Kofi Annan/Talk

Article says:

In the UN Secretariat, he served with the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa

I didn't think the ECOSOC Regional Commissions were part of the Secretariat.

Also, whoever put this up here, did you write it yourself? If so, congratulations on a very good article; but on the other hand if you copied it from somewhere, from where and did you get permission? --- Simon J Kissane

Yes, the staffs of the regional commissions are part of the UN Secretariat.

The biography is largely copied from the UN website, with minor editing. I used to work for the UN Department of Public Information and I know that they would be quite happy to see this material disseminated as widely as possible. We can't credit this to the UN, since there's no telling what changes others will make.

Thanks for your remarkably prompt additions to the Secretary-General article.

--- Frank Barabas, fbarabas@nyc.rr.org

Do you think that holds for other UN websites (e.g. someone earlier on copied from the International Court of Justice website, which I deleted because they hadn't asked for permission)? I suppose though it is better to ask anyway. --- Simon J Kissane

UN policy is that material appearing in their press releases -- and that is where the website text came from in this case -- may be freely used, preferably (but not necessarily) with attribution to the UN. Attribution would not be appropriate for material in Wikipedia, which can be changed by anyone. However, you have raised a good question, so I have e-mailed the UN with a query about reuse of material, with specific reference to the Annan biography. I shall let you know what answer I receive. In the meantime, I believe it's safe to leave the present article in place.

By the way, almost everything I have found on the Web about the work of the International Seabed Authority has come from its press releases, often word for word and almost always without attribution, and I assure you that the Authority is quite happy to see this material on the Web or in the press. By another way, the new Wikipedia article on the Authority is my own contribution and exists nowhere else.

===Frank Barabas

If we want to give attribution, maybe we could just say "This article was originally based on a United Nations press release", or something similar? Which would remain true even if someone later came along and changed the article. -- Simon J Kissane

That sounds like a good idea. Another possibility would be to include an external link to the original source. Does Wikipedia have a formula or policy on attribution in such cases?

Let's wait to hear the UN reply.--Frank Barabas

 I just found the UN's reuse policy [1]:

"Copyrights

"Most public information materials, including press releases, fact sheets and features, produced by the Department of Public Information are not copy righted and can be reproduced without prior permission. UN sales publications are copyrighted and thus require written permission for reproduction. Requests for permission to reproduce United Nations material should be directed to the Secretary of the Publications Board, Room L-382C, United Nations, New York, NY 10017. Fax : (212) 963- 0077."

That takes care of the Annan biography, to which I shall now add an external link to the original source.

As to the International Court of Justice, here is its policy [2]:

"Information or data contained at this site may not be reproduced or used for commercial purposes."

If Wikipedia has no commercial purposes, it is in the clear.--Frank Barabas

Well, Wikipedia is not presently being used for commercial purposes; but it is distributed under a licence (GNU FDL) which requires commercial use to be permitted; and I think Bomis (the people who run the servers) are thinking of maybe putting advertising up to raise money in the distant future. So if it says no commercial use I don't think we can use it. -- Simon J Kissane

The information currently on the International Court of Justice page does not come from their site and so we are in the clear on that. The ICJ page's info was replaced with information from the U.S. Department of State site, which is in the public domain unless explicitly noted otherwise. The ICJ site was merely listed as an additional reference. --KQ