I am not quite sure why you might want a policyassigning all copyrights
to the Wikimedia Foundation. First, this would be an administrative
nightmare to change the licensing in midstream. Those who
have contributed to any wiki type project are doing so with the
understanding that their work can be edited, changed, etc. even
if they don't grant any kind of additional license. However, they
do not give up their copyright, with or without attribution. If they
do not grant an open license then just posting it on a wiki type space
is legally no different than writing someone a letter (though the issue of
publication may come up). Regarding anonymous and pseudononymous
works both are protected by copyright under US and foreign copyright
laws, as the case may be. The author of the letter retains copyright.
Regarding people making contributions under any kind of specific
license (be that open in the case of the WP community, or closed
in the case of AOL) it is just a license, it is not the transfer or
assignment of copyright, thus the original contributor under an
open, non-exclusive license could still sell her or his work or have
it published commercially, (without the GNU notice) though someone
who discovers that it is posted with a open license could then also
publish it commerically (as long as the GNU Free Documentation
License notice is then included).
I should also remind you that everything done on a wiki space IS
in writing, the question being who wrote it is a question of proof,
but it is written and recorded.
I am not certain why there is a discussion of assigning copyright
to the Wikimedia Foundation. Of course anyone is free to make
such a contribution (though I doubt they will get a tax deduction
for it) but it is not necessary IMHO for Wikimedia to use materials
under the open license it already has, perhaps I do not understand
the question, but what specifically cannot be acheived with the
current open license that every Wikipedia contributor grants when
they make contributions to any Wikipedia space? Is anyone really
worried that contributors will start publishing their original contributions
commercially (that includes publication by a not-for-profit corporation,
many so called "small press" publishers are exempt under 501(c)(3)
and their publications are sold in bookstores, i.e. most University
Presses).
Alex756 (the lawyer mentioned below)
>On Fri, 1 Aug 2003 07:10:47 -0700 (PDT) Karl Wick said:
>Wasn't there a lawyer who offered free services to Jimmy a
>while back ? An expert opinion would he helpful in many
>issues to make a plan that is legal and helps achieve WP
>goals and mission, such as regarding the proposed
>dedication of copyrights to the Foundation.
>--Karl
Alex R.
>I should also remind you that everything done on
>a wiki space IS in writing, the question being who
>wrote it is a question of proof, but it is written and
>recorded.
The question before us then is this; can we state on our Wikibooks copyright
policy page and on every edit page that by pressing save, that the submitter
is agreeing to grant Wikimedia a non-exclusive right to license to use their
own unique and copyrightable work under both the GNU FDL /and/ any other
copyleft license the Foundation may deem fit in the future (with a defintion
of "copyleft" linked from that word)?
Can authors transfer the right re-license their work through a click-through
agreement like we have with the "Save page" function, under the narrowly
defined terms mentioned, without assigning away all their rights to the work?
Question two: Would such a notice prevent us from using purely FDL work (such
as from Wikipedia)?
If the answer to the first question is yes and the second no, then we could
have our cake and eat it too; We would be able to swap text to and from
Wikipedia and be able to more easily relicense at least some of the content
on Wikibooks.
Related question: If the above is true then could we add such a notice to
Wikipedia in order to cover all new submissions (we would also have to
contact every current and past contributor we could in order to ask them
about the change in copyright terms; if they say no or we can't find them
their text will only be under the FDL)?
The reason I ask is that some people here see that our content could be even
more useful if it also could be used under other licenses similar to the GNU
FDL. This would not, however, solve the problem of us being able to use work
under other copyleft licenses.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Alex756 wrote:
>It is ironic that these various licenses are
>incompatible with each other, maybe a simpler
>solution would be to have a very straightforward
>license like has been used commonly in areas where
>non-exclusive licensing is a commercial reality
>and just make sure that attribution is preserved
>(sort of like the moral rights approach of European
>copyright) isn't that what we all really want when
>we talk about open content?
You are asking the wrong question since we want our
content to be free, not just open. I, at least, get a
very positive feeling from knowing that everything I
write will be free forever. If all we required was
attribution then a proprietary encyclopedia could take
our work, improve upon it, sell it as a proprietary
work and we would not be able to build upon their
improvements; the chain of positive feedback would be
broken.
But the GFDL does have some serious problems compared
with the Creative Commons Share Alike Licence (such as
onerous compliance measures that we don't even bother
to enforce on downstream users; such as having
transparent copies, distribution of the whole GFDL
license with each copy and a changelog). However, we
are stuck with the GFDL because that was the best
option available when Wikipedia started. So, IMO, we
should keep things simple by having just one license
for all Wikimedia projects and we should work with the
GNU people to create a GFDL 2.0 which is compatible
with CCSA (and then work with the CC people to make a
CCSA 2.0 that is compatible with GFDL 2.0 or later).
We can't ignore the huge resource of free content that
is already in our own family - Wikipedia.
But I would still like to know if we could require all
new submissions to be more flexibly licensed so that
Wikimedia could re-license the text under one of
several copyleft licenses. We still, officially, would
be a GFDL shop but downstream users could ask the
Foundation about re-licencing selected Wikimedia works
under other copyleft licenses (of course this would
only be for content submitted after a certain date and
any content by users who explicitly agree to let
Wikimedia re-license their work under other copyleft
licenses - I'm sure there will be plenty of those).
This, IMO, would be an acceptable (but not ideal)
situation until the GNU and CC people get their act
together.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Tomasz Wegrzanowsk wrote:
>Contract of transfer of material copyrights
>requires written form to be valid.
The server is in the US. Thus only US law (for all activity within the US) and
International law (for all activity between the server and those contributing
outside of US jurisdiction) applies.
-- mav
LDan
>As a wikipedia author, why can't I relicence
>wikipedia content under the CC ATT-SA?
Becuase you only own the stuff /you/ write. You can
relicense /your/ own work any way you want, but the
version you uploaded to the Wikimedia server is
forever under the GNU FDL.
-- mav
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Wasn't there a lawyer who offered free services to Jimmy a
while back ? An expert opinion would he helpful in many
issues to make a plan that is legal and helps achieve WP
goals and mission, such as regarding the proposed
dedication of copyrights to the Foundation.
--Karl
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Tomasz Wegrzanowsk wrote:
>If it's copyrighted by anyone living in Europe, European laws apply.
All that matters to Wikimedia is what is legal to have on the server in the
US. When you edit on a US-based server then the laws of the US dictate what
is legal to have on that server. That doesn't mean you are immune to the laws
of your own country, but as soon as you post something to the Wikimedia
server then US law takes over.
However, it does look like written consent is required in the US to transfer
ownership (an exclusive right) but it is not required to transfer other
rights (so-called "non-exclusive rights"). This does seem to go counter to
common contract law that which is rather permissive with informal agreements
(but any good lawyer will still tell you to get things in writing)... Oh
well.
But, the question is this; is one of those non-exclusive rights the right to
re-license the work to third parties (such as giving Wikimedia the right to
relicense the Anon's work under another copyleft license)? I couldn't find an
answer to that.
We really need a lawyer's opinion here.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Hey, I am loving the fact that the textbook pages have all
the features that are disabled in the main site, but could
we get the table of contents feature ?
Thanks, -- Karl
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
LittleDan wrote:
>--- Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> Aside: It would also be nice if links to other
>> Wikimedia projects looked
>> different than external links. A green color would
>> be nice..
>>
>> --- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>That sounds good, but green is used for external
>links in Cologne Blue. I think that sticking with blue
>for the external links within Wikimedia.
But we /do/ need to distinguish between links within Wikibooks from links to
other Wikimedia projects. The Cologne Blue stylesheet should be fixed.
-- mav
Imran Ghory wrote:
>> Question two: Would such a notice prevent us from using
>>purely FDL work (such as from Wikipedia)?
>
>Yes. The person who is importing the work will not be able
>to legally save the page and meet the required conditions.
I meant to word the click-through agreement to more clearly state that only
work the submiter holds the copyright too would be covered by the Wikimedia
re-licensing clause. Everything else would only have to be kosher per the GNU
FDL and the limited amount of fair use materials we allow.
-- mav