Projekt:CommonsDB registry/Commons copyright managament summary for IVIR

This is a summary of how copyright is managed on Wikimedia Commons. It should be brief, a high-level overview, but cover everything from uploading, maintenance, flagging for deletion processes, VRT and DMCA. The reader is not expected to be a Wikimedia Commons user, but someone familiar with copyright.

Introduction

Media on Wikimedia Commons have many sources, and all in common is that they are uploaded by registered users who themselves should declare the copyright status of the files. It should be noted that Wikimedia Commons grows quickly, and also in an accelerating pace (>10M files per year the last few years, or, on average > 27,000 files per day).

Upload process and copyright declaration

A user can upload files of allowed formats and are guided to select the correct copyright status / license of the file. This puts trust in the user to follow the Terms of use. It does happen that users make errors, sometimes unintentionally through misclicks, poor source information, or poor understanding of copyright at all (despite the guides). More rarely is there intentional copyright infringement, but it does happen too.

Depending on the tools used for the uploading, the guidance varies, and also the enforcement. For example, via the most featured way, the "UploadWizard", there is a lot of guidance and it's not possible to not make a statement about the copyright status. Some choice has to be made. Other tools has less guidance and weaker enforcement of the copyright status. This is somewhat mitigated by that these tools are most often are used by experienced Wikimedians with at least basic knowledge of copyright and the policies of Wikimedia Commons.

For certain uploads, particularly large batches from other organizations who may not usually release files under a free license, the user can contact the Volunteer Response Team (with a bit more than 100 volunteers) and put them in contact with the organization. After verification, the entire batch can be marked as being checked.

Proactive maintenance

As support for all these variations during the upload, there are automation in place to check on files with poor metadata. For example, if an uploader states that the file is not their own creation but lack to specify where they come from the file will be tagged with a template and put in a maintenance category. If further information is not provided within a short time (currently 7 days) they will be tagged for deletion. Similarly, if someone manages to upload a file without any copyright information, they will also be tagged and categorized and deleted even quicker.

Files that are claimed to be someone else's and where there is a source, may often get tagged as needing license review and put in a category too. That means that someone will actually check the supplied source link to see if the copyright information there matches what the user selected.

Copyright is such a common topic for discussion, there is a specific "forum" to discuss issues that may establish new, or change existing, policy or to how to interpret copyright exceptions all around the world.

Disputes

As with the uploads, there are many ways to raise an issue about the copyright status of a file. In general many Wikimedia Commons users are both fairly knowledgeable and vigilant about copyright. There is an established precautionary principle that states that if there is any significant doubt that a file is free, it should be deleted. Deletions can be made by volunteers elected to administrator role (currently 179) and by staff of Wikimedia Foundation per the workflows below.

Peer nomination for deletion

Any user (even visitors who are not logged in to Wikimedia Commons) can nominate a file they suspect that the copyright status may not be correct for deletion. This will start a discussion and an administrator will based on the findings there either remove the mark or delete the file. This is probably how most disputes are raised, by volunteers peer reviewing the content. Users whose uploads continuously gets deleted may be blocked. Blatant copyright violations that don't need a discussion will be tagged for speedy deletion.

This is both a bit ad-hoc, users stumbling over images, but there are also users who continuously scan new uploads, and specifically uploads from new users. The administrators have a dashboard to see what needs being done.

Volunteer Response Team

It is also possible to send an email if one finds a file where the copyright status on a file is not correct. It will then be reviewed by the volunteer team, and if found to be a valid request, the file will be deleted. The email is most easily found through the Contact us link in the sidebar of the site.

DMCA/OCILLA

Finally, as Wikimedia Foundation is a US organization, they make it clear how to make formal take-down requests (also mentioned on the Contact us page). These requests are handled by the legal staff of Wikimedia Foundation. The DMCA requests are made public and there are around 10-20 per year.

Statistics

As mentioned above, DMCA requests are few. Other statistics are less available. Here is a sample, collected from the 1,000 latest deletions in Wikimedia Commons deletion log, at the morning of 22 July (stretching about 14 hours back). Reasons for deletion are shown in the table below.

No license since	No permission since	Deletion requests	Copyright violation	Other content related reasons
209	207	84	90	410