User talk:GuidoGY

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, GuidoGY!

First steps tutorial Our first steps tour and our frequently asked questions will help you a lot after registration. They explain how to customize the interface (for example the language), how to upload files and our basic licensing policy (Wikimedia Commons only accepts free content). You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold when contributing and assume good faith when interacting with others. This is a wiki. Getting help More information is available at the community portal. You may ask questions at the help desk, village pump or on IRC channel #wikimedia-commons (webchat). You can also contact an administrator on their talk page. If you have a specific copyright question, ask at the copyright village pump.

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 20:15, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Following the fantastically incompetent handling by the local Taliban of a ludicrous dispute over one of my own pictures, I will no longer contribute any content whatsoever to Wikimedia.

A note

Alas that you left. However, the people you were arguing with are rather well versed in the relevant law. Unfortunately, that law is baroque.

While it was likely legal for you to upload photos with software interfaces, there are jurisdictions in which it would not be legal for a reader to take those images and reuse them in their own work. And this is the ultimate goal of Commons. So this project adopts a conservative legal position, in order to ensure that anyone almost anywhere in the world can take any image here and reuse it under a CC-SA license. As a result, you will find very few images of software of any kind on Commons.

Individual projects, such as the English Wikipedia, have their own less strict copyright policies. So your deleted image could be uploaded directly there, and used under fair use. --SJ+ 05:11, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

This must be the first constructive response I've had from anyone in the whole matter! Nevertheless, and while I have my doubts about the legal qualifications of several of the actors in this sorry dispute (people making lots of statements but not demonstrating anything, hardly the way to have your day in court), it is appalling to see how this place is run and how one sided the balance of power here is. I have no intention of being part of this sort of Taliban regime where in the end as an individual you have no say, no rights, no appeal, no control over your own stuff and I certainly do not want any of my pictures to be given to such a place. I'm now also being labelled "in bad faith" for wishing to remove the few pics I had already uploaded! I spend weeks preparing over 500 of my pics for upload, so the one good aspect of it all is that I found out what really goes on here at this early stage. --GuidoGY (talk) 10:54, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

There are many times when I wish we had the sort of power, and solidarity that you describe above. It simply isn't the case. There are many opinions on Commons and close calls get extended discussions. The only reason you heard only one voice speaking in this case is that your position is simply wrong. You would have us believe that it is OK to make and sell screenshots of copyrighted software. That is plainly not the case and would be an infringement anywhere. I say "plainly" with the background and experience to back it up -- I have been involved with copyright, particularly copyright in software, since 1984. It is perfectly plain that graphic images produced by copyrighted software are copyrighted, no matter what their purpose. The "utilitarian" exception applies to 3D objects, not graphic and literary works, else, as I said in my closing comment, instruction manuals, cookbooks, engineering and architectural drawings and the like would have no copyright.

As for "no rights, no appeal, no control", you are right and wrong. You certainly have the right of appeal -- see Commons:Undeletion requests, where you may appeal my closure of the DR.

You do not, though, have any control over your images once you have licensed them freely. The license is irrevocable and we very rarely remove images at the request of the uploader -- never without a good reason, which you do not have.

You have uploaded some wonderful images. I hope you continue to do so. If, however, you continue to spray deletion requests at your other files, you will be blocked from editing on Commons. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 12:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)