Anonymous contributions are problematic when licensing changes are needed. Wikipedia is big, but it will be a lot bigger in 10 years from now, with a lot more anonymous contributions.
The need for a license changes (in the future) is not zero: 1) Copyright law itself changes regularly, so we can't look far in the future and know what will be necessary then. 2) We don't know if FDL and CC-AT-SA are going to reach compatibility, 3) we don't know how a judge might rule if the "moral rights" in the European copyright-system conflict with public domain or copyleft licences. 4) The GNU licenses are english only, there is an internationalisation effort at CC. In many countries terms of use of a product need to be stated in the official languages of the country.
Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL? This is not a vote against the FDL at all, but it would retain the possibility of a license change in the future. Now, with each anonymous contribution, a license change becomes more and more something of an impossibility.
Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used in a free and open copyleft spirit.
For contributors that have an account with a valid emailadres, nothing need to change. But if they loose interest, they should have the possibility to easy transfer their copyrights the Wikimedia Foundation.
What dou you think?
Wouter Vanden Hove www.open-education.org www.opencursus.be
On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 10:15:30PM +0200, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
Anonymous contributions are problematic when licensing changes are needed. Wikipedia is big, but it will be a lot bigger in 10 years from now, with a lot more anonymous contributions.
The need for a license changes (in the future) is not zero:
- Copyright law itself changes regularly, so we can't look far in the
future and know what will be necessary then. 2) We don't know if FDL and CC-AT-SA are going to reach compatibility, 3) we don't know how a judge might rule if the "moral rights" in the European copyright-system conflict with public domain or copyleft licences. 4) The GNU licenses are english only, there is an internationalisation effort at CC. In many countries terms of use of a product need to be stated in the official languages of the country.
Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL? This is not a vote against the FDL at all, but it would retain the possibility of a license change in the future. Now, with each anonymous contribution, a license change becomes more and more something of an impossibility.
Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used in a free and open copyleft spirit.
For contributors that have an account with a valid emailadres, nothing need to change. But if they loose interest, they should have the possibility to easy transfer their copyrights the Wikimedia Foundation.
What dou you think?
Legally can't work, copyright transfer can't be done by "clicking", and that's especially so if copyright owner is anonymous.
Op ma 28-07-2003, om 22:20 schreef Tomasz Wegrzanowski:
Legally can't work, copyright transfer can't be done by "clicking", and that's especially so if copyright owner is anonymous.
This is what ordinary corporate websites do: http://www.aol.com/copyright.adp USER'S GRANT OF LIMITED LICENSE
By posting or submitting content to this site, you: 1. grant America Online and its affiliates and licensees the right to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, distribute, have distributed, and promote the content in any form, anywhere and for any purpose; and 2. warrant and represent that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content and that public posting and use of your content by America Online will not infringe or violate the rights of any third party.
Funny that they call it a limited license. :)
If copyright transfer is not possible, then at least a more liberal licensing to the Wikimedia Foundation can be asked, upon which the Wikimedia Foundation automatically decides to license the anonymous contribution under the GFDL. But since the contribution was given more liberally, the content could also be relicensed if necessary without having to track the anonymous contributor or to remove his contribution alltogether.
Wouter Vanden Hove www.open-education.org www.opencursus.be
Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia
Foundation. A >disclaimer
could be issued that states that the contributions always
will be used
in a free and open copyleft spirit.
This sounds like a great idea to me. -- Karl
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Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL?
Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used in a free and open copyleft spirit.
This sounds like a very interesting idea!
If we do this, then the time pressure on licence issues reduces. Should somebody come along that wants to combine Wikibooks with a free project covered by a Creative Commons (or other) licence, then we can look at that licence, decide that it's free, and OK it. And should somebody come along that wants to contribute material covered by a Creative Commons (or other) licence, then we can look at that licence, decide that it's free, and OK that.
Now, we have to implement submission of copyleft material. Given other posters' complaints that transfer of copyright is out, and given that copyleft material must be tracked as such, I suggest: * Tell contributors that submissions are licenced to Wikimedia with no restriction other than those listed below; * State (as part of their giving us rights, so it's legally binding) that we will immediately distribute the material under the GNU FDL (which is exactly what we do when we put it up on the web site); and * Give a radio button option to say that the material is: * Free for the submitter to transfer all rights to us; or * Free for the submitter to submit only under the GNU FDL. In the latter case, we flag the material as GNU FDL-only, so we won't accidentally redistribute it under a CC licence. (Thus it's out of bounds for the first "should somebody" above.) If somebody wants to give us submissions under some other copyleft (which is the second "should somebody" above), then we can add buttons.
This plan still needs some work, but I'll let others point out its flaws, thus encouraging them to simultaneously suggest fixes. ^_^
-- Toby
Toby wrote:
Now, we have to implement submission of copyleft material. Given other posters' complaints that transfer of copyright is out, and given that copyleft material must be tracked as such, I suggest:
- Tell contributors that submissions are licenced to
Wikimedia with no restriction other than those listed below;
- State (as part of their giving us rights, so it's
legally binding) that we will immediately distribute the material under the GNU FDL (which is exactly what we do when we put it up on the web site); and
- Give a radio button option to say that the material is:
- Free for the submitter to transfer all rights to us;
or
- Free for the submitter to submit only under the GNU
FDL. In the latter case, we flag the material as GNU FDL-only, so we won't accidentally redistribute it under a CC licence. (Thus it's out of bounds for the first "should somebody" above.) If somebody wants to give us submissions under some other copyleft (which is the second "should somebody" above), then we can add buttons.
If this can be made to work from a technical standpoint it sounds like a great solution to me. Default option is to transfer rights to the Wikimedia foundation and a checkbox if it is GNU FDL-only. But this just came into my head, what about the times that someone copies (GNU-only) text from the WP main site but does not flag it as such. Is there any way to automate finding this (I think this was previously discussed).
BTW, Anyone find the good link to the GNU FGL compatibility with other creative licenses yet ?
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Karl Wick wrote in part:
Default option is to transfer rights to the Wikimedia foundation and a checkbox if it is GNU FDL-only.
I do think that we should prefer radio buttons. We don't want somebody to forget to use the checkbox. (And making the box start out checked can be confusing.) With radio buttons, if they select neither option (all rights to us, GNU FDL, CC BY-SA or whatever we might add later), then an error message with big shouting red text can come up. That avoids mistakes.
But this just came into my head, what about the times that someone copies (GNU-only) text from the WP main site but does not flag it as such.
This is just like copying proprietary material to WP and not flagging it as such (which flagging you can't do -- so it's just like copying proprietary material to WP, period). This is a copyright infringement and should be treated as such -- although instead of deleting to fix it, we can flag.
BTW, Anyone find the good link to the GNU FGL compatibility with other creative licenses yet ?
Nope! Did it ever exist?
-- Toby
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