Template talk:PDMark-owner

Wording of the template

@King of Hearts: I have a bit of trouble with the current wording. I am proposing wording closer to {{PD-self}}, {{PD-user}} and {{PD-author}}. Another issue is that we are mostly talking about flickr images and on flickr when you were choosing a license there was no "Public Domain Mark 1.0" option only "public domain" option. Also on flickr pages there is no mention of "Public Domain Mark 1.0" only "public domain". Only on commons we began scrutinizing the link from words "public domain" to "Public Domain Mark 1.0" page.

• Current text: This file is made available by its copyright holder under the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0.
  While the Public Domain Mark is not intended to be used as a license, community consensus has found that when a copyright holder applies the PDM to their own work, they are declaring their work to be in the public domain.
• Proposed text: This work has been released into the public domain by its author, by declaring it as "public domain" and linking it to Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0.
  While the Public Domain Mark is not intended to be used as a license, community consensus recognized this marking as valid in the US and countries where it is legally possible to release own work to the public domain. In the countries where this is not possible this release is likely not valid.

--Jarekt (talk) 02:36, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, I guess the question is, are we accepting PDM for Flickr only, or in general? There wasn't much discussion of non-Flickr sites in the RfC, and at least one user (Fae) seems to think it can apply to other websites as well (such as the Internet Archive, see User talk:Fæ/IA audio). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:27, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

By the way, I've reverted your change from {{CC-Layout}} to {{PD-Layout}}, as the black PDM logo (as opposed to a light grey PD icon) looks really garish at that size. I think it has much more in common with {{Cc-zero}} than {{PD-user}}; it consists of a link to external legal text which we have decided to accept, rather than a wording invented by us (as is the case for all the light blue PD tags). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Jarekt: As pointed out by User:Scann: The risk should be made clearer. This "release" might not hold up in other countries. Can you add a line for that? Multichill (talk) 12:19, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

I think that community consensus is completely irrelevant when we're talking about a legal tool (or I might add, a non legal tool, since CC doesn't consider the PDM to have any enforceable effect). Could we at least have a conversation with lawyers? @Slaporte (WMF): I think the legal team at WMF might need to take a look at this. This is very problematic since it's affecting one of CC tools, offering an interpretation that is inconsistent with the tool itself and the design decisions that CC has made with its tooling. While I understand what the users are concerned about, I have concerns about how this impacts the clarity of CC tooling. CC tools shouldn't be overridden by voting consensus in Wikimedia Commons. As the FAQ of CC clarifies, you can always add additional terms, but then you should not use the CC branding whatsoever (see relevant information here). Scann (talk) 15:09, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Scann: Please don't use this Talk page to start a closed discussion again. Just don't. You probably know there are other places for that, although I think it would not be very constructive to restart a topic that has just had months of discussion, resulting in 80+% pro-voting. Thanks, Eissink (talk) 15:27, 29 August 2020 (UTC).

I was pinged in this thread by someone else to give my opinion. So I'll give my opinion: the text being proposed actually makes the outcome of the so called consensus even worse. Also, I don't think that 80+% voting over a small fraction of Wikimedia Commons users over a tool that actually doesn't belong to Wikimedia is necessarily representative of anything, or even worse, adequate or informed. Scann (talk) 15:33, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

If anything, I think the text should read as follows:

"This file has been marked with the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0.

The Public Domain Mark is not a legal instrument, is not intended to be used as a waiver, dedication or fallback license, and copyright holders that want to dedicate their work to the public domain should use {{Cc-zero}} instead. However, in some legal systems, the text of the Public Domain Mark might result in a public domain dedication if the mark is applied by the copyright holder. The Wikimedia community has agreed that this is an acceptable public domain dedication in several countries. Be aware that this might not apply in the jurisdiction where you plan to make use of the work.

If a file is tagged PDM by someone other than the copyright holder, a more specific copyright tag such as one found at Commons:Copyright tags/General public domain must be applied. If this is your own work, please use {{Cc-zero}} instead."

This doesn't change my viewpoint that this interpretation is poor. Scann (talk) 15:54, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

It isn't just the "text of the Public Domain Mark"; there are two things to consider here. One is, of course, the text, which states "You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission." If one indicates that on their own work, that's a very solid statement of permission right there. Not one that CC's lawyers would sign off on, grant you (there's a reason why CC licenses are thousand of words long), but so long as we accept things like {{Attribution}} or {{Copyrighted free use}} (mostly consisting of our own interpretation of bespoke, non-lawyer-approved permission statements on external websites), there is no reason to treat PDM any different.

The other one, which is Flickr-specific, is that users aren't really selecting the PDM explicitly, but rather choosing "Public domain" or "Public domain work". In the US at least, there don't seem to be any requirements for releasing a work into the public domain other than just declaring it "public domain". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:46, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

We are not changing the terms of the PDM as supplied by Creative Commons. We can design our tag however we want, just like for {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}}, and since we're importing a license from elsewhere there is no way anything we say can be legally operative. So long as we continue to not accept PDM for works originating on Commons, our wording doesn't need to be airtight, it just needs to maximize helpfulness to the average user. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:53, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: the current text seems to imply that the copyright holder picked PDM as a license, while on flickr they pick "public domain" which happen to be linked to PDM by flickr, just like we have links to PDM in many our templates. If we want to have a template for cases where someone picked PDM as license we could have text for that, but it does not fit the situation of flickr files. Alternative is to continue to use of {{PD-Author}} for flickr files like we always did. @Multichill: I added a line about countries where this template is likely not valid. --Jarekt (talk) 02:02, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

@Fae: Do you know how audio files end up as PDM on IA? Is there a place for people to upload their own work on IA as "public domain" (as on Flickr), or is IA importing works from elsewhere? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:06, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Another example of a non-Flickr site with PDM: File:Psathyrella epimyces (Peck) A.H. Sm 373856.jpg. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:19, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

So lets get back to my original question: are there any objections in updating the wording of this template as the current version does not represent how people picked this license on flickr, which as far as I know is majority or even all the cases we host. --Jarekt (talk) 02:42, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Currently the wording is generic and does not apply only to Flickr images. If you want to add wording that only makes sense in the context of Flickr, it may be necessary to create a new template or make it an optional parameter. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:27, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: , OK I can create a new template, perhaps {{PD-author-FlickrPDM}} with text: "This work has been released on Flickr into the public domain by its author, by declaring it as "public domain" and linking it to Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0.
While the Public Domain Mark is not intended to be used as a license, community consensus recognized this marking as valid in the US and countries where it is legally possible to release own work to the public domain. In the countries where this is not possible this release is likely not valid. " and use it for files comming from flickr, while all other files can use this template. Is that your thinking? --Jarekt (talk) 00:58, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

It's probably better to make it an optional parameter on this template; when a flag like flickr=yes is set then use the custom wording and append some Flickr-specific PDM category. {{PD-author-FlickrPDM}} can be a wrapper which hardcodes this parameter (and I would suggest using a more consistent naming convention, e.g. {{PDMark-owner-Flickr}}). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:29, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: ,I see this template as more narrow {{PD-author}}, which for years was used for flickr PD files (like here), so I was trying to use template name related to the current standard to follow consistent naming convention. As for a flag flickr=yes, I do not think it is a good idea as so far 100% of known cases would be from files from flickr, the most used default case should not be using any flags, or we will have situation like Template:GFDL where we had constant work on adding required flag to all the files that missed it. I think we should just have 2 templates and add prominent information in their documentation about which cases they should be used for and link to the other template. --Jarekt (talk) 14:46, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm still not sure what the need for this additional template is. But, the first part of the proposed wording seems fine. The second part seems overly cautious -- are there any countries where you can't give away your economic right? If you are going to say it's not valid in some countries, we should name them, or at least some of them. The Creative Commons warning about the PDMark is more to do with moral rights (which CC-Zero also tries to give away, but the PDM mark would not). Moral rights are indeed often not transferrable, but the economic right always is. If you can sell it, I don't see why you can't also give it away. If we want to indicate that the scope of the public domain declaration may not be completely clear in some countries as case law may not exist, I could see a statement along those lines, but the proposed one seems too strong. It certainly doesn't need to be any more cautious than what PD-author says -- this tag, to me, is at least as strong as PD-author, as the link to PD-Mark (with its additional statements) means the release is probably stronger and more explicit than a general "public domain" statement. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:46, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

{{PD-author-FlickrPDM}}

What’s the difference between them? RodRabelo7 (talk) 07:35, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Nothing really, except one is specifically for Flickr and this one can apply to any external website (including Flickr). This template was created during the discussion above; see the arguments there for why some thought was needed (and others not). Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:50, 22 March 2023 (UTC)