Copyright issues on CZ: need for rapid action

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

We now have two separate and major unresolved legal issues on CZ:

(1) the sort of licence that CZ will take for its own publications;
(2) the usage and labelling of public domain (PD) images on CZ.

The former has led to an outraged response from one author -- namely that he cannot be required in advance to transfer copyright to CZ in some unspecified way at some unspecified date in the future.

The second case has emerged most clearly in the article on Poland, and concerns the request of Google for mention of their digitization of PD images. This is interpreted by Richard Jensen as an attack upon the unrestricted rights attached to the legal status of PD, whilst Google is advancing its own position with doubtful legal claims concerning distribution of digitized images.

In my opinion, from some limited legal background, both complainants have strong cases. Therefore, I move that CZ has rapidly to develop an official policy to determine its legal position on both issues. This is not easy, as it transcends national laws, but I think it has to be done. And if Google can try to redefine the meaning of public domain, CZ can also try to resist that redefinition. Until such time as there is caselaw, this should not be a problem.

[Stephen Ewen]

On point one, it just ain't gonna happen as a hasty decision.  It's going to happen carefully and, hopefully, with substantial professional input from people outside the project (note the latest Citizendium-L posting).  Larry has said hopefully by fall but certainly by end-of-year.  This is a permanent decision and really ought be treated as such, don't you think?

On point two, its much more a common courtesy than any legal matter, with great practical benefit for the project.  It's like holding the door open for someone entering the store.  There's no law saying you have to do it, but its common courtesy and people will think less of you if you do not. 

Also, the example of Google Book Search is a very poor, and rare, example to use.  Much more often it is a public domain image that is held in care by a museum who has expended funds to make it available in digitized form to the public, and they have used language that has either requested or required as a condition of use unrelated to copyright (basically, if you use our website, here are the conditions) that they be attributed when their digitized images are used.  See http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln for a usual example. 

Its really pretty simple.  They have provided an image the project would not have otherwise, except at great expense--traveling to the museum and receiving authorization to use our (non-existing) expensive equipment to make our own digital images of photos in their collection, if they even allow that, almost none do.  If you don't want to provide them the common and minimal courtesy as they have asked, then dammit, you don't use the image. 

And if you do use it but do not meet the common courtesy, then you should be viewed as the person who does not hold the door open for someone nearby you entering the store: as a rude ass.  Have you broken the law?  No, probably not (excepting when your use of the image is related to contract law, mentioned above).  But you're still a rude ass.  Avoiding the project getting such an image is the point.

Also see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Help:Images#Attributing_media_within_articles for what has been being practiced recently.  While you're there, don't miss the link to the upset response from one semi-professional photographer about Wikipedia's practices of not attributing photographers within the image boxes of articles, an obviously related matter.

Sorry for the "colorful" language here, something I very rarely do.  I use it here because only it will get the point across adequately.

[RJensen]

Google requests that usage of its books.google.com resources be non-commercial (we qualify), and that there be an attribution to google search. The second criteria we always meet by providing a URL to the google source book. The dispute arises because Steve Ewen insists on splashing google's name repeatedly in each article every time we use a book google has scanned.  That goes much too far. We of course cannot let Google seize control of the world's cultural heritage by use of its scanner!  It surrenders our rights to unrestricted use of public domain material. Of course it is not the custom in publishing to trace all the links that connect a book published in 1863 to 2007 -- art historians do that to original paintings, not to a digital copy of an old photograph of an old painting. (A book typically will cram all the permissions on one page, and not duplicate permission info throughout the text.) ~~~~

[Stephen Ewen]

We of course cannot let Google seize control of the world's cultural heritage by use of its scanner! 

This is absolutely ridiculous language and I hope people have the wisdom to see it as what it is: an attempt to appeal to people's anti-Google biases to inflame them and cloud the issue I discussed above.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Well, disregarding emotive language, I read all the links posted on your reply, Stephen. I have several comments.

(1) All authors of original works must be credited. This is clear legally and morally, and the case of the photographer is a common new problem with the internet, where people assume that copyright law either doesn't apply or cannot be enforced. It is good that CZ has a clear position on this point.

(2) THe courtesy thing...Well, I certainly have no hesitation in thanking sources such as libraries and museums which have made material available. This is also useful info for people wishing to trace the original, or at least a copy of it.

(3) The Google thing...I am not clear what is expected from CZ here. Should we thank Google for their near-successful attempt at a global monopoly on digitized images? Many of these have been digitized by other sources and Google rarely seems to state exactly where the images really came from... On the other hand, it is perhaps useful to provide a link to the actual Google source where the image came from. Is that enough?

As I mentioned on a Talk page, I am not happy with promoting Google. It is not consistent with Neutrality Policy. If there is no legal requirement to acknowledge Google, is it clear that your opening door analogy holds? After all, it is one thing to hold the door for a person you don't even know, it is another to hold it open for the world's richest man. These two have quite different social meanings....

[Derek Harkness]

After all, it is one thing to hold the door for a person you don't even know, it is another to hold it open for the world's richest man. These two have quite different social meanings....

That doesn't hold true on my morals. You don't treat someone worse because they are rich. If holding the door open for the next person is what is socially acceptable, then that's what we do. I don't go checking the size of their wallet and if they have more money than me, slam the door behind me.

Just because Google is big and successful doesn't mean you should treat them differently form a smaller organisation. If there is a issue of politeness, then we should be polite irrespective of who the other person/company is.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I meant specifically -- the world's richest man, not someone who has a little more money than you. It is not about politeness, it is actually about power. This is, I suppose, Richard Jensen's position, that Google is far too powerful for people to treat it is a small city library or something. Failure to realise this is what allows filthy rich people to get even richer, to our detriment.

[Jitse Niesen]

We now have two separate and major unresolved legal issues on CZ:

(1) the sort of licence that CZ will take for its own publications;
(2) the usage and labelling of public domain (PD) images on CZ.

[...] The second case has emerged most clearly in the article on Poland, and concerns the request of Google for mention of their digitization of PD images.

I find it really odd to acknowledge Google while failing to mention the book from which the picture is taken or the library holding the book. To me, the author and library deserve more to be mentioned than Google. After all, if we find a web page via Google then we don't acknowledge this. It is said that it is customary to acknowledge Google but I don't remember ever seeing an acknowledgment in a book mentioning who scanned or digitized an image.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

It is said that it is customary to acknowledge Google but I don't remember ever seeing an acknowledgment in a book mentioning who scanned or digitized an image.

As I understand it, Google is trying to push the boundaries of copyright law to claim that its digitization requires -- as a matter of courtesy -- acknowledgement by all who use it. Richard Jensen rejects this approach, since there is no legal requirement; Stephen Ewen accepts it as being in CZ interests to have good relations with Google.

My opinion is that it is contrary to CZ Neutrality Policy to support the empire-building of Google, and we should do everything that is legally required, and no more unless there is a clear resolution approved by the Editorial Council. This has already blown into a personal dispute between a constable and an editor; the editor is blocked for 24 hours; and there is in fact no CZ policy to support the blocking of the editor.

[Stephen Ewen]

I find it really odd to acknowledge Google while failing to mention the book from which the picture is taken or the library holding the book. To me, the author and library deserve more to be mentioned than Google. After all, if we find a web page via Google then we don't acknowledge this. It is said that it is customary to acknowledge Google but I don't remember ever seeing an acknowledgment in a book mentioning who scanned or digitized an image.

Agreed that the book should be mentioned.  But there is no tradition of attributing the library the book was checked out from, obviously (!), nor any other chain of hand. 

On the other hand, if the library digitized the images, made them available to the public, and in that requested they be attributed, that's different.  You honor the request or (1) don't use or (2) digitize your own images. 

Imagine if I undertook the expense to digitize 1000 rare images and made them available to the public.  For my efforts, I request I be attributed as the provider (not the author) of the images.  What are you going to do, snub the request?  And if you did, would you expect me to continue to make such images available?   

[RJensen]

My position is that giving the URL to the books.google.com meets google's nasty "request" and goes well beyond what most references books do, and no further referencing to google is necessary or desirable.  For example, scholars never give the library call number of a book in their footnotes, but we are doing approximately that.  Second we should not take sides in the battle among Google, Yahoo and Microsoft  to monopolize past knowledge. They are NOT dissinterested public-service libraries like U Michigan, they are battling for $$$ and power. (They stretch the law to their benefit, not ours. EG Bill Gates (Microsoft) via Corbis, asserts copyright in pictures in public domain!) To block Yahoo is why Google "requests" non-commercial usage only and that's why I call it nasty.  Let me note here an article in NY Times yesterday quoting Wikipedia's general counsel saying there are zero lawsuits against Wikipedia on copyright or anything else. ~~~~

[Stephen Ewen]

My position is that giving the URL to the books.google.com meets google's nasty "request" and goes well beyond what most references books do, and no further referencing to google is necessary or desirable.  For example, scholars never give the library call number of a book in their footnotes, but we are doing approximately that.  Second we should not take sides in the battle among Google, Yahoo and Microsoft  to monopolize past knowledge. They are NOT dissinterested public-service libraries like U Michigan, they are battling for $$$ and power. (They stretch the law to their benefit, not ours. EG Bill Gates (Microsoft) via Corbis, asserts copyright in pictures in public domain!) To block Yahoo is why Google "requests" non-commercial usage only and that's why I call it nasty.  Let me note here an article in NY Times yesterday quoting Wikipedia's general counsel saying there are zero lawsuits against Wikipedia on copyright or anything else.  ~~~~

The above post is an attempt to cloud the issues and appeal to people's emotional biases by interjecting extraneous issues and by using hyperbole. 

As I have stated. Google is a very unusual case.  Much more often it is the Chicago Historical Soceity, the Library of Congress, and the like, so this anti-Big Guy rhetoric is pointless.  While Jensen is right in saying we should not take sides, he is only giving lip service to this--his actual position is that we should take sides.  If the tiny Jupiter Lighthouse Museum digitizes images and makes them available for free to the public with a request for attribution, then Google who does the same act and makes the same request must get the same treatment.  When it is the case, you inform people that a provider of images has made requests about usages of their usages, and let people make up their own minds about what to do about it.  We don't hide that information and make decisions for others.

Insisting over and over (and over and over) on interjecting the question of copyright into the matter is again just a repeated attempt to cloud the issue and inflame reader biases.  As I have stated above, copyright is not the issue.  Professional courtesy is.

Stating that attributing the digitizer of an image compares with "scholars giv[ing] the library call number of a book in their footnotes," and that "we are doing approximately that," is just pure hyperbole.  It is yet another attempt to cloud this issue by introducing extraneous matters in the hope that it might inflame some people's biases.

Regarding Wikipedia's general counsel saying there are zero lawsuits against Wikipedia on copyright or anything else--you are implying that this means WP is clean in the matter and that WP should be emulated.  Respectfully, what this is really showing is ignorance of the situation. 

It is due to provisions in the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act that shield WP as not a content provider, a publisher, but a mere service provider on the very same level as the likes of YouTube. The so-called "safe harbor provision" in the DMCA means that service providers need only remove infringing material when specifically asked to by the copyright holder, something WP does do, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE.  If WP or YouTube did not remove the content, then they may be sued.  In short, under the DMCA, WP knows the target of any lawsuit is the kid (and suing kids rarely pays) who put the stuff up, not themselves. 

[Stephen Ewen]

Pretty interesting find while I was tidying image data for an editor, from the PLoS Biology Journal (the Creative Commons released journal).

The first photo is attributed within the article thusly:

(Photograph: John Whitfield)

The second within the article thusly:

(Image ID: spac0289, NOAA in Space Collection)

Of their public domain images, NOAA says

Although at present, no fee is charged for using the photos credit MUST be given to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce unless otherwise instructed to give credit to the photographer or other source.

See http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/aboutimages.html

The third within the article thusly:

[Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI); acknowledgment: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)]

See at http://tinyurl.com/32z57j

I could endlessly produce examples like this.

[Jitse Niesen]

I find it really odd to acknowledge Google while failing to mention the book from which the picture is taken or the library holding the book. To me, the author and library deserve more to be mentioned than Google. After all, if we find a web page via Google then we don't acknowledge this. It is said that it is customary to acknowledge Google but I don't remember ever seeing an acknowledgment in a book mentioning who scanned or digitized an image.

Agreed that the book should be mentioned.  But there is no tradition of attributing the library the book was checked out from, obviously (!), nor any other chain of hand. 

My point is that the library went through more trouble safeguarding the book than whoever scanned the book, especially if it's an old book. So if you think that you don't need to mention the library (and I agree with that), then you also don't need to mention the scanner.

The above post is an attempt to cloud the issues and appeal to people's emotional biases by interjecting extraneous issues and by using hyperbole. 

That's not the collegial language I would expect from a constable.

As I have stated. Google is a very unusual case.  Much more often it is the Chicago Historical Soceity, the Library of Congress, and the like, so this anti-Big Guy rhetoric is pointless.  While Jensen is right in saying we should not take sides, he is only giving lip service to this--his actual position is that we should take sides.  If the tiny Jupiter Lighthouse Museum digitizes images and makes them available for free to the public with a request for attribution, then Google who does the same act and makes the same request must get the same treatment.  When it is the case, you inform people that a provider of images has made requests about usages of their usages, and let people make up their own minds about what to do about it.  We don't hide that information and make decisions for others.

It may be an unusual case, but it is the case we're dealing with here. I think there is a difference between a museum keeping some artifact and making pictures available (should be acknowledged) and a company taking books from a library and making pictures available (should not be acknowledged). It's not the same act. By the way, I'm only considering acknowledging Google Books in the article here; I'm okay with putting their requests on the image page.

Insisting over and over (and over and over) on interjecting the question of copyright into the matter is again just a repeated attempt to cloud the issue and inflame reader biases.  As I have stated above, copyright is not the issue.  Professional courtesy is.

True, but when I looked at my book case I found that some books print the acknowledgements near the photographs, and some gather them in a page at the back of the book (Chris Patten's autobiography falls in the latter category, for example), so it's not a courtesy universally adhered to.

[Stephen Ewen]

My point is that the library went through more trouble safeguarding the book than whoever scanned the book, especially if it's an old book. So if you think that you don't need to mention the library (and I agree with that), then you also don't need to mention the scanner.

Sounds like you may have been caught up into someone's clouding-the-issue rhetoric here.  The person who scanned stuff is not attributed--saying so is an attempt to cloud the matter.  The entity who incurred expense to provide a public good--images we can access freely that we would otherwise not have at our disposal to even use in the first place--is. 

And, if a library is the entity that incurred expense to provide a public good--images we can access freely that we would otherwise not have at our disposal to use--they do get attributed.  See http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/ for an example - we would attribute as they ask at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/usage_statement.html?maps=yes which says:

Materials that are in the public domain (such as images from the Portrait Gallery or most of the maps in the PCL Map Collection), are not copyrighted and no permission is needed to copy them. You may download them and use them as you wish. We appreciate you giving this site credit with the phrase:

    "Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin."


It is from several of their maps that RJ removed the attribution, incidentally.

That's not the collegial language I would expect from a constable.

It is accurate language.

It may be an unusual case, but it is the case we're dealing with here. I think there is a difference between a museum keeping some artifact and making pictures available (should be acknowledged) and a company taking books from a library and making pictures available (should not be acknowledged).

Then you have apparently missed the point. 

You have one policy applied in a standardized fashion, and it should not contain a "List of entities not to attribute in articles because we don't like them".

In point of fact, there will be a few entities attributed that people don't generally like now and then.  If you don't like them, then don't use the image, or do what it takes to obtain the image apart from their provision of it to you.

When an entity makes available to us something we would otherwise not have, and requests attribution for it, we don't just snub them.  You either honor their request if you use it or you are being dishonorable, plain and simple. 

True, but when I looked at my book case I found that some books print the acknowledgements near the photographs, and some gather them in a page at the back of the book (Chris Patten's autobiography falls in the latter category, for example), so it's not a courtesy universally adhered to.

And of course, in most books, they pay to use images.  And, mind you, there are going to be a great many images CZ will not be able to get unless we fork out dough--although, it is much more possible to get fees waived if you give them something: attribution in image boxes in articles. 

And, in any way hiding such acknowledgments is exactly what ticks a lot of people off who we depend on for images, see http://duncandavidson.com/archives/564 for one semi-pro photographer's take on the matter.