Commons talk:Photographs of modern buildings

General discussion

Proposed Wording

To be added to the Commons Licensing policy in the section Interaction of United States copyright law and non-US copyright law:

Photographs of buildings are accepted on Commons regardless of any copyright status they may have as derivative works in their countries of origin, and that they are tagged with a warning if such copyright situation is believed to exist.

For and Against

Objections

I'll repeat my objections from Commons talk:Licensing here:

• Commons:Licensing policy is that a work must be public domain in both the source country and the US to be permitted at Commons.
• PD-Art is an exception to this policy, but one that has wide consensus at Commons, support from the Foundation, and moreover has never been contradicted successfully in court (indeed all case law so far points to international validity of this policy). A common misunderstanding is that "PD-Art does not apply in the UK" - the truth is that it's simply untested.
• There is a clear history of architects being actively litigious with respect to reproductions of their works in nations such as France.
• Some nations are beginning to relent and add specific exceptions to their law for buildings. The right course of action is for citizens of these nations to promote these legislative actions.

Therefore I don't believe we should change our position, notwithstanding the damage to our educational mission. Dcoetzee (talk) 17:06, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Support for the Proposal

This project is subject to US law alone so the occurence or absence of litigation in other countries need not concern us. That's not to say that we should do this just because it is legal, we should think it through and discuss the implications very thoroughly. It's an absurd law that allows an architect who has already been paid handsomely by their client to chisel money out of photographers and it would be a shame if we were to do nothing but sit passively waiting for every single one of the countries involved to repeal these quirky laws. The damage the existing policy does to our educational mission is the critical issue. No one's rights are infringed by the proposed change, the only parties likely to suffer are the perpertrators of copyfraud. 9carney (talk) 23:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I would argue that emotive language, accusing architects of being chiselers and perpetrators of copyfraud, is less then productive.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, perhaps I was bit harsh there, but I do think that that law in those countries can be called absurd. 9carney (talk) 23:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Honouring the interests of actual authors is one thing. In practice, the rule "defends" either executives of the firms, or their legal proxies who signed up the drafts, or the hypothetical descendants of dead authors - people who have no legal right to collect any interest in first place. That is, if such descendants exist, then for all practical purposes these rights are in limbo and unenforceable in court, but commons assumes that these are fully enforceable rights. NVO (talk) 08:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's begin by considering a weaker policy. Suppose that in the coming weeks there is a major political protest in one of the contested buildings in Dubai. I would strongly suggest that Wikimedia Commons should accept photographs of the protest, even though the vast majority of the picture will consist of architectural elements rising up above the people depicted. We should not limit ourselves to de minimis, nor should we leave the image tagged with "Fair Use", nor should we disfigure it with black boxes or blurs or other censor-marks - we should simply cover the event. The usual malleus, incus, and stapes of copyright are particularly offensive when it comes to buildings, because the code exalts the rights-holder's claim to all derivative works to a small fraction of a building, while denying all expression to the countless people who actually enter and use the building.

From this I would generalize that the photography of an event at a building should be welcome, and it should be free of any overbearing restrictions on whether someone is standing directly in the path of the camera or how much of the picture is building or how much of the building is pictured. Now an opponent of this idea might say that there is almost always an event of some sort, though not so dramatic, going on at a major public landmark building, and that someone could abuse this policy to ignore the copyright altogether. If this is so, then it is better to pass the proposal as written above, than to deny people the right to cover a major event. If not, then any line we draw at Commons should still be more generous than what the local laws would allow - the requirement of always being more cautious than the law allows may be a useful precept to those at risk of prosecution, but need not apply to outsiders. Wnt (talk) 17:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• I support the change of policy. It should mostly be much less of a problem than recent European photos of old paintings. I agree with 9carney that copyright on a pyramid, a bridge, or a building in the shape of an iron unit cell is a bit absurd, but it is the current policy on Commons that pushes this to further absurdities: photos of drab office buildings or houses on a normal residential street, or photos in countries where the concept is so strange that lawmakers did not think of formulating a FoP exception. There is a list of some 40 objects in France where rights holders take legal steps; let us just exclude those, and the Belgian Atomium. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:49, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Almost every case in the US on architecture I know about has been about houses on a normal residential street.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:27, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

You mean infringement on the architects rights by building a very similar house? Yes, of course, that would normally involve the most common type of buildings: residences. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 20:31, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I have just discovered this proposal and I like it very much, as it expresses well my own opinion on the subject. Therefore I am even more sorry that it seems to have stoped evolving and never made it for a vote of any kind. I have just linked to it in a discussion I started and this is now ongoing in Commons talk:Freedom of panorama. Marek BLAHUŠ (talk) 03:02, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I explicitly mentioned this with File:Freedom of panorama and Wikimedia Commons.pdf that was presented at Wikimania 2011 with the hope of getting ideas such as this more exposure. Personally, I would go further than this proposal, and remove the need for content to be free in the country of origin for all uploads, to resolve the issue of having some images that can only be uploaded to local projects as free, but not to Commons, entirely. CT Cooper · talk 12:27, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Christopher, somehow I did not notice that link in your presentation, although I was there in Haifa and it was me who later asked you for the source file in order to translate it into Esperanto. But what is sure is that your presentation has made me pay more attention to the topic and eventually led me here. I would probably be in favor of your amendment too, although people like JackLee in the other talk page have warned that making Commons a project that follows only US law might possibly damage its reputation and even guide it into some actual problems. In your presentation, you wrote that there is "no community wide consensus yet" on this issue. So my question is: What is the best way to reach it? There has already been a lot of discussion at Commons talk:Freedom of panorama (and its archive is actually a great resource for anyone who has deeper interest in the issue) and there is also this proposal... so how could I help to get things moving further? Marek BLAHUŠ (talk) 13:26, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh yes, it is a small world. There are indeed issues with making Commons US only with copyright law, though these could be mitigated, for instance with templates noting that this item is only free in the US - giving people the choice on if to use the content or not, dependent on their needs, rather than banishing it from the project completely. We already have templates that could serve this purpose, such as {{NoFoP-UAE}}. Another problem would be that there is no FoP for sculptures in the US, so pictures of copyrighted US sculptures would still have to go, but whether we would still keep pictures of non-US sculptures in countries with FoP, regardless of what US law might have to say on the subject (as now), is a different question. Ultimately, the community needs to decide how to draw the line between standards of freedom for uploaded content against the educational usefulness of the project, and as I said at Haifa, it is questionable on if that line is correctly drawn at this point. A lot of content on the project as it is is not completely free, for instance there are often {{personality rights}} which limit how some content can be used - that's not copyright law, but the distinction is rather artificial.

On what to do next, I don't think that is an easy question to answer. I think awareness has increased on the issue over the last year or so, which has resulted in more meaningful debate and support for reform, so discussion should continue. One aim of my presentation at Wikimania was to try and get the attention of the Foundation, which has somewhat succeeded, though nothing dramatic has happened. At a recent London meetup I spoke to Geoff Brigham, the General Counsel of the Foundation, who said that my presentation brought clarity to the issue - though I didn't get a chance to push for his opinion on reform to Commons' policy. On the whole, I think it would be most realistic at this point to push for reform just covering FoP areas, rather than try to change core policy. I hope that if the problems keep being highlighted, along with proposed solutions, we might get change eventually. CT Cooper · talk 20:27, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Define "modern" if you would...

A very vague word for a title. Perhaps you think that "modern" is easily recognizable ("I know it when I see it") but then think twice.

• 
  Built in 1850s. Or 1980s?
• 
  Built in 2000s. Or 1820s?

Case 1. Vernacular architecture persists for centuries with little changes. Is a recently-built Cape Cod House or mud hut "modern"? From a legal point, perhaps yes.

Case 2. Modern replicas of old buildings. In this case, it's not even a facadist job - it was wrecked and rebuilt anew; the facade follows old photographs, the floorplans are modern.

NVO (talk) 07:26, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

May be "recent" would be a better choice. --Túrelio (talk) 07:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

In many cases it's counterintuitive. Like French buildings of 19th century that don't pass the 70 years p.m.a. test. NVO (talk) 07:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

'Completion date' certificates of those buildings need to obtained for claiming it as new......Captain......Tälk tö me.. 17:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

In a PMA nation, completion dates are irrelevant.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Completion dates are fine unless the building was substantially altered/rebuilt/... - happens too often. Consider, for example, en:Château de Pierrefonds: is it a medieval castle or Viollet-le-Duc's 19th century fantasy? NVO (talk) 03:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

19th century is modern. Modern enough for copyright, at least.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Half the words in title are very vague. What does this word "on" or "of" or "building" mean? You're welcome to discuss changing the language to Lojban or some other philosophical/logical language, but as long as we're communicating in English, we have to assume that people will use common sense to interpret words, and when they're unclear--as "building" certainly is at points--will read the article to understand what exactly it covers.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I assume that "modern" means "not yet expired to the public domain in their country of origin". There is no strict need to use the word "modern" at all, and if it's this confusing, maybe you shouldn't. Wnt (talk) 17:29, 17 February 2011 (UTC)