User:Hawkeye7/Essay

There is no aspect of article creation that I have found causes a much trouble as images. So I thought I would devote a bit of time writing down some thoughts about them. I am not an expert though.

Images are more complicated than text in almost every way. Our terms of use specify that when we create text, it is under a Creative Commons 3.0 or GNU Free Documentation License. You can incorporate Fair Use text such as quotations into the work. Note though, that the copyright rests with the Wikipedia editors. Images are different in this regard. For a start, images (especially here at MilHist) are often not created by Wikipedia editors. The terms of service differ too; they advise that you comply with the licensing policy, and note that there is a Commons licensing policy.

So we have three different organisations involved in images: Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia and Commons. If you've dealt with other image archives, you'll know that most work on the basis that they believe that an image is theirs, or is available for use, and if they get a complaint, they will take it down. That attitude is not helpful to us; it sometimes means that we often have to know more about an image than the site we got it from. Wikimedia Foundation have this attitude too. If they get a request to take something down, especially from within the United States, they will comply. They won't argue about it. If you don't agree, you cannot reverse the deletion; it is an office action. Instead, you have to file a counter-notification. Wikimedia's legal group have been known to advise Wikipedians in other countries to contact their local US Congressman.

Each of the different Wikimedia projects, of which the English language Wikipedia is one, is allowed to set its own criteria as to what is acceptable. Thus, it is possible that an image that is acceptable on Wikipedia is prohibited on Commons and vice versa. Which brings us to what is acceptable. There is a definition of "Free Cultural Works" that is breathtakingly Orwellian in tone. In particular, there is a contention that non-commercial free works are not free works, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "communalist". "Creators who release their work at no cost under an NC licence will have to compete with their own work available gratis if they ever try to monetize the same work." Because why else would you ever want to put your work out under a free licence, if not to make money out of it?

Some Wikipedians have argued that works have to be free in all 193 or countries in the world. In practice, this is almost impossible to verify, and would leave Wikipedia open to having all its images ruled unusable by one crazy government. So in practice, we have it that the image be free in the country of origin, and in the United States, where most of the servers reside. For the other country, I am going to use Australia as an example, but I live there, and am reasonably familiar with the rules there. As it turns out, Australia is a fairly typical case, and the copyright laws here closely resemble those of many other countries.

Australia is by no means a rogue state. Being a country with a English-speaking country on the outskirts of Asia puts it in a precarious situation, which it has sought to remedy by creating close ties with other countries. This is true in the military sense, and no less true in its economic relations with other countries. In particular, Australia has ratified the Berne Convention, and the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement. As part of the latter, each country had to state what its intentions for the future were. The United States stated that it was going to abolish the placing of government images in the public domain in favour of something akin to the British crown copyright, and extend the term of copyright to at least 120 years.

The Australian road map was that government works (crown copyright) would become available under Creative Commons. This was done. Under pressure from the United States, copyright duration was extended from 50 to 70 years, effective 1 January 2005; but not retrospectively, and not government works. Thus, government works dating from 1964 or earlier are in the public domain, but private ones only from 1954 or earlier. The clock will start ticking again in 2025. In Australia, "copyright expired" and "public domain" are interchangeable. Only the government can set the copyright term, so you cannot extend your copyright term; your rights expire world-wide. Nor can you place your own works in the public domain.

This is good thing from a Wikipedia point of view, because there is such a thing as the Uruguay Round Agreements Act in the United States which says that the US only recognises the public domain status of works that were in the public domain on 1 January 1996. That covers everything from 1946 and earlier. But if you try to do it yourself, then it wasn't in the public domain in the US in 1996, and the US won't accept your declaration. Government works expire world-wide after 50 years, so they enter the public domain if the copyright has expired. What is the problem then? Private works from after 1946 where rights were sold to a pirate in the United States.

In Australia we also have a sweeping Freedom of Panorama.