This talk page may have a limited number of watchers. Issues concerning the copyright rules of Cambodia may get more attention if a notice of the discussion here is given at a general page like Commons:Village pump/Copyright or Commons talk:Freedom of panorama.
Iffy law (thus affecting our interpretation thereof)
Can you direct me to the relevant discussion about such FOP laws' spirit vs letter and the WTO's role, maybe in Commons talk:Freedom of panorama archives?
Surely it had been discussed ad nauseam here and maybe in enwiki's Talk.
@Zezen: Commons talk:Freedom of panorama archives would be the best place to find discussion. Laws restricting freedom of panorama can be very annoying, but we have to respect them. All images in Commons must be freely available for any type of use, including commercial use. We cannot afford to leave an image in the database when it has been pointed out that it violates local or US copyright law. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:19, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I took a peek at your profile and your Global only now and I can see that you are autoreviewer, extendedconfirmed, reviewer, rollbacker on enwiki and patroller, translationadmin here, with many more edits then myself, thus you may have participated in such specific talk.
Can you direct me to the exact FOP archive, with a precise URL to the relevant discussion about East Asia FOP's Letter and spirit of the law?
@Zezen: Thanks. I have been involved in various discussion on FoP, but only about how specific laws should be interpreted. Each country is different. I have never seen any discussion on the Cambodian law, but it is not unusual. France does not allow FoP either. I think the reasoning is as much to do with moral rights as with financial factors. That is, a sculptor or architect may object to a picture of their work being used for a political, religious or pornographic purpose that they find extremely distasteful. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:25, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Atomium (J. dela Fuente) 2 - after its "FOP liberation"
Hm, I have thus found only two specific mentions of Cambodia in this local archive: 1, 2, and they are not professional: "I think it is saying that... ", "I think I may be wrong" (incidentally they also mention the very same spelling mistake). I do not claim to be an IP expert either, as such ab auctoritate argument would not (and should not) be used in WP anyway; nonetheless I sustain my criticism of this interpretation of Cambodia's FOP as expressed hereinabove, with this self-quote update: cf. also the Article 25 c, ff., copied from one of these individual articles, and referring the readers to its equivalent in Law No. 36/2009/QH12 of June 19, 2009 also numbered 25, in the same geographical zone, for good measure.
Thus an URL to an archived detailed FOP discussion using such IP law provisions that is less country-specific may convince me - do furnish it here if you are aware thereof, best citing the local case laws or e.g. RSes about their local initiatives similar to the recent MEP Cavada vs Reda #SaveFOP debate; I will thus keep this discussion in my Watchlist.
Verba docent, exempla trahunt so one relevant "liberated" pic from our own Commons, and the latter "unliberated" from a non-FOP country but in Commons as a counter-example:
Images of modern buildings must remain on Wikipedia. Absence of full Freedom of Panorama means we can't illustrate Wikipedia properly... If the restrictive [modifying it here slightly]: interpretation of such laws is made, then hundreds of thousands of images on Wikipedia would no longer be free and thus would no longer belong in Wikipedia, etc.
Has anything changed in our lofty aims and goals?
Do ping me here folks, as I may miss this interesting meta topic in my home wikis, with its corollary also being discussed in eswiki right now: esas fotografías tienen licencias que permiten obras derivadas etc.
@Zezen: Wikimedia provides a repository for images and other media that can be freely used without permission for any purpose. It must respect the rights of authors, who are protected by copyright laws so they can profit from their effort. Without those laws the music, film, book and magazine industries would collapse, and many talented people would turn to other occupations. "Freedom of panorama" is concerned with the tricky question of whether an artist forfeits their right to control reproduction if their work is displayed in public. It mainly affects architects and sculptors.
I do not know of any country that prohibits making pictures of works permanently displayed in public places for personal or educational use. Some countries allow commercial use of pictures of any work in a public place. Some limit commercial use to 2D reproductions of 3D objects, on the principle that a photograph of a building or sculpture does not affect the author's commercial rights, but a 3D copy of a building or sculpture does, as does a 2D copy of a 2D artwork. Some countries, and Cambodia is one, simply prohibit unauthorized commercial use of pictures of protected works in public places if the protected work is the main subject. It is annoying, and you may want lobby for a change to Cambodian law. Until it is changed, we have to respect it. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:56, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. As I had written I may know a bit of the general theory of what Commons is and copyright itself (yet see my self-caveat: "ab auctoritate argument would not (and should not) be used in WP anyway"): there is no need to remind us of these general principles.
Let me itemise via self-quotes and specify my arguments, which may help us (and the readers) focus ad meritum:
A. I have thus found only two specific mentions of Cambodia [FOA discussion] in this local archive: 1, 2, and they are [self-admittedly] not professional [which is OK...]
-> Please URL any more Cambodia- or maybe East-Asia specific FOA discussions, if you remember these, as a more experienced "old-timer".
B. Your "A sculptor or architect may object to a picture of their work being used for a political, religious or pornographic purpose that they find extremely distasteful" is wrong. See WEDONOTCARE how they feel, aka NOTCENSORED, e.g. the Muhammad acewiki appeal and other such famous cases (yes, I know of e.g. CHILDPROTECT and the resulting post 2007 spate of SanFranBans - the latter topic is out of scope.)
-> Do you agree that your argument is wrong within the "FOA in Cambodia" ambit, i.e the street views of a building or of that other infotainment beach placards?
C. [...] my criticism of this interpretation of Cambodia's FOP as expressed hereinabove, with this self-quote update: cf. also the Article 25 c, ff., copied from one of these individual articles, and referring the readers to its equivalent in Law No. 36/2009/QH12 of June 19, 2009 [...]
-> I assume that you had read this law before commenting. Please thus analyze and comment the import of these Article 25 c, ff. I had quoted days ago.
D. Two Statues Gugulethu Seven Memorial, used in enwiki after light censoring as a FOP borderline example
I am conciously using these as tu quoque.
-> Shall you PROD these two?
E. A bit of needed meta, but bear with me: the local initiatives similar to the recent MEP Cavada vs Reda #SaveFOP debate [...]
-> What do you think: who was right: Cavada or Reda?
F. [...] a reminder of our related and public 2015 WM campaign: Images of modern buildings must remain on Wikipedia. Absence of full Freedom of Panorama means we can't illustrate Wikipedia properly... If the restrictive [modifying it here slightly]: interpretation of such laws is made, then hundreds of thousands of images on Wikipedia would no longer be free and thus would no longer belong in Wikipedia, etc.
-> Why do you vote here and there against the spirit and letter of our 2015 WM campaign, with their specific claim "Images of modern buildings must remain on Wikipedia"?
Some countries place more emphasis on protecting the author's moral and economic rights, and others on protecting the public's rights. Whatever our personal opinions, Wikimedia has to respect each country's laws or we risk expensive lawsuits and being banned outright. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Ayamatth2 and the readers, if any:
Again: I know that, and I wrote twice that I knew that. Also, these are not my "personal opinions": to forestall this argument, I cited law itself in the beginning and then high-level legal FOA case law reviews, related WM campaigns and some more meta.
You have not answered these specific questions, including about the Cambodian law itself. Until you do (or somebody does) answer, as per WP:IDHT, I assume that I am right here and the related files should stay. (Again: by default I assume that I am wrong, as a WM and a personal life rule to forestall any ad hominems.)
@Zezen: see also COM:CARES. Commons cares for copyrights, even if the rest of the world doesn't. That includes copyrights from architects, sculptors, and muralists of public artistic works. Thus FOP is a serious matter on Commons. COM:PCP indicates that Commons does not follow "what is not written is allowed" principle. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)18:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for these comments, @JWilz12345 after these months, providing an answer to my Point A. I have clicked around the links provided: as I cannot see the actual 2011 Koh.Pich.Park type requests, only their modern traces, my guess is that a number of them depicted innocuous FOP public objects like this one that is "Place is gone sadly. Went there a day ago and they were bulldozing it down.", the election billboards, etc.
As an aside, and consciously using yet again the slippery slope and tu quoque arguments: myself I lived for decades in a country that had no "freedom of most anything", including panoramas of bridges, offices, stations, military, officials, then using photocopies, emails, radios, and publications needed a visit to the censor. Any Wikipedia would be banned on sight. It does not mean that we should kowtow to such laws, FOP included.
If you want to engage in this discussion (maybe on another forum):
@Zezen: , I may answer some of your points in the next thread after this. Usually the responsibility on introducing FOP lies on Wikipedians' efforts, consulations, and lobbying in their respective countries. We don't have FOP too, which caused major deletions last year and up to early part of this year. Nevertheless some of fellow Filipino Wikipedians participated in several discussions and forums, which ultimately led our copyright law agency/office to propose freedom of panorama (using Australian FOP as the model) in the amendments in modernizing our copyright law Republic Act No. 8293. FOP was not met with opposition in various Congressional hearings in the w:House of Representatives of the Philippines (HOR), and it is likely that this will be included in the HOR version of the bill. We will now look forward for the Senate version (which is not yet drafted). Hopefully FOP becomes part of our copyright law before the 18th Congress ends (in preparation for the 2022 Philippine elections).
Zezen, my inputs on some of your questions (other users or editors may give different inputs)
Re: point C — the link you provided is of Vietnam's law. Their FOP provision (Article 25/h) does not give restrictions: Photographing or televising of plastic art, architectural, photographic, applied-art works displayed at public places for the purpose of presenting images of these works. This was already discussed at COM:Deletion requests/Template:FoP-Vietnam, and it came to conclusion that "presenting images" can mean images can be presented on any medium (like TV broadcasts, photos on stamps and postcards etc.) whether that medium is to be sold or not. Cambodian FOP (Article 25) does not give wide FOP: "The reproduction of graphic or plastic work which is situated in the public place, when this reproduction doesn't constitute the principle subject for subsequent reproduction." That means you can take photos of it, but you cannot make further derivative copies of it if your photo is the integral subject.
Re: point F: that is no longer a matter for Wikipedia, especially English Wikipedia. Since the status quo remains (Cavada's amendment was rejected, but Reda's amendment was also rejected), editors there decided to cease involving on the EU FOP matter (see also w:Wikipedia talk:Freedom of Panorama 2015). Besides enwiki has adopted a local exemption doctrine from 2012 that states that enwiki only follows U.S. copyright law (as American English is their chief language and their servers are found in the U.S.), and applies U.S. FOP to all unfree buildings in countries with no FOP, using "w:lexi loci protectionis" (choice of law) as basis. This despite enwiki is also accessed in other countries; the Philippines browses enwiki more than Tagalog Wikipedia (tlwiki) or Cebuano Wikipedia (cebwiki). JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)11:40, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
1. We don't have FOP too, which caused major deletions last year and up to early part of this year.
Aha. Interesting.
... which ... led our copyright law agency/office to propose freedom of panorama ... it is likely that this will be included in the HOR version of the bill. ... South African Wikipedians are also monitoring for their copyright law amendments... etc.
Fascinating. Kudos to all of yous and let me know if I can help. (I informally wrote to our Cambodian colleagues back then and was about to enquire with the Ministry, but they may have other things to take care of, as we all know...)
2. BTW, now I see that my counter-example given above that had been used in enwiki is gone!
3. Re: point C — the link you provided is of Vietnam's law.
Indeed, as per self-quote "[compare it also] to its equivalent in [Vietnamese]... also numbered 25, [and] in the same geographical zone, for good measure." Alas, I do not have time now for a full rereading of the both laws side by side, as I have had to Ctrl+F in this thread myself to refresh my memory (probably I meant that one law may have been just copied from the other one, with some mistakes or without a legislative update) - as we agree about the Vietnamese law, so i am skipping it.
Re: point F:that is no longer a matter for Wikipedia, especially English Wikipedia. Since the status quo remains... This despite enwiki is also accessed in other countries; the Philippines browses enwiki more than Tagalog Wikipedia (tlwiki) or Cebuano Wikipedia (cebwiki).
I got that. Thank you.
4. Only for the sake of an argument (meant in a good way! I learn a lot), another reductio ad absurdum cases, if you still have energy:
A. Assuming that this "2011 Koh.Pich.Park showed something similar to their modern traces" (as per my example above), imagine we have a travelling funfair (aka Carnival in US) accross SE Asia. You take a photo of that "mobile Koh.Pich.Park carriage" both in Vietnam and when in Cambodia and want to upload it. The resulting images, including most of metadata, would not differ.
-> Would we thus delete a photo of that gaudy "Koh Pinch helicopter" only because somebody claims it to be located in a non FOP country, and retain the same before it moved across the border? (It is a sizeable structure, let us remember.) How does that Lex_loci_protectionis apply thereto?
B. What about the related previous Point B case of "our prophet is holier than thine" cases, similar to the one you wrote of: the ph- or ml-wikipedians browsing the he- or enwikis, a self quote again: "[check] the Muhammad acewiki appeal and other such famous cases " ?
@Zezen and Aymatth2: it is indeed a typographical error in my opinion, as it should have been "principal". "Principle" is not used as an adjective in the English language. But nevertheless, the Cambodian FOP is incompatible to Commons because it apparently prohibits further derivatives if the monuments become main subjects of subsequent depictions. Say you took a photo of a recent sculpture in Phnom Penh. By the language of the law you are free to host it on Commons, but that photo cannot be edited or cropped that would generate a separate image that shows it as the main subject. So no derivs. Still not OK for Commons though. I edited the section accordingly. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)16:24, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JWilz12345: See Commons:Freedom of panorama#Further derivative works. It is common for FoP to allow pictures where the protected work is not the main subject. A picture derived from such a picture where the protected work is the main subject is not authorized. Does that mean we cannot allow pictures where a cropped version could have the protected work as its main subject? I am not sure about this. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:04, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Aymatth2: the important passage here is "when this reproduction doesn't constitute the principle [sic] subject for subsequent reproduction." The term "subsequent" should be noted, and in my new understanding it seems to restrict some forms of further derivatives (subsequent reproduction = further depictions), unless the new derivatives are images etc. that do not show the work as the main or principal subject. JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)00:31, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was able to copy the FOP provision of the Khmer (original) version thanks to the import photo feature of Google Translate app (I copied the FOP wording that I highlighted). It reads: "ការចម្លងរូបភាពស្នាដៃសិល្បៈក្រាហ្វិកឬសិល្បៈសូនរូប ដែលស្ថិតនៅទីកន្លែងសាធារណៈមួយ លើកលែងតែរូបភាពនោះត្រូវបានចាត់ទុកថាជាកម្មវត្ថុសំខាន់នៃការចម្លងបន្ត ។." JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)00:53, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JWilz12345: When I run the Khmer version through Google Translate I get "Reproduction of a work of art, graphic, or visual art that is in a public place, unless the image is considered the main object of reproduction." There is no mention of "subsequent" reproduction. That seems to allow pictures where the protected work is not the main subject. The pictures should probably by tagged with something like {{Deminimis}}. I would be more comfortable if the write-up at COM:FOP was clearer about our general position on laws with similar wording, allowing pictures that include protected works, but not if they are the main subject. Maybe this should be discussed at some broader forum. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:13, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Aymatth2: I think there is no need for a broader forum. It is already understood that such type of FOP is still insufficient. A complete FOP wouldn't restrict images of works if these are main subjects, like COM:FOP UK. Cambodian FOP is somehow similar to unrelated FOP legal rights of Luxembourg and Zambia, in which works should be incidental (de minimis). JWilz12345(Talk|Contrib's.)14:18, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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