[pd-discuss] Contact between Wikimedia Foundation and Wellcome Trust regarding image collections?

Thu Jan 13 21:21:02 UTC 2011

Michael: Sorry, I didn't get the door metaphor, probably because I am not
English native speaker.

Bob: Thank. I think you made both point I was trying to raise.

If there is fear about commercial use, public domain cannot avid those
fears. Personally, I don't think that is the problem. Peopla can made money
with public domain. Why not? Actually, in some developing countries, luckily
we have publishers that publish low cost book based on public domain.
Unfortunately, it does not provide access to more updated bibliography.

However, I am afraid about "copyfraud", as Make mentioned that. That is, in
my understanding, when someone argue exclusive rights on public domain
works. But here, the problem is not the public domain itself, but the
precarious protection for public domain content.

Some countries have started to made changes about it, by raising concern in
international foras and even by adopting domestic law that protect public
domain, mitigating the risk of copyfraud base on public domain explotation.
The latter is, for example, the cases of Brazil and Chile, that have adopted
criinal provisions against who argue exclusive rights on public domain
contents.

Best,
A.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at creativecommons.org>wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Michael S. Hart <hart at pglaf.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, Rob Myers wrote:
>>
>> > On 01/13/2011 07:47 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Is there some reason for this that you haven't stated?
>> >
>> > Plagiarism is not a licencing issue, and banning commercial use is
>> > inconsistent with the concepts of the public domain and of free use.
>>
>>
>> I think something was missed here:
>>
>> The point -I- am arguing with is that they are not considering works
>> that are given for all but commercial use. . .which is pretty much as
>> close as you can get to completely public domain without letting them
>> make money from selling your files.
>>
>
> Which isn't all that close.
>
>
>> What is the reason for NOT including work that is freely distributable
>> other than for commercial purposes???
>>
>
> As Wikimedia was brought up, see
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Licensing/Justificationsand
> http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC (their licensing policy requires
> meeting the definition of free culture works; link explains why NC only
> licenses don't).
>
> However, even free licenses are non-exciting for mere digitizations of
> public domain works -- they ought be in the public domain! If one can
> usefully offer under a free license, one can also retain all rights. The
> pejorative term is
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyfraud
>
> Holders of public domain works ought instead be clearly stating the works
> are in the public domain. To facilitate this Creative Commons recently
> developed http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ ... however
> experience the last few years has also shown being gentle with institutional
> holders can lead to good results long term ... but being gentle may not
> include featuring "their" works in a "public domain review". :-)
>
> Mike
>
> --
> https://creativecommons.net/ml
>
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