Re: request for deletion for other language- wikipedias

If you really want to remove these pictures for the reasons you state, I
would propose to you to consider closing down the whole Japanese Wikipedia.
In particular, #2 would mean that _any_ text on the Japanese Wikipedia
which has more than one author would also be breaking Japanese copyright
laws.

To get to your points:
(1) According to your statement, the person who uploaded those pictures
    is the one who holds the copyright. By uploading them to Wikipedia,
    s/he has agreed to put them under the GNU/FDL. I don't see the problem.
(2) See above - this would mean that the majority of texts on the Japanese
    Wikipedia are against Japanese copyright laws. There must be another
    reading for that.
(3) Now this is another thing. I don't know the images you're talking
    about, but who is supposed to own the trademark and on what? Also,
    trademark laws allow a lot more than copyright laws do.
(4) No new point, see the above points.

Andre Engels


On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:

> Basic reasons:
>
> 1) Those images are probably copyrighted. It is not okay to use them as
> GFDL'd images.
>
> The remaining records regarding those files suggest that the person who
> uploaded probably draw those images by himself/herself.
>
> He is not one of those suspicious users or anon vandals. He made important
> contributions to then-infant Wikipedia - he was the first to design Main
> Page with colored tables, which would be adopted by fr. and many many other
> wikipedias, for example.
>
> He stopped coming to wikipedia one day.
>
> One of us tried to contact him via wikimail, so that we can hear his
> opinions and learn if he was aware of copyright issues, or obtained
> permissions. No reply was received after over a month.
>
> Sidenote: There is no "fair use" provision in Japanese copyright law. In the
> past, the idea was explicitly denied by the court. (But Japanese corpyright
> law offers another type of opportunities for people to use copyrighted
> materials without prior permission from the copyright holders - the most
> relevant to japanese wikipedia among them is the provision to legally quote
> others materials).
>
> 2) It is not okay to GFDL others work in Japan, even when it is a fair use.
>
> In japanese copyright law, there is a set of provisions protecting
> moral-rights of the authors. Among them is the right to keep integrity of
> the work.
>
> Because of this, even if the use of the symbols are not copyright violation,
> the use of modified images could be a violation of copyright. So, we should
> not provide those images under GFDL unless there is an explicit permission.
>
> 3) They are sometimes trademarked.
>
> We came to believe that offering trademarked images on Wikipedia as GFDL
> would be problematic because it could mislead other users about the nature
> of the images, and how they can/cannot use them.
>
> Japanese trademark law also says that national and local governments (among
> others) have exclusive rights to trademark their symbol marks, when those
> symbols are famous.
>
> Others cannot possibly trademark them as their own.
>
> Japanese trademark law also seem to provide some priority to the existing
> trademark owners - they can claim those registered trademarks as theirs in
> the business domain that they registered for, AND other related domains.
>
> You may say that GFDL provides only copyright-related assurances, if any,
> and not other laws. And therefore, trademarked images could be shown in
> Wikipedia.
>
> In the past, there were a few cases of deleting trademarked images, but they
> are all with other concerns, including copyright and GFDL. No image so far
> was deleted only because of trademark issues.
>
> 4) Jurisdiction
>
> If the contributor is a Japanese living in Japan, infringing on other
> Japanese's rights, as far as we could tell, there is a possibility that
> contributor could be hled responsible for that in Japanese court with
> Japanese law. (Discussion of this matter is done separately, months ago, and
> the tentative conlusion has been serving as a basic assumption.)
>
>
> Again, thank you for your attention,
>
> Tomos
>
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