Talk:Legal/URAA Statement

Question

The statement says « Members of the Wikimedia community […] have proposed removing the affected works from Commons and forking them to third-party servers outside of the US. Unfortunately, these plans would violate Wikimedia Foundation policy and US law. »

And then supports it by saying « If infringing content is linked to or embedded in Wikimedia projects, then the Foundation may still be subject to liability for such use - either as a direct or contributory infringer. »

Where exactly the plan to move content to third-party server included linking or embedding to said content from Wikimedia websites?

Jean-Fred (talk) 14:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Jean-Fred. You can read some discussion of the ideas at Commons:Commons:Requests_for_comment/Commons_Abroad_and_related_ideas and Commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/All_files_copyrighted_in_the_US_under_the_URAA#4_-_Commons_Abroad. There may be others. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:39, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I see. I thought this part of this statement was referring to the current, ongoing effort to move files to a Canada-based third-party website (which as far as I know never projected embedding, hence my question), not to the Commons Abroad idea. Thanks for clarifying. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Fair use in the US, PD in the country of origin?

Do you support my understanding of the legal issue with URAA (and other similar issues stemming from differences in copyright law between applicable jurisdictions), that one file might fulfill the requirement of being free at least in the US and the country of origin, by being covered by Fair use in the US, while being PD due to expiration of copyright terms in the country of origin? In that case we could save lots and lots of images that can be justified under the fair use doctrine. rgds --h-stt !? 15:28, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I support the idea of Fair Use for URAA files (but only for them!) — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Raymond (talk) 15:49, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

One problem is that the files would have to be deleted if unused on Wikimedia projects. This could cause lots of frustration* to external reusers, such as people using mw:InstantCommons, because external reusers would get red links if a file becomes unused on all Wikimedia projects. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:41, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought that InstantCommons only worked for Commons files, not local project files? And the reference to fair use was in the context of an EDP, which Commons is explicitly prohibited in wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:49, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Instant Commons is for Commons files. No idea if you can set up some other project (say, this project) to act as a media repository to some external project. Whether a local project wants an EDP or not is a matter for that project to decide about. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

This problem could be eliminated by including commentary about the image on the file page itself. That's the only legal reason that images have to actually be used on a Wikipedia, as the Wikipedia article assumedly includes commentary about the image. Trlkly (talk) 20:00, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Commons discussion

This statement is also being discussed at commons:Commons:Village pump#URAA statement. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)