WMF Legal issues first "Transparency Report"

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 11:01 am

The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to publicise the articles that Google won't link to any more:

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/06/wi ... h-results/

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Not ... ch_engines

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 11:23 am

See also the WMF's first transparency report detailing requests for user data, content modification and takedown:

http://transparency.wikimedia.org/

Early coverage in New York Times and Washington Post.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 11:26 am

From the page about user data:

Freedom of speech is essential to the Wikimedia movement—our projects cannot flourish in an ecosystem where individuals cannot speak freely. Our users trust us to protect their identities against unlawful disclosure and we take this responsibility seriously.

However, every year, governments, individuals, and corporations ask us to disclose user data. Often, we have no nonpublic information to disclose because we collect little nonpublic information about users and retain that information for a short period of time. But when we do have data, we carefully evaluate every request before considering disclosure. If the requests do not meet our standards—if they are overly broad, unclear, or irrelevant—we will push back on behalf of our users.

If we must produce information due to a legally valid request, we will notify the affected user before we disclose, if we are legally permitted and have the means to do so. In certain cases, we may help find assistance for users to fight an invalid request.

Below, you will find more information about the requests for user data we receive.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Oscar Wilde
Writer & Poet (1891)

Drowninginlimbo · Unread post by **Drowninginlimbo** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 12:10 pm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/n ... ns-it.html

Wikimedia, the organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused a photographer’s repeated requests to remove one of his images which is used online without his permission, claiming that because a monkey pressed the shutter button it owns the copyright.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commo ... rtrait.jpg

This image was shot by a monkey who picked up a camera that a photographer had dropped. The photographer later published the image, and it garnered some press attention. I uploaded it to Commons on the basis that the image was not created by a human and that therefore nobody holds copyright in it.

Heh.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 12:29 pm

I get the sense from these press releases and press coverage that the Wikimedia Foundation and Google are very much politically and corporately aligned. I wonder if the average person who is not steeped in WMF/Jimbo/Google cultural history would readily draw the same conclusion?

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 12:37 pm

On the Washington Post story, I commented:

The graphics saying that "86%" or "93%" of requests result in "information being withheld" is extremely misleading. There is a set of scenarios where because the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't store IP address information for longer than 90 days, that the result is actually "information not available, but may or may not have been withheld if it had been available". Each of these many cases has been carelessly dumped into the "information withheld" category, which I believe is a clumsy attempt by the WMF to look "good" to its libertarian user base. Really, in my experience, the WMF should be forbidden from producing charts and graphs, because so much of what results is biased or seeks to fulfill an agenda of theirs.

I find it amusing that on the WMF's new "Transparency" site, they feature the Brandeis quotation: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." I couldn't agree more. Is that why English Wikipedia's official policy is to block editors who identify themselves with a corporate name, and ask them to rename themselves something more like "BruisedBanana456"?

What's out and out hilarious is this statement by the WMF:

Freedom of speech is essential to the Wikimedia movement—our projects cannot flourish in an ecosystem where individuals cannot speak freely.

More honestly supporting the hidden agenda of the WMF-Wikipediot alliance is this quote selected by the WMF press folks:

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

-- Oscar Wilde

Textnyymi · Unread post by **Textnyymi** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 12:51 pm

Who holds the copyright of a photo? The guy who presses the button, or the item or person which is being photographed?

Everything that does not speak can't say "yes" when asked "do you give me permission to put this photo in the public domain or under a license?", therefore it's a violation to have all those pictures of trees, houses, stones, rivers... and children... will someone please think about the children!

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:48 pm

Wikimedia Foundation Legal Counsel Michelle Paulson announced the publication of a first "Transparency Report" to the Wikimedia-l mailing list on August 6, 2014.

The report is available at the following URL:

http://transparency.wikimedia.org/content.html

The Transparency Report details the number of requests made to WMF for alteration of content or for removal of content for copyright reasons in accord with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for the two year period July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2014.

According to the report there were 304 content change requests for content alteration or take-down made of WMF, of which 0% were granted.

For the same period, 58 DMCA takedown requests were made and 24 (41%) granted.

There were also 56 requests made for user data in the period, with 8 (14%) granted, according to the report.

RfB

SB_Johnny · Unread post by **SB_Johnny** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:57 pm

Wow. Just wow.

Should be an interesting discussion on Jimbo talk. One of the geniuses voting to keep was Beeblebrox of ArbCom.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 2:02 pm

Here is New York Times coverage of the report:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/0 ... -requests/

Note to mods: this thread is closely related to the "Monkey Owns It" thread.

RfB

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 2:05 pm

Textnyymi wrote:Who holds the copyright of a photo? The guy who presses the button, or the item or person which is being photographed?

Everything that does not speak can't say "yes" when asked "do you give me permission to put this photo in the public domain or under a license?", therefore it's a violation to have all those pictures of trees, houses, stones, rivers... and children... will someone please think about the children!

The basic answer is "the guy who presses the button" and thus the rest of your post is................. novel.

There is something known as "personality rights" that do come into play with the use of certain photos, but inanimate objects do not have these. And then there are rules for photography of certain inanimate objects. And all this varies from country to country... It's a big mess, frankly.

RfB

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 2:43 pm

Tim was beaten by several hours by HRIP7, here. But I think we need one catch-all thread about the new "Transparency" pablum that the WMF is feeding us and the media, which should be separate from the "Right to be Forgotten" thread in News and Media. Pull the monkey thread into the Transparency Report thread.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 3:38 pm

Mod. note: Threads merged, including the related posts from this thread.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 4:03 pm

So Google has decided that a 2008/9 ArbCom lynching shouldn't be linked to. And the wikipedia fuckwit lawyer shits are bawling.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:15 pm

lilburne wrote:So Google has decided that a 2008/9 ArbCom lynching shouldn't be linked to. And the wikipedia fuckwit lawyer shits are bawling.

They're already voting to keep unnecessary content that they freely admit should have been deleted long ago, based on the rationale that the material "became notable due to the Google affair" even though it was Wikimedia's own decision to expose it. Here's someone who's already keeping a list of the pages in question on his user page under the heading "The Streisand Effect," which is to say he's deliberately attempting to promote the Streisand Effect in these cases, in contravention of the EU judicial ruling, apparently just because he can.

This is just so typical of them... It's like they can't even bother to try and be unpredictable, like, ever.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:16 pm

Yeah this whole trasnparency report smells of corruption. Lets release a "transparency report" that has been so heavily sanitized that it doens't even come close to giving a "transparent" picture. This totally sounds like something the Arbitraitors would write up.

Mancunium · Unread post by **Mancunium** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:17 pm

Wikipedia swears to fight 'censorship' of 'right to be forgotten' ruling
Announcing its first transparency report, Wikipedia reveals that Google has received five requests remove links to its pages
The Guardian, 6 August 2014 link

Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales has revealed new details about what he describes as the site’s “censorship” under the EU’s “right to be forgotten” laws. Wales revealed that Google has been asked to remove five links to Wikipedia in the last week. Now the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit group which runs the collaboratively edited encyclopaedia, has posted the notices of removal from Google online. [...] “History is a human right and one of the worst things that a person can do is attempt to use force to silence another,” he said. “I’ve been in the public eye for quite some time. Some people say good things, some people say bad things … that’s history, and I would never use any kind of legal process like to try to suppress it.” [...]

Geoff Brigham, Wikipedia’s general counsel, said that many more links may have been removed without Wikimedia’s knowledge. “We only know about these removals because the involved search engine company chose to send notices to the Wikimedia Foundation,” he said. “Search engines have no legal obligation to send such notices. Indeed, their ability to continue to do so may be in jeopardy. Since search engines are not required to provide affected sites with notice, other search engines may have removed additional links from their results without our knowledge. This lack of transparent policies and procedures is only one of the many flaws in the European decision.”

Lila Tretikov, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, described the ruling as creating Orwellian “memory holes”. “Accurate search results are vanishing in Europe with no public explanation, no real proof, no judicial review, and no appeals process,” she said. “We find this type of veiled censorship unacceptable. But we find the lack of disclosure unforgivable. This is not a tenable future. We cannot build the sum of all human knowledge without the world’s true source, based on pre-edited histories.” [...] Wikimedia was also asked to give up personal information 56 times during the period, and complied with the request 14% of the time. The foundation has also not been asked to give up data under laws such as the US’s National Security Letters, which gag the recipients from revealing the request. This disclosure is a form of “warrant canary”: if Wikimedia stops saying it, it can be assumed to have received its first letter, Wales explained.

I see that Lila Tretikov is as depraved and deeply immoral as her idiot godking.

(L-R) General Counsel or the Wikimedia Foundation, Geoff Brigham; Wikimedia
Foundation Chief Executive, Lila Tretikov and Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy
Wales, attend a press conference in central London on August 6, 2014

Wikipedia founder: EU's Right to be Forgotten is 'deeply immoral'
More than 50 links to Wikipedia pages will be removed from search results, as a result of the EU's Right to be Forgotten legislation
The Telegraph, 6 August 2014 link

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has described the EU's Right to be Forgotten as "deeply immoral", as the organisation that operates the online encyclopedia warned the ruling will result in an internet "riddled with memory holes". Speaking at Wikipedia's annual Wikimania conference in London today, Wales said: "History is a human right and one of the worst things that a person can do is attempt to use force to silence another. [...] The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has received multiple notices of intent to remove certain Wikipedia content from European search results, since the EU's Right to be Forgotten legislation came into force in May.

The founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales: "deeply immoral"

Wikipedia reveals Google 'forgotten' search links
Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales has revealed new details about what he describes as the site’s “censorship” under the EU’s “right to be forgotten” laws.
BBC News, 6 August 2014 link

Wales revealed that Google has been asked to remove five links to Wikipedia in the last week. Now the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit group which runs the collaboratively edited encyclopaedia, has posted the notices of removal from Google online. [...] Between July 2012 and June 2014, the period the first report covers, Wikimedia received 304 requests for content to be taken down or altered, but did not grant a single one.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:30 pm

Lila wrote:This is not a tenable future. We cannot build the sum of all human knowledge without the world’s true source, based on pre-edited histories.

I assume she meant to say something like, This is not an ideal situation, we cannot build the 'sum of human knowledge' unless Google produces all the results that exist, as opposed to a limited subset thereof. But this is clearly one of those instances where not having a native-English speaker in charge could have negative consequences for the WMF, because what she did say right there made almost no sense whatsoever, to the point where it could easily be viewed as a lie by anyone trying to take it literally.

It's difficult to say what's going to happen with this, but if the WMF people continue to behave as if this is the End of Civilization As We Know It, a lot of people are going to realize that they're all nothing but a bunch of dishonest, highly deceptive drama queens, Lila Tretikov included apparently. Maybe they've made an organizational decision to react this way, but if they continue to refuse to even consider an opt-out policy for BLP's - something we've been advocating for nearly nine years now - they only have themselves to blame for what happens.

Mancunium · Unread post by **Mancunium** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:50 pm

thekohser wrote:Tim was beaten by several hours by HRIP7, here. But I think we need one catch-all thread about the new "Transparency" pablum that the WMF is feeding us and the media, which should be separate from the "Right to be Forgotten" thread in News and Media. Pull the monkey thread into the Transparency Report thread.

Yes. Monkey thread is the result of journalists focusing on the most obviously-stupid aspect of Wikimedia's Big Lie.

Wikipedia refuses to delete photo as 'monkey owns it'
Wikimedia, the non-profit organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused a photographer’s repeated requests to stop distributing his most famous shot for free – because a monkey pressed the shutter button and should own the copyright
The Telegraph, 6 August 2014 link

Wikipedia refuses photographer's request to remove animal selfie because MONKEY took the picture
The Mirror, 6 August 2014 link

[...] Mr Slater claims he is facing a £10,000 legal bill because Wikimedia, the organisation behind the site, say he doesn't own the copyright - because the monkey took the picture. He said: "They have denied my request to take off their site. "The photograph from 2011 got worldwide coverage because the monkey took it but some claimed because the monkey took the pictures - she owns the copyright. "It makes me very angry, I'm a professional photographer - it costs me over £2,000 to do the trip. It's my livelihood. "You take 20,000 shots to get one image that sells, it was potentially a good earner for me, I've lost over £10,000 pounds because of it."

'Communist' Wikipedia Faces Lawsuit Over Monkey Selfie Copyright Dispute
International Business Times UK, 6 August 2014 link

Wikipedia has been labelled a "band of communists" by a photographer after refusing to remove an image he owns, claiming that he does not own the copyright as a monkey pressed the shutter button. [...] "Wikipedia are a disgrace," Slater told IBTimes UK. "They're a band of communists who think that because photographs are taken of the wild, then they should be free to everyone." Slater claims that the inclusion of the monkey image in Wikimedia's royalty-free image library has damaged his livelihood and is currently considering legal action against the organisation for statutory damages. "I'm very angry. I'm not a rich photographer, in fact I can't even afford now to travel or to replace my old camera equipment," Slater said.

A spokesperson for Wikimedia told IBTimes UK that under US copyright law, David Slater does not own the rights to the image. "Copyright claims can't be registered to non-human authors - and the monkey was the photographer," the spokesperson said. "That doesn't mean that the monkey owns the copyright, it just means that the human who owns the camera doesn't.""To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they'd only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image." Slater claims that he did make a significant contribution to the image in question, by framing and focussing the photograph. He also says that it is registered under his name with the US Copyright Office. US copyright law, under section 503.03(a), states: "In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable."

And one hundred more in today's Google News: link

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:54 pm

There is obviously another side to all this right-to-be-forgotten kerfuffle. Published in The Guardian a week ago.

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:09 pm

HRIP7 wrote:The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to publicise the articles that Google won't link to any more:

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/06/wi ... h-results/

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Not ... ch_engines

Disgusting and disingenuously self-lauding comments from Brigham and Paulson. Look at how they carefully set up these listings as "relevant, neutral, and truthful." Bull. So is their pursuit of the "sum of human knowledge." Brigham and Paulson pursue the sum of their annual salaries and big bonuses.

It's also lawless and vindictive what they are doing with the second link. They are spotlighting those European individuals that exercise their right under the EU Court of Justice ruling. They are attempting to punish them and to warn others off. They are saying essentially "you just try to exercise your right to be forgotten, we will highlight you even the more." They are behaving contemptuously of the court's ruling. They need to be sued. Maybe some of the people they are threatening with this can launch a lawsuit against them. Against WMF, and the personally vindictive and disingenuously self-lauding Brigham and Paulson.

Last, I don't want to ping-pong moderators around given that the threads were evidently recently merged, but I don't see how the stuff about the monkey owning the photograph rights belongs in this thread. This thread is about WMF's response to people exercising their rights under the EU court's "right to be forgotten" ruling. Can we put the monkey business in some other clearly-labeled drawer?

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:20 pm

The monkey comes from the transparency report.

Monkey Selfie
JANUARY 2014

A photographer left his camera unattended in a national park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. A female crested black macaque monkey got ahold of the camera and took a series of pictures, including some self-portraits. The pictures were featured in an online newspaper article and eventually posted to Commons. We received a takedown request from the photographer, claiming that he owned the copyright to the photographs. We didn't agree, so we denied the request.

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:31 pm

HRIP7 wrote:The monkey comes from the transparency report.
Monkey Selfie
JANUARY 2014

A photographer left his camera unattended in a national park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. A female crested black macaque monkey got ahold of the camera and took a series of pictures, including some self-portraits. The pictures were featured in an online newspaper article and eventually posted to Commons. We received a takedown request from the photographer, claiming that he owned the copyright to the photographs. We didn't agree, so we denied the request.

Well, leaving aside the transparent attempt by WMF to ridicule the takedown requests it directly receives "har har, the macaque owns the photograph," the blog linked at the top of this thread is about the separate matter of notifications Google has decided to send Wikipedia about the articles *it* has been de-indexing. Correct?

I think what WMF is doing with its vengeance "name-and-shame, we will Streisand you" page is a matter we should hash out here earnestly and vigorously without getting diverted to the monkey matter.

EDIT: Reading back now, I guess this means I disagree with Kohser about how the threads should be handled. Obviously I'll yield to him then, but I'd also ask him to see if he can reconsider it my way. The matter of the macaque photo is distinct from the important question of what the WMF is now vindictively doing (to people like Gerry Hutch) who exercise their new rights under the EU court's ruling.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:37 pm

Triptych wrote:They need to be sued. Maybe some of the people they are threatening with this can launch a lawsuit against them. Against WMF, and the personally vindictive and disingenuously self-lauding Brigham and Paulson.

If some one turned up at the Barbican a bag of manure and hurled it at them the place would smell sweeter afterwards.

Mancunium · Unread post by **Mancunium** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:37 pm

Wikipedia boss Lila Tretikov: ‘Glasnost taught me much about freedom of information’
She has taken flak from the online encyclopedia’s hardcore users for being an ‘amateur’, but after 18 years in open source software, the 36-year-old is determined to expand the ‘knowledge-building community’
The Guardian, 6 August 2014 link

Lila Tretikov was still a child when the Soviet Union began to embrace glasnost in the 1980s. [...] For Tretikov, there are parallels between glasnost and Wikipedia’s own aspirations of transparency and openness. “Glasnost was a phenomenal, renaissance period in the history of Russia and taught me much about importance of freedom of information,” Tretikov told the Guardian in her first interview. “The only real way to improve conditions of civilisations is to provide open access to information for education and culture, and to be honest about the past. Otherwise we spend our lives siloed from each other and we repeat the mistakes of our grandparents.” [...] Speaking in soft, heavily accented American, Tretikov, 36, is ambitious about Wikipedia’s future. Yet her appointment was controversial among some of Wikipedia’s notoriously boisterous community of volunteer editors.

The community includes a hardcore of around 3,000 volunteers who have all made at least 20,000 individual edits and when Tretikov admitted in a post that she had only just made her first edit on the English Wikipedia site there was an inevitable backlash. “We ended up with an amateur, and that’s pretty frightening,” wrote veteran editor Pete Forsyth in a leaked email. “If she’s got no keel on the open sea, who knows where her take on the community will wash up? It doesn’t give me a lot of hope that she can chart a better course through the crippling dynamics of the last couple years.” Others were offended that her boyfriend, developer Wil Sinclair, had joined a site that scrutinises Wikipedia and its editors, describing Sinclair as “her uninvited plus one”. It prompted a characteristically rational response from Tretikov. “I make my decisions using my own professional judgement,” she wrote at the time. “I don’t consult Wil on [Wikipedian] matters, ask him to do anything on my behalf or monitor his engagements with the community … We have always both been extremely independent.”

There is often tension between volunteers and management in Wikipedia. A men’s rights group claimed a “feminist conspiracy” was censoring its views on the site. It is a challenge for Tretikov to gain the confidence of its male-dominated volunteers, many of whom have worked on the site for years to establish its processes and norms, while at the same time making the site more appealing and accessible to new, more diverse editors. Diversity is a big problem, with Wikipedia dominated by white, western men. Thirteen years since it launched, the site publishes and maintains more than 32m articles in 287 languages, all run through a complex and often exhaustingly democratic system of voting and consensus. But women are estimated to account for only 15% of the 80,000 regular editors, and volunteers in the developing world are also under-represented. “The most important thing for us is to lower the barrier to entry to this knowledge-building community,” she says. “Our mission is to educate, so the more open we can be to different types of thinking, the more diverse we will be.” [...] “Knowledge is all about trust,” says Tretikov. “Not being beholden to demands of the market gives us freedom to do the right thing for the user first and foremost. It allows us to be much more focused on the users and what their needs are.” [...]

“In the future, an editor without coding skills will have access to tools that could allow him or her to automatically scan, identify, and fill gaps in the knowledge with a few clicks of a button,” she says. “[Programmers] are thinking about how we can augment and improve what humans do by handing off the grunt work to the machines - enabling us to focus on the creative, ingenious tasks. Our biggest challenge is to understand how things are changing in the way humans experience technology and be there for those that aren’t even online yet.” Tretikov said she recognised concern about the increasing use of machines to automate human tasks. “But computers are definitely much better than humans at processing large amounts of information, which is why that’s where we use them most. There are emerging areas where bots could help us identify interesting things – that doesn’t make computers creative in and of themselves, but they do help us amplify our own creativity.” [...] Given the site’s experiments with automation and Tretikov’s academic interest in artificial intelligence (she has co-authored several patents), it is no surprise that her vision for Wikipedia is to assert itself as a technology company, rather than a media firm. Her first real test will come on Saturday, when she stands before the real-world congregation of Wikipedia to set out her plans for its future. “The only thing we can do to change things, is to charge ahead and change things through actions, through trying. Who knows, in 50 years we could be trying to help men change the status quo of the world, where women have been proven the capable ones.”

Гласность и перестройка

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:02 pm

I can name pretty much the month (March 2012) when Google started to de-index most of the pages of my website, MyWikiBiz.com. I assume that they determined that the "spam" found on my site warranted removing links even to good-quality original content pages from their search results. There was no international furor over this censorship of history. Jimmy Wales did not jump to my aid.

After I took considerable effort to purge the site of much of the spam, Google did begin to start re-indexing some of the strongest pages -- but even still, the links are buried on the 8th or 9th page of the Google results.

Some pages remain completely de-indexed. Right now, in the United States, I can search Google for:

"June 2011 lunar eclipse" "x-men" "les paul" "ryan dunn"

It should return this page, but Google has censored it. Where is my front-page article in The Telegraph and the New York Times, crying out about how Google has censored my free speech, without even a court order to prompt them?

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 8:33 pm

In the Evening Standard: Wikipedia refuses to remove famous 'monkey selfie' photograph claiming copyright belongs to animal, featuring a quote from WereSpielChequers (T-C-L).

Interesting take from ITV News:

ITV lawyer and author of The Law of Photography & Digital Images, Christina Michalos, said: "Unfortunately for the monkey she doesn't own the copyright in her photographs. Only a person or in some circumstances, a company can be a copyright owner.

"However, under UK law where an artistic work is generated by a computer, the person who makes the arrangements for creation is the copyright owner. Computer generated is narrowly defined in our law as meaning "without human involvement".

"It is arguable that the photographer is the owner on this basis or in equity - in other words on the grounds of fairness - because he owned the equipment and presumably had set up the camera for optimal focus and light in the jungle."

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Wed Aug 06, 2014 9:03 pm

I'm glad the WMF chose a quote from such an insightful thinker to accompany their report.

“ Motherfuckers wanna act loco, hit em wit numerous shots with the fo'-fo'
Faggots wanna talk to Po-Po's, smoke em like cocoa ”

Jay Z
Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator '99)

Coat of Many Colours · Unread post by **Coat of Many Colours** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 2:21 am

HRIP7 wrote:From the page about user data:

Freedom of speech is essential to the Wikimedia movement—our projects cannot flourish in an ecosystem where individuals cannot speak freely. Our users trust us to protect their identities against unlawful disclosure and we take this responsibility seriously.

However, every year, governments, individuals, and corporations ask us to disclose user data. Often, we have no nonpublic information to disclose because we collect little nonpublic information about users and retain that information for a short period of time. But when we do have data, we carefully evaluate every request before considering disclosure. If the requests do not meet our standards—if they are overly broad, unclear, or irrelevant—we will push back on behalf of our users.

If we must produce information due to a legally valid request, we will notify the affected user before we disclose, if we are legally permitted and have the means to do so. In certain cases, we may help find assistance for users to fight an invalid request.

Below, you will find more information about the requests for user data we receive.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Oscar Wilde
Writer & Poet (1891)

Yes. So strange how people have different gut reactions here. I find Google a real threat to our civic freedoms on an Orwellian scale. Totally loved Hex above!

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 1:06 pm

For this aggressive move, I would call Smallbones an ass-wipe, but that would be insulting to toilet paper.

At least Jimbo recognizes the problem, but no admonishment for Smallbones.

And earlier, Smallbones said that our own Randy from Boise (Carrite) is a banned editor.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:21 pm

As you all know its extremely rare for an admin to get in trouble in Wikipedia for anything. So its no surprise to me that nothing will happen to any admin related to this. They would ban 20 editors on the say so of an abusive admin before they even consider getting rid of an abusive admin.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 7:02 pm

It seems Jimmy Wales has told Wikipedians at Wikimania that they're "very well respected" and "really, really powerful".

https://twitter.com/BrianUkulele/status ... 7697128448

Unread post by **Zoloft** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 7:13 pm

HRIP7 wrote:It seems Jimmy Wales has told Wikipedians at Wikimania that they're "very well respected" and "really, really powerful".

https://twitter.com/BrianUkulele/status ... 7697128448

I remember this episode!

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Thu Aug 07, 2014 7:18 pm

This might be the wrong thread for this post:

Ronan Farrow's MSNBC Show: http://www.msnbc.com/ronan-farrow/watch/wikipedia-fights-right-to-be-forgotten-316071491660

Arik Hesseldahl, Senior editor for Re/code, and Alyssa Bereznak from Yahoo! join for an intellectual property and privacy debate – a debate that has ignited over one adorable monkey selfie and Wikipedia’s fight against Europe’s “right to be forgotten” ruling.

Video embedded.

(edited)

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 3:36 am

Did anyone notice that the Google removals for Dutch Wikipedia made up a long list, relating to one person: Guido den Broeder?

Coat of Many Colours · Unread post by **Coat of Many Colours** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 4:42 am

EricBarbour wrote:Did anyone notice that the Google removals for Dutch Wikipedia made up a long list, relating to one person: Guido den Broeder?

Guido comments at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/w ... under.html (a familiar face there as well I notice

). He threatens the Telegraph with a lawsuit. Pretty sure he has a case against Wikipedia as well, not for any coverage they might make of him - banned user stuff it seems - but for their contempt of the EU ruling, which is first and foremost about the EU enshrined right to a private life, which Wikipedia is plainly flaunting with its naming and shaming policy "reluctantly" subscribed to by Jimbo. I'm astonished Wikipedia's lawyers haven't warned them about that. I think it not impossible that the EU Commissioners themselves might have a go.

If anyone can deconstruct Jimbo's thinking in the third paragraph commencing "I've been in the public eye for quite some time", that would be entertaining.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 4:53 am

In case this Daily Dot item wasn't posted yet:

This Wikipedia page doesn't care about your 'right to be forgotten'

The actual page currently contains only three names.
*Mario Costeja González
*Greg Lindae
*Max Mosley

So far, there's only three pages, though that's sure to grow. The first is poor Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spaniard who unwittingly became the face of the online "right to be forgotten" movement, and who most certainly got more attention than he ever bargained for. Costeja Gonzalez spent five years battling Google in courts, trying to get the search engine to hide references to the fact that he'd had his home repossessed in 1988.

The second is Greg Lindae. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Lindae, a private-equity investor born in the U.S. but now based in the Netherlands, wasn't pleased by an older Journal article. That article, also from 1988, named Lindae as someone who attended a tantric sex workshop with his then-girlfriend.

The final one is Max Mosley, former head of the governing body that oversees Formula 1 racing, who successfully sued the now-defunct tabloid News of the World for £60,000 ($90,000) for claiming that he had joined a Nazi-themed S&M orgy with five prostitutes. Though Mosley won his lawsuit, the paper's video of its claims lives on.

Created by Jeremybornstein (T-C-L), an associate of libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel. Subsequently edited by Andy Mabbett.

Coat of Many Colours · Unread post by **Coat of Many Colours** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 10:16 am

EricBarbour wrote:In case this Daily Dot item wasn't posted yet:

This Wikipedia page doesn't care about your 'right to be forgotten'

The actual page currently contains only three names.
*Mario Costeja González
*Greg Lindae
*Max Mosley

So far, there's only three pages, though that's sure to grow. The first is poor Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spaniard who unwittingly became the face of the online "right to be forgotten" movement, and who most certainly got more attention than he ever bargained for. Costeja Gonzalez spent five years battling Google in courts, trying to get the search engine to hide references to the fact that he'd had his home repossessed in 1988.

The second is Greg Lindae. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Lindae, a private-equity investor born in the U.S. but now based in the Netherlands, wasn't pleased by an older Journal article. That article, also from 1988, named Lindae as someone who attended a tantric sex workshop with his then-girlfriend.

The final one is Max Mosley, former head of the governing body that oversees Formula 1 racing, who successfully sued the now-defunct tabloid News of the World for £60,000 ($90,000) for claiming that he had joined a Nazi-themed S&M orgy with five prostitutes. Though Mosley won his lawsuit, the paper's video of its claims lives on.
Created by Jeremybornstein (T-C-L), an associate of libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel. Subsequently edited by Andy Mabbett.

That stuff about Max Mosley making a "right to be forgotten" application is rubbish. He can't make any such application because he is a public figure and the balance shifts to the public interest in respect of his unconventional leisure activities. What he's doing is starting proceedings on his own account. This DT page refers http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... raphs.html.

Coat of Many Colours · Unread post by **Coat of Many Colours** » Fri Aug 08, 2014 5:04 pm

Coat of Many Colours wrote:
<snipped>

That stuff about Max Mosley making a "right to be forgotten" application is rubbish. He can't make any such application because he is a public figure and the balance shifts to the public interest in respect of his unconventional leisure activities. What he's doing is starting proceedings on his own account. This DT page refers http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... raphs.html.

Further to this, Wikipedia's own page is interesting and informative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley#Sex_scandal. What I gather is that Mosley is trying to get links to the original pics of his leisure activities sensationalised by the New of the World (discredited and now defunct of course) removed. This was already possible before the "right to be forgotten" ruling because publication of the relevant pics must be considered unlawful and the relevant EU Directive already catered for that situation.

In general however the Max Mosley leisure activities story is not a right to be forgotten issue because the whole issue of privacy that it raises is very much in the public interest (and correcting an incorrect emphasis, for which I apologise, in my previous remark posted above - I had forgotten the details of the Mosley case). The right to be forgotten issue is concerned with material that has been legally published, nor need there necessarily be any personal injury involved. In most of the Mosley news stories that is so. That's not so for links pointing to "banned" pics, but that's not a right to be forgotten issue per above.

I hope he succeeds. Pretty sure he will. Perhaps Jimbo would condescend to contribute to the debate (I mean in the other place of course)?

Mancunium · Unread post by **Mancunium** » Sat Aug 09, 2014 6:39 pm

Mancunium wrote:Wikipedia boss Lila Tretikov: ‘Glasnost taught me much about freedom of information’
She has taken flak from the online encyclopedia’s hardcore users for being an ‘amateur’, but after 18 years in open source software, the 36-year-old is determined to expand the ‘knowledge-building community’
The Guardian, 6 August 2014 link
Lila Tretikov was still a child when the Soviet Union began to embrace glasnost in the 1980s. [...] For Tretikov, there are parallels between glasnost and Wikipedia’s own aspirations of transparency and openness. “Glasnost was a phenomenal, renaissance period in the history of Russia and taught me much about importance of freedom of information,” Tretikov told the Guardian in her first interview. “The only real way to improve conditions of civilisations is to provide open access to information for education and culture, and to be honest about the past. Otherwise we spend our lives siloed from each other and we repeat the mistakes of our grandparents.”

Гласность и перестройка

Gorbachev's slogan, which led to the Soviet catastrophe of 1991, the theft of national property by criminal oligarchs, the explosion of pornography, drug addiction and homelessness, the stripping of pensions awarded to those who had fought through the Great Patriotic War and defeated Hitler, and which set back the gains made by the workers of the world by half a century, was "Glasnost (T-H-L) and Perestroika (T-H-L)": literally, "publicity and restructuring". You couldn't have one without the other.

This is Mikhail Gorbachev, shilling for Pizza Hut:
This is Boris Yeltsin, explaining "glasnost":
This is Vladimir Putin, explaining "perestroika":

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Sat Aug 09, 2014 7:26 pm

Hex wrote:I'm glad the WMF chose a quote from such an insightful thinker to accompany their report.

“Motherfuckers wanna act loco, hit em wit numerous shots with the fo'-fo'
Faggots wanna talk to Po-Po's, smoke em like cocoa”

Jay Z
Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator '99)

Here's where he came out in support of gay marriage in 2012:

Jay-Z, May 2012 wrote:It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It's discrimination plain and simple...I think [announcing support of gay marriage is] the right thing to do, so whether it costs [Obama] votes or not — again, it's not about votes. It's about people. It's the right thing to do as a human being.

(Http://gawker.com/5910404/jay-z-comes-o ... y-marriage.)

I would say in those lyrics, the term "faggots" refers not to gays but rather to what that gangster culture he's artistically embodying in that song thinks of police informants, i.e. that they are contemptible persons.

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 4:38 am

EricBarbour wrote:In case this Daily Dot item wasn't posted yet:

This Wikipedia page doesn't care about your 'right to be forgotten'

The actual page currently contains only three names.
[...]

Up for deletion. Surprisingly, it's leaning towards "delete", with only Jeremybornstein (T-C-L) voting "[l]eave as is":
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people who have petitioned for the right to be forgotten (T-H-L)

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:17 am

mac wrote:Up for deletion. Surprisingly, it's leaning towards "delete", with only Jeremybornstein (T-C-L) voting "[l]eave as is":
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people who have petitioned for the right to be forgotten (T-H-L)

It's still early of course, but so far I have to say, I'm impressed!

Still, I wonder how much of this is due to their intelligently realizing how hypocritical and potentially damaging (to Wikipedia's reputation) this list is, and how much of it is based on fear of exposure of their own identities once journalists and politicians start asking, "just who are these smug little American pricks who are arrogantly thumbing their noses at our court rulings?"

No doubt followed by, "...and what are all those thousands of white-guy penis photos actually for, anyway?"

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 12:31 pm

The WMF Legal department announced its second issue of Transparency reporting. (Unfortunately, by using the same URL as the first report, I guess the older one is lost to the ages, or at least to Archive.org.)

I commend the WMF Legal department for at least attempting to share more information about back-channel dialogues they tender. However, as you read the report, you come away with the notion that the WMF has really revealed very little at all. And, there's a profound sense that most of the WMF mission is to deflect responsibility for the project that supplies them with $50 million per year. Examples:

Often, we have no nonpublic information to disclose because we collect little nonpublic information about users and retain that information for a short period of time.

We responded that the community of editors felt that “coffee berry” was an acceptable term to refer to the fruit of the coffee plant.

We explained that the Wikimedia Foundation does not write or edit Wikipedia articles. We asked that they engage with the French Wikipedia community of volunteer editors and follow Wikipedia policies to address any issues of alleged inaccuracies with the community.

Their hands are cleanly washed of any of the general public's problems with Wikipedia.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:19 pm

Also, Russavia wants the WMF Legal team to know that they probably used a non-free image to illustrate the Transparency Report.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:29 pm

thekohser wrote:Also, Russavia wants the WMF Legal team to know that they probably used a non-free image to illustrate the Transparency Report.

Perfect.

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 9:03 pm

Vigilant wrote:
thekohser wrote:Also, Russavia wants the WMF Legal team to know that they probably used a non-free image to illustrate the Transparency Report.

Perfect.

subject insures it's copyrighted

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:00 pm

Time for the third edition of the WMF Transparency Report.

In the past 6 months there were 234 pleas to the Wikimedia Foundation, many of them likely victims of defamation on Wikipedia, seeking relief. The WMF rejected all 234 of the requests.

Auggie · Unread post by **Auggie** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 3:54 am

thekohser wrote:Time for the third edition of the WMF Transparency Report.

In the past 6 months there were 234 pleas to the Wikimedia Foundation, many of them likely victims of defamation on Wikipedia, seeking relief. The WMF rejected all 234 of the requests.

Interesting. I never knew this thing existed. It looks like they did some DMCA takedowns. :always:

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 5:23 am

thekohser wrote:Time for the third edition of the WMF Transparency Report.

In the past 6 months there were 234 pleas to the Wikimedia Foundation, many of them likely victims of defamation on Wikipedia, seeking relief. The WMF rejected all 234 of the requests.

Amusing that more than half the images on this page have broken attribution due to WMF staff using Media Viewer links for attribution: