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Russian Civil Law Changed By Wikimedia

Posted by Unknown on from the sudden-outbreak-of-sane-copyright-law dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Changes to the Russian Civil Code, which include the recognition of open licenses, the right for libraries to generate digital copies of certain works, were now signed by the Russian President and come into force on October 1st. According to Wikimedia-RU member Linar Khalitov, 'these changes are a result of a lot of hard work on behalf of Wikimedia-RU ... proposing, discussing and defending amendments to the Code.'" The changes are pretty major: licenses no longer require a written contract to be enforced, and published works can no longer be retracted. The two combine to give Wikipedia RU authors stronger author rights. Pictures of architectural objects can be used freely without the permission of the architect, which will allow many images that were pulled from the Wikimedia Commons to return, and new projects to add pictures of monuments to go forward.

11 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Well done, Vladimir! by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This more than makes up for invading a neighboring country - I mean another one - and nearly starting WW3!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re: Well done, Vladimir! by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Russia is a regional power. They will certainly start a war, but it would take insanity on our part that matches or exceeds Putin's to turn it into a world war.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    2. Re:Well done, Vladimir! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is not a question of belief. When Russian forces stepped off the leased military bases in Crimea, Ukraine, and also flew in more forces into Crimea, Ukraine, to take control, yes it was an invasion. Crimea was an autonomous region in Ukraine, not a separate country.

    3. Re: Well done, Vladimir! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Russia is a regional power.

      So was Austria-Hungary...

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re: Well done, Vladimir! by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      Im far-right because Im disappointed with the tepid, half-hearted, laughable response we've given over the invasion of a country that we encouraged to disarm? (Ukraine underwent disarmament in 2005 at the behest of (along with Senator Lugar) senator Obama)

      But that wouldnt be the worst of it, if we were just going to be scumbags and say "nuts to you, we dont care what Russia does". No, we decided that we care, but we cant actually back our bravado up with any real consequences, with the result that we now look impotent as Russia completely ignores both our threats and our weak sanctions (oh no, sanctioning 12 individuals!). One wonders how cheaply Russia will acquire the next country, and whether we will draw additional imaginary lines for those as well.

    5. Re:Well done, Vladimir! by H0p313ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And Kosovo was an autonomous region in Serbia for hundreds of years. How many bombs did USA and its vassals drop on Yugoslavia to change that?

      Unless there have been mass executions of Russian ethnic civilians in Crimea that I've missed, it's not really a fair comparison is it?

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    6. Re: Well done, Vladimir! by genepro77 · · Score: 2

      Just out of curiosity ... which particular quality of us, americans, entitles us to pass judgement and "care" what Russians do in their corner of the world? It would be very much curious to what we would do if we didn't like the behavior of one of our neighbors, like Cuba, for example. We would never dare to invade! Wait...

    7. Re: Well done, Vladimir! by manu0601 · · Score: 2

      Russia is able to grant asylum to Snowden, while China wanted him to leave Hong Kong to avoid upsetting the US too much.

    8. Re:Well done, Vladimir! by afxgrin · · Score: 2

      Still incomparable:

      a) Kosovo doesn't share a border with the United States

      b) Crimea had an ethnic cleansing attempt by the Russians - you can't argue that Kosovo had all sorts of Americans move to Kosovo to make a majority American population so they can vote to be annexed by America....

      c) Kosovo is recognized by 108 UN member states. Crimea ... I think only by Russia so far.

      d) Kosovo, another "autonomous region" was part of a country that was falling apart. Funny how Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomous status triggering the breakup of Yugoslavia to further his "Greater Serbia" agenda.

      e) If you want to compare Puerto Rico, I guess lets go back to the 19th century and compare things:
      The Imperial census of Crimea in 1897 found that the population of the governorate consisted of 1,447,790, with 762,804 male and 684,986 female.
      Language Number Percentage (%)
      Ukrainian (Little Russian) 611,121 42.21
      Russian (Great Russian) 404,463 27.94
      Belarusian (White Russian) 9,726 0.67

      By this standard Crimea belongs to Ukraine.

      It is grossly undemocratic and unethical to hold a referendum in Crimea when:

      1) the Parliament of the so called "autonomous region of Crimea" was raided by Russian paramilitaries

      2) the federal government which the "autonomous region of Crimea" lies within: Ukraine, is under civil strife and is holding elections in a few months.

      3) Russia itself conducts massive military exercises near the border, in addition to holding a port they lease from the Ukrainian government while having their own forces step off the base and surround Ukrainian military bases.

      For the above reasons no one at the UN should recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, and no referendum result should be observed until Ukrainian federal elections are held under international supervision until international observers agree on the election result. All of this is bullshit otherwise.

      "Russian self defence forces" - what a fucking joke.

  2. In Soviet Russia ... by PPH · · Score: 2

    ... published works take down you!

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  3. Re:Why bother? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

    First of all, this was spearheaded largely by the Russian Wikipedia.

    Second, while law is "flexible" in Russia, it's nowhere near as bad as you make it sound. Basically, when it gets political, then all bets are off, but otherwise rule of law applies. And even for political cases, they try to make some semblance of due process.