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Sheng Jiong | 1 Mar 2004 18:18

Chinese Wikipedia featured by 2 media

Hi, everybody, we have got really good news for Chinese Wikipedia in
February.

The Chinese Wikipedia has been reported by two media in mainland China.
The New Magazine based in the southern province of Guangdong had an
article about us on 15 Feb. Another report was from Shanghai Sunday
Morning Post, published yesterday(29 Feb). This is the first time
Wikipedia is reported in mainstream media in China. Besides, Chinese
Wikipedia has been talked about in many Chinese blogs.

These two reports have brought in much traffic for us. We are having
more newcomers, although most of their contributions are only stubs. Up
to now there are 3468 registered users, and only yesterday there were
only around 3,000. And in Alexa.com, we see that about 6% of the traffic
is contributed by ZH Wikipedia, (
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=wikipedia.org )
although we are not the top 10 Wikipedias. But I am worried that despite
the increase in traffic, there might not be a very big increase in
article counts, as from previous experiences we find that Chinese users
are less willing to contribute new articles.
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Tomos at Wikipedia | 1 Mar 2004 18:43
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fair use policy in other languages


At Japanese wikipedia, there has been a discussion regarding fair use 
(equivalent of that in Japanese legal context). It involves both legal and 
moral aspects, and there has not yet been any concensus reached. This is 
just a call for information.

I have been following discussions on some lists (wikipedia-l recently, 
wikilegal-l before), on meta wikimedia's related pages. I got an impression 
that it is mostly about English wikipedia, and I am wondering if wikipedias 
in other languages reached some concensus on this issue, or at least had 
some discussion.

I have heard that German wikipedia does not accept fair use images (and even 
texts?). But I don't know the reasonings behind it. That would be 
interesting to know.

Do other wikipedia have policies on this? If you could point us some 
archived discussions and policy pages (in any language), that could help 
japanese wikipedians making better decisions.

Thanks for your help.

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
Stay informed on Election 2004 and the race to Super Tuesday. 
http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx
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Yann Forget | 1 Mar 2004 20:18

Re: fair use policy in other languages


Hi Tomos,

Le Monday 01 March 2004 18:43, Tomos at Wikipedia a écrit :
> At Japanese wikipedia, there has been a discussion regarding fair use
> (equivalent of that in Japanese legal context). It involves both legal and
> moral aspects, and there has not yet been any concensus reached. This is
> just a call for information.
>
> I have been following discussions on some lists (wikipedia-l recently,
> wikilegal-l before), on meta wikimedia's related pages. I got an impression
> that it is mostly about English wikipedia, and I am wondering if wikipedias
> in other languages reached some concensus on this issue, or at least had
> some discussion.
>
> I have heard that German wikipedia does not accept fair use images (and
> even texts?). But I don't know the reasonings behind it. That would be
> interesting to know.
>
> Do other wikipedia have policies on this? If you could point us some
> archived discussions and policy pages (in any language), that could help
> japanese wikipedians making better decisions.

There were some talks about images under fair in the French Wikipedia, but no 
agreement. There is the same debate there as for the English WP. Some people 
say that fair use images should not be used, others say it is OK.

I think we will try to have a list of images under fair use before making a 
decision to delete them or not.
(Continue reading)

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Timwi | 2 Mar 2004 11:36
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Re: fair use policy in other languages

Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:

> I have heard that German wikipedia does not accept fair use images (and 
> even texts?). But I don't know the reasonings behind it. That would be 
> interesting to know.

My understand of it is that:

- Most German speakers come from Germany
- Hence, most people who would want to re-use the German Wikipedia
   content, would likely be from Germany
- There is no such thing as Fair Use in Germany
- Hence, they wouldn't be able to use Fair Use images, even if the U.S.
   server on which de.wikipedia.org is hosted would be.

So, if I haven't gone wrong anywhere, they disallow Fair Use images in 
order to maximise the reusability of their content.

Timwi
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Guillermo Anasagasti | 2 Mar 2004 18:25
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eu adm

Hello!

Should be possible submit the languageEU.php file; "Language-specific text" 
section is translated, the rest of the messages can be edited via 
MediaWiki. And can I be sysop? There are only english wikipedians 
registered; I've been writing in Enciclopedia Libre for a year where I'm 
sysop, and once in a while in the spanish wikipedia.

Willy
Euskara badakizu, zure languntza behar dugu.
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Ray Saintonge | 2 Mar 2004 18:41

Re: Re: fair use policy in other languages

Timwi wrote:

> Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
>
>> I have heard that German wikipedia does not accept fair use images 
>> (and even texts?). But I don't know the reasonings behind it. That 
>> would be interesting to know.
>
> My understand of it is that:
>
> - Most German speakers come from Germany
> - Hence, most people who would want to re-use the German Wikipedia
>   content, would likely be from Germany
> - There is no such thing as Fair Use in Germany
> - Hence, they wouldn't be able to use Fair Use images, even if the U.S.
>   server on which de.wikipedia.org is hosted would be.
>
> So, if I haven't gone wrong anywhere, they disallow Fair Use images in 
> order to maximise the reusability of their content.

There may very well be no fair use provision in German law, but to the 
extent that Germany is a signatory to international conventions, such as 
the Berne Convention, which provide for something like fair use, it is 
incorporated into German law.

The absence of a provision about something in the law is very different 
from an existing provision which bans that practice.  One view of law is 
that everything is permitted that is not specifically prohibited by the 
law.  How do the German courts treat this?
(Continue reading)

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Tomos at Wikipedia | 2 Mar 2004 21:42
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Re: fair use policy in other languages

Ray Saintonge wrote:

>There may very well be no fair use provision in German law, but to the 
>extent that Germany is a signatory to international conventions, such as 
>the Berne Convention, which provide for something like fair use, it is 
>incorporated into German law.

There is some Japanese court cases where fair use defense was employed by 
the defendants anyway, even though they knew that such provisions did not 
exist in Japanese law. Their claim was that Japan should adopt something 
like fair use. Not surprisingly, the court has said the defense was not 
valid under Japanese law. Not that we do not have some counterpart. There 
are a number of provisions in japanese law to limit copyrights.

But I think the Berne convention could possibly be used against wikipedians 
- an American copyright holder can seek for the protection of his copyright 
in Japan based on Japanese law (that's what Berne convention provides among 
other things.) So, if an image or a text is fair use, and a Japanese 
wikipedian copy it from english wikipedia to Japanese wikipedia, there is a 
possibility that the fair use part is simply an illegal use of copyrighted 
material in Japanese law.

As I said earlier somewhere, more troublesome is the fair use texts without 
clear indication. Some texts are fair-used without being in the form of 
quotation. Again, Japanese wikipedian or some further downstream user would 
face a trouble if some texts translated from english wikipedia have 
contained some fair use text without any hint of it.

I recall that [[land-grant university]] had such text. Until I googled and 
read some outside documents, I could not tell that there was some external
(Continue reading)

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Timwi | 3 Mar 2004 01:10
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Re: fair use policy in other languages

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The absence of a provision about something in the law is very different 
> from an existing provision which bans that practice.  One view of law is 
> that everything is permitted that is not specifically prohibited by the 
> law.

I would think that the use of copyrighted material is specifically 
prohibited by German law.

Or is there something I don't understand about "fair use"?
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Guillermo Anasagasti | 3 Mar 2004 15:28
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RE:eu adm

Thanks!

Willy
Euskara badakizu, sure laguntza behar dugu

-----Mensaje original-----
De:	Guillermo Anasagasti [SMTP:guiana@...]
Enviado el:	martes, 02 de marzo de 2004 18:25
Para:	'intlwiki-l@...'
Asunto:	[Intlwiki-l] eu adm

Hello!

Should be possible submit the languageEU.php file; "Language-specific text" 
section is translated, the rest of the messages can be edited via 
MediaWiki. And can I be sysop? There are only english wikipedians 
registered; I've been writing in Enciclopedia Libre for a year where I'm 
sysop, and once in a while in the spanish wikipedia.

Willy
Euskara badakizu, zure languntza behar dugu.

_______________________________________________
Intlwiki-l mailing list
Intlwiki-l@...
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/intlwiki-l
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Peter Gervai | 9 Mar 2004 12:27

button permission problem

http://hu.wikipedia.org/upload/button_bold.png

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /upload/button_bold.png on this server.
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Gmane