Whilst browsing over the QI candidates page I noticed this image:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:EM_Spectrum_Properties.svg.
The image itself is licensed as public domain. However it is a
derivative of two images licensed under the GFDL
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:P_biology.svg and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyscrapercompare.svg). Unless
I am misreading something quite badly, releasing a derivative of a
GFDL-licensed work to the public domain is a violation of the GFDL.
It is easy to fix one image, but I suspect we have deeper problems
throughout the project with a lack of respect for copyleft.
Establishing just how serious this issue is will be non-trivial, never
mind resolving it.
I can think of a number of approaches to this situation, some of which
are obviously harmful to the project and/or the free content movement
as a whole.
* Ignore the terms of the GFDL (or any other copyleft licenses) in this context.
* Treat them the same as any other copyright violation.
* Contact the creator of the derivative and inform him of the
pertinent terms of the original license; and ask him to change the
licensing on the derivative.
* Changing the licensing on the derivative work to be compatible with
the original work, and inform the creator of the new work of the
change and the reason why.
Furthermore we probably have the difficulties associated with of a
CC-BY-SA work and a GFDL work being combined. I'm no lawyer, but I
suspect to truly sort these cases out will need an additional release
from some of the creators of the original works.
If we cannot enforce the copyleft terms on our own community, can we
really expect external groups to?
Simultaneous send to wikitech-l, foundation-l, and commons-l
Hi folks,
Yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation, Kaltura, and WikiEducator made a
combined announcement about our beta collaborative video project. You
can see the announcement here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Invites_Users_to_Take_Part_in…
The Foundation has set up a landing page here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Collaborative_Video
with more background and information. We'll keep it updated regularly.
WikiEducator has done the same here:
http://wikieducator.org/Help:Collaborative_video
with specific instructions on how to participate in the beta.
Through this project the parties will be able to explore the potential
for developing open-source, collaborative video or slideshows for the
Foundation's projects. Collaborative video is simply a collection of
images, video, and sound edited and combined by one or more collaborators.
The technology, which many of you may already be familiar with, will be
demonstrated on WikiEducator - which is not a WMF project. Those of us
involved in the Wikimedia Foundation projects will have a chance to
examine the software, test its limits, and ultimately improve our
ability to bring multi-media, free knowledge content to our users. We
recognize that Kaltura's software and interface are still not 100%
open-source, and as such the technology will not appear on any
Foundation projects until we've worked through some of the technical
challenges - which is where you come in.
Kaltura has released their code to the open-source community to help
this project along. It's available on SourceForge,
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura .
We're excited that an innovative, private business has taken strong
initiative in embracing open-source development.
You're invited to examine the code, test the technology as it exists on
WikiEducator, and help us bring this functionality to the Wikimedia
Foundation projects over the coming months. You'll find a feedback
process on the WikiEducator landing page, and of course we fully welcome
discussion about the technology on the lists.
Thanks,
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
1 (415) 287-0680
Further confusion from the Terms of Service
(_http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/cms/signup_ (http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/cms/signup) )
The content on the Kaltura Website, except all User Submitted Media (as
defined below), including without limitation, the text, software, scripts,
graphics, photos, sounds, music, videos, interactive features and the like
("Content") and the trademarks, service marks and logos contained therein ("Marks"),
are owned by or licensed to Kaltura, and is subject to copyright and other
intellectual property rights under United States and foreign laws and
international conventions.
You agree to not engage in the use, copying, or distribution of any of the
Content other than expressly permitted herein, including any use, copying, or
distribution of User Submitted Media of third parties obtained through the
Website for any commercial purposes.
You agree not to circumvent, disable or otherwise interfere with security
related features of the Kaltura Website or features that prevent or restrict use
or copying of any Content or enforce limitations on use of the Kaltura
Website or the Content therein.
Etc.
Apparently, I do not understand what free software and free content is, so
can Greg, Erik, or someone else more knowledgeable than me please explain this.
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
Thanks Jay,
I'd really like to help but, according to Kaltura's own terms of use
Kaltura hereby grants you permission to use the Website as set forth in this
Terms of Service, provided that: (i) your use of the Website as permitted is
solely for your personal, noncommercial use (please contact
_commercial(a)kaltura.com_ (mainto:commercial@kaltura.com) regarding the terms of a commercial
license) ; (ii) you will not copy or distribute any part of the Website in
any medium without Kaltura's prior written authorization; (iii) you will not
alter or modify any part of the Website, other than as may be reasonable
permitted according to the site’s GUI and its purpose and (iv) you will otherwise
comply with the terms and conditions of these Terms of Service.
This is certainly not free. In fact, the very terms of use eliminate the
possibility of it being free.
I am very confused
Danny
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Linksvayer <ml(a)creativecommons.org>
Date: 16 Jan 2008 14:20
Subject: [cc-licenses] CC0 beta/discussion draft launch
To: cc-licenses(a)lists.ibiblio.org
CC0[http://creativecommons.org/projects/cczero] is a Creative Commons
project designed to promote and protect the public domain by 1) enabling
authors to easily waive their copyrights in particular works and to
communicate that waiver to others, and 2) providing a means by which
any person can assert that there are no copyrights in a particular work,
in a way that allows others to judge the reliability of that assertion.
As announced[http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7920] on CC's
5th anniversary, today we are announcing a beta of the CC0 user
interface[http://labs.creativecommons.org/license/zero] and technical
specification[http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCZero_Technical_Overview]
and discussion drafts of the CC0 legal tools:
The CC0
Waiver[http://labs.creativecommons.org/licenses/zero-waive/1.0/us/]
will enable the author or owner of a work to affirm the copyright and
related or neighboring legal rights that he or she has in a work, and
then to fully, permanently and irrevocably waive those rights. By making
this waiver, the Affirmer effectively dedicates all copyright or related
legal interests he or she held in the work to the public domain – "no
rights reserved". The CC0 Waiver (United States) will be an effective
legal tool within the US and any other jurisdictions with equivalent
law. It also will also be offered as a template indicating the scope
of most of the rights that must be covered in other jurisdictions in
order to effect an equivalent dedication to the public domain. Some
jurisdictions may need to address additional rights, for example "sui
generis" database rights and specific rights to data.
The CC0
Assertion[http://labs.creativecommons.org/licenses/zero-assert/1.0/us/]
will provide a means by which any person may assert that there are no
copyrights in a work, within a system that permits others to judge the
reliability of the assertion, based on the Asserter's identity and other
information the Asserter may provide. The CC0 Assertion (United States)
is intended to address copyright status under US law. The Assertion may
not be appropriate for Works created in or whose copyright status is
governed by the law of other jurisdictions.
Internationalization
As with our existing core legal tools (six licenses ranging from
Attribution to Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives), we want the CC0
waiver and assertion legal tools to be valid worldwide and eventually
ported to many jurisdictions worldwide to take into account the nuances
of copyright law in those jurisdictions. Our strategy and schedule for
accomplishing these goals will be based on feedback from our international
project[http://creativecommons.org/international] jurisdiction leads,
who are responsible for the same process for our existing tools.
Norms
One of the use cases for CC0 is the Protocol for Implementing Open Access
Data[http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protoco…,
also
announced[http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2007/12/16/announcing-p…
in conjunction with CC's 5th birthday. In addition to fulfilling the
protocol's legal requirements, the CC0 technical infrastructure will also
support the assertion of non-legal community norms in conjunction with
a work, beginning with the norm of citation in the context of science.
Discussion
Feedback on the legal tools should be directed to the cc-licenses
mailing list. Only subscribers may post and the list is moderated
so that off-topic posts do not burden subscribers. To join go to
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
Similarly, technology feedback should be directed to
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-devel
General comments may be directed to
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
These discussions will be summarized at
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCZero_Feedback
Deployment
The CC0 beta and drafts referenced above are only intended to be used for
testing and feedback. The beta/discussion period will last a minimum of
one month and most likely include several incremental betas and drafts,
depending on community feedback.
If your organization plans significant support for CC0 upon its release
for production use, please contact press(a)creativecommons.org concerning
potential coordination.
_______________________________________________
cc-licenses mailing list
cc-licenses(a)lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
On 18/01/2008, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Just writing to let folks know that on Commons we are developing some
> Javascript that add form elements to the upload page, instead of
> asking the user to use a template, to "fake" structured data. If the
> user doesn't have Javascript, it defaults to the plain normal form.
> It could be considered a model of what we would like the upload form
> to look like one day.
That's excellent! We should put this into place ASAP once it's
definite it works on all reasonable browsers.
Needs the "other versions" field (I've been doing a lot of cropped
versions of shots already on Commons), possibly automatically doing
the right thing with the filename of existing Commons files - turning
all of Example.jpg or Image:Example.jpg or [[Image:Example.jpg]] into
[[:Image:Example.jpg]]. And leaving anything else (http:// links)
alone. (What's JavaScript's regular expression performance like?)
> Just flagging it here in case there are any performance-related things
> we should take into consideration.
Since it's using the client's CPU power, performance shouldn't be a
problem - sanity-check for security, I expect.
> Demo (you need to be logged in at Commons):
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?withJS=MediaWiki:UploadFor…>
> Demo combing uselang hack:
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload?withJS=MediaWiki:UploadFor…>
> The JS is here:
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:UploadForm.js>
> (FYI, the add-category functionality is here:
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js> )
Suggestion: a properly internationalised version of
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Add_Article_to_Category that
sends the user to an upload form with the category in place - I put it
on the work intranet with vast success, but it's not properly
internationalised and (obviously) would need to go to Special:Upload
rather than creating an article with the cat preloaded.
- d.
