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April 22

Lebanese electorate by religion

I've been working with Lebanese general election, 2018. I've noted that several Lebanese news outlets have published fairly detailed accounts of the religious affiliations of the registered voters in each electoral district. They all seem to have used the same original source, since numbers match. But my problem is that they often summarize the smaller group in larger categories, like grouping several of the Christian communities together or not reporting Druze and Alawites in most districts, which makes it impossible to provide a national overview. Also I they don't report how religious affiliation differ within the electoral districts divided into 2-4 'minor districts'. I imagine that the original source of the statistic would be the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities. Anyone know if the original source material is available online somewhere? --Soman (talk) 13:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seems the press is basing their numbers on https://www.ministryinfo.gov.lb/21558 , which does not provide a full account for all districts, but just reports the 4-8 main communities for each electoral district. Anyone knows if the full report is available somewhere? --Soman (talk) 13:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is the way of calculation ISEP Index?

I found here that the tuition fees depends on something that's called ISEP index. What is the way of calculation this ISEP Index? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.126.116.89 (talk) 14:51, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, "ISEP" apparently stands for "Index of Economic and Property Situation". I believe it may be translated from the Italian, which is why the abbreviation doesn't match the English text. This document gives details of how the index is calculated. The term is unique to the Humanitas University. Tevildo (talk) 15:34, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

International copyright issues

If a book is under copyright protection in the US, but not in Australia (for example), are the Australians legally allowed to offer this work through the Internet? That is, the Australians know the copyright status in their country and abroad, and, obviously, can only assume that US users would have access to it.

The above scenario is the situation of some works that are offered in Project Gutenberg Australia (for example, some Scott Fitzgerald works), which are not to be found in the US Project Gutenberg page.

Would this be any different from some site that uploads other types of work, like, say, a best-seller from 2017? --Doroletho (talk) 16:26, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

By that standard, sites outside the UK should not be allowed to host the text of the King James Bible, which is under perpetual "Crown Copyright" in the UK... AnonMoos (talk) 18:07, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't heard about this Crown Copyright until now. Apparently there's also an Open Government Licence, that is broadly and liberally granted, akin to the Creative Commons license. Doroletho (talk) 18:47, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the general answer or if there is one. The Wikimedia foundation hosts Wikipedia and Wikicommons on server in the US, and they take the position that material on these server must adhere to US copyright law. We also try to make a reasonable accommodation for other countries' copyrights: see Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights. -Arch dude (talk) 04:15, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The implicit principle is that the site does not make copies in other countries. If someone in another country downloads a file, then the downloader is making the copy, and the downloader is responsible for adhering to the laws of that country. -Arch dude (talk) 04:19, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why wouldn't they be? U.S. laws don't apply to them. Now you certainly have identified the issue that effectively this makes it available to everyone with Internet access contrary to the wishes of the copyright holder, but, well, that's just one of the many things the Internet has "disrupted". Copyright laws were made for a world in which works existed as ink on paper or recordings on some physical medium like film. Society is just beginning to grapple with the implications of effortless duplication and worldwide transmission of information. (And if you think this is a big deal, wait until artificial intelligence starts replacing jobs by the millions.)

This would be different from "some site that uploads…a best-seller from 2017" because in any Berne Convention signatory (which includes most of the world), any eligible work is automatically copyrighted, and all signatories agree to recognize each others' copyrights, so doing so without permission would be copyright infringement in most countries, by the laws of that country. Of course then you still have to go after the infringer, which may be difficult and not accomplish much. It's not like it's hard to find illicit copies of lots of things online. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 09:00, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is a depressing lawsuit between the S. Fischer Verlag (part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group) and Project Gutenberg (the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, PGLAF) about several books that are public domain in the US, but still under copyright in Germany. A German low-level court, in what I consider to be a very stupid decision, held Project Gutenberg to be responsible for (potential) downloads of these books from Germany, and ordered PGLAF to block access. It's unclear if Fischer can enforce this ruling in the US, but PGLAF has blocked access to all books for all IPs from Germany while preparing an appeal, on the theory that a German court would not look favourably on plaintiffs ignoring German court orders. Wikimedia requires content to be freely licensed in the US (where it operates) and in the country of origin, presumably to avoid such conflicts. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:53, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikimedia Commons Commons:Commons:Licensing requirement AFAIK (e.g. Commons:Commons:Licensing/Justifications) has much more to do with their purpose namely to serve as a repository of free content. They don't only serve the US with their purpose. We can't check legal issues in every single country (although we do try at a general level Template:PD-old-70) and while ultimately reusers need to verify that their use is compliant with local law themselves, it's considered more likely that content will be free if it's free in the source country. This is extended to the site the content came from if it's different from where the content was created.

In other words, the reason for the source country thing isn't because of concerns the foundation may be sued over German users accessing our content that comes from Germany. It's mostly because we want to reduce the chance an Indian or French reuser of our content may be sued for violating copyright law in India or French (not German) copyright law. The foundation seems to accept the risk of being sued for the general case. They may comply with specific request if they don't think the case is worth fighting but there's little proactive enforcement, after all en.wikipedia and some other projects may not have that, or even allow things like fair use.

I guess there may be some minor consideration that reusers could be sued for violating source country law in another country since reusers may have far smaller pockets and the copyright holders may be based in the source country so may be most likely interested in their law, but I don't think it's a significant consideration. An exception to this general sentiment is that the concept of any copyright over simple reproductions of public domain 2D art work is considered so 'wrong', that any possible copyright is rejected. Commons:Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag/Straw Poll.

The US thing OTOH actually has little to do with the mission, it only arises because the wikimedia servers are in the US so need to comply with local law. A notable example of this is are doubts over some FOP cases where the law of the country the 'work' (sculpture or whatever) is in allows it but US law does not. See Commons:Commons:Requests for comment/Non-US Freedom of Panorama under US copyright law.

Nil Einne (talk) 10:53, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if I'd entirely agree the 2007 thing is completely different. While there may me moral and PR reasons to treat cases like that mentioned by StS different from the high profile cases of generally commercial sites hosting or linking to recent works, the actual implications tend to be related. In other words, if you actually study cases like Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, Library.nu, Megaupload legal case, The Pirate Bay or even the older Kazaa and Grokster, I think you'll find similar issues arise.

There were at least attempts to go after these because they violate US copyright law. They may have violated Russian, Netherlands or whatever law as well and there are sometimes additional attempts to go through local law or maybe these issues have to be considered e.g. due to extradition requests but the US cases are generally mostly concerned with US law which shouldn't be that surprising since US courts aren't generally the right place to decide if something violates Russian law.

These cases haven't always been especially successful but some of them have been. (And often the big barrier is not getting the US judgement, but enforcing it. See e.g. [1] "Sci-Hub infringes US copyright law simply by serving its content to US citizens, says Toby Butterfield, a lawyer with the firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz in New York.") Also they seem to have at a minimum established that using one of the traditional generic TLDs is risky.

It's true that the commercial aspect opens up additional legal avenues and there are related things like claims of inducing people to violate copyright (including inducing or targeting US users) which may be unlikely to arise in a case where someone is just hosting a PD work in Australia on an Australian site as part their efforts to make Australian PD work available to Australians. But it remains true that cases are being pursued for US copyright violations, even if neither a company nor the people involve, nor the site is not based in the US.

There was also the infamous United States v. Elcom Ltd. case although that failed. More generally, many sites even those not based in the US operate (or claim to operate) some sort of DMCA system. While this may be partially because they considered it the best way to reduce the risk from local law, from what I've read I'm pretty sure many also do it due to concerns over the long arm of US law. Likewise once they raise enough interest, many operators of sites seen to be contributing to copyright violations tend to avoid visiting the US like the plague. Of course in a place like the US with multiple local jurisdictions these issues can also arise locally e.g. Penguin Group (USA) Inc. v. American Buddha.

(Outside of copyright, such issues can also arise. Probably the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 is one of the most famous examples were a number of sites attempted to proactively block US customers after the law. Funnily enough copyright law also came up there in the proposal by some affected governments to ignore some US IP including copyright to the WTO to make up for their losses. Much less surprising but companies with significant multinational operations often comply with local law unless they decide not to for some reason. E.g. Microsoft, Google in areas like search engines & content sales.)

Nil Einne (talk) 12:02, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The silliest ever was the "shift-key lawsuit" (which never actually went anywhere)... AnonMoos (talk) 15:14, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]