Wikidata:Edit groups/QSv2/38530

Edit group QSv2/38530

Summary	Batch should be reverted due to incorrect assumptions.	Author	Waldyrious
Number of edits	417 (more statistics)	Example edit	Q81403472

Discussion

@Waldyrious: That something is CC-0 does not imply that copyright status (P6216)public domain (Q19652). On the contrary, one can only apply that license if one is in control of the copyright. This batch should be reverted. Ainali (talk) 19:17, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm writing this short note just to acknowledge your message, as I'm a little short on time at the moment. I'll try to collect some more concrete information (including from domain experts) and will get back to you ASAP. Cheers, Waldyrious (talk) 20:40, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick follow up — this week has been quite chaotic for me, but next week I should have the time to pick this up. Thanks for your patience :) --Waldyrious (talk) 20:56, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Better do it when there is time thinking properly about it than rushing it. Ainali (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the patience. I'm adding some comments below, but they've gotten a bit long, so I thought I'd unindent the discussion and split the notes into subsections to make it less unwieldy to read.

Hey User:Mike Linksvayer — do you think you'd be able to provide some input here? Cheers, 14:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Detais of the problem

The main question is whether an item being released under the copyright license (P275)Creative Commons CC0 License (Q6938433) (or any public-domain-equivalent license (Q25047642), for that matter) can be said to have copyright status (P6216)public domain (Q19652). This could be particularly troublesome since not all jurisdictions recognize the ability to waive all copyrights. We could add applies to jurisdiction (P1001) qualifiers to such statements, but I'm not sure that would be sufficient to make them accurate.

Which jurisdictions allow releasing works into the public domain?

I've been researching this topic but I haven't been able to reach a definitive conclusion. Creative Commons' page on the CC0 describes the problem (emphasis mine):

Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright or database protection terms expire. Few if any jurisdictions have a process for doing so easily and reliably. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to what rights are automatically granted and how and when they expire or may be voluntarily relinquished. More challenging yet, many legal systems effectively prohibit any attempt by these owners to surrender rights automatically conferred by law, particularly moral rights, even when the author wishing to do so is well informed and resolute about doing so and contributing their work to the public domain.

...but it doesn't provide any specifics about which jurisdictions do allow this.

The CC0 FAQ in the Creative Commons wiki is also quite informative, in particular in the passages

If the waiver isn’t effective for any reason, then CC0 acts as a license from the affirmer granting the public an unconditional, irrevocable, non exclusive, royalty free license to use the work for any purpose.

and

...the laws of some jurisdictions don’t allow authors and copyright owners to waive all of their own rights, such as moral rights. When the waiver doesn’t work for any reason CC0 acts as a free public license replicating much of intended effect of the waiver, although sometimes even licensing those rights isn’t effective. It varies jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

...but similarly does not mention any specific jurisdictions.

OSI's FAQ also brings clarity into how the CC0 behaves in restrictive jurisdictions:

Because such a waiver is (perhaps surprisingly) not possible in all jurisdictions, CC0 also contains a "Public License Fallback" clause that goes into effect "should any part of the Waiver for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law". The fallback is essentially a copyright license that is very similar to an Open Source license, in that it gives up most of the restrictive powers associated with copyright, and allows redistribution and modification of the work.

and also explains the difficulties of conducting a comprehensive review of the worldwide legal applicability of such dedications:

...we would have to somehow evaluate the laws themselves, in different jurisdictions, and say which jurisdictions have a public domain that meets the Open Source Definition and does not create problems for software authors and users. This would be very difficult, because it would mean evaluating not just the statutes but various bodies of case law...

...and while I understand this to be a bulky endeavor, I would have expected that a collaborative effort could be set up to gradually collect this data — similar to what we have in various places, e.g.:

User:Mike Linksvayer, are you aware of any such surveys, or do you have thoughts about the feasibility of creating one (in a similar level of detail as the pages I link immediately above)?

Status of specific jurisdictions

In a chat over Telegram, User:Ainali mentioned that Sweden is one of the jurisdictions where copyrights can't be waived, and according to this document (cited on wikipedia:Public domain and wikipedia:Creative Commons license), the same is true in Germany ("Under German copyright the CC0 waiver itself is –insofar it relates to the author’s rights– not legally valid. However the public license fallback in sec. 3 CC0 leads to the (almost) same effect."). Conversely, Wikipedia:Granting work into the public domain appears to suggest that this is possible in the US ("...a copyright owner may release all of their rights to their work by stating the work may be freely reproduced, distributed, etc." — emphasis mine).

Commons:Licensing says that this is possible in the US, but not in Europe:

In some jurisdictions (like the United States), one can also explicitly donate work one has created oneself to the public domain. In other places (like the European Union) this is technically not possible; instead, one can grant the right to use the picture freely with, for example, the Creative Commons Zero Waiver, which waives all rights granted by copyright, but the waiver might not be legally binding in the full extent of what is normally understood as “public domain” (e.g. regarding authors' moral rights).

I also came across D. J. Berenstein's Placing documents into the public domain, which offers a more optimistic perspective of the applicability of CC0 and similar licenses.

It would be nice to be able to clarify this information, especially because some of the pages linked/quoted above are guides in Wikimedia projects, which we should aim to be clear and accurate. Even if we were able to say something definitive about the US and the EU, that would already be a major step forward from where we are at the moment, where information is scattered and not presented in an uniform manner.

Modeling the distinction in Wikidata

That said, even if we identify jurisdictions where all rights can indeed be fully waived, it seems to me the legal status is still not 100% equivalent to public domain in those jurisdictions (i.e. the work remains under the purview of copyright law, even if inertly so). If that understanding is correct, we should be able to model the distinction here on Wikidata. So perhaps we could create an item "dedicated to the public domain" that could be assigned as a value to copyright status (P6216). User:Ainali, do you think that would solve your original concern?

A separate note: items with license = public domain

In the meantime, I think we should change all items with copyright license (P275)public domain (Q19652) to say instead copyright license (P275)public-domain-equivalent license (Q25047642) (or one of its instances). Here's an example of such an edit). There are hundreds of these. User:Ainali, what is your position about doing this mass change?

Apologies for the long text. Looking forward to your feedback! --Waldyrious (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hm... I believe that public domain (Q19652) is not a license at all, and hence should never be used on copyright license (P275). It is an item that is one of the few allowed values for copyright status (P6216) as can be seen from its constraints. To me this mostly feel like a mixing of concepts. copyright status (P6216) tells you which status an item have "by law", whereas copyright license (P275) tells you under what conditions the copyrightholder grants usage of the item. Whatever those conditions are, the law will not change. Preferably all cases of copyright status (P6216)public domain (Q19652) should have a qualifier referring to an article in a law explaining why an item is out of copyright (eg. Q97787829#P6216). Ainali (talk) 16:52, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]