Comments on: Milestone: 5 Years, 5 Million Media Files on Wikimedia Commons http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2009/09/wikimedia-commons-5-million/ Wikimedia UK: Supporting free and open knowledge Sat, 21 Jan 2012 06:17:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Thomas Dalton http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2009/09/wikimedia-commons-5-million/comment-page-1/#comment-19 Thomas Dalton Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:34:41 +0000 http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/?p=74#comment-19 Kwyjibo: Simple geometric shapes probably aren't copyrightable, but they can still be covered under trademark law. Trademark and copyright are completely different things. Kwyjibo: Simple geometric shapes probably aren’t copyrightable, but they can still be covered under trademark law. Trademark and copyright are completely different things.

]]> By: Kwyjibo http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2009/09/wikimedia-commons-5-million/comment-page-1/#comment-12 Kwyjibo Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:00:42 +0000 http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/?p=74#comment-12 Congratulations, it's obviously a milestone. But there are still big questions to answer from the Commons before it becomes a true standard. One is the outdated categorisation system. A tagging system would be much more flexible and powerful. Another crucial point, is its underutilization on non-English projects. There are many articles on en.wiki with significant commons contributions, yet their foreign language equivalents are deprived of images. Conversely, if a Chinese contributor were to upload images with a Chinese description and filename, how would any other language projects find such images? And should we really have amateur editors making calls on what is and isn't copyright free? I've seen scores of trademarked symbols and logos tagged as copyright free due to "simple geometry", when I'm sure that the trademark/rights owners would have serious issue with. Congratulations, it’s obviously a milestone. But there are still big questions to answer from the Commons before it becomes a true standard.

One is the outdated categorisation system. A tagging system would be much more flexible and powerful.

Another crucial point, is its underutilization on non-English projects. There are many articles on en.wiki with significant commons contributions, yet their foreign language equivalents are deprived of images. Conversely, if a Chinese contributor were to upload images with a Chinese description and filename, how would any other language projects find such images?

And should we really have amateur editors making calls on what is and isn’t copyright free? I’ve seen scores of trademarked symbols and logos tagged as copyright free due to “simple geometry”, when I’m sure that the trademark/rights owners would have serious issue with.

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