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Should we give Kazakhstan the bird?
An interesting article about the brand new Kazak 500 tenge banknote, What Future for the ‘Misplaced Pages Seagull’ on Kazakhstan's Brand New Banknotes? has been published. The claim is that the lead image at ru:Чайковые has been used by the Kazak Central Bank on the new note, without attribution. The photographer is Marcel Burkhard @Cele4: . See also (in Russian) and - the story is not a joke.
Marcel has said something about getting a lawyer. My guess is that if he sued the KCB for copyright infringement, the court would just give him an uncomprehending stare. Copyright? on a bird? That at least is my opinion of the state of copyright law enforcement in the former Soviet Union. Commons has all sorts of rules that tend to mean that almost no photos of the FSU can be uploaded there (at least according to their rules) but few FSUers seem to understand this.
So my advice to Marcel is to write a letter to the KCB and just give them the bird. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
- I'm not a lawyer, but since I think copyright is stupid and the courts rule in favor of whoever has the most money, that won't stop me here. Supposedly -- for a wealthy company, anyway -- taking a picture of a bird, copying it, putting an outline around it, joining it with several others, using it on a banknote should be a transformative use. And transformative use you can get away with. Also, we can look at the damages -- how much would Kazakhstan have paid this guy for his particular outline of a seagull? Nothing; they'd just have drawn it a little differently -- if they didn't think it was free cuz it was on Misplaced Pages! Last but not least, is this commercial infringement? Well, it's a bank note, so it's about money, right? Well, I'd say no -- the bank note is worth precisely the same as if it just had Repo Man block lettering and no silly artwork at all: 500 tenge and not a tïın more.
- Oh sure, he deserves credit, per CC licensing and all that. Thanks to the news he has some - maybe something could be worked out for more. But I bet a Kazakhstan lawyer could wangle some amusing solution ... "the credit is on page 2 of the banknote ... we'll be printing those any day now..." Not at all eager to see Misplaced Pages looking for some way to tighten copyrights -- that would be going to bat for the wrong team. Wnt (talk) 16:59, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages material is used without proper attribution every single day. When's the last time you asked Siri something? She was coughing up an error about a book that my girlfriend was querying about last night and I just jumped on to WP to fix it. Did Siri say, "According to the English-Misplaced Pages article available at URL blah blah blah?" No. Apple is making 9 gazillion dollars a year and part of the empire is coming from WP content. But do you know what? That's one of the inevitable side effects of the ultra-open use standards that WP has. We can't and I would argue we shouldn't run around trying to police abuse of the extremely lax reuse standards which we have — WP was set up the way it was precisely so the material could be readily reused; and the fact that the information has become ubiquitous through Google or Apple or whomever else is part of WP's enduring strength. So, sorry Seagull Photographer about no credit given for your photo, but such is inevitable. Take it as an honor. Carrite (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
They can copyright it, even though it is a bird! A picture tells much more than it being a bird. The material resources (camera etc.) Camera angle, later processes which are all attributable to tastes of an author, and the whole composition, specific corrections, selections. There are ways to use reverse engineering to remove the copyright, by replacing patterns and forms with their non-patentable equivalents (like simple curves following a simple mathematical pattern, like Fibonacci sequence, or simple textures from the persons environnment)… with some effects it might even be impossible to tell that it isn’t an original.
There should be certain level of consistency (something which is impossible by images which relies on extra process), that’s particularly the case with pictures on Misplaced Pages. If Camera angles were all standardized, colors were regulated etc… and then the process to recreate the image disclosed under strict guidelines (easily understood). With new projects to provide the Internet in regions like Africa, there will be no limitation at all, an African could have the same degree of Freedom with a 50$ Raspberry Pi than anyone else: Same chances to contribute on Misplaced Pages to reverse cultural bias. Good cameras will still be necessary because those pictures would be serving for reverse engineer them removing material bias from them.
This means that irregardless of the initial camera used, everyone could be obtaining the same result at the end. And irregardless of the fact that some species don’t exist in somewhere, a person living there could reconstitute it, and get it here and have it featured. Each pictures processes disclosed, to prove that it can be replicated on a Raspberry Pi (means minimal process required).
When a material is copyrighted, it means it relied on extra processes and material resources. There is a reason why an author wants attribution. But consider that the fact that it required such extra processes is one reason to not use those images. They are sources of contamination and systematic bias. Suppose that you go on to take several pictures in the wild, under what criteria would you be using one picture and not another? Your tastes… then you will correct the picture, again relying on arbitrary parameters of tastes… more process and resource = more manipulation = more bias = copyright. :)
In conclusion, copyrighted image = bad thing (not only on Misplaced Pages). They will survive the court case, and probably won’t do the same mistake. It is unfortunate though. Yaḥyā (talk) 21:55, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
- That feeds back to our old friend File:Macaca nigra self-portrait large.jpg. Some say it has no copyright because "it's just an animal". Others say it has copyright because some person selected how to set up the camera and throw it into the equation. Both, of course, gloss over the point that the camera is the product of vast amounts of intellectual "capital" to make everything pretty much automatic. Only the Company knows how the color palette and the motion compensation works, what special features are used to secretly mark up the photos with identifying numbers so that if you take a shot of anything bad the Gestapo can have a word with you etc. The person who points and clicks a photo of anything has no more real intellectual role than that monkey. Maybe someday the camera companies will pull out all the metadata Misplaced Pages likes to faithfully store for them and formally claim the copyright on all the pictures that they took, no matter what we say. Until that day, the guy who takes a snapshot of a seagull in the distance can continue to pretend he is the artist. Wnt (talk) 02:24, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
- The same can be said about a house, a car..., that person paid for that camera and all what goes with it. It's like a paid software, how does that invalidate copyright? what's the point of paying thousands of dollars on equipments if there is no benefice on the other end for the professional (be it reputation or monetary)? Even the combination of equipments can be copyrighted... I can show you several examples in other cases. All the point of making everything automatic is to use blocks of predetermined rules... instead of repeating them manually over and over again..., so that the photographer can manipulate those blocks... all those updates those changes and new models of equipments are released periodically, someone has to pay for them. Besides, making things automatic has a net benefice because it requires from the user less manipulation and talent, less cognitive skills. Yaḥyā (talk) 04:23, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
- The File:Macaca nigra self-portrait large.jpg case is different. In that case, the issue was that the animal took the photo itself, not that it is a photo of an animal. Obviously photographs of animals can be (and are) copyrighted, so I've no idea where that particular angle came from. (Copyright has also got nothing whatsoever to do with who owns or paid for the camera, just who took the photograph - and/or who commissioned it/paid for it, and what commercial agreements might have been entered into over the photo itself.) The only issue here is that, according to Misplaced Pages, the photographer should have been credited (not necessarily on the banknote itself) and wasn't. There's no issue of payment, as the photographer had already released it under a Wikimedia Commons free license. Had a country selected a Misplaced Pages image of mine to use on a banknote, I'd have been rather pleased - and I'd have willingly given my permission, credit or not. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:23, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- That's not accurate see here , while it's a Canadian site, it applies about anywhere else. Who own the device is central in who owns the copyright. It's like works being done in a lab... an employee can come up with the discovery, its under who's name the lab is registered who gets the credit. See on that link I provide, just the simple fact that the picture was on a film you don't own is sufficient to invalidate your ownership of the said copyright (because the picture was recorded on a medium which was not your property). When you buy the device you are given the permission to own the copyright of every pictures which are taken with it (that's what you are actually paying). If someone spend hours taking pictures with your camera and you use them. They're yours by right! The only thing that person could do is sue you because he was not rewarded for his time. But still he can't own the copyright. Yaḥyā (talk) 14:56, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- Well seems I am wrong, , depends on the laws and regulations of each countries. Yaḥyā (talk) 16:42, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- I doubt it will remain this way though, because this above assumes that there was no device specific process (devices company patent) of the image which obviously isn't true. The owner of the device has the exclusive right to use those embedded processes because he paid for them. The above would have made sense had their been no patent or undisclosed processes. Yaḥyā (talk) 16:51, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- So I guess from the above, Misplaced Pages has to change rules (if it has) regarding pictures to specify that you should take the permission from the owner of the camera. Because inevitably the above US regulations will be changed since it will be contradicting with other laws. It just doesn't make sense. Yaḥyā (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- Your understanding of copyright seems somewhat bizarre, to say the least. In the USA, UK, EU, and every other jurisdiction I've ever encountered, the owner of a camera has no copyright claim whatsoever over photographs taken with that camera by another person - no more than the owner of a paintbrush would have any copyright claim to paintings painted with it by someone else. I've never come across that Canadian thing before but it seems very much the exception - in fact, it seems very doubtful to me, given that it is clearly contradicted by this and this. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- Actually, if you read more of that Canadian source you provided, you'll see...
- "Before 2012, photograph authorship fell under a special regime in the Copyright Act. When a photo was taken, the copyright, by default, belonged to the person who owned the film negative, or digital camera at the time the photograph was taken. This means that the photographer was not necessarily the author of the photograph."
- and then just below that...
- "As of November 2012, the author of a photograph is the person who takes the photo."
- That suggests Canadian law was out of line with the rest of the world, and that it has been brought into line. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:49, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- It never stops being "somewhat bizarre". You ask someone to "stand here and hit the button" for your group photo and now they own the picture on your camera because they're the artist? A hacker activates the camera on the laptop you foolishly didn't cover over and now they own images of you in your underwear? You hire some schmuck to do the photography for your wedding and after he charges you a bunch of the pictures he tells you you can't copy them or send them out digitally to your friends because
he's infringing youryou're infringing his copyright? - Copyright is a slave system, a peculiar institution that cannot make sense no matter how it is reformed. There literally is no right way. At the highest levels, we see companies randomly succeed (like YouTube) or be wiped out (like Napster) and no Doctor of Law could have told you which would go to which destination in advance. Because there is no right way, there is no law, there is no justice, there is no fairness, there is just corruption wrapped up in corruption in the name of the enslavement of human knowledge. Wnt (talk) 19:01, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- While the morality of copyright is very much an interesting discussion in its own right, all I'm commenting on here is the law as it stands, and correcting the misapprehension that the owner of a camera legally owns the copyright to all images made with it (and pointing out that Misplaced Pages and the US are not out of line with the rest of the world in that understanding). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:09, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- We're talking about completely different things here. Those laws can be all thrown in the garbages, it takes only one person to show that they contradict with all other situations where patents are involved. Not only those laws can be thrown in the garbage, but they inevitably will (one law can't resist the countless others which says otherwise in other situations). It assume that irregardless of the camera you take, you will obtain the same picture and that no patent is involved here. That's why that Canadian law exist! :) Someone can even say that the given law is against the US constitution. And I am not even involving the fact that they feed discrimination!!! See all those patents cause a situation of equity... since about anyone can take the pictures without much talent or cognitive skills... the skills are transposed in another medium than the individual. A medium which can be transmitted from someone to another without involving genes. Rendering all the talks about Race_and_intelligence completely pointless. :) See if someone can own those skills (the machine)..., he will inevitably has to own the copyright, per extension to all advantages someone gets with a set of genes. :) it's easy to regulate in such a way to attach credit on machine instead of the individuals... either way like all of you implied, its the machine which did all the processing!!! :b Yaḥyā (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- You appear to be confusing patent with copyright, and they are two very different things. Owning the patent to, say, a specific type of camera sensor, does not in law give you any copyright over works made using that sensor (which require getting into the right place and pointing the thing in the right direction at the right time, among other things - your suggestion that it requires no creative skill to compose a photograph being another of your rather bizarre ideas, and clearly contradicted by comparing the images produced by talented photographers and those produced by the rest of us). Anyway, that's what the law says today (including Canadian law - as I pointed out, it has changed). But if that ever changes, I'll be happy to talk about what Misplaced Pages should do to comply. Until then... Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:38, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- Bizzare ideas? You are confusing your every day experiences with what makes sense or not. Your above comment lack in consistency (check your prior reply). Suppose that someone uses a paid software (registered under another name) in someone elses house and come up with a masterpiece. On what will a judge be relying on to assess paternity? If both claim the copyright? (authorship? And even what constitute authorship is debatable, see the Canadian law above) See the contradiction? Just lets take paternity alone! Usually like in historical paintings paternity is given under strict criteria of style, medium etc… but those aren’t valid anymore because all those embedded processes in those softwares play at least as much role in proving authenticity.
- You appear to be confusing patent with copyright, and they are two very different things. Owning the patent to, say, a specific type of camera sensor, does not in law give you any copyright over works made using that sensor (which require getting into the right place and pointing the thing in the right direction at the right time, among other things - your suggestion that it requires no creative skill to compose a photograph being another of your rather bizarre ideas, and clearly contradicted by comparing the images produced by talented photographers and those produced by the rest of us). Anyway, that's what the law says today (including Canadian law - as I pointed out, it has changed). But if that ever changes, I'll be happy to talk about what Misplaced Pages should do to comply. Until then... Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:38, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- It never stops being "somewhat bizarre". You ask someone to "stand here and hit the button" for your group photo and now they own the picture on your camera because they're the artist? A hacker activates the camera on the laptop you foolishly didn't cover over and now they own images of you in your underwear? You hire some schmuck to do the photography for your wedding and after he charges you a bunch of the pictures he tells you you can't copy them or send them out digitally to your friends because
- So I guess from the above, Misplaced Pages has to change rules (if it has) regarding pictures to specify that you should take the permission from the owner of the camera. Because inevitably the above US regulations will be changed since it will be contradicting with other laws. It just doesn't make sense. Yaḥyā (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- I doubt it will remain this way though, because this above assumes that there was no device specific process (devices company patent) of the image which obviously isn't true. The owner of the device has the exclusive right to use those embedded processes because he paid for them. The above would have made sense had their been no patent or undisclosed processes. Yaḥyā (talk) 16:51, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- Well seems I am wrong, , depends on the laws and regulations of each countries. Yaḥyā (talk) 16:42, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- That's not accurate see here , while it's a Canadian site, it applies about anywhere else. Who own the device is central in who owns the copyright. It's like works being done in a lab... an employee can come up with the discovery, its under who's name the lab is registered who gets the credit. See on that link I provide, just the simple fact that the picture was on a film you don't own is sufficient to invalidate your ownership of the said copyright (because the picture was recorded on a medium which was not your property). When you buy the device you are given the permission to own the copyright of every pictures which are taken with it (that's what you are actually paying). If someone spend hours taking pictures with your camera and you use them. They're yours by right! The only thing that person could do is sue you because he was not rewarded for his time. But still he can't own the copyright. Yaḥyā (talk) 14:56, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- If the judge assume good faith and give equal chances for both, he’d be relying on prior works or documents, and such assessment will entirely be relying on his judgment alone which can later be reversed. The only way to remedy to that is what I propose, it is consistent and a permanent solution!
- Fixing the criteria that copyright goes to the camera (since you don’t deny that it is it which has done much of the work) owner is the only long term solution. It settles the disputes between patent, copyright, paternity etc… playing with words semantics (by ignoring what lies inside those words(meaning)) does not invalidate my above argument. All I have to do is just change few words to settle the dispute (because the conclusion of what I propose would collapse all those different words into one). How do you personally fix the lack of consistency of your replies which aren't mere word games? See the point? Yaḥyā (talk) 20:22, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Last day for ArbCom elections
Sunday (until midnight UTC -about 26 hours from now) is the last day to vote in the WP:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017. Please do vote, if you're eligible, and haven't already voted. There was a bit of a glitch in getting the talk page notices sent out this year, but that was worked out early this week and now it doesn't seem to have affected the overall turnout. There have been about 1,860 voters this year compared to 1,950 total last year (with about 75 voting on the last day). In some ways the glitch was a good experiment, we can now state with some confidence that the talk page notice accounts for approximately 75% of the turnout. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:02, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reminder, have voted. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:03, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Beyond reproach?
Jimbo, awhile back while looking into the desysopping of Dangerous Panda I noticed you'd weighed in before things had been allowed to pile up to folks making broad at-wit's-end pleas for relief to ArbCom. I'm hoping you'll find some way to express opinion and offer mentorship in circumstances I'll present surrounding Drmies as well. I'd like to see him encouraged to voluntarily rein himself in – to preclude problematic attitudes and behaviors escalating to a level of community disruption requiring formal intervention.
Yesterday I posted the following to a talkpage thread addressing the reversion en masse of 12 edits by ~6 editors spread over 29 days:
There's been some mention by others above of sourcing/citation backing removed changes and comment on the ostensible accuracy of Drmies' edit summary. I have difficulty imagining how one could have done better than these edit summaries*:
(→2017 protests: boldfaced—as recommended by WP:ASTONISH and Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Other uses—first use of the name to aid readers arriving from the "Bret Weinstein" redirect page) diff 1
(→2017 protests: see talkpage) diff 2
*And for-the-life-of-me, I don't see as how anyone could make a plausible claim for their removal having been adequately explained by a summary of "I have an idea: let's use reliable sources.".
I encountered a similar questionable use of bulk revision a few weeks ago (in which the user/admin involved has also yet to address their error). And a few months before that another similar case with that same user/admin seems to have prompted a trip to the drama boards.. While such did not lead to explicit consequences like a block, etc., (wrong choice of venue, perhaps) I think it at least serves to show that I'm not the only one concerned about bulk edit removals carelessly brushing aside the policy compliant potentially useful efforts of others as collateral damage when they're intermixed with other less desirable changes that a mass reverter has chosen to remove.
I feel that Drmies as a long-term admin and sitting ArbCom member has committed to offering exemplary behavior to the en:Misplaced Pages community (or at the very least committed to aspiring to offer such) and to being open to discussing his actions when they are called into question. I find it disturbing that he's recently felt free to swiftly leap to F-bomb laced rants (noted in original thread) when an editor he's called into question fails to respond as fully as he'd like but then shows reticence to engage when someone like myself raises questions and prompts him to reexamine his own editing practices.
11 minutes later Drmies removed the passage (while leaving preceding comments) and left in its place:
User:A Fellow Editor, thank you for your comments. Please don't make anymore on this talk page, unless it is to summon me to a dramah board. Drmies (talk) 15:29, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
... with an edit summary of:
(→Subsection break to ease thread navigation: rm text from subsection per WP:YAWN while also invoking WP:OWNTALK. note that rollback was not used, and an edit summary (this one, you are reading it) was left. "I made the reader say BANANA") diff
I'm hoping that other editors of comparable rank and social status might find a way to convey to Drmies as to how his recent conduct—relating to thewolfchild as well as to myself and to general concerns of behavior befitting a WP admin—might be seen as problematic and unbecoming to his position so as to encourage better care and consideration in the future.
Thanks for your time and attention, (and thanks for your efforts in offering the world an amazing public resource) ––A Fellow Editor– 10:54, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- Perhaps also Doug Weller and some of his fellow Eguor admins might be willing to pull Drmies aside and offer some guidance? Or maybe some of the current ArbCom candidates—on this the last day of elections—might wish to take this as an opportunity to show the community their position on holding themselves and others with elevated privileges to offering at least the same standards of best practice as to which the community-at-large is held? While perhaps also addressing the expectation that those with elevated powers and responsibilities exemplify best practices themselves? ––A Fellow Editor– 11:33, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Drmies has blundered into my userspace—after requesting I avoid his—to edit in my personal archive User:A Fellow Editor/Archive/Drmies talk, December 2017.
One might be inclined at this point to take this as a further demonstration of the present scope of his tact and prowess. ––A Fellow Editor– 12:19, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
- The parent controversy seems more entertaining. Apparently The Evergreen State College has some very peculiar liberal traditions, like encouraging all the minority students and professors to skip class one day in order to make them more academically equal. Then someone hit on the notion of "encouraging" the white students and professors to skip out instead... much hilarity ensued. On Misplaced Pages, this manifests in muted form as edit warring. It looks like DrMies was involved in trying to suppress the very best of this comedy gold here - if this is supposed to be reason why citing primary sources is "problematic", it is also a great example of why primary sources are so valuable. Watch this weirdness at , though to be sure, this really isn't primary enough, too many cuts.
- So far my best explanation is North Koreans already released the brain-destroying virus, presumably after sticking a special bonus into their own citizens' mandated vaccination schedule. But hey, maybe I'm wrong ... we'll see. Wnt (talk) 18:53, 10 December 2017 (UTC)