[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Ray Saintonge]

David Goodman wrote:
> My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely
> and unquestionably legally  necessary is a violation of the moral
> rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in
> the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all
> explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did
> not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or
> noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what
> we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone.
>
>   
Precisely!  To a large extent, we are effectively releasing our work 
into the public domain, except for the fact that in some countries this 
is not allowed.  Also, putting a work into the public domain means 
abandoning our rights of action in the event that there is infringement 
on that public ownership. There is no custodian of the public domain to 
take action when the copyrights of the general public have been infringed.

I have no complaints about commercial use, but I am concerned when a 
commercial user massively takes freely licensed or public domain 
material and parks them under the umbrella of his copyrights so that the 
users of "his" material unwittingly respect a copyright that has no 
basis in fact.  If the only ones with rights of action against the 
fraudster are the separate owners of the fragments, we will have loosed 
the tactic of divide and conquer upon our own selves.  I would really 
like to see a situation where we nominating someone as an non-exclusive 
agent with the right to prosecute serious copyright violations on a 
class action basis.

I choose to edit with a pseudonym, though my real name is certainly well 
known to the community.  My self-esteem is not so week that I need to be 
publicly credited for every last edit that I make, the satisfaction of a 
job well-done is its own reward.  We do not own the articles, and we 
edit each others' work mercilessly.  Having a long list of names in 
2-point type just so that the individual editor can see his name in 
print is wasteful and contrary to the spirit of our collective effort.  
This is not what credit and attribution is about.  Expecting anything 
more from the downstream user than to say that he took things from 
Wikipedia is unrealistic.

Ec