David Gerard

I was going to call NPG this morning first thing as a volunteer, to see what could be reasonably done to avert a public battle — a public battle would really foul up our other museum liaison volunteers’ ongoing efforts. But I was awake all night with a sick child and so I just got up …

Has anyone reading this called yet, as a volunteer? Physchim62, who did a lot to get the American Chemical Society working with us, was going to call. Has anyone else?

(I don’t hold out much hope for this — the NPG’s position has been completely consistent and completely uncooperative for many years. But it’s always worth asking.)

It’s reasonably important to avoid directly going into details of the possible legal case, for Dcoetzee’s sake — but the NPG’s lawyers have effectively written a press release read by ten thousand Wikimedians and a million Slashdot readers. The letter clearly does directly and personally threaten a lot of them. I bet it’s been more widely read than any intentional NPG press release has been.

Ideal outcome: PD everything, they welcome a team of our photographers in.

Plausible good outcome: We put up the hi-res images with notes that they are PD in the US but the NPG claims copyright in Europe and releases them under copyleft, and full credit is requested in either case. (Copyleft is not as ideal as PD, but it’s plenty good enough for us.) We issue press releases lauding the NPG to the skies and say nice things about them forever.

Another plausible good outcome: They welcome a team of our photographers in. Careful supervision, etc. Then we can do stuff like infrared shots as well (which can show interesting things about a painting’s restoration history).

Awful outcome: great big legal and public relations battle. Even if we or they win, we both lose.

Bad outcome: mainstream press about this at all, really. It will hamper our efforts with other museums. The NPG probably doesn’t see it that way.

Any other possible outcomes to list?

Additional data point: the NPG has removed the hi-res versions. Thus, the Wikimedia copies are the only copies currently available. This makes it actually culturally important for us to keep them up!

Meanwhile, here’s an article you must read on this topic: Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility by Kenneth Hamma, Executive Director for Digital Policy, J. Paul Getty Trust. Precis: do your best to get as many of the highest-quality copies out there as you can.

For several years, the National Portrait Gallery has claimed copyright over public domain images in their possession. Wikimedia has ignored these claims, occasionally laughing. (Bridgeman v. Corel. Sweat of the brow is not creation in US law; go away.) Our official stance in this time has been “sue and be damned.”

So the National Portrait Gallery has tried. Here’s their letter. A lollipop for every misconception or unlikely or impossible demand. This was sent after (so they claim) the WMF ignored their latest missive. The editor they sent the threat to is … an American.

A UK organisation is threatening an American with legal action over uploading images that are public domain in the US to an American server — unambiguously, in established US law, not a copyright violation of any sort. I wonder how the case will go.

It’s most unfortunate that the National Portrait Gallery considers this in any way sensible behaviour, considering how well we’ve been going with museum partnerships for Wikipedia Loves Art — the V&A were fantastically helpful and lovely people, who realise that spreading their name and exhibits far and wide is much more likely to get them money and fame than claims of copyright over works hundreds of years old.

I can’t see this ending well for the National Portrait Gallery, whatever happens. Anyone who could speak on their behalf at this level won’t be in until Monday; I wonder if they’ll be surprised at the people politely queueing with pitchforks and torches.

I’ll be calling them first thing Monday (in my capacity as “just a blogger on Wikimedia-related topics”) to establish just what they think they’re doing here. Other bloggers and, if interested, journalists may wish to do the same, to establish what their consistent response is.

Looks like we survived yesterday’s featuring of Gropecunt Lane on the front page of English Wikipedia. Total press coverage: Popbitch — not one word elsewhere. I’m amazed. I did write a suitable News of the News. Even the on-site angst was minimal (good discussion on Raul654’s user page). Did someone fail to think of the fictional children?

Update: Second bit of press: Stephen Fry approves.

WJohnson brought up on WikiEN-L that Bible quotes were pointing to (a) external sites (b) that made fraudulent claims of copyright over public domain translations.

After a bit of discussion, Magnus Manske hacked together the BibleBay! A given chapter and verse range, listed in all translations on WikiSource.

Suggested additions: 1. The original Hebrew or Greek the section is translated from. 2. Links to an external site with the New International Version. 3. The future canonical version.

Update: Greek and NIV links added. And … try this.

Not only did Ars quote me … they illustrated my quote with a lolcat.

The Web, with an unencumbered video codec. Apparently.

WIKICITIES, Helmand, Monday (NNN) — The kidnapping of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist David Rohde in Afghanistan was suppressed not only by almost all press syndicates but also by Wikipedia, on the direct command-and-control orders of Jimbo Wales, who is personally responsible for every word in the popular web-based encyclopedia.

Conservative commentators were appalled at the suppression. “Would they have protected HITLER like this?” thundered Michelle Malkin. Wales pointed out that the encyclopedia’s biography of Hitler had already been appropriately edited and cited per the Biographies of Living Persons policy:

Adolf Hitler is the Chancellor of Germany^{[citation needed]}. He is noted^{[citation needed]} for his work on the moral fibre of German society^{[citation needed]} and stimulating the economy^{[citation needed]}, notably through the Autobahn construction programme^{[citation needed]}. Some^[who?] have criticized aspects of his policies^{[citation needed]}.

(Read more …)

Gdansk was Danzig
Now it’s Gdansk, not Danzig
Been a long time gone, Danzig
Now it’s Polish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Danzig
Lives in Gdansk, not Danzig
So if you’ve a date in Danzig
She’ll be waiting in Gdansk

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Danzig
No, you can’t go back to Danzig
Been a long time gone, Danzig
Why did Danzig get the works
That’s nobody’s business but the Poles

Gdansk (Gdansk)
Gdansk (Gdansk)

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way

Gdansk was Danzig
Now it’s Gdansk, not Danzig
Been a long time gone, Danzig
Why did Danzig get the works
That’s nobody’s business but the Poles

So take me back to Danzig
No, you can’t go back to Danzig
Been a long time gone, Danzig
Why did Danzig get the works
That’s nobody’s business but the Poles

So take me back to Danzig
No, you can’t go back to Danzig
Been a long time gone, Danzig
Why did Danzig get the works
That’s nobody’s business but the Poles

Gdansk

Paul Graham: After credentials.

Paul Graham is a computer scientist turned dot-com winner turned early-stage venture capitalist. He’s speaking of the deprecation of credentials in the business world.

If credentials are deprecated, how do we reliably identify experts for an educational endeavour? Graham speaks of measurement and market rate for skills. How do we measure that in our context?

This is the Wikipedians group on LinkedIn as run by Wikipedians.

This is not — the guy running it has stated in private emails that he is running it for “networking,” which in practice appears to mean spam blasts. I suggest avoiding it.

(If you add me on LinkedIn with the link being Wikipedia/Wikimedia, I’ll probably add you back eventually when I get around to it.)

Another scalp. I wonder what will happen to the content. (I doubt the text is up to much, but there will be original images. We are asking them about it.)

THE MEMORY HOLE, Jim Callaghan Primary, Wednesday (NNN) — Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, says a review of the primary school curriculum in England by Sir Jim Rose of Ofsted.

Students will also be required to familiarise themselves with podcasts, the iTunes store, the Pirate Bay, b3ta and 4chan. They will gain fluency in handwriting and keyboard skills and learn how two use a spell chequer proper Lee. Literature classes will involve young adult novels written entirely in txt spk.

(Read more)

I spent Sunday through this morning doing Wikimedia stuff. (I have flu, but you know this doesn’t require coherent thought.) Mostly relating to flagged revisions on en:wp (status: awaiting a more robust and supported proposal — 59:41 is an insufficiently convincing majority) and biographies of living people. I suggest reading that last link and joining the discussion on foundation-l.

It’s amazing how much time it uses and how little sense one can have of things actually pushing forward. Wikipedia is the size of a small city. You know how hard it is herding five volunteers? Try getting ten thousand to do any particular thing.

Internet Watch Foundation chief interviewed on Wikipedia and Internet Archive blocks; Bennett Haselton’s attempts to get sense out of them.

The IWF was established for one purpose: to get the government off the ISPs’ backs. It successfully did so for many years. Unfortunately, the people currently at the IWF have lost sight of this and now think they have to actually do stuff to justify their existence. Fatal error when your supposed function is technically impossible and socially unworkable. Everyone who knows about the IWF despises them.

See Brion Vibber’s post — we need more testing on the mobile gateway for English Wikipedia. Brion’s slipped in some JavaScript which intermittently pops up a link if it detects an iPhone/iPod Touch or Android device. There’s also gateways for the German and Wikipedias.

(I must say, I really like the mobile skin — I was running the “classic” skin on Wikipedia for ages, but it was too ill-maintained and I had various wacky user JavaScript that didn’t work well on anything but Monobook. The mobile skin doesn’t allow editing as yet, but is great for viewing.)

WIKIALITY, San Francisco, Monday (NNN) — The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.

The change has proven controversial. “It’s a slippery slope,” said administrator “WikiFiddler451” (real name WikiViolin451). “I don’t see how we can reasonably keep the Pokémon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors.”

(Read more)

Wikimedia only accepts video in Ogg Theora format, because it’s not patent encumbered (and Dirac is not yet ready for prime time). Nothing produces this by default. Fortunately, Firefogg will do the job for you on Firefox 3.1 (which is that cool, by the way). Brianna Laugher’s posted (1, 2) a couple of useful guides to the fancy media stuff we’re doing.

The Mozilla Foundation has also given the WMF $100,000 to improve Ogg Theora. The goal is to get it as good as H.264. This is actually considered feasible.

(And MPEG LA plans to charge for H.264 encoding after December 31st, 2010. Some people are going to get a horrible lesson in why encumbered formats are a problem.)

Take that, Apple, Nokia! Lying arseholes.

The media thinks the flagged revisions proposal for English Wikipedia is just the thing for the hype machines. I did Chris Evans BBC2 drivetime today. Hopefully not too oversimplified. (Cheers to Chris Down for transcript.) It behooves those of us all for it to make damn sure the edits are patrolled really fast.

Update: Mathias Schindler on BBC World Service Europe Today.

When Wikipedia was little (when I started in early 2004, we were #500 in the world. I was seriously impressed), and I was just someone who volunteered to answer a UK press enquiry then another one, we were in the technical press a lot.

The trouble with the technical press is that they are whores. Cheap diseased ones. (The press in general arguably is, but the tech press are so blatant.) Previously whores to print advertisers, now whores to ad-banner trolling. So unsubstantiable bullshit is the order of the day, because IT GETS THE CLICKS.

Some of you aren’t whores, but you know damn well you’re few and far between. The rest can fuck off, thanks.

It’s so much nicer dealing with the mainstream press — at least they can spell “journalism.” They can’t work computers, but anything you can’t explain in a difficult-to-corrupt soundbite you can’t explain.

• UK citizens protected from Wikifilth by IWF.
• Internet Watch Foundation “Crapland” closes down.

Channel 4 was fun. I recorded a sequence of soundbites for them to pick’n'choose from. News story with video — their Flash player is crappy, crappy, crappy shit and doesn’t buffer. I look dead. “UNBLOCK WIKIPEDIA OR TEH INTARWEB ZOMBIES WILL EAT YOUR BRAINS.” The IWF head came across as a curtain-twitching weasel.

A small amount of gleeful dancing on the skulls of the IWF today. Next trick is to get a better UK press corps together for Wikimedia. Mostly it’s reserve duty. I’m really annoyed we didn’t have someone spare for Sky News (I was doing Channel 4 at the same time) as the reporter was actually technically clueful. Any Wikipedia editors here who think they could talk in soundbites on telly if needed?

By the way, the really massive IWF fail, which didn’t come out in the press coverage: they blocked the page about the album, and they blocked the page for the image, but they didn’t block the image itself.

The next question is what happens next. The filtering infrastructure melted when faced with filtering a top 10 site; they’re not going to give up and go away, so I expect them to (a) beef it up (b) make it less evident — we spotted this by the collateral damage.

I also predict a flood of helpful citizenry going to the IWF reporting page and entering any image on any top 10 website that might be “potentially illegal.” Much as the head of the IWF is “potentially a fabulous drag queen.”

I wasn’t aware before going on it just how important Radio 4 Today is. In fact, I’d barely heard of it. Do I get deported now?

Right-click, download mp3 here. MP3 and transcript below (by TRS-80, cheers!) are copyright BBC; if they object I’m sure they’ll let me know.

I’m on Channel 4 News and More4 News tonight, possibly another thing too. HOLY CRAP.

Broadcast on 2008-12-08, on BBC Radio 4’s The Today Programme between 08:54:11–08:59:56 (UTC)

James Naughtie

The time is six minutes to nine. Another curious story about censorship is spreading across the internet, it’s all about a page on the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, about a heavy metal band of 25 or 30 years ago, The Scorpions. The image at the centre of the story is a record cover from an album of the early eighties featuring a picture of a naked child, which the Internet Watch Foundation says could be illegal. Now the foundation is a watchdog funded by the internet services industry, but Wikipedia says that it’s unacceptable censorship. Susan Robertson speaks for the Internet Watch Foundation, and David Gerard is here, he’s a volunteer media spokesman for Wikipedia in this country. Susan Robertson, now what is it that’s lead you to think that this, which after all appeared in a publicly available album cover 35, 25 years ago, is now illegal?

Susan Robertson

Good morning. We received this report last week at the Internet Watch Foundation and then assessed it according to our normal channels, which is it’s reviewed by our team of analysts, in conjunction UK law enforcement.

Naughtie

So somebody simply said “Have a look at this, because it looks to me as if it’s over the top” ?

Robertson

Exactly, the Internet Watch Foundation is the UK hotline providing just that service; if the public are worried they’ve stumbled across content which might be illegal, they can report it to us. Our job then is to assess that content then and trace it and indeed our assessment last week was that the image in question was indeed a potentially illegal child-sexual abuse image.

Naughtie

So, which law would it contravene?

Robertson

It’s the Protection of Children Act 1978.

Naughtie

Right. So, in fact would it have been illegal, do you think, if someone had complained at the time? …I can’t remember when that album came out specifically…

Robertson

Yeah, I under the album came out before that date, of course it’s an important issue—we’re applying today’s standards and today’s legislation to the reports we’re receiving today. Obviously, y’know, this is an old image.

Naughtie

David Gerard, speaking for Wikipedia, what do you make of that?

David Gerard

The album was issued in 1976, it’s been available continuously for 32 years. The album cover was changed because some various people told the band “this is a stupid and crass image”, which it is, and I’m not questioning it’s a tasteless image, but that’s quite different from illegal. You can still buy the record with this image in The Scorpions box set, in any high street. There are many other record covers available; Blind Faith by Eric Clapton, Houses of the Holy by Led Zepplin, Nevermind by Nirvana which feature naked underage people. None of these albums are illegal, you can go into high-street record shop and buy them. You can see this image—the image of the album Virgin Killer by The Scorpions—on the Amazon website right now. When we asked the Internet Watch Foundation why they blocked Wikipedia and not Amazon, apparently their decision was quote “pragmatic” unquote, which-

Naughtie

right

Gerard

-we think means that Amazon have money and would sue them, whereas we’re an educational charity and-

Naughtie

Well Susan Robertson, can I just put that point to you; if it’s proper to block Wikipedia, it’s proper to block Amazon?

Robertson

Absolutely; we only act on the reports we receive, and as I understand it, the only report we received regarding this content as of Friday was the content on Wikipedia-

Naughtie

So you’ll go for Amazon will you?

Robertson

We need to take a view today, obviously we need to look at the reports that have come in over the weekend, I know there’s been a lot of activity as you’ve said on the internet. We need to take a view with our analysts here and with our police partners.

Naughtie

Yes, indeed, but you confirm it isn’t a question of how much money somebody’s got, if it’s a principle, it’s a principle and it applies to Amazon as well as to Wikipedia.

Robertson

Absolutely. We process about 35,000 reports every year, only about a third of those are confirmed to be potentially illegal, as such they’re all treated the same.

Naughtie

What can you do, many people are concerned about you know, the consequences of the freedom which they value on the internet, and a lot of people think that the Internet Watch Foundation is a sort of guardian for them, but what can you actually do?

Robertson

What we do do is do our very best to ensure that the only content that is inaccessible is the specific content, including illegal images, so how we block… I mean, our main function is a hotline—we’re also a take-down body for illegal content when it’s hosted in the UK. But if it’s hosted abroad-

Naughtie

There’s nothing you can do.

Robertson

There is, and our industry members have asked us to provide them with a list of specific URLs, which we do. All the URLs, which as an individual webpage are live, and they’re depicting child-sexual abuse images.

Naughtie

David Gerard, everyone will know, most people will know if they use the internet, about Wikipedia, and how it works and what source of information—occasionally disinformation—it is. Do you object to the idea that there is someone out there, funded by the industry, who can take down something which is regarded as so offensive, or potentially illegal that it goes beyond the boundaries.

Gerard

Nobody objects to the IWF blocking actually illegal content; that’s what it’s for. What they object to in this case is they blocked an image that is not illegal, that has not been found illegal anywhere in the world, that has been …it was investigated in America by the FBI in May after a complaint by a fundamentalist Christian group, who told them to go away. The IWF also censored the text—what the issue in this case is they censored encyclopaedia text on the number four website in the world. This is the biggest website the IWF has ever blocked, and we think it was an experiment to see what they could get away with, without people noticing.

Naughtie

From IWF point of view, last world Susan Robertson, was it an attempt to see what you could get away with?

Robertson

It was absolutely not an experiment, we don’t experiment. Look, we do our job in good faith, we apply the Protection of Children Act, and the UK sentencing guidelines-

Gerard

-Blocking text?

Robertson

We’ve only blocked the URL that contains the page-, the image.

Naughtie

Susan Robertson, David Gerard, thank you both.