2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
2009/1/21 Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>:
A lot of the problems you are having there are
because you are trying
to group things into "print" and "online". The correct dichotomy is
"online" and "offline". Of course you are going to have problems
classifying DVDs if your classifaction systems assumes all electronic
data is only available on the internet. I don't see a problem with
listing authors in fairly small print on the back of a t-shirt, seems
perfectly reasonable to me. If instead of names there's just a URL on
the t-shirt, does that mean I can't where it in China since people
seeing it won't have any way (without significant technical know-how)
to view the list of authors?
Nor would you be able to access the list of authors on a mirror that
carries it by reference.
Ideally, a mirror would carry a local copy of the history page and
link to that. Even if they don't, the problem is caused by the Chinese
government being inconsistent with their polices (blocking the
original while not blocking the mirror), so I think it's fair to make
allowances.
Whether you draw the distinction between
print or non-print, or between "online" and "offline", is always
somewhat arbitrary, as content can change from one state to another
very easily. (A file downloaded to your harddisk becomes an offline
copy; so does an email attachment.) A licensing regime that relies on
such arbitrary transformations of attribution is fundamentally
unworkable for re-users.
I don't think there's an ambiguity there - when you view anything
online it becomes a local copy, but I think it's perfectly clear in
the vast majority of cases whether it's an online or offline source
(there may be the odd corner case, there often is, there is rarely any
option beyond common sense for dealing with them).