Commons:Massive restoration of deleted images by the URAA

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Massive restoration of deleted images by the URAA

Hi all!

After the response of the WMF Board of Trustees, we must raise the mass restoration of all deleted images by the URAA.

Letters
Response

Jusjih (talk) 06:00, 5 April 2014 (UTC) (disinterested bureaucrat) Due to ongoing concerns, I propose using Template:Wikilivres page to explain why we may not have URAA-affected files here, thus redirected to Canadian Wikilivres. However, having a bot to post this template may be better. Do not make mass restoration without Wikimedia Foundation's clear position.--Jusjih (talk) 04:08, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
✓ Closed as YES. URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion. Deleted files can be restored after a discussion in COM:UDR. Potentially URAA-affected files should be tagged with {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}. Yann (talk) 10:17, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note -- the above conclusion was superseded by Commons:Review of Precautionary principle; current policy is at Commons:Licensing#Uruguay_Round_Agreements_Act. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:33, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]


The position of the WMF BoT is clear, don't delete anything at the moment.

Regards, --Alan (talk) 16:11, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There have been a rather amazing amount of misconceptions in the votes below stemming from the ambiguities of the statement provided here. The Wikimedia Foundation has never supported the mass restoration of images deleted under the URAA, that is much different from what they have done, which is only opposing mass deletions of images under the URAA. In fact, the Wikimedia Foundation has supported deletion of images which can be found to be clearly infringing various copyright statutes, as noted in the language from their response: "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work using the guidelines issued by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department, as well as the language of the statute itself, and remove works that are clearly infringing." Don't delete anything at the moment ≠ please mass restore Wikimedia Commons images. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 16:32, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Comment: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees said on February 20, 2014 regarding Deletion of Content that "The WMF does not plan to remove any content unless it has actual knowledge of infringement or receives a valid DMCA takedown notice. To date, no such notice has been received under the URAA. We are not recommending that community members undertake mass deletion of existing content on URAA grounds, without such actual knowledge of infringement or takedown notices." This means that there be no more mass deletions. However, what about the images which were deleted previously? We have/had 55 to 66 year old images that are PD in Canada and were uploaded to Commons but were deleted under URAA. They should be given a chance of restoration on a case by case by basis, and not left deleted just because the WMF changed its mind here a little bit late, I think. Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 06:50, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Community members have not carried out mass deletion on URAA grounds. Bulk deletions, yes, but not mass deletions. The URAA is complex, and we need to be careful, but the bulk deletions generally seem to me to have been based on clear evidence of infringement. So our current policies and practice on Commons seem consistent with the Board's statement which you quote, as well as earlier guidelines from the WMF Legal team.
The Board's recent statement, while silent about what we should actually be doing, seems consistent with the WMF's earlier statements. They do not seem to have changed their mind.
Being PD is Canada is not enough for Commons to host a Canadian work. It must be PD in the US as well, or freely licensed (see COM:L#Interaction of United States copyright law and non-US copyright law for an explanation). If it isn't PD-US, it shouldn't be restored. --Avenue (talk) 10:54, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support the restoration of the files that have been deleted so far Poco2 18:41, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The position of the Board of Trustees is not "don't delete anything"; it's "we are not recommending that community members undertake mass deletion." That's a pretty passive non-recommendation, different from "we recommend that no deletions are made" and very far from "we are recommending restoration of deleted files." —LX (talk, contribs) 19:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The board recommends deleting images after a DMCA takedown notice is received. Doesn't that mean they advise that deletions that were not triggered by a DMCA takedown notice were premature -- a mistake? If they were premature mistakes, why should't we correct them? Geo Swan (talk) 15:21, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exactly—as I've been saying, these is no longer a legal issue here, it's just a Commons policy issue, which makes it even more strange why some people on Commons advocate mass deletion (or prevent mass restoration, which is similar). We're achieving nothing by deleting these images except angering thousands of volunteers who found, uploaded and often restored them (at least I did). As usual, the burden of proof is on the deleter, and since the legal argument has been yanked from under them, I can't see any further reason to advocate mass deletion or prevention of mass restoration. —Ynhockey (talk) 10:03, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • That all seems backwards to me. The burden of proof is usually on the uploader or those wanting to keep a file, not the reverse, and that is still the case here. Our whole URAA debate is about a tricky legal issue, and it only becomes a policy issue at the margins; what sort of DRs we should allow, and how certain we should be of infringement before deleting these files. And opposing mass restoration is not at all similar to advocating mass deletion. I oppose mass restoration of URAA-affected files, and I don't advocate mass deletion; in fact I oppose it. --Avenue (talk) 12:04, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both on Wikipedia and on Commons, the burden of proof was, and hopefully will remain, on the deleter. If you don't believe me, try to delete a copyrighted file on Commons that's claimed to be free (I mean through the regular process, not with your admin tools), but don't provide any proof that the file is copyrighted. I assure you that the admin reviewing your request will ask you for proof that the file is copyrighted (I am sure that this is how you yourself handle delete requests!). The same applies here: the images are claimed to be free, and the deleter must prove that they violate our copyright policy. In this case the proof used was that the URAA issue makes the very hosting of these files illegal. However, the Foundation has now made it clear that it's not necessarily illegal and there's no problem hosting the files on Commons if the community decides to. Therefore, the original proof used to delete the files is no longer valid. Therefore they must be restored. —Ynhockey (talk) 09:43, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, that's not true. Commons:Burden of proof is Commons policy, and it says "In all cases, the burden of proof lies on the uploader or other person arguing for the file to be retained [...]".
You are technically correct that the WMF can legally host URAA-affected files (at least until the WMF receives a takedown notice or otherwise becomes aware of the infringement), but the same is true of any copyright violation - e.g. creating a Wikipedia article by copying the corresponding Britannica article verbatim. Just because this is legal does not mean we should do it. Also, while it may be legal for the WMF to host it, for many people it would be illegal to reuse it. In other words, it isn't free. --Avenue (talk) 11:33, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Oppose - I agree with LX. We should not take this as carte blanche to upload URAA-violating files either, because that's not what the statement says. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 19:33, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Neutral Oppose Don't delete anything does not mean restore right now. —레비Revi 19:43, 22 February 2014 (UTC) / Changing to oppose after reading comments below, —레비Revi 03:51, 24 February 2014 (UTC) | Additional comment: We need reply from WMF legal, not BoT. —레비Revi 10:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support If the BoT don't recomended to take mass deletion I consider that the Commons Community should restore all the deletions until the problem is perfectly clear. --Elisardojm (talk) 23:58, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Its as clear as its going to be or are you offering to pay for some test cases?Geni (talk) 04:15, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Oppose per LX, as the statement is not recommending restoration, merely restraint in mass deletions going forward. — Huntster (t @ c) 00:12, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support The damage produced because the deletions of the image is too big and there isn,t legal issues keeping them in Commons Ezarateesteban 01:16, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support Se borró de manera preventiva, sin que hubiera requerimiento legal de hacerlo. Solicito la restauración de las imágenes. Laura Fiorucci (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Neutral I would atleast support discontinuing URAA deletions and DRs until we're more clear on what the board's position is. INeverCry 03:24, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support The statement is pretty supportive of keeping URAA-affected images, much better than last year analysis, so yes. Yann (talk) 03:39, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Oppose "Not continuing deletions" ≠ "Restore everything deleted". The core basis of this proposal is patently flawed. -FASTILY 07:20, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The response was pretty clear that "The WMF does not plan to remove any content unless it has actual knowledge of infringement or receives a valid DMCA takedown notice"; many (most?) of the images were deleted regardless of that consideration and that's why they should be restored or reconsidered. --CyberXRef☎ 20:42, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Oppose Per LX. But I am with INC and the board to not undertake mass deletion of URAA copyright restored material. On the other hand, we must not encourage uploading these to Commons. -- Rillke(q?) 10:08, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support stopping useless DRs + restoring files. But I suggest to have images identified as having URAA issues be clearly marked with an URAA warning template. --Denniss (talk) 10:42, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support As Laura has said, it's a case of preemptive deletion. My oppinion is that no file should be deleted if any other option is available. All afected files that have been deleted should be restored. We cannot let files be lost just because nobody shouted stop! fast enough. B25es (talk) 10:51, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Please define "any other option is available". Because as it stands you are suggesting we shouldn't delete a file if we can encrypt it in a laser and bounce it off the moon (well its an option).Geni (talk) 04:15, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support We can't accept "preventive deletion" without a legal requirement Tramullas (talk) 10:53, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? Without a legal requirement - Is U.S. law not a legal requirement? -- Rillke(q?) 11:01, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In US, of course, yes. In the rest of countries, at this moment, no. Anyway, Do yo accept that US laws can be applied to every contributor of Wikipedia/Commons in any location of the world? Tramullas
That's irrelevant; there are no copyvios that are copyvios in every location of the world. There are places in the world where it's still legal to post the latest Hollywood movie. We constantly delete stuff from the EU that's out of copyright in the majority of the world, which is still life+60 or less.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:58, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose The Board's statement still places confidence in the Legal team's statement last year, which says (in part): "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work [...] and remove works that are clearly infringing." Neither mass restorations nor mass deletions are appropriate. --Avenue (talk) 12:55, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I agree with B25es. Dorieo (homerízate) 18:07, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Should be restored until a final decision is made. --Mauricio V. Genta (talk) 18:50, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose "Do not continue mass deletions" does not really mean "please mass restore". Taivo (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose of course. The WMF has told us several times that all files hosted must be free in the U.S. And now we should ignore the URAA? A U.S. law, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court? Just because the WMF doesn't like it? Come on! Why not ignore other parts of copyright laws, too? Why not ignore copyright altogether? Upload to your heart's desire and let the foundation remove things when a DMCA takedown request comes in. If that's really what people want, we should stop pretending the Commons was a repository of free media and be honest about it having become a repository hosting whatever we can get away with. We're already playing a stupid game of picking the law that is most favorable to us and just ignoring any others, and doing so inconsistently even. Let's not make it even worse. Lupo 20:19, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think the fundamental problem with this argument, which many oppose comments are based on, is the understanding of the issue at hand. This is not a legal issue at all, but a policy issue. There are three types of people who could be in danger because of this content: the Foundation, the uploaders/editors, and content re-users. Clearly the biggest problem was the Foundation, because we don't want them to be sued, but the Foundation has clearly stated that there's no reason to delete images just for the sake of deletion. Regarding users and re-users: this is a question of Commons policy only. You can easily put a notice on each URAA image page that it's copyrighted only in the United States, which will solve the problem. The uploaders, presumably not based in the United States, and not in danger in the first place (because even if sued in the US, the lawsuit will be transferred to their own country where it will fall automatically), and any re-user not in the United States (the vast majority of Internet and Wikimedia users worldwide) will be able to use the content freely just like before. US users will have to be more careful. I see absolutely not problem with this, and don't see how it contradicts the mission of Commons. On the contrary, deleting URAA images directly contradicts the movement's primary mission of making free content available worldwide. —Ynhockey (talk) 18:19, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Worldwide, again, not including the US, or any other nation without the rule of the shorter term. It is not true that these files are only under copyright in the US; Argentina photos that are 30 years old will not be out of copyright in many countries: Brazil, China, Mexico, etc. (See Rule of the shorter term.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:21, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We're currently discussing specifically the URAA law, which is relevant to the United States and not other countries. For other countries the problem has always existed and we never deleted these images. However, even if we weren't just discussing the US, I see no problem with this: we can add a disclaimer to every picture if we so wish. Again, at this point it's a Commons policy issue, not a legal issue. Adding a disclaimer to any image is infinitely better than deleting it. —Ynhockey (talk) 08:51, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We aren't really discussing the URAA law; the question is the rule of the shorter term. Argentina photos that were published in 1989 may be out of copyright in Argentina now, but they were always in copyright in the US and thus never affected by the URAA law.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:40, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My previous argument still stands. If there's one country where something is non-PD, we can add a disclaimer. The Foundation's legal team has made it clear that it's not necessary to delete the files. —Ynhockey (talk) 10:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Support the restoration of the files that have been deleted so far --El Pantera (talk) 20:33, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  SupportAll the pictures should be restored. Do not delete any more pictures. I realy did not understood the eager to delete pictures that according to the previous owner the copyright had been expired. Hanay (talk) 20:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ownership of a physical item is irrelevant to most forms of copyright.Geni (talk) 04:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
US supreme court begs to differ and its kinda their decision to make.Geni (talk) 04:19, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support חיים 7 (talk) 20:58, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support same as Hanay. Kooritza (talk) 21:02, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support; (I am using this as a case in point; there are many other similar ones); A large number of files such as that were deleted even after strong indication they were in PD (such as released by the Israeli Gov). The response says "The WMF does not plan to remove any content unless it has actual knowledge of infringement or receives a valid DMCA takedown notice." Many photos were deleted without this consideration, there were no actual knowledge of infringement, and furthermore there were no valid DMCA takedown notices. It is for this reason that they should be restored. In the rare case that a DMCA or an infringement is shown, then and only then we should act on these individual files. We, as community volunteers, are not lawyers (and certainly not lawyers for the WMF). You shouldn't interpret laws in the strictest literal sense, and certainly not to your own detriment. The WMF certainly evaluated the risks and that's their reply. This is not the place for people's opinion regarding the law, it's the actions the we need to take to be aligned with the WMF BoT. --CyberXRef☎ 21:03, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • So why no just do what the brits did an ask for explicit clarification on the issue from the Israeli government. Surely if they want to release their copyrights into the public domain they will have no problem in explaining that this applies worldwide.Geni (talk) 16:25, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See Commons:URAA-restored copyrights. —RP88 16:12, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Commons:URAA-restored_copyrights#Background explains it pretty well. 1989 is the date the US joined the Berne Convention. It is true that though often around here the USA are kinda framed as the bad guys of this story who took back works from the public domain, this is quite misleading − fact is that the USA resisted implementing this retroactivity clause, but yielded in the end.
On the topic of the rule of the shorter term, there is this Meta page meta:United States non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term but this topic is quite beyond me so I cannot judge what it is worth.
Hope that helps, Jean-Fred (talk) 15:55, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
pre-emptively? Golan v. Holder was decided over a year ago.Geni (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Been looked into. All the other options and worse and commons tends to have content that is illegal anywhere outside the US.Geni (talk) 16:34, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I think it's time to set a precedent where the Movement and its communities define opening up data as a default policy, and not trying to think of every way possible to not open data. We have nothing to prove by deleting those photos, only what to gain by restoring. NLIGuy (talk) 05:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support The purpose of the copyrights are to save the rights of the creator. If the rights are granted to a state and by this state's rules the copyrights were expired, I don't see a reason why to delete them. Shannen doh (talk) 06:13, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The problem you hit with that argument is that it is quite possible for a state to chose not to enforce it's copyrights with its boarders but to do so outside. In such cases we need explicit assurances that they wont enforce them. For example this.Geni (talk) 16:38, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support In this case there is no danger of copyrights infringement whatsoever. These photos are free for use universally. Oyoyoy (talk) 06:14, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Same as Hanay. איתן96 (talk) 06:44, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support . Danny-w (talk) 07:36, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support. not only stop delete picture but restore all deleted picture. Yona B. (t) 07:39, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Gilgamesh (talk) 08:49, 24 February 2014 (UTC) the same as Hanay 07:58, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support of course. GuySh (talk) 08:02, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support. not only stop delete picture but restore all deleted picture.בן נחום (talk) 08:04, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support A comment to user Trijnstel first - of course many users of the He Wiki vote here as according to the current interpretation of some admins here, ALL PD photos from Israel (from 1946 till 1996) have to be removed/deleted from Commons. If this seems reasonable for some it makes no sense to me. I spent many hours of uploading images to Commons and putting them in cats' instead of uploading all of them directly to the Hebrew Wiki. I currently feel quite stupid following the recommendations given at that time by Commons. If this irrational pre-emptive approach does not stop soon, i'm afraid the result will be having very few images from Israel in commons left, and i don't think this is the aim commons was erected for. By the way, this URAA issue affect surely many other countries beside IL. Best Regards --kippi70 (talk) 08:06, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    •  Question Kippi70: since when is this a vote page? Natuur12 (talk) 08:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Of course this matter concern many countries see Category:URAA-related deletion requests and see how many pictures were deleted from many many many... countries. Hanay (talk) 09:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • That is not what I asked. I asked: since when is this a vote page? Arguments are important, input is important but just a support without arguments is quite pointless since this is not a vote. Natuur12 (talk) 10:17, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • This isn't a vote, this here is a farce. Most supporters obviously have been summoned here and most "arguments" are just babble like "Deletion is evil" or "Israel is not USA". --A.Savin 11:54, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • This is not a farce. This matter was discussed a lot in he:wik Village pump, and users were very angry about the deletion of important historical pictures of the state of Israel that was done by few here without raise this matter first before to the community As you can see above wikomedia Israel sent a letter to the BoT. When it was published last night in the village pump that there is a discussion here on this matter, of course users enter here to express their opinion. Unfortunatly not every one ןit easy for him to express himself in English so it is easier for them to say the same as. It is also not easy for me to express myself in English. But what they thinks it is matter and the community here should listen. Hanay (talk) 12:30, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • If this is so important, why are we still deleting files that are completely public domain in the country where the WMF is headquartered? Whether or not they are under copyright in France,Israel,etc., is completely irrelevant. Why is it so important that we restore works that illegal for us to host while still deleting works that aren't illegal for us to host?--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • "While still deleting works"? We actually shouldn't be doing that either; the reply was very clear "WMF does not plan to remove any content unless it has actual knowledge of infringement or receives a valid DMCA takedown notice". I really don't understand your extremist stance. --CyberXRef☎ 02:26, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • Commons deletes files from the EU if they aren't out of copyright in the EU even when they're public domain in the US and thus not eligible to removed through a DMCA takedown noticed. Please familiarize yourself with Commons policy.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:40, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • This is exactly the point: many here are trying to argue that there is some kind of legal issue here, even though in reality it's a 100% policy issue. There is no problem in keeping PD images that are copyrighted only in the EU, with a proper disclaimer of course, just like there is no problem in keeping PD images that might be (again, might be) copyrighted in the US, under a disclaimer. If there is a policy or guideline that says otherwise then it should be changed, and the sooner the better. I'm sorry that most of the people in this debate come from Wikipedia and not Commons, and might not be familiar with some of the intricacies of Commons policy. However, since Commons is heavily integrated with Wikipedia, people active on Wikipedia have just as much of a say. If there is clear consensus and no legal issue, I don't see why we should still be sticking to rules that have no purpose other than to anger people, assuming such a rule even exists. —Ynhockey (talk) 10:08, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support ¿The position of the BoT is "just" an opinion? Do not try to be more righteous than the pope. --Aleposta (talk) 09:08, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Delete these pictures doesn't make sense. We, which are in charge for accessibility to knowledge, and information, should not behave, as, dry technocrats , when it comes to such a treasure. Ariel Palmon 09:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support. Previous deletions of these images are not in accordance with the new statement of the BoT. The images should be restored and further deletions per URAA should only be considered if a valid complaint or DMCA takedown notice is received. The position of the WMF was made very clear in this statement and Commons, as it serves all other Wikimedia projects, should comply with this position. • Yael (Meronim) • 09:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support All the pictures should be restored. Do not delete any more pictures. I do not understood the eager to delete pictures that according to the previous owner the copyright had been expired Ovedc (talk) 10:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support *I looked at Golan vs. Ashcroft, and in the introduction it is written that the case is about trying to strike down the relevant part of the " Uruguay Round Agreements Act" saying that "Congress has extended copyright restoration automatically to all foreign works that were in the public domain in the United States if, among other things, (a) the work "is not in the public domain in its source country through expiration of term of protection."[1]
    So, if I understand this correctly, the case is relevant to files that are not in the public domain in their source countries, but that had their source been in the US should have been freed to the public domain. But here we are talking about files that are in the public domain in their source countries! So I really can't understand why they were deleted in the first place? It looks to me that deleting those file was an unreasonable interpretation of the ruling, therefor those files should be retrieved immediately. Eman (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, copyright on foreign works was restored in the USA, if they were not in the public domain in the source country on the URAA date (usually 1996). The fact that these works may have entered the public domain in their source country between that date and now is, quite unfortunately, irrelevant. Jean-Fred (talk) 18:03, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is not what I understand from the law. The law deals with works that entered the PD in the USA even though they were not PD in the source country prior to this date. I suppose this law (or maybe another law) prevents works to enter the PD in the USA after this date if it is not in PD in the source country. But I didn't see anywhere that it prevents a work to be relesed in the US when it is released in the source country! Eman (talk) 20:16, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Pierre, WMES and WMIL only expressed his opinion as chapters of Wikimedia. The opinion of the community is now trying. Cheers, Alan (talk) 14:29, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Still, I think when you want to enforce/add/change the licensing policy of one project, you probably should involve the community of said project first. If the problem is local to IL or NL the wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy and exemption doctrine can be used on local wikipedia not movement wide. Well this is my vision of how the movement should work and I can accept that yours is different, however I want to point it out. --PierreSelim (talk) 16:01, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support - As said above - deleting these pictures makes no sense. I agree with user: Hanay above. Danny-w (talk) 12:39, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose I am often as annoyed by the URAA law as anybody else: I not to upload images that break URAA law, but also do not go out of my way to find such images. The most annoying part of the law is that makes some uploads possible only by elite group of users that can figure them out. To do everything by the book, {{PD-1996}} now requires a "reason" that should require an essay on why the work was PD in the country of origin on some date. That said I agree with user:Lupo and others that we do not cherry-pick laws. Is URAA is the law of the land than if we want to claim that images are in PD than they need to also follow URAA rules, no mather how ridiculos they are. However we should lobby to change the law, or at least make people more aware of the issues related to it. We can have something on the subject on the wikipedia and commons main pages, we could add information on the wikipedia pages that use graphics affected by the rule. Non English wikipedias like Wikimedia Israel or Wikimedia Spain could work on making their population and government aware of how the law affects the works of PD authors from Israel and Spain. They can make US government aware about unpopularity of the law, or at least help in future negotiations. --Jarekt (talk) 14:32, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support The letter from WMF says: "The WMF does not plan to remove any content unless it has actual knowledge of infringement or receives a valid DMCA takedown notice. To date, no such notice has been received under the URAA. We are not recommending that community members undertake mass deletion of existing content on URAA grounds, without such actual knowledge of infringement or takedown notices." It is my impression that a very large fraction of those images that might be challenged under a naive, surface, interpretation of URAA, would actually be unequivocally PD, if looked at in detail. Didn't the USA use to require copyright holders to file paperwork, and pay renewal fees, in order to retain their initial copyright beyond 28 years? Isn't this how "It's a Wonderful Life", "Old Yeller", and thousands of other fine films entered the public domain? How many foreigners would have bothered paying an agent to go through this onerous paperwork? And yet, if I am not mistaken, if they didn't do so, those photos would unequivocally be public domain without regard to the URAA. Geo Swan (talk) 15:16, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unfortunately the law says that even in the case that the work entered public domain because the copyright was not renewed, the copyright is restored anyway. Best regards, Alpertron (talk) 17:42, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The whole point of the URAA is to return those works to copyright, at the demand of nations like Israel and Argentina.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:21, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • the demand is that every work that is under copyright protection in the source nation will be also under copyright in the USA. I don't know about the Argentinian case, but in the case of the Israeli pictures that were deleted, they are free under Israeli law! So there is no reason that they won't be free under American law, even with the URAA! Eman (talk) 22:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • The US does not and never has had the rule of the shorter term. The US ever since the US signed the Berne Convention, the US has given equal rights to foreign authors as it does to local authors; I don't see why other countries should be proud of not doing the same.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:40, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I agree with user: Hanay above, there is no sense in deleting these files . אור שפירא (talk) 15:27, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I am unsure such a straw poll on the AN is a good way to reach a consensus on this very complex and polarising topic of enforcing the URAA. Jean-Fred (talk) 15:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you are aware of previous attempts to "reach a consensus on this very complex and polarising topic of enforcing the URAA" would you consider linking to them here? How did they work out? Geo Swan (talk) 16:02, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Some background on the URAA, links to earlier discussion, etc. is available at Commons:URAA-restored copyrights. More can be gleaned from the page history and discussion page. —RP88 16:12, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Geo Swan: Well, I do not have any magic solution − RFCs like the US FoP one are not a huge success either. I guess the closest we had to a community wide discussion about URAA was the 2012 mass-DR (but you already know about it :)
I simply meant that I do not see much meaning in a straw poll like this one − though it can help me refine my own opinion about the URAA, I don’t see how it could possibly shape future Wikimedia Commons policy − nor mass-reverse previous deletion requests outcomes. Jean-Fred (talk) 18:03, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

 Support Files that are free in their source countries are free, regardless of the rules in the countries where Wikimedia servers resides. This is pretty obvious! You go by the laws of the country where the pictures were taken. בורה בורה (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

 Support Should be restored until a final decision is made. also i dont think that wikipedia should be Exclusively an american project, and Talmoryair (talk) 17:33, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why? Natuur12 (talk) 17:36, 24 February 2014 (UTC) Motivation was added after I asked this question. Natuur12 (talk) 18:04, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support The reason that copyright policies on Wikimedia projects exist in the first place are to protect a) the Foundation, b) our users and c) potential content re-users from copyright related lawsuits. The URAA issue is most relevant to a) and c) in the first place, assuming the uploaders of this content are based outside the United States. It has been clear from the start that copyright suits are unlikely, and even if they happen then it's unclear what the consequences will be for the movement. Now even the Foundation is saying that the panic was overstated and we shouldn't be deleting images just for the sake of deletion. Now look at the other side: our mission as a movement is making this information accessible to the general public. That's our "primary directive". Is it really worth giving up our ideals for a very remote possibility that someone will sue the movement on the flimsy grounds of URAA? Moreover, as a content contributor and donator to the movement, do these things precisely so that the movement will grow and be able to defend itself legally. We should never break the law, but when a law is unclear and the practical chance of any damage to the movement is slim, we should not throw away our fundamental ideals at the first chance. —Ynhockey (talk) 18:04, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support after the nightmare of a gauntlet I went through to get Canadian Crown Copyright exempted from the URAA, I don't want the stupid law taken into consideration anymore. If someone has an issue with us using an image that was restored under the URAA, they can let us know. It's copyright protection at its absolute minimum, and a banter factory producing the same tired old deletionists with the same tired old argument, and most especially the universal lack of consideration by those editors, who will do squat to help restore the damage they've done when they have been proven wrong following their mass-deletion campaigns. And yes, right now I am pointing fingers squarely at users such as Stefan4, Fastily, and Ramaksoud2000. - Floydian (talk) 18:17, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Fry1989 eh? 18:25, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Guycn2 (talk) 18:51, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose If the Board or the Foundation want to restore the files, they can do it via an office action. It's too easy to put the final decision on the community and wash their hands with the problem. Pleclown (talk) 19:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Wikimedia Argentina has just released an open letter from its Board regarding its position on URAA-motivated deletions. Please consider additing it to the list of Letters if you consider it possible despite our position being made public after the RfC began. --Galio (talk) 20:56, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Those may be a bit different, in that the DR is sufficiently focussed (i.e. on files from a particular jurisdiction in a specific year) that the same reasoning could well show they are all clear infringements under the URAA. (IMO the German cases are not quite so clearcut, and might deserve an undeletion request.) There are some bulk URAA DRs that are even more specific, e.g. Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Scans from 'Pitman, Automobile Engineering', Vol V. While it wouldn't hurt to review them, I think these are not necessarily problematic. I believe WMF Legal's position against mass deletions wasn't meant to prohibit any DR covering more than one file, but related primarily to sweeping DRs like Commons:Deletion requests/All files copyrighted in the US under the URAA, which covered anything tagged as falling afoul of the URAA and contained no examination of the facts applying to each individual file. --Avenue (talk) 09:26, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support per WMF BoT, that's all · Favalli ⟡ 00:48, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support agree withh Hanay and Yanhocky. As stated by WMF BoT, the deletion is a Legal error, if done with out proper DMCA takedown first, and as stated by Wikimedia Argentina, it is a bad policy to delete. As deletion was done in legal error and against community better values, it should be reversed. Deror avi (talk) 05:43, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support agree with Devor avi, Hanay and Yanhocky --Jörgens.Mi Talk 05:47, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support In accordance to the Israeli chapter's letter. I belive that the current situation where the picture rights are bounded to a local law of the state where the main computers are is ridiculous. It's a fine example of what the wikimedia project is trying to solve, bringing knowledge to the masses in a free and easy to use platform. The current decision is not representative of what all of us are trying to do all over the world in our actions in the wikimedia projects. therefore, I think it's necessary to have a new disscusion about this topic, that will include proffesional point of view from lawyers that specialize in international law and copyright laws. With regards, Garfield גארפילד (talk) 07:30, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support URAA is a very special case. It is valid for only 1 of ~ 200 states of the world. Add a note to the URAA template to warn US citizens to not use them. But all other people of the world are free to use them. Keep the knowledge of the world as free as possible. The BoT of WMF has not a problem to keep them so why should we delete them? (And undelete all previously deleted!). Raymond 07:51, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support O yes, so much of my work that I have done in many years for the Commons has been deleted by copyright-paraonid admins that I cannot but say again: restore the files, and add a disclaimer, if you must. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 08:09, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support +1 AndreasPraefcke. --Ordercrazy (talk) 08:52, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support. --Hartmann Linge (talk) 10:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Ephraim33 (talk) 10:07, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose mass restoration, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, one of the core principles of Commons is that files have to be released under a free licence or be in the public domain both in the country of origin and in the United States. Undeletion of files that are unfree in the US will be in direct contradiction to this core principle of ours. Secondly, we cannot just pick and choose laws that suit us or laws that we like. We routinely delete files that are not free either in their country of origin or in the US, and URAA should not be an exception. Thirdly, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has no higher authority on matters of copyright law than any one single person that decides to take part in this discussion (or maybe it's already a !vote). The Foundation has long claimed it is only a service provider, and not a content provider: if so, their opinion on the matter is mostly irrelevant (or at least, as relevant as any other opinion voiced on this page), and should not be taken as a decisive factor for anything. Fourthly, the idea that we would only delete files after receiving DMCA takedown notices is out of touch with reality, and plainly contradicts our founding principle that defines Commons as a repository of free media. If we deleted files only after DMCA takedowns, (1) Commons would not only become a yet another free (as in beer) media hosting site full of copyright violations but (2) we would put our re-users into significant legal risk. The United States, like it or not, is one of the biggest Internet markets in the world, and serving our US-based users with material that is clearly copyrighted in that jurisdiction would do us (and them) more harm than good. URAA is the law of the land in the US, and it would be better for this discussion if we stopped caring about our feelings for URAA, and started caring about the facts. odder (talk) 10:20, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem is that (if I understand the URAA correctly) there was a mass deletion of files that even under the URAA are free. As I showed above, and still nobody showed me otherwise, what the URAA did was to restore copyright to works that were released in the US, despite still being under copyright protection in their source countries. But once a work is on PD in its source country, the URAA is not relevant to it. So all we want is to restore pictures that were taken in Israel/Mandatory Palestine and that are more than 50 years old, therefore in the PD under Israely law (a law that originated from the British copyright law). Those pictures were deleted by a mistake because sombody thought the URAA is relevant to them, despite it is not (if I understand correctly what the URAA means). Do you agree that such files should be restored? Eman (talk) 10:44, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • To my knowledge, there was no such thing as a « mass deletion » per Wikimedia Commons standards. Here we routinely delete media by tens and tens. A “mass-deletion” in the context of URAA would be to fire a bot to deleted the thousands of files in Category:Works copyrighted in the U.S., or to nuke entire category trees like Category:1924 paintings. To my knowledge, no such thing has happened and if so it was indeed a mistake in my opinion (I’d be happy to be pointed to such a case).
    • Please read COM:URAA, which details the currently accepted URAA analysis and examples, which go contrary to your reasoning.
    Jean-Fred (talk) 10:58, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I read the analysis, and I don't see how it contradicts my reasoning.
    If there is a picture that was taken in Israel in 1955. According to Israeli law it is protected untill 2005. What the URAA says is only that if somehow it entered the PD in the US in any year brfore 1996 because one of three reasons that are mentioned here [2] the copyrights should be restored. But all this means is that it expires in the US at the same day it expires in Israel, that is on January 1st 2006. So do you agree with me that it should not be deleted in 2014, and if it was, it should be restored? Eman (talk) 11:47, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    “It expires in the US at the same day it expires in Israel” − precisely no. The US granted this picture the same protection it would have had in the first place, which is 95 years post-publication, meaning this picture would enter the public domain in the US in 2050. The fact that the copyright expired in 2006 in Israel is irrelevant to the copyright status in the USA, as the USA do not observe the rule of the shorter term. See the COM:URAA examples which relay this Copyright Office circular: In the first one with the French 1935 short story, assuming the author died in, say, 1940, it entered the public domain in France in 2011 but is nonetheless protected in the USA until 2030. Jean-Fred (talk) 13:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    So basically you are saying that the problem is not in the URAA, but that the USA do not observe "the rule of the shorter term" (even though it appears in the Berne Convention)? Eman (talk) 15:19, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Eman: Well, I’d say it is a rather unfortunate combination: the fact that Commons must follow USA law, the USA copyright term of 95y post publications which in this instance is less favourable than the 50y post-publication of Israel (or the 25y in Argentina, and for that matter often the 70y pma of many countries), and the lack of rule of the shorter term which does not make it public domain in the USA on the day it becomes public domain in its source country. The fact that works were granted copyright protection in the USA through the URAA is really a side problem (except that it makes it more complicated to determine if the copyright was restored, but once that is established usual rules apply). Jean-Fred (talk) 16:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    And please read in Golan v. Holder, pages 9-10 (13-14 on the file) "Works that have fallen into the public domain after the expiration of a full copyright term—either in the United States or the country of origin receive no further protection under §514."[3] Eman (talk) 12:56, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    My understanding is that this sentence deals with deciding whether to restore copyright on the URAA date. Indeed, if the copyright term had expired in the source country on the URAA date, then the work does not get further protection. URAA application only make sense based on the situation at the URAA date (1996). Jean-Fred (talk) 13:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    "Undeletion of files that are unfree in the US will be in direct contradiction to this core principle of ours."
That's exactly the point: this is not one of our core principles. It's a practical consideration stemming from a wish not to break the law and to protect a number of people from lawsuits. Making free information available is one of our core principles, not just of Commons but of the entire movement. Now that the Foundation has made it clear that there is no legal problem with keeping the images until (if) a takedown notice is given, there's no reason to go back on our actual core principles. It is really not our job to debate whether something is legal or not, we have the Foundation's legal team for that (and we do need to heed their legal advice). Our job is to do everything in our power to make the information free with minimal limitations. —Ynhockey (talk) 09:33, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Ynhockey: The requirement for files to be free both in the country of origin and in the United States is a founding principle of Wikimedia Commons. It is directly derived from the need not to break U.S. law, and it is used to protect our re-users, but this doesn't make it a non-core principle.
The Wikimedia Foundation has never been involved in day-to-day deletions of copyright infringing files; they have only ever deleted files after receiving DMCA takedown notices — and their behaviour in that regard has always had zero influence on the copyright policies of Wikimedia Commons.
Furthermore, the Foundation's legal team has long claimed that it does not and cannot provide legal advice to the community, and I would be very cautious with accepting their assistance now.
The goal of Wikimedia Commons is to create a free media repository; this cannot be achieved if we keep files that are unfree in the United States. odder (talk) 11:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is the perfect example of how the process has become more important than the result. Uploading images that are also free in the US might have been a founding principle (I really don't think so, but let's assume for the sake of argument), but it's not a core principle. As you said yourself, it stems from the practical need to protect users and re-users. What can protect them just as much? A disclaimer. An elementary solution to a seemingly intractable problem.
On the other hand, making free images accessible to the public is one of our core principles, and has always been. It is our most important principle by far. I don't understand why so many users are fighting against this principle.
The WMF does not decide Commons policy, but their legal advice is definitely important. The WMF's legal team is the highest authority in the movement for Wikimedia-related legal issues in the United States, whether we like it or not. We don't have to follow their advice, but at least we should have a good reason for not doing so, i.e. it contradicts our core principles. In this case, not following their legal advice contradicts our core principles.
The goal of Wikimedia Commons is to create a free media repository. This does not mean keeping only files that are free in the entire world, and indeed if you look at Commons today, a significant percentage of the files isn't free in some country or other. I see absolutely no conflict.
—Ynhockey (talk) 15:03, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Have you read meta:Legal and Community Advocacy/URAA Statement? I'll quote its closing paragraph: "New proposals for solutions to this issue are welcome. However, US laws will apply to all Wikimedia projects and files, regardless of where the files are used, uploaded, or stored." As you say, "The WMF's legal team is the highest authority in the movement for Wikimedia-related legal issues in the United States, whether we like it or not." We cannot simply change Commons policy to ignore US law. --Avenue (talk) 15:59, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

 Support The rules on the Wikimedia projects aren't laws, they have to be interpreted in the light of the goal "free knowledge, for everyone". A mass deletion without concrete legal problems such as takedown-notice doesn't serve this goal and destroys other peoples work. --Koffeeinist (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Support -- and never such a mass deletion again. Marcus Cyron (talk) 23:28, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Apoyo sin reserva las propuestas de Argentina y España. --Juan C Anselmi (talk) 17:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Expandiendo mi voto inmediato anterior, a efectos de agregar una argumentación que no está reflejada en mi escueto mensaje anterior, diré que una solución perfecta no existe en este caso, y el resultado es tanto más imperfecto al adoptar una solución masiva en el que la simple desconfianza de que se pudieran lesionar derechos de autor, o en el mejor de los casos encontrar algún detalle contradictorio, ya amerita borrarla en forma preventiva. No, se debe ser más cauto. Hay que respetar el trabajo de quienes subieron esa foto y de quienes tal vez la usaron ya en algún artículo. Borrar la foto en forma preventiva si hay una denuncia concreta, para mí es una solución aceptable, pero luego, creo que habría que profundizar en el caso, y restaurar la foto si se llega a la conclusión que ese borrado preventivo no corresponde. --Juan C Anselmi (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I support the restoration of deleted images. They shouldn't have been deleted. --Pepe piton (talk) 18:21, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support per above. --Leyo 23:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support per above. I'm in Canada and a lot of Commons images of Barbara Ann Scott who won Canada's only gold figure skating medal at the 1948 St. Moritz Olympics were deleted due to URAA issues. The images of her dated from 1946-1948. Some images bore the PD-Canada tags which stated that they were out of copyright since they were taken in Canada and copyright expires 50 years after the photos were taken. So, they were copyright free by 1999. This was from the City of Toronto archives and dated to 1948 and I doubt the City of Toronto would sue over this image. But due to the precautionary principle, they were all deleted due to URAA issues. Therefore, these images are free only if you live in Canada. Personally, I think that...the WMF should not have deleted this content unless they received a valid DMCA takedown notice or otherwise become aware of any infringing content. This was only 1 case but there must be many more. That is why I would consider supporting a restoration of deleted images by the URAA--unless of course there are valid DMCA takedown notices to protect the WMF, of course. IMO, Dennis' point that 'images identified as having URAA issues [should] be clearly marked with an URAA warning template' is quite sound here. A compromise would be for the community to restore older images that are clearly out of copyright in their host nation on a case by case basis since we are supposed to be supporting access to free images and not just deleting them. Just my opinion. --Leoboudv (talk) 03:55, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Millars (talk) 11:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support - per above. Same as Hanay and דוד שי. Ravit (talk) 11:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support As preemptive mass deletion were supported neither by Wikimedia policy nor by community opinion, the deleted files should be restored. --WolfgangRieger (talk) 16:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Since there haven't been any mass deletions of URAA-affected files, that would mean restoring zero files. See Jean-Fred's post of 10:58, 25 February 2014 above for an explanation of what mass deletion would mean in this context. --Avenue (talk) 19:33, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, since I posted that I made a similar review to the one you did in your 09:26, 25 February 2014 thread − and I pretty much have the same reasoning. Although it hardly qualify as “massive” in Commons book (or at least my book), I can understand how DRs targeting a category can be intriguing for non-regulars. As far as I can see many of them are no problems though. The ones targeting all pages of a book make sense ; all pictures of a building are of course commonplace (cf. FoP) ; stuff like Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Auguste Brouet is very on spot. The ones like “X from Argentina” do raise an eyebrow but looking at them they were well laid out with each file sorted per year. Clearly there is some room for improvement (I always roll my eyes when I see several “Undelete in X” on the same DR) but overall I do think no mindless nuking has been taking place on URAA grounds. Jean-Fred (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support The latest WMF statement is crystal clear. It says that the WMF does not plan to remove any content on URAA grounds “unless it has actual knowledge of infringement or receives a valid DMCA takedown notice” and recommends community members to follow this same principle. Therefore the deletion of images on URAA grouns should be immediately suspended; only those affected by DMCA requests should be proposed for deletion. The logical corollary is that all images deleted up to now on the same grounds should be restored and only deleted again if a valid DMCA request is filed.--Hispalois (talk) 22:04, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose People are misunderstanding the board of trustee's statement. The statement does not say that we can keep the material; any "clear violation" would still have to be deleted. The statement only talks about "mass deletions" (deletions at random without any review?) are inappropriate. Also keep in mind that Commons is bound by wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy, which tells that Commons only may host material which satisfies Freedomdefined:Definition. That is, anyone should be able to use, study, make and distribute copies and modify the material. It is for example illegal for some people to do the aforementioned things in the following situations:
  1. If it is a non-US work published after 1922 and copyrighted in the source country on 1 January 1996 (illegal to do the aforementioned things in the United States of America)
  2. If it is a photograph of a building in any country, and the architect hasn't been dead for at least 75 years (illegal to do the aforementioned things in Samoa)
  3. If it is a work originating from any country, and the author hasn't been dead for at least 80 years (illegal to do the aforementioned things in Colombia)
These files fall in the first category of works which do not meet the Definition of Free Cultural Works. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:56, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support These files are absolutely free under the Israeli law, hence the pictures are free for any use elsewhere. There's no sense in deleting these files from the Commons unless we get a valid DMCA takedown notice. Ldorfman (talk) 02:05, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Wuyouyuan (talk) 10:05, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose The statement only says "the WMF doesn't remove anything unless it receives a DMCA notice". Which has always been the case. Nothing new under the sun. If we apply that in the way this proposal suggests, we might as well stop deleting any copyvios at all. Being free in the US is absolutely essential; if we want to question anything about our licensing policy, I'd prefer questioning whether we should still apply source country law (especially FOP law), because that is clearly not something we are required to do. darkweasel94 10:05, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Stop the mass deletion of files that are in public domain under local laws of their respective countries of origin and for which no one ever claimed anything. Banfield - Amenazas aquí 12:24, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support NaBUru38 (talk) 12:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong  Oppose I consider "mass restoration" of images the same as "mass reuploading" of such images against copyright policy without consideration or close scrutiny of the copyright statuses of such images, a behavior that, if it were not for the inherently divisive nature of the URAA among our community, would likely have gotten the uploader blocked for repeatedly reuploading copyright violations. The mission of Wikimedia Commons is to supply a database of freely licensed images to end-users around the world, including but not limited to the various Wikimedia wikis served our content. Let's examine the potential harm this might bring to Wikimedia Commons:
  • Mass deletion of images under the URAA: Likely deletion of images legitimately licensed freely within their home country, doing a disservice to potential end-users of such images such as Wikimedia wikis (who are also contemplating separating from Commons).
  • Mass restoration of images deleted under the URAA: It's highly likely that some of the images that were deleted by Commons administrators were also, and I trust their good judgment, in violation of several copyright statutes in addition to URAA. We would be doing a disservice to end-users who may be violating the copyrights of such images should they choose to reuse them for other purposes, because they risk breaking the copyright rules and find themselves facing a potential lawsuit.
In both cases, we are ultimately doing our end-users potential disservice. The message from the Wikimedia Foundation is clear: we should simply stop committing mass deletions of images under URAA until their copyright statuses can be verified, rather than simply taking the conservative approach under the precautionary principle. To resist this law, we must approach it by voicing our dissent passively, not actively, as in the difference between passive nonviolent protest rather than active violent protest. Passively, we choose to keep the remaining uploads which might violate URAA within our database, not touching them in any way. That is non-deletion and non-restoration. To take an active approach, whether to delete en masse such images, is to uphold the letter of the URAA (which of course all good Wikimedians ought to be against), or whether to restore en masse such images, is to reupload potential copyright violations and risk compromising the legal safe harbor of our end-users.
As noted above, there has been no evidence of "mass deletions" of images under the URAA, though I'd be happy for someone to prove me wrong, so we can mob hang the administrator responsible take a reasonable re-review of such images. Usually, the images are deleted from Wikimedia Commons because, and I reiterate that I trust the good judgment of the administrators of this site, they violate other copyright statutes in addition to URAA. Let me emphasize that violating URAA should not be the sole reason an image should be deleted. Rather than "mass restoration" willy nilly of images deleted under URAA, we should establish another process in place to reexamine the copyright statuses of each image and upload to Commons if we are sure they are free for our end-users and do not violate any copyright statutes including URAA. That's the safest route to protecting Commons content and Commons end-users from lawsuits. This leads into my proposal below.
Also, to any uninvolved administrator or bureaucrat looking at this issue: There might possibly be some canvassing from Hebrew Wikipedia, whether because of the Wikimedia Israel chapter statement or Hanay's message to them. I can't say for sure as I have not examined the situation closely whether the canvassing was appropriate for such a large divisive topic within the global Wikimedia community or whether it might be inappropriately translated and announced to Hebrew Wikipedia as "stop deletion" instead of "mass restoration". TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
One additional to oppose this sort of move is that Commons:Burden of proof requires that the uploader, or in this case the undeleting administrator which is equivalent in this case, establish that the image they so previously uploaded is suitable for Commons, URAA or otherwise be damned.

In all cases, the burden of proof lies on the uploader or other person arguing for the file to be retained to demonstrate that as far as can reasonably be determined:

  • the file is in the public domain or is properly licensed, and
  • that any required consent has been obtained.
We need quality controls and ways to re-review the infringed media on a case-by-case basis, and neither mass deletion nor mass restoration will help either way. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:25, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --ProtoplasmaKid (talk) 05:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Acélan (talk) 06:00, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support reversal of any bulk deletions and a stop to bulk deletions. To be clear, our decision on this should not be that we are intentionally selecting files we know violate copyright to be restored. Rather, we should say that bulk deletions of content may have removed material in error, and we are simply undoing these bulk deletions pending case by case evaluation of the content. A consequence of this is that files that were actually discussed for deletion on an individual name basis might not be restored. Wnt (talk) 14:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is effectively why so many of us have opposed this proposal as it is written. It implies mass restoration of potentially infringing media files without regard for possible errors, when the much safer route is to do it by evaluating each file on a case-by-case basis. Remember that Commons:Burden of proof requires that the uploader assert their file is released under a free license, and I believe that in this case "mass restoration" of potentially infringing material is the same as "mass reuploading" of previously deleted files. If in fact they were clear copyright violations, normal uploaders would get a copyright warning followed by a short block on Commons were they to continue uploading infringing material even after being warned of doing so. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 16:40, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it should be clear that undoing a deletion is not the same as deliberately uploading the content. To make a simple comparison, suppose one of the Wikimedia servers breaks down, and the devs have to set up a new server with the same content to replace the one that was lost. Do they have to look through all the files case by case and make sure it's OK to "re-upload" them to the Web? Of course not! If the files were deleted without individual examination, they can be restored without individual examination. Wnt (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
i understand TeleComNasSprVen. since foreign wikis cannot trust commons not to mass delete files, then they should move those files to their wikis, where they are under their copyright rules and law, not the US. this is a similar situation to the German FoP DMCA takedowns. [4] Slowking4 ♡ Farmbrough's revenge 17:00, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Andycyca (talk) 09:15, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I see people saying that imposing that the images be free both in the origin country and the US is at the core of commons's principles. This is a serious mistake, as the only reason why we would want works from other countries to be free in the US is to protect the WMF from legal challenges. I therefore propose to drop this requirement and let the WMF delete files that are troublesome. Of course, the files would still need to be free in the origin country. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strainu (talk • contribs)
  •  Support waiting a stable strategy. --Rical (talk) 11:49, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support If the Foundation's legal team says it's not necessary to mass delete the files (and they are who would suffer the legal consequences), ¿why should we delete them?--Zeroth (talk) 12:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @TeleComNasSprVen I consider what has been done with the is a mass deletion, and as such should be reverted. How would you call tens of thouthands of files deleted with the only argument of "URAA protected file" in the Deletion Request?.--Zeroth (talk) 10:58, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Kjetil_r 13:16, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose We build a repository of free files in the sense of the Freedomdefined:Definition. The resolutions of the WMF and our own core principles and policies obligate us to remove any non-free or potentially non-free files, not because we would be afraid that the Foundation may get sued, but because they can't be used by anyone for any purpose without inherent legal risks. Hosting them would go against the spirit of creating free content. Of course, this should be done on a case-by-case basis so I also oppose to any massive deletions without review. Additionally, as already stated, in numerous cases files were deleted not only due to the URAA provisions but for other reasons. Please also mind that many reusers come from the United States, so it's not just an Argentinian or Israeli thing but affects a large number of reusers. As to the statement by the Foundation, in my opinion it is not so much a binding statement about what should we do (these are expressed in its resolutions) but a political expression of opinion on this matter. --Eleassar (t/p) 14:11, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What risk? The state of Israel says very clear that today: All pictures that were taken until December 31, 1963 are no longer under copyright. Many web sites are using them freely even in USA. Who wiil sue? Hanay (talk) 14:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The photographer can sue (or the photographer's heir if the photographer is dead). The Israeli government can only control the copyright status in Israel but not outside Israel. A good example is this case. After WWII, all of Adolf Hitler's belongings were confiscated by the German government, including the copyright to the book Mein Kampf. However, the Swedish supreme court concluded that German law couldn't influence on the available methods for transfer of copyright. Confiscation is not listed as a valid method of transfer of copyright under Swedish law, so when the copyright was transferred to the German government by virtue of confiscation in Germany, this did not have the effect that the copyright was transferred to someone else in Sweden. Since that point, one person (the German government, and later the Bavarian government) has been the copyright holder to the book in Germany, whereas someone else (unclear who) has been the copyright holder in Sweden.
This copyright expiration issue is the same problem: the government of Israel can only force copyright holders to resign the copyright to photographs in Israel after 50 years. Israeli law is null and void outside Israel unless other countries explicitly write a law which has the effect that copyright to Israeli photos expires after 50 years. No such law has been written in the United States (or Mexico, Venezuela, Switzerland or several other countries). --Stefan4 (talk) 15:14, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So Why File:Abba Hushi 1956.jpg was deleted? The copyright belong to the state of Israel see here. If the Photographer was Government Press Office (Israel) employee, he has no copyright because it was part of his job. So who will sue? Hanay (talk) 15:53, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Hanay: I'm not seeing the big deal here really. If you could elaborate why this or the URAA is a problem concerning Hebrew works released into the public domain before 1963, please do. As I'm reading the language of the URAA now at Commons:URAA-restored copyrights, it only mentions restoration of copyright of images after the URAA date which is January 1, 1996; this means works released into the public domain without renewal of copyright before 1963 can be kept on Commons. Wikipedia:Non-U.S.copyrights#Dates of restoration and terms of protection also agrees Israel is not likely to be affected by this if the work was published before 1996, and surely 1963 falls within that range. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 16:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
But It was deleted under URAA see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Abba Hushi 1956.jpg. It seems that every one here is a lawyer. THis is only example. What was done under the cover of URAA is not OK. Hanay (talk) 16:41, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support--Wotancito (talk) 17:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose, Lupo has it all right. I see this primarily as a publicity stunt, and I'm actually suprised that only four chapters took the chance. It has always been consensous, condified by Board resolution, that Wikimedia Commons respects U.S. law. Apparently we're now only respecting U.S. law as long as it suits our interest. Is this step posing a risk for the WMF? No, of course not. You could upload all sorts of copyright-protected stuff to this site and we could abandon all guidelines/rules/policies, and it would still not pose a risk for the WMF as long as takedown notices are honored. It does pose an addition risk for uploaders, of course. Copyright law is, also in the U.S., (to a degree) lex loci protectionis territory, and of course you can get sued under U.S. law if you upload such files. Most importantly, however, it's a signal. A signal that the WMF, which, until now, has at least respected one jurisdiction (U.S.), abandons this principle alltogether as soon as the law doesn't benefit them. That's pretty saddening, actually. Volunteers devote huge efforts to enforcing the Licensing Resolution, to make "us" different from all the other host providers that just don't care about the legality of their content because they comply with the DMCA. There are many countries in the world that "suffer" from the restoration of copyright protection. Take the E.U.; all sorts of pictures from certain member states could be used if it were not for the Copyright Duration Directive that restored protection. Why care about it? Why not just write a few letters to the WMF/Jimbo and get rid of it? You've opened Pandora's box. — Pajz (talk) 19:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support URAA is bad law. I would rather see the servers relocated out of the US than participate in this travesty. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Good idea. Restore them until there is consensus to delete. We should be keeping images that are free in some region. James Heilman, MD (talk) 21:38, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support -- Zyephyrus (talk) 08:57, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Le ciel est par dessus le toit (talk) 08:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Restoration until there is consensus to delete. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:00, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose The proposal to mass undelete would be a knee-jerk solution that verges on carelessness as it would leave re-users at more risk than necessary. I would like to thank Avenue for an excellent summary of the hard and painstaking work that has been going on by long term Commons volunteers to resolve the sadly ridiculous and pointless copyright mess that US lawyers and politicians have (yet again) introduced to international intellectual property law by putting short term commercial gain over public benefit or even clarity. The self-interested and job-creationist US legal market gives plenty of fuel for Mr. Bumble's statement that the law is an ass. However, it is a great pity that a minority of Wikimedia Chapter boards and a handful of active individuals have not taken the time to review and praise the work of unpaid volunteers that is giving us a gradual, reliable and legally meaningful resolution and a comprehensive understanding of the URAA and the damage it does to public knowledge. As is already the case, mass undeletions can and have fairly and legitimately worked, when Commons administrators can refer to a legally meaningful statement. The poor representation of the facts (mostly off-Commons), and our collective duties with regard to best interpretation of copyright law to protect our reusers, creates plenty of soapboxing, grandstanding and drama, along the well trod political path that "OMG Commons is broken" and that rogue Commons admins are wilfully incompetent and a threat to Wikimedia (tellingly not a single de-sysop request has been created, despite how comparatively simple and effective that procedure remains on Commons for governing our admin group), however the drama and exultation does nothing to help the Commons case book, nor our joint policies and guidelines to provide a reliable world class and first class public resource for completely free and reliably reusable educational media. If the WMF or a Wikimedia Chapter wishes to invest the donor's money in a "less free" project this may be worth considering, I would certainly see 'regionally free' or 'not free in the US but Public Domain everywhere else' and hosting media which may allow no-derivative restrictions as a useful addition to the Wikimedia project family, particularly if media of this type automatically transfers to Commons whenever it becomes truly free through eventual copyright expiration. --Fæ (talk) 14:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Fæ, thank you for your thoughtful input. I would like to differ with you on a number of issues. First of all, Wikimedia Israel has stated multiple times that we appreciate and support (and praise!) any initiative by any chapter to release works into free licenses or PD anywhere in the world. I am sure that the other chapters you're implicitly referring to will say the same. The problem is that the majority of images are not owned by any one large body, and you cannot mass-release them. This does not mean that they are free, but that it would not be possible for unpaid volunteers to do anything about them, except on an individual basis. Don't forget that those fighting to keep these images are just as unpaid as those fighting to delete them.
I think you are jumping to conclusions here that have nothing to do with this particular undeletion request. I know that there is a minority of users who think that Commons has been taken over by a clique of rogue admins who have nothing better to do that mass-delete images. This is not my opinion, as I am sure it is not the opinion of most users who support this request. What we are saying is that, while legal realities cannot easily be changed (but in Israel we're working on it), Common policy can, if there's a major reason to change it. This is one such major reason. You might say it's too much drama, but from our point of view, this is no less major, and actually affects us much more practically and right here and now, than, say, PIPA or SOPA.
So far I have not heard of a single convincing argument why we should delete images that are non-free in a specific country, including the United States. This is not exactly new: we have been hosting these images for years with exactly the same policies as today, and there was never any problem. The knee-jerk reaction that you describe is exactly the opposite: there was an update in the Golan v. Holder case, and instead of carefully considering the options, some users moved to mass-delete all the "offending" images. We are merely trying to revert that knee-jerk reaction and then carefully consider the options. Obviously Wikimedia Israel, including myself, is of the opinion that the images should be kept in the long term, but before the community makes such a major decision, we should go back to a neutral situation instead of the current situation that has already created a strong bias toward deletion.
It's funny that you mention that WMF here, since it weighed in on this issue and made it clear that it sees no legal problem. It appears to me that the legal arguments has been completely invalidated by now, and there's no use trying to be holier than the Pope trying to enforce laws that neither you nor I have expertise in. Let's focus on our internal policies and let the WMF make the legal arguments. If you foresee potential problems for re-users, use a disclaimed—another thing we've had for years without any problems whatsoever.
—Ynhockey (talk) 14:38, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Ynhockey: I know of no instances where users moved to "mass-delete all the images" without carefully considering all the options, as there was considerable debate of all the options at Commons:Deletion requests/All files copyrighted in the US under the URAA which was highly publicized on Commons. Avenue has summarized all of the "bulk deletion requests" below, which are not very many, and as he alleges there has been no evidence provided so far about "mass deletion requests". Also of note is that in the case of URAA-infringing media, they have often suffered numerous other copyright violations and other considerations before being deleted. Even if there was a mass deletion request, a knee jerk response (mass restoration/reuploading of potentially copyrighted material) to another knee jerk response (mass deletion of potentially free images) should not be the appropriate reaction. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 21:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why we should delete files that are under copyright in the US is because the law demands it. If we don't follow the law that binds us, why should we follow any law at all? There was an update in the Golan v. Holder case, and the Supreme Court decided not to invalidate law that had been good law for a decade, that was in place before Wikipedia came into existence. It is not a knee-jerk reaction to start following a decade-old law.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:39, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I support the mass restoration of the deleted files: the reversion of each of the 'massive' or 'bulk' deletions that, it was argued in recent open letters, were backed by inverted burden of proof illogic. (Let me be clear: Avenue insists there have been no mass deletions. There have been, and I'm voting based on the mass(ive) deletions raised in the open letters. See Avenue's effort, far above, to portray WolfgangRieger's support !vote as something else.) The WMF has said massive deletions should stop. The community agreed. I say the massive deletions should be reverted, as do many of my fellow !voters. THEN, the community should continue to evaluate potentially affected works using the LCA guidelines, and in particular, identification of one of three enumerated reasons for copyright restoration and evidence to support that reason is a necessary step in the evaluation process for each potentially effected work before it is deleted. Furthermore:
    This is the right thing to do; it strikes the right balance in respecting people's rights. It's entirely consistent with the WMF and LCA statements. It is not a !vote to defy US law. It is a !vote to respect it. We respect the law not just when we delete infringing material, but when we restore non-infringing material too. I believe it's clear that this is a call to revert the 'massive' or 'bulk' deletions of non-infringing material (and includes files that will merit deletion once they are evaluated individually), despite the efforts of some to paint it as something else. I appreciate Avenue's summary of the deletions, characterize them differently from Avenue. Of those I viewed, I found only mass deletions where there was no enumerated evidence that copyright was restored, and deletion decisions that were NOT guided by the LCA statement.
    SEPARATELY, I believe Wikimedia should FURTHER explore ways to provide a common location to store works that can be shared among wikis that serve countries not subject to the URAA that are PD except where the URAA applies. There's no reason the Israel, Argentina, Venezuela, etc. wikimedias shouldn't be able to do so, and be supported. This is what's called for in Venezuela's letter: "a solution that allows [maintenance of] the highest possible amount of free content without risk of legal backlash." I've read this but wonder whether it's been thought through enough - Why exactly couldn't il.wikipedia.org and es.wikipedia.org, for example, include, the same way they currently include from commons.wikimedia.org, include stuff from commonsURAA.wikimedia.org, hosted in, say, Argentina? en.wikipedia.org would not be configured to allow this, since the URAA does apply in a major English-speaking country - the US. I note that the "WMF does not see a reason to engage in mass deletions of content simply because of general concern about the URAA," I see setting up such inclusions as not merely toeing the law in terms of considering the rights of copyright holders, but going above and beyond. OTOH, given the way US courts lean toward copyright owners, how I or other reasonable people see things isn't terribly important; biased courts could see the Napster decision as on point.
    Commons remains fucked a disaster zone as long as admins are not required to stop making arbitrary decisions based on their own pet interpretations of the largely undefined term significant, as was done in too many of these mass deletions.
    --Elvey (talk) 18:55, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    "Commons is fucked"? Keep it mellow please. --Fæ (talk) 19:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not mellow here. It's a disaster zone. Commons remains a disaster zone as long as admins are not required to stop making arbitrary decisions based on their own pet interpretations of the largely undefined term significant, as was done in too many of these mass deletions. Until that changes, it will not be mellow here. (But since you don't like cursing, and it's arguably uncivil, and I don't like to use to reinforce negative associations to sex, and want to be seen as civil myself, I've struck the 'fucked'.) As I said, "…I found only mass deletions where there was no enumerated evidence that copyright was restored, and deletion decisions that were NOT guided by the LCA statement." --Elvey (talk) 17:07, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll just say that I did not try to portray WolfgangRieger's support vote as something else. I was simply trying to point out that his rationale for restoration ("As preemptive mass deletion were supported neither by Wikimedia policy nor by community opinion, the deleted files should be restored.") was inconsistent with the facts, as I see them. A mass deletion of URAA-tagged files, with no examination of individual files, was proposed and rejected two years ago. Mass deletions, at least in that sense, have not occurred here. --Avenue (talk) 00:17, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Oscar_. (talk) 18:22, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


Comments

Yes, I did. I feel I could ask you the same question. My reading of the board's statement is that:
  1. The WMF will not themselves be deleting such content unless they receive a valid DMCA takedown notice or otherwise become aware of infringing content.
  2. They do not recommend that editors conduct mass deletions of such content.
  3. They have confidence in the WMF legal team's research and advice. That advice includes the following guidance to editors: "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work using the guidelines issued by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department, as well as the language of the statute itself, and remove works that are clearly infringing. However, if a work’s status remains ambiguous after evaluation under the guidelines, it may be premature to delete the work prior to receiving a formal take-down notice [...] These guidelines differ from the more proactive systems currently used by the community for other copyright violations, but the complexity and fact-intensive nature of the URAA analysis makes a more active approach imprudent."
So I believe the WMF board supports our deletion of works that (on evaluation of each particular work's status) clearly infringe copyright under the URAA, and they would therefore not support the mass restoration of all URAA-affected works being proposed here.
Of course, I might be mistaken. Do you see a hole in my logic? --Avenue (talk) 00:17, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. The first sentence of the statement is The WMF does not support the URAA. I don't see how you could interpret that as supporting deletions. I think Ynhockey explains my opinion above better than I would do myself. All comments supporting deletions give a distorted view of the real legal situation. There isn't, there never was, I doubt there will be, any real legal issue in hosting URAA-affected files. It is just a rethoric to implement a completely nonsense law. When do we start following some common sense? If there would be any real problem, the WMF wouldn't obviously issue such a statement. The legal department has always been very careful about this. Yann (talk) 09:17, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As for me, I read this first sentence as “the WMF, just like every sensible person in the world, thinks the URAA has stupid implications”. It really is an utter commonplace − just who in the Wikimedia world or free culture world supports something like the URAA? And politically speaking, of course the board would say they do not support the URAA − who wants to be the bad guy shoving stupid & unpopular laws in the community’s face, when you can be the good guy bestowing your Eternal Wisdom on how copyright laws are Complicated® and Unfair™, expecting that every community member will do their duty, and as Pleclown says above, washing your hands of it? I certainly look forward to hearing the Board predictable opinion on polarising issues like lack of Freedom of Panorama. Oh wait, wasn’t it the WMF cautious and ambiguous language accompanying the Oldenburg DMCA action that sparked the non-US FOP community resolution, putting many such files under scrutiny (which if the “URAA calendar” holds true, will start being deleted a year from now) − snowballing all the way into discouraging enough the good-faith community effort that was Wiki Loves Public Art?
As for me, and though I despise the URAA effects just as much as the next Wikimedian, I must say that my reading is the same than Avenue’s. And at the very least, I would not call it “unambiguous” − I think they did a pretty good job at keeping it ambiguous, as one can see per the present debate.
(this does not hinder your argument on the reality of any real problem with URAA files, which I understand and ponder at the moment)
Jean-Fred (talk) 10:46, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Yann: I interpret their initial statement that "The WMF does not support the URAA" much as Jean-Fred does. It's the WMF's political position on the URAA, and says nothing about whether or not they believe any files should be restored or deleted. You can oppose a law vehemently and still believe that you are bound to follow it, along with other members of the community. (Or you can oppose a law and feel that you must disobey it, but from the rest of their statement I don't believe that's the WMF's position here.) --Avenue (talk) 11:29, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this interpretation is not a legal requirement. This is a political decision. As I already said above, there is nothing in the BoT statement which compel us to take such a decision. And it is sad, because this political decision goes against the objective of this project. I expect that we take progressive decision regarding copyright, not conservative one, when we have the liberty to do so. And as you can see in the vote above, it may back fire, because most people do not support this decision. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get why you still support the deletion of EU works copyrighted in the EU and not the US. That's just a political decision, not a legal requirement.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:46, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is also a political decision, but at least, I see a practical compromise here. If the work is to be reused in the country where it was first published, it needs to in the public domain there. A document about a particular country is certainly more useful to be use in that country that anywhere else in the world. There is no such thing in the URAA issue. Beside, this is a straw man argument. Please keep focus to the subject, and don't try tangential arguments when you don't have a real answer to the question I put forward. Regards, Yann (talk) 06:18, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can choose to voice dissent of my local government raising my taxes, but I would still have to pay them all the same. This situation is no different really. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, this is completely different. BTW, this is a straw man argument. Don't mix up different issues. Keeping and restoring these files won't make any change to real life assets. Nobody will loose anything. Yann (talk) 08:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so what are you suggesting we do? You said "It is very sad that people oppose this benign proposal, inspite of the unambiguous WMF board support for this. Did you even read the board statement?" I have read all of the chapter wikis response letters, especially Wikimedia Israel's comparison to SOPA/PIPA which I found very relevant, in addition to the Board's response on the matter. Please comment on the response I made above. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:51, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not a straw man argument. If we aren't willing to follow the law that binds us, we shouldn't be voluntarily choosing other rules to bind us. We shouldn't be restoring a bunch of files that under copyright in only in the US if we're aren't going to restore a bunch of files that are only under copyright in France.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:19, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment - Update: Wikimedia Venezuela has published a letter as well: Wikimedia Venezuela/Open letter from WMVE regarding URAA --CyberXRef☎ 18:49, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Someone has raised this discussion with Jimbo Wales on his talkpage The person raises some reasonable points about the number of copyvios on Commons--everyday there seems to be many everywhere sadly and one can hardly get a handle on all the problems but URAA is a separate problem and a legitimate issue over openness when there are no DMCA takedowns over the use of old 50 to 60+ year old images that are PD in the host country. Granted the way this discussion was structured may not have been ideal. Regards, --Leoboudv (talk) 06:32, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suggest as a start for reuploading images deleted under URAA, we establish that they have been released into the public domain from their home country. I believe that one of the provisions of URAA is that if an image is in the public domain in their home country it should also be in the public domain in the U.S. for the purposes of the URAA. Public domain images should be the easiest to track down, while images that are copyrighted, even if under CC-BY-SA or other free licenses, might be more difficult to keep/upload on Commons with respect to URAA. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

<striketrough> Support Andycyca (talk) 09:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)</striketrough>[reply]

All projects have to operate within US law since that is where the projects are hosted.Geni (talk) 17:10, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Except that it's not the case, never been the case, and never will be the case... Every Wikipedia hosts it's own PD images (the ones that expired in that country) regardless of whether or not their copyright has been restored in the US. --CyberXRef☎ 15:37, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment - I would like to point out that Welinder has recently clarified the foundation position. She REMOVED the "mass" - as she intended to mean no deletion regarding URAA altogether, not just not mass as some people purposely misconstrued for the sake of backing their argument.
Furthermore, she posted a clarification that's finally unambiguous - do not delete.
"I should clarify that we don't see a need for any deletions – mass scale or otherwise – based solely on a general concern that the work may be infringing. I will remove the reference to "mass deletion" in the post to make this clearer."
"Community members should always refrain from uploading content that they know to be infringing. But how community members review potentially affected works is a community decision. And, of course, we can't provide legal advice to community members. Generally, however, community members are not likely to have the facts necessary to make a determination under the URAA. To give you an example, the URAA does not restore copyright in a non-audio work unless the work originally entered the public domain in the US because of: (1) noncompliance with previous copyright formalities, including failure of renewal, lack of proper notice, or failure to comply with a manufacturing requirement or (2) lack of copyright relations between the US and the source country. It would be really difficult to know whether a work originally entered the public domain in the US because the author failed to provide proper notice or comply with a manufacturing requirement. Yet this is information that a copyright holder could include in a valid DMCA takedown notice, at which point we would be required to remove the work." - Revision of :m:Talk:Legal and Community Advocacy/Wikimedia Server Location and Free Knowledge

--CyberXRef☎ 19:08, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Point taken ; but “as some people purposely misconstrued for the sake of backing their argument” → Please assume good faith. Jean-Fred (talk) 19:32, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for my tone but seriously, look at this discussion. There is no civility; just walls of ad-hominem attacks, accusations, and crazy interpretations of the law to their own detriment. As for AGF, I really tried. But I've become convinced that some people have ulterior motives. The discussions on meta are simply shocking; everyone is suddenly an IP-lawyer. The WMF has never even seen a URAA taken down notice. No one even knows what's involved in such things (even the Legal Counsel) yet it looks like as if we were hit by 100s of notices and we are in desperate need of a solution. --CyberXRef☎ 20:14, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reflection on WMF position

Some people have mentioned the ambiguity of the WMF position. I agree that it is ambiguous, but I am not sure the WMF could issue a different statement because of legal requirements. Jimmy Wales may be able to clarify that in his answer to Magog, but it is also possible that he won't be, for the same legal reasons. I think that both the WMF and Jimmy Wales cannot say openly that they support keeping URAA-affected files, even if they do. This left us with interpreting their statement. Some others required that we need a statement by the WMF legal department. This will obviously not happen, as this department does not answer to the community, only to the WMF.

My interpretation is that the copyright policy of Commons is meant to prevent any situation where a court could put the WMF into trouble. Now, if an image is not formally into the public domain because of the URAA, but that the eventuality that a copyright holder requires deletion is non existent, what should we do? That is the real issue. Regards, Yann (talk) 10:11, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WM Legal's previous statement (meta:Legal and Community Advocacy/URAA Statement) seems much less ambiguous than the recent ones. In particular, this sentence speaks directly about what we should do with these files: "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work using the guidelines issued by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department, as well as the language of the statute itself, and remove works that are clearly infringing." --Avenue (talk) 14:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree in that the new statement is much less ambiguous, but from your quote it gives the impression that it is biased towards deletion, when I understand quite the opposite: "[...] As we stated last year, very few works on Commons are likely to be affected due to the various requirements of this statute. Indeed, to date, we have not received a single takedown notice under the URAA. A valid notice would provide us with the facts necessary to make a determination under the URAA. It requires information that may not be available to a Commons volunteer trying to make a decision without a takedown notice. So WMF does not see a reason to engage in mass deletions of content simply because of general concern about the URAA" —emphasis is mine. It is clear that mass deletions only aggravate the problem, but even single deletions are reached by this wording. Even if the Commons' community takes the decision to insist on its currenty policy, to my understanding this last communication from WMF makes clear that other Wikimedia projects' communities can put forward a different implementation of URAA if they consider it needed. Best, Galio (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I read it in the same way than @Galio. I simply believe board and legal team just try to tell us to hold on deletion but can't really say it too clearly (:p) --PierreSelim (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you're right, although for such a major reversal in approach, I'd hope they could find some unofficial way to signal it more clearly. I've asked for some clarification of the legal team's statement here; if no real clarification is forthcoming in the next week or so, I'll probably have to assume the ambiguity is intentional. --Avenue (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now they have clarified: I should clarify that we don't see a need for any deletions – mass scale or otherwise – based solely on a general concern that the work may be infringing. (...) community members are not likely to have the facts necessary to make a determination under the URAA. (see here). It is absolutely clear now the position from the Foundation is against the URAA-related deletions. Of course, Commons community can continue deleting images and be more conservative than the WMF but I don't see why keep this policy that goes against our mission to spread and preserve knowledge. --B1mbo (talk) 14:46, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that has clarified things, especially in showing that the WMF do not believe that mass deletions in themselves are the issue here. There may be a big grey area between having "a general concern" versus "the facts necessary to make a determination under the URAA" about whether a work is infringing, but their point seems to be that the latter is their preferred deletion criterion. In other words, they seem to be saying that we should reverse our usual burden of proof for such works, requiring proof for deleting rather than keeping these files. I think the argument they give for this (i.e. how difficult it is for us to establish the relevant facts, such as failure of renewal, lack of proper notice, etc) would also apply to many other works, but perhaps I am missing something. --Avenue (talk)
Actually, the only works which are unclear are US works and works which were not copyrighted in the source country on the URAA date. Only in those cases do we have the problem of locating renewals. If a work was copyrighted in the source country on the URAA date, then it is always copyrighted in the United States, either under COM:URAA (if no renewal was made or if a copyright notice was missing somewhere), or under Commons:Subsisting copyright (if a renewal was made and the copyright notice was present). --Stefan4 (talk) 22:22, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some figures on URAA tags and deletions

Currently we have are over 4000 files tagged with {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}, and there are probably many more that aren't tagged but should be. Over the last two years, the number tagged has varied from roughly 3000 to 6000 (details here).

There are now 1157 deletion requests listed in Category:URAA-related deletion requests/deleted, i.e. DRs that resulted in URAA-affected files being deleted. Of these, 1070 start with "Commons:Deletion requests/File:" or "Commons:Deletion requests/Image:", and so presumably just involved a single file. The remaining 87 bulk DRs covered between 2 and 540 files each; 4309 files in total, of which 4248 are currently redlinks. (Blue links either were not deleted to begin with, or have since been undeleted.) Of the 4248 redlinks, 1890 (44%) are from just five of these DRs, each covering all the pages uploaded from a single book (and some images cropped from these pages). Another 659 (16%) were German postage stamps from 1926-1942, debated in a DR for each year.

Clearly a lot of work has gone into this clean-up effort - not by me, I should add. My impression, having looked over all the bulk DRs, is that they have generally attempted to follow the guidelines laid out by the WM Legal team two years ago, i.e. by isolating files with similar rationales for deletion. Many of the deleted files have reportedly been transferred to Wikilivres.

The bulk DRs are listed below, with the number of files (total and redlinked) that they covered. (The figures shown here are mainly from unchecked manual counts, and may not be entirely correct.)

Deletion request Files listed Current redlinks
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:"Der Weltkrieg in seiner rauhen Wirklichkeit" 19 17
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1923 paintings 64 64
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1924 paintings 47 47
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1926 stamps of Germany 18 18
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1927 stamps of Germany 9 9
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1928 stamps of Germany 16 16
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1930 stamps of Germany 19 19
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1931 stamps of Germany 10 10
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1932 stamps of Germany 18 17
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1933 stamps of Germany 35 35
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1934 stamps of Germany 81 69
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1935 stamps of Germany 42 42
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1936 stamps of Germany 45 45
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1937 stamps of Germany 32 32
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1938 stamps of Germany 43 43
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1939 stamps of Germany 57 57
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1940 stamps of Germany 116 105
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1941 stamps of Germany 88 88
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1942 stamps of Germany 54 54
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1957 Japanese movie posters 70 70
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1958 Japanese movie posters 73 73
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:1959 Japanese movie posters 32 32
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Actors from Argentina 73 73
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Actresses from Argentina 52 52
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Alexej von Jawlensky 34 32
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Alfredo Zitarrosa 6 6
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Amrita Sher-Gil 10 10
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Architects from Argentina 20 16
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Barbara Ann Scott 4 4
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Chinese propaganda posters 42 42
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Coins of the Netherlands 8 8
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:De Literatur und Lüge (Kraus) 366 366
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:De Wolkenkuckucksheim (Kraus) 120 120
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Die Literatur der Ägypter Erman 408 408
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Esteban Laureano Maradona 8 8
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Herman Richir 33 25
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Hotels in Argentina 2 2
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Japanese album covers 3 3
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Journalists from Argentina 45 45
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Kasperle-Verse 15 15
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Kurt Tucholsky 8 8
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Louis Bouquet 15 15
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Meyers Blitz-Lexikon 540 540
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Moria Casán 6 6
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Musicians from Argentina 59 59
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:National Anthem of Pakistan 3 3
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Oberá 12 12
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Paintings by Joaquín Torres García 4 4
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Paintings by Theo van Doesburg 30 29
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:PD Canada 9 2
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Philipp Johann Heinrich Fauth 8 8
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Raúl Alfonsín 25 25
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Rudolf Wacker 39 38
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Saúl Ubaldini 2 2
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Scans from 'Fowler Patent Steam Wagon brochure' 19 19
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Scans from 'Oil Engine Manual', 1939 13 13
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Scans from 'Pitman, Automobile Engineering', Vol V 45 45
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Scans from 'The New Motoring Encyclopedia', 1937/undescribed 15 15
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Sculptures by Aristide Maillol 23 23
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Three Smiths Statue 4 4
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Vigelandsanlegget 2 2
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Weltbühne 52 52
Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Weltbühne (1932) 22 22
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Cobatfor 24 24
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Createaccount 6 6
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Der Bischof mit der E-Gitarre 2 2
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Ginés90 3 3
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Juniorpetjua 12 12
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Martín Giardelli 10 10
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Nummer 12 3 3
Commons:Deletion requests/Images of Three Smiths Statue 3 3
Commons:Deletion requests/Mystic Treatises 456 456
Commons:Deletion requests/NPG images protected by the URAA 9 9
Commons:Deletion requests/Ontario highway images 5 0
Commons:Deletion requests/PD Israel images (Almog) 42 42
Commons:Deletion requests/PD-AR-Photo de la Guerra de Malvinas 2 90 88
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1922 paintings of Nicholas Roerich 70 67
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Auguste Brouet 8 8
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Christian Rohlfs 146 146
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Heinrich Vogeler 5 5
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Leo Gestel 83 83
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Ludovico Cavaleri 3 3
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Philip Alexius de Laszlo 69 69
Commons:Deletion requests/Post-1923 works by Édouard Vuillard 11 10
Commons:Deletion requests/Rachmaninoff recordings from Pandora Records 8 7
Commons:Deletion requests/Various PD-Australia after 1945 45 45
Commons:Deletion requests/Works with unknown date by Ilmari Aalto 4 4
Total 4309 4248

--Avenue (talk) 05:39, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for compiling this report Avenue. Hopefully it will shed some light on the scope of the URAA issue affecting our files. Right now however in the comments section there's unfortunately been a lot more heat than light... TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 10:58, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome. I hope the above figures will help us develop a common understanding of the situation. --Avenue (talk) 12:16, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Moratorium on deletion of images under URAA

I hereby propose the following solution: All current deletion requests at Commons:Deletion requests, which has deletion arguments solely related to URAA, be put on permanent hold or closed as kept with the closing rationale referring to this discussion. Any other future deletion requests referring only to URAA should also be speedily kept. However, if a deletion request contains other concerns, such as violations of other copyright statutes or non-free (fair use) images, then they should be considered on their own merits. For such requests, there is also no prejudice against reopening the DR page if such other concerns (about violating other copyright statutes) should arise regarding the image of the DR. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Support: I believe this is a reasonable solution. There should also be no prejudice about reopening a DR page for old images--deleted under URAA--which are clearly confirmed to be PD in the host country. I am striking out my other comments but somehow the images already deleted by URAA should have a fair chance of being restored on a case by case basis. --Leoboudv (talk) 06:16, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support As an admin I would like to wait to have the result of the discussions and the Wikimedia Community consensus on the matter before going one way or another. Files can still be marked with categories or template if needed. --PierreSelim (talk) 13:26, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I would add to the proposal, as PierreSelim hints: “Files raising concerns related to the URAA shall be systematically tagged with {{Not-PD-US-URAA}} and/or the artist category with {{URAA artist}}”. Jean-Fred (talk) 14:06, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I'd favor this because it is clearly better than the current situation, but I don't understand if this would close the door to restoring images already deleted solely under URAA, which are far from being a few. I accept opposition to a general indiscriminate restoration, but what would be the procedure for identifying and restoring all those files that, according to this new criterion, shouldn't have been deleted in the first place? —take for example images that are free under Argentine law but that have been pre-emptively removed under URAA. Thanks, Galio (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The idea that talk pages of deleted files would be placed in Category:Files deleted under the URAA was part of the rejected proposal for mass deletion of all URAA-tagged files. Since the mass deletion proposal was rejected, that part of the proposal didn't take effect either. The category should probably have been deleted at that point. Individual and bulk DRs of URAA-affected files can be found in the subcategories of Category:URAA-related deletion requests. --Avenue (talk) 01:42, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Weak oppose I can see some justification for a temporary time-out from URAA deletions, because recent WMF statements have been silent about whether these should go ahead, and (despite earlier statements being quite clear that some deletions are appropriate) there is some feeling that their position is now ambiguous. Given how upset many people are about URAA deletions, some delay is worthwhile to clear this up. But I don't currently see any good reason for a permanent halt to URAA deletions, not nor for automatic keeps. This would naturally change if the WMF does in fact reverse its call for us to delete files whose copyright was clearly restored under URAA, but they haven't done so yet. --Avenue (talk) 14:03, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Avenue: Perhaps I didn't choose my words carefully enough. Of course, if the WMF suddenly reverses their stance and then issues a less ambiguous statement instructing admins to delete material even if they were infringing only the URAA statute, then we would obviously have to comply with them. What this change is aimed at is a matter of current Commons policy, and I think the decision for justifying deletion of media based solely on the URAA statute ought to be taken out of the hands of regular Commons users, and the responsibility of issuing a clear statement guiding our deletions should belong with the WMF. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • More likely I haven't been clear enough. The WMF's Legal team has already said that we should delete media based solely on the URAA statute, where examination of of individual works makes their unfree status clear. They said this two years ago. Quote: "The community should evaluate each potentially affected work using the guidelines issued by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department, as well as the language of the statute itself, and remove works that are clearly infringing." I see no ambiguity there about the main point: that we should delete URAA-affected files (after proper evaluation). None of the WMF's more recent statements have overruled this; they have only addressed mass deletions (which no one is advocating) and works whose status remains unclear. --Avenue (talk) 23:05, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Avenue: In light of the recent statement by the WMF (and I note that even with WMF's leadership they are still indecisive) would your reconsider this statement of yours? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yes, the last sentence is now incorrect, and I've struck it. While the thrust of the WMF's latest clarification is against deletion, it still seems to allow for URAA-related deletions in rare cases if the relevant facts are clear, so I don't believe it supports your proposal to permanently and totally prohibit URAA-focused deletion requests. I read it more as shifting the burden of proof onto those wanting to delete on URAA grounds. There may not be much practical difference, i.e. little or nothing should be deleted under either approach, but I think there remains an important difference in principle. So I still oppose the proposal. --Avenue (talk) 20:38, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • On second thought, my opposition is not strong, due to the expected small practical difference. --Avenue (talk) 10:27, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Obviously, seeing the trend of the opinions, and the recent clarification from the WMF. Yann (talk) 11:13, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

m:Requests for comment/Creation of a Global Wikimedia Commons

Please see my reasoning and focus debate on that proposal in the specific page. Lugusto • ※ 20:12, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should Wikimedia use this to push policy?

Our use of {{PD-Art}} means we actually host a lot of files not necessarily out of copyright in their source countries; By advocating for rule of the shorter term, we'd effectively be doing something similar, but with more direct risk: {{PD-Art}} could cause reuse issues; violating URAA allows Wikipedia to be directly sued. Thoughts? Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:32, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia cannot be sued. It would be the Wikimedia Foundation or if smart lawyers just wanted to have this project fold, selected individual volunteers who can be outed or already have their real identities public. --Fæ (talk) 08:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note that individual contributors aren't only affected by this but also by other copyright problems. A file which meets COM:L is not free to use everywhere in the world. For example, {{PD-US-no notice}} images are accepted here, but both France and Germany have rejected the rule of the shorter term for that PD reason, so French and German contributors who upload files with that tag can be sued in their home countries. Wikipedia's zh:維基百科:非自由內容使用準則 and fr:Wikipédia:Exceptions au droit d'auteur are both partially incompatible with Swedish law, so I need to think twice before uploading any files which depend on one of those policies as it could cost me a lot of money if someone decides to sue me. Individual contributors do not necessarily have to follow the same countries' laws as the ones Commons chooses to respect. --Stefan4 (talk) 00:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Where did you see that {{PD-US-no notice}} works are not in the public domain in France? AFAIK, France uses the rule of shorter term, so a US work in the public domain in the US is also PD in France. Regards, Yann (talk) 08:29, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Court of Cassation decided that articles 5.2 and 18.1 of the Berne Convention prohibit the rule of the shorter term in cases where the work hasn't entered the public domain in the source country through expiration of its term, but nevertheless is in the public domain in the source country for some other reason. This is essentially a prohibition on the rule of the shorter term for works which have entered the public domain in the source country because of copyright formalities (and probably also COM:TOO reasons). The specific case was about w:His Girl Friday which is {{PD-US-not renewed}} but copyrighted in France. I assume that the rule of the shorter term applies to {{PD-1923}}, which tells that the full term has expired. See [6]. --Stefan4 (talk) 09:48, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, one more complication. :( It seems that works under {{PD-US-no notice}} published before 1933 would be OK through (1989-56). Yann (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, possibly. The full copyright term at creation was 56 years from publication, but this was later extended in the 1970s and 1990s and eventually became 95 years from publication. However, the court ruling suggests that if the obsolete 56-year term had expired by 1 March 1989 and the work also was in the public domain in the United States on that date (for any reason), then the rule of the shorter term might apply. However, the full 95-year term probably applies if the work still was copyrighted in the United States on 1 March 1989, or if the 56-year term expired after 1 March 1989. Very confusing (and out of scope for this page). --Stefan4 (talk) 14:18, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What now?

What do we do now? We have a clear majority of people who support this proposal, and also some admins and experienced contributors opposing it. So no consensus either way. Also it seems some people change their opinion following the clarification from the WMF. Could we find a middle ground, or an intermediate proposal? I see several possibilities:

  1. No restorations for now, but no new deletions either, until we reach a conclusion (see also above proposal by TeleComNasSprVen).
  2. Agreements for subsets of URAA-affected files: works by governments, orphan/anonymous works, etc.
  3. Other ideas? Regards, Yann (talk) 08:40, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You #1 is completely flawed. If we are not going to delete URAA files there is no point in not restoring old ones; otherwise people could simply re-upload the photos and achieve the same goal. --CyberXRef☎ 09:45, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please read what I write. I suggest this as an temporary solution. Yann (talk) 09:58, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think there could also be some advantage in having individual editors re-upload files, as opposed to mass restorations by admins, at least for some kinds of files. Some of the files may be PD only in countries where no admins live. By restoring them, admins could well be breaking the law where they live. Individual re-uploads are also a less "official" action and may make legal responsibility for the restorations more diffuse. The legal risk for any individual file may be low, but over thousands it may add up. --Avenue (talk) 10:22, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The system does not allow to re-upload files that were deleted. So the suggestion that editors will re-upload files is not practical. Hanay (talk) 23:23, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why? All you have to do is turn off the warnings, then you can overwrite even deleted files. Some of the more persistent copyright violations on this site are due to users abusing this very feature, and regrettably admins and regular patrollers forgetting to watchlist a file even after its being deleted (I'm guilty of that too, but given the fact we're swamped with 10000+ files per day I think it's excusable). TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 23:42, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I did not know that, I thought that the system is so sophisticated :) Hanay (talk) 23:49, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed closing

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Refer to closing statement above. --Fæ (talk) 16:00, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Seeing that

  1. there is basically no answer or interest in the proposals I made above after 6 days;
  2. the huge majority of opinions in this RfC for supporting it;
  3. the latest opinion of the WMF, which clearly supports keeping URAA-affected files until a DMCA is received, I propose to close this RfC as yes. I think that this message from the WMF shows that most oppositions against this proposal are not warranted. This message also says that most deletions of potentially URAA-affected files may be inappropriate because we do not have the required information. So files would be undeleted after a discussion in COM:UDR for each proposed undeletion. It will be closed after one week. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:32, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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