Intellectual Property Office Consultation

This page contains what we're thinking of submitting to the 2012 Intellectual Property Office Consultation

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/consult-2011-copyright

See also: Copyright consultation from 2009

Suggested response

Wikimedia UK is the Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom. We exist to help collect, develop and distribute freely licensed knowledge (and other educational, cultural and historic material) - in particular, doing so via the the Wikimedia projects, which includes Wikipedia.

We achieve our Object by bringing the Wikimedia community in the UK together, and by building links with UK-based cultural institutions, universities, charities and other bodies. We also represent UK-based Wikimedians to the Wikimedia Foundation and the global Wikimedia movement.

We do not wish to respond in detail to the 114 questions but offer these thoughts that we would like to be taken as an overall commentary on the area under discussion:

1. On orphan works, we believe there is a case for much older orphan works going out of copyright rather than entering "orphan limbo". The proposed commercially-reusable orphan limbo is fine for commercial re-users like broadcasters or newspapers: it just means they have to do some due diligence and they can then use orphan works, safe in the knowledge that if the owner actually does turn up, they can pay market rate for it.
2. We would also like to point out that on orphan works "non-commercial" exceptions turn out not to be that useful in practice, as the moral intuition they are trying to tap into doesn't actually fall along the non-commercial vs. commercial line but along the acting for the common good vs. private profiteering line, and there are commercial uses that are for the common good (for instance, the Internet Archive might send out a book van charging 50p a copy for on-demand printed books, which could count as commercial use since it could potentially turn a profit).
3. On the matter of extended collective licensing and collecting societies; we would like to comment on the position in which content creators (e.g. photographers or musicians) who produce Creative Commons works, for use in Wikimedia projects, are placed. And also how Wikimedia works fit in with a collective licensing situation. For instance if someone were to take a photo from our media file repository, Wikimedia Commons, that is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY SA), and uses it outside of the terms of that license, should they be able to pay for it through a collective licensing arrangement or through a collecting society? Part of the point of CC BY SA and free culture is to encourage people to use the works under the terms of the license.
4. On the exceptions to copyright, we are clear. Wikimedia UK believes the "Use of works for quotation and reporting current events", is something that Wikinews contributors (and people who write Wikipedia articles about current affairs) would find useful. We also support the public administration proposals. Wikimedia UK would welcome the opportunity to host rights-cleared work from the UK government that are under discussion in the consultation.

Wikimedia UK would welcome the opportunity to discuss our view in more depth.

Suggestions from Tom Morris (outdated)

I'm thinking of sending in a few answers to a few of the questions asked, but I'm wondering if there is any interested in rapidly producing a WMUK response. The closing date is tomorrow, so if there is any interest, we'd need to act super fast. I'd suggest broadly the issues that are probably of direct interest to Wikimedia are as follows:

1. On orphan works, we believe there is a case for much older orphan works going out of copyright rather than entering "orphan limbo". The proposed commercially-reusable orphan limbo is fine for commercial re-users like broadcasters or newspapers: it just means they have to do some due diligence and they can then use orphan works, safe in the knowledge that if the owner actually does turn up, they can pay market rate for it. For projects like Wikipedia, such reuse is incompatible with our policies and fundamental values.
2. We would also like to point out that on orphan works "non-commercial" exceptions aren't actually that useful, as the moral intuition they are trying to tap into doesn't actually fall along the non-commercial vs. commercial line but along the acting for the common good vs. private profiteering line, and there are commercial uses that are for the common good (for instance, the Internet Archive might send out a book van charging 50p a copy for on-demand printed books. This is technically commercial use and it could potentially turn a profit, but it's hardly the sort of commercial use that the government seems to want to regulate).
3. On extended collective licensing and collecting societies, we would like to make clear the position photographers or musicians who produce Creative Commons-licensed works for use in Wikimedia projects raises complicated questions for any collective licensing regimes. For instance, if someone were to take a photo from our media file repository Wikimedia Commons that is under CC BY SA, and uses it outside of the terms of the license, should they be able to pay for it through a collective licensing arrangement or through a collecting society? Part of the point of Creative Commons licenses and free culture is to encourage people to use the works under the terms of the license.
4. On the exceptions to copyright, we are clear. Wikimedia UK believes the "use of works for quotation and reporting current events", is something that Wikinews contributors (and people who write Wikipedia articles about current affairs) would find useful. We also broadly welcome other aspects of the proposal that further our mission of. Wikimedia UK believes in general that extension of fair dealing and fair use-style rights are important to ensure that the copyright system is balanced and equitable between creators, consumers and reusers.

Wikimedia UK would welcome the opportunity to discuss our view in more depth.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 11:26, 21 March 2012 (UTC)