least announced on Portal:Russia, Portal:Ukraine and Portal:Belarus. Any actions to completely depreciate the tag or remove the images should be adopted by the WikiBoard due to the shear volume of the images involved. Sorry, but it is absolutely outrageous to have such a drastic action as depretiation of a PD tag used by thousands of images all over Wikipoedia taken by a single administrator without prior discussion with the all involved parties. abakharev 18:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
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If there is a possibility that pre-1973 Soviet images will be found to be copyright in some way, it makes sense to retain the tag, so that images whose sole claim to being PD is that they were produced in the Soviet Union before 1973 can be easily identified for removal or status change at such time that there is a case which verifies that pre-1973 Soviet images are not public domain. Without any such ruling that those images are not PD, the tag, and the images, should remain. Argyriou 22:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Nothing cited above, much of which appears to be inaccurate, rises to the level of an RfC. All that should come of this is renewed discussion on the appropriate talk pages.
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From what I read on peoples comments, nobody seems to have a clear understanding of the rules, and the point of this RfC was that Lupo forgot (let's assume that word) to inform the people who he knows would be directly affected by such an action to have their rightful say. Ok if that might have not been totaly bad faith but it was certainly not good faith. Hence this RfC. Now I don't want to continue this debate in circles so I ask the wiki admin community to a) Participate in the discussion on the fate of the tag and the template. b) Full security to the images until a consensus be reached. c) No premature decision at present d) That Lupo (and all others) in the future would keep respecitve communities notified of major changes to the patterns that will have a direct affect on them. If he can do the latter, than I shall apologise to Lupo for some of my earlier insults and withdraw my accusations from this RfC. --
Kuban Cossack
12:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.
Good points have been made on both sides.
From reading this page, and a number of the previous discussions on this topic, it appears that we don't know that there is a case of copyright infringement here. It might be that we can't know this without a copyright lawyer's professional advice, or more likely, without referring to the precedent of a court case. And it's possible that no relevant precedent exists at all.
Given this situation, since there has been no legal claim by a copyright holder against Wikipedia, nor even a request to take down any allegedly copyrighted work, there is no real evidence that copyright infringement exists, and therefore no reason to take down the materials in question. The assertion that we need to do this to protect Wikipedia from lawsuits seems to be without legal basis, given the facts that I have seen.
On the other hand, it does seem that the assumptions made in the template PD-USSR may be wrong, so further investigation or clarification is necessary. — Michael Z. 2006-05-15 04:44 Z
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I'd like to address two particular points in the accusation. At no time did Lupo abuse his admin privileges. His edit to the mediawiki namespace was perfectly acceptable within Wikipedia policies (and exactly the sort of thing endorsed by Be bold); when it was reverted, he exercised commendable constraint in leaving it be. Also, the accusation of "original research" is nonsensical--that policy is explicitly meant to apply to articles, not to discussions of copyright. We need more research on this issue, not less.
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I don't know if this is the right place to put this, but... Without taking a position on the case, I would like to point out that Be Bold specifies that you should be bold in updating articles, and goes on to note that boldness should be avoided when dealing with templates and categories, since changing them will affect a large number of people; it furthermore states that such edits should generally be discussed with the people who will be affected. Far from endorsing those sorts of actions, Be Bold specifically warns against them. -- Aquillion 21:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
This dispute is about a complex legal question that nobody knows the answer to and only a court can decide, and then only in its own jurisdiction. Alex Bakharev claimed that lots of people are using this pre-1973 material, commercially and otherwise, without getting hassled. The "legal research" conducted by nonspecialist users looks useless and if anything will do more harm than good. Such research, if done, should take the form of an opinion given by the WMF's counsel to the WMF. There is practically nothing that WP does that's completely free of copyright risk (e.g. the amount of dubious fair use images on en, the retention of definite copyvios in article histories etc) so it's a question of what is tolerable. "Be bold" in this situation means leave the template alone and keep using the images unless/until there's an actual problem, rather than trembling at the theoretical possibility of a problem arising. If the WMF wants WP to use a more paranoid approach, then it can announce one; at the moment, it apparently finds the status quo acceptable, so we should do the same. Phr ( talk) 08:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Btw, MediaWiki:Licenses is definitely a protected page. Phr ( talk) 09:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
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If someone corrected a spelling error and got called a "spelling Nazi", then had an RfC filed against them because they were only correcting spellings on a particular topic (being selective and therefore biased against the work of certain users) there'd be outrage. For someone who, in utmost good faith, and citing substantial evidence in support, tries to correct what they believe (after diligent research) is a copyright problem - a far more vital issue for our "free" encyclopedia - to be called a "copyright Nazi", have an RfC placed against them, then get criticised for not having tried to address all of WP's other copyright issues as well... this is distasteful, disgraceful, and hostile both to the notion of Wikipedia as a "free" encyclopedia and to the establishment of the supportive, co-operative, pro-active community we need to build it.
Wikipedians have to fix our own problems. People who try, in good faith, to fix problems are our most vital asset.
We can't always just wait for the board to sort things out. The Foundation has legal advice available but that doesn't mean we have a lawyer on call for all user disputes, or that he'll prove to be an expert in Georgian/Ukrainian/Russian copyright law (let alone Polish or Italian...). Most of all, we can't afford to scare off users who try to fix these problems, or criticise them for not attempting to solve all of Wikipedia's problems at once.
Neither should we apply "innocent until proven guilty" to uploaded media. When we upload media as PD we are making a very striking assertion: that they are no longer anybody's intellectual property (at least as far as U.S. law is concerned). It's that assertion that should be backed up: for instance, information about the exact source has to be given or the image is deleted (hardly "inncocent until proven guilty" here). Lupo collected and documented a substantial body of evidence that strongly suggests that many of these good faith assertions were based on a false premise. The burden of proof surely reverts to the uploaders: their good faith is not in question, but the correctness of their original assertions is in severe doubt. The continued existence of this template and category may be prolonging a false premise - at the very least the template should keep its warning sign. I emphasise "may" because the issue is a complicated one. Some stronger legal advice would be welcome.
However, as far as the law is concerned: consensus can't override copyright law, "ignore all rules" doesn't apply to copyright law, "nationality X gets away with it so why can't nationality Y, stop picking on us!" doesn't apply to copyright law, and usefulness to Wikipedia certainly doesn't make a copyright violation okay. If we are striving for a genuinely free encyclopedia, we ought to be extremely cautious in making assertions that work is PD if that assertion is reasonably (in good faith, and with supporting evidence) disputed. I can understand the "it's complicated, so we'll just ignore it until something else crops up" approach, but don't believe that it benefits the project. On a wider view, this RfC highlights the deficiency of our current way of dealing with copyright law. But it also highlights the possibility of abuse of the RfC system. TheGrappler 21:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
There being absolutely no evidence of anything other than good faith, a sincere commitment to the project and a substantial amount of hard work on Lupo's part, there is no realistic chance that there would be any community sanction against Lupo based on this complaint. This RfC should be closed and discussion of the substantive issue continued in the relevant place.
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As an ininvolved party, and seeing that this RFC is over 4 months old and essentially stale, I'm going to archive it and remove it from the main RFC page. Thatcher131 19:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
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