Commons talk:WMF support for Commons/WikiLegal for Commons

Plain language

This page needs to be rewritten in shorter sentences and plainer language, bearing in mind that a significant part of it audience are not native English speakers. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion @Andy. I will certainly take it into consideration and make any necessary changes to ensure that the page is clear and accessible to everyone. Is there anything specific that you feel needs to be changed? Udehb-WMF (talk) 17:07, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Formulating the legal question

Having a background as both a lawyer and a community member, I would like to offer my help get these requests ready for someone from the WMF legal team to work on, i.e. help with fleshing out the precise legal question. Gnom (talk) 19:28, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Gnom for your offer! I appreciate your willingness to help with this project. Your background and expertise as a lawyer and community member would be a great asset in getting these requests ready for the WMF legal team. Please let us know what information you need from us to do this and we can get started right away. Udehb-WMF (talk) 16:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Udehb-WMF, thank you for your quick response. I don't know what process you were thinking about, but we will probably wait first to see if more questions come in, and then see where we stand with the number and scope of requests, right? Gnom (talk) 10:37, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like a great plan. We can take some time to see if any additional questions come in and then assess the scope of the requests. Once we have a better understanding of the requests, we can move forward with getting them ready for the WMF legal team. Thank you again for your offer of help. Udehb-WMF (talk) 12:02, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Udehb-WMF: Just a quick message to see if the team has already considered a timeline for this project. Gnom (talk) 16:26, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

No specific timelines. I think the thing that will be most useful about the page (and the discussion here) will be to see where there's a critical mass of discussion around a specific topic. That would influence us starting (or finishing) a wikilegal article we have (or considering some other intervention). Already, some of the main page discussion has revived a dormant article idea about de minimis/incidental third-party material inside of otherwise public domain content. If you think there should be a "specific" timelines for things to be delivered, I'd be open to that suggestion. For now, my current vision is that what articles get completed and when will be a bit more flexible.

To the extent someone feels like there's a brewing, immediate conflict on one of the issues being discussed, I'd encourage someone to @ tag me. SSpalding (WMF) (talk) 08:50, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@SSpalding (WMF) @Udehb-WMF: No rush – just let me know if I can help in any way (see above). Gnom (talk) 10:05, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@SSpalding (WMF): Any news to share? Xover (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

AI artwork-content

"US Copyright Office rules AI-generated artwork, content not legally protected" Original copyright office decision (PDF); The Hill article about it. Issue has been under discussion at deletion requests, eg Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Alice_and_Sparkle_cover.jpg, but there may be (?) additional related issues not addressed. This apparently resolves copyrightability, presumably if all parties are in the United States (any rulings in other countries?). It probably does not resolve if there is any COM:DW issues. It might or might not resolve issues around proprietary software used; I don't know. I request we get Wiki Legal involved for guidelines for such cases. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 22:46, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@Infrogmation Thank you very much for this! I think this is an important issue regarding copyrightability and proprietary software that should be addressed. I think it would be beneficial to move your comment to the main page so everyone can access and reference it. Could you please consider doing this? Thank you! Udehb-WMF (talk) 15:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Done, thanks. Cheers, -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:28, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Community consent and rights for representations of living heritage

The Wiki Loves Living Heritage project discusses over the course of the year the shortcomings of Wikimedia Commons policies and tools in addressing community consent and community protocols in materials depicting Intangible Cultural Heritage. We are inviting the Commons community as well as practitioners in the field of ICH to the discussion in order to find possible practices. They could include for example

• Expressing whether consent has been acquired with the consent template (needs to be elaborated to include community consent).
• Finding ways to document consent.
• Exploring if Traditional Knowledge Labels could be applied on Wikimedia Commons
• Work with the related policies to take these expressions into account

We would find it beneficial if there would be a legal component to the discussion. For the most part, community rights are not legally protected for traditional materials that have been passed on from generation to generation, but the discussion about these is active also in the Wikimedia projects. –  Susanna Ånäs (Susannaanas) (talk) 19:31, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Susannaanas,

Thank you for your thoughtful input on the Wiki Loves Living Heritage project and for raising important issues regarding community consent, community protocols, and Intangible Cultural Heritage. Your suggestions and ideas could indeed contribute significantly to the ongoing discussion. I kindly urge you to move your comment to the main page so that it can receive the attention it deserves and potentially elicit input from the Legal department.

Again, thank you for your valuable contribution, and I look forward to seeing the discussion progress on the main page. Udehb-WMF (talk) 16:46, 24 April 2023 (UTC)