User talk:Lupo

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Talk to Lupo

An editor's talk page at Wikipedia.

I'm extremely busy off-Wikipedia these days. I may or may not answer promptly, or I may not answer at all. Lupo


2008
Thursday
12
June

Archives of older talk are listed on the archives page.

Contents

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[edit] Kuntaw

I've added a Kuntaw page which is a simple redirection to the Kuntao article. I'm just mentioning it here because I see you had deleted a same-named page for copyright violations and wanted to reassure you that this is different. I've sent this note to RedWolf as well since he made a similar deletion. HarmonicSphere (talk 8:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Picture of Bush Dog

I want to publishing your public domain picture of the bush dog in a book. It is a book about all wild dogs of the earth. How you wish, I hereby tell you about using of that image. Thank you, Thomas Riepe thomas.riepe @ t-online.de —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.225.142.145 (talk) 16:28, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

commons:Image:Speothos_venaticus_001.jpg is not "my" picture. It was moved to the Commons by someone else, who completely botched the image description. The photographer was R. Schmode. I am not Mr. Schmode. Please see commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Archive/2007/03#Image:Bushdog002.jpg and commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Speothos venaticus 001.jpg about possible problems with this image. (The Zoo complained.) We've deleted this image before, and we'll delete it again now. Lupo 21:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Patry's Blog

Have you been following this? Brrrrr --BirgitteSB 22:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Brr indeed. I am very happy that Patry regularly speaks out against the machinations of the RIAA. The contract law problem (ProCD v. Zeidenberg, decided 1996, enforcability of shrink-wrap licenses, court's opinion (see in particular section III, the LEXIS example made by the court!)) is indeed chilling... for contributors, less so for the projects like WS or the Commons, or (I think) its operator, the WMF, since neither is party to any such contract. (A point of view also confirmed by the ProCD court opinion.)
I am no lawyer, but I wonder what that means for Bridgeman v. Corel (decided 1999)? What if Bridgeman had put a shrink-wrap license on its CD saying that one mustn't redistribute the files on the CD? (I haven't found any mention of that in the court opinion of Bridgeman.) Would Corel have lost under the ProCD ruling? Would the contract have trumped copyright law?
commons:User:Micheletb once claimed something similar: he said that the creator of a file (even if it's an image that is a plain reproduction of a PD work) had ownership rights on the file, and could impose conditions about its re-use, even if he published the file on the Web. So, only self-taken {{PD-Art}} files should be accepted according to him. (He didn't mention ProCD, he argued in terms of French contract law.) At the time, I don't think anybody (me included) understood what he meant. The implications of this 7th circuit decision make this look less far-fetched... even if ProCD would (in my spontaneous layman reaction) be applicable to files on the Web only if the conditions were clearly stated right next to the image (or within the file), or the file was accessible only through a click-through license, but not if the conditions were placed in some linked "terms of use" statement at the botto m of the page. And anyway, the contract would be enforceable only against the uploader (I think). Still brrr. Lupo 11:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Contract law seems to have overrode copyright law in ProCD, in my lay opinion. So I imagine a wider acknowledgment of Bridgeman v. Corel will go hand and hand with more restrictive "Terms of Service" to mitigate the "weakness" of copyright law in that area. I agree that this will only applicable where the conditions are stated in the file (or more likely a click through TOS to access a database of files). I also agree that this is not a going to concern WMF or the projects but rather contributor (especially those in the US). More later . . . --BirgitteSB 12:10, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
All the same I would personally be upset to see uploaders taken to court (God forbid criminal court) over the fact that they did not bother to read the TOS and thought PD is PD is PD, as so many people do. I think that there large lack of awareness about this issue with uploaders. I asked about it on IRC last night and no one seemed to have heard of this issue. The other concern is that if Chapter 12 can be used to ignore the normal working of Copyright law (including the fair use defense). This makes me worry that it could be used to restrict the use of anything were access is only availble after "agreeing" to some sort of contract, even if the contractee would otherwise have a license to reuse the material. If that concern is valid, then WMF needs raise ensuring future "Accessibilty" a bit higher on their list of goals.--BirgitteSB 13:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid that indeed this concern might be valid. I remember now the issue (without reference to ProCD, though) having been discussed when the New York Public Library put its collection on-line. Their TOS still makes it clear that they claim physical rights and are trying to use them to restrict uses of the items put online. (Though I must admit that their notice is the most honest one I've seen in a long while. They even acknowledge that most of these items are PD.) The fear then was that they'd make the images accessibly only through a click-through license, which would, in the opinion of the laypeople discussing it, probably have given them the means to potentially go after people who downloaded their images and published them elsewhere for commercial purposes. (Or uploaded them on a WMF project...) That click-through license didn't happen yet... Lupo 13:41, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Its very honesty makes it wonderfully incongruous. They admit right off the bat that they don't hold the copyright and then go right ahead and claim that things still work exactly as if they did hold the copyright. Haukur (talk) 23:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
You are missing the point that Chapter 12 of Title 17 is not really copyright law but contract law. If the contract in those TOS is found to be a valid one; the copyright is likely irrelevant. The ProCD case was over material that was uncopyrightable per Feist; therefore it doesn't seem to matter that they don't own the copyright so long as you enter into a contract with them to obtain access. There are many, many public domain works which are not available at all because the owner (i.e. Vactican) of every physical copy refuses to allow people access to them in order to make a copy. Don't conflate access issues with copyright; they are completely separate and you need both in order reuse a work.--BirgitteSB 02:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I do follow what you're talking about. I still think this is quite amusing. Haukur (talk) 09:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
The NYPL TOS is just the sort I am afraid of being enforced. Although some people may game the system by cherry-picking jurisdictions or using untraceable technical means, it remains a trap for the unwary. Those that will get in trouble over this are the ones that will have never understood it could illegal to copy a PD work in the first place. I find it very frustrating that these "anti-piracy" laws can be used against works which are not protected by copyright. Hopefully RIAA will get squashed across the board in their lawsuits and dragging small fry into court will go out of style. I think the best we can hope in these restrictive TOS's will be only enforced when someone draws attention to themselves by making too much money off of breaking the agreements. I don't see much chance of them going away unless Bridgeman is overturned or something else earth-shattering happens. --BirgitteSB 23:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
What annoys me is that, as far as Web images are concerned, the whole "physical rights" issue is just not necessary. If the physical owner of some work wants to make money off that work, he has plenty of ways to do so without recourse to such a TOS. The NYPL, for instance, only puts rather low-quality (well, call it medium quality) images on the web. If you want a high-quality version, you need to order a print, and I'd bet it comes with a license that says you mustn't republish that print. So, they wouldn't need that "physical rights" TOS at all, since the quality of the images available on the Web is such that commercial use (say, printing posters or even postcards from them) is not really possible. Still, the quality is sufficient for most other uses, and in fact, they can only profit from their images being reused elsewhere: it's free advertisement (at least, if properly attributed). And they are protected against someone ripping off substantial parts of their on-line database anyway by copyright law (in the EU, by the sui generis database protection, in the U.S., because the database as a whole is protected as a collection—the selection, arrangement, and presentation thing).
For text databases like LEXIS, the contract issue may make more sense. It's not for nothing that LEXIS is a subscription service; I guess they'd have a hard time enforcing any "contract" if they made the PD texts in their database accessible to anyone. If a U.S. governmental authority should ever decide to put up a similar database of legal cases online as a service for the general public instead of publishing the court documents only in rather obscure other sources, some of which are not even online, LEXIS couldn't do anything against it. Luckily for us, most of the important stuff is available elsewhere (Findlaw and others).
Google books has another way of protecting its PD assets: when you download a PDF of a PD book from Google, you do get the whole thing all right, but it's not OCRed. For just about anyone, OCRing a PDF containing only graphics showing the text is beyond their capabilities. Maybe doable for a single file (but you'd need to have a good OCR software first), but hardly en masse. If you want to search for a text in such a book, you'll need to go back to Google... Lupo 08:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Lots of books contain prominent claims on one of the first pages along the lines of "any reproduction of this book blah blah blah is prohibited", often this is found even on books in the public domain. Am I entering into a binding contract by continuing to read the book? Haukur (talk) 18:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
From ProCD :

We think that the place to start is sec. 2-204(1): "A contract for sale of goods may be made in any manner sufficient to show agreement, including conduct by both parties which recognizes the existence of such a contract." A vendor, as master of the offer, may invite acceptance by conduct, and may propose limitations on the kind of conduct that constitutes acceptance. A buyer may accept by performing the acts the vendor proposes to treat as acceptance. And that is what happened. ProCD proposed a contract that a buyer would accept by using the software after having an opportunity to read the license at leisure. This Zeidenberg did. He had no choice, because the software splashed the license on the screen and would not let him proceed without indicating acceptance. . . . the UCC permits contracts to be formed in other ways. ProCD proposed such a different way, and without protest Zeidenberg agreed.

Not all efforts to prevent reproduction are binding contracts but binding contract can contain enforcable efforts to prevent reproduction; regardless of the copyright status.--BirgitteSB 19:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
A few links:
Lupo 09:46, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

(undent)If the physical owner of some work wants to make money off that work, he has plenty of ways to do so without recourse to such a TOS. The NYPL, for instance, only puts rather low-quality (well, call it medium quality) images on the web. If you want a high-quality version, you need to order a print, and I'd bet it comes with a license that says you mustn't republish that print The crazy thing, which is pointed out by Peter Hirtle, is the license that comes with the print is basically worthless for protecting NYPL's asserts. Let's say I buy a dozen high-quality prints from them. Then I mail the physical prints to WMF as a donation. The works are PD and the license would only bind me from making a copy of the physical print they provided. So with organized individuals shelling out a one-time fee (perhaps imagining it as a donation to a worthwhile institution) they could easily and legally have these "assets" plundered and put on Commons. It is a really flimsy protection for those whose mission includes public access to the collection for reproductions. Do you have any idea whatever happed with the Smithsonian and PublicReasource.org?--BirgitteSB 20:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right. And no, I don't know if a lawsuit is brewing between the Smithsonian and public.resource.org. All I know is that the images are still online. Unless I'm mistaken, many of them have also found their way onto Commons. Lupo 20:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Patricianship

A couple of us are trying to improve this, and would welcome anything you could add on the Swiss patrician classes, especially concrete details - where, when , how many families, monopolies of which rights and powers etc. Thanks Johnbod (talk) 20:58, 7 June 2008 (UTC)