en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the GFDL. Although he has been careful to pad his words with the expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to disregard our licensing.
When the issue of User:Pioneer12's non-article edits came up ... I didn't care too much because the issue was the licensing of his work, not mine. In this case UninvitedCompany is making an effort to circumvent the licensing on my work that I have chosen, by attempting to relicense that work against my wishes. I consider this to be profoundly anti-social.
Although uninvitedcompany has been more than polite in my discussion with him on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UninvitedCompany (more polite than I for sure), he refuses to stop attempting to relicense my work via the text on his user page.
I understand that UninvitedCompany dislikes the GFDL and that he is not alone in that position. I, however disagree with his position on the GFDL and his idea of what other people think of the GFDL. For example, the position of debian legal is not as strongly negative as he implies, because the license is setup to only have teeth against distribution so the 'encrypted storage' issue is generally a strawman argument. I specifically prefer the GFDL over the CC-BY-SA because the DRM restriction would make life hard for someone distributing my content using a device which involuntarily locks the content with DRM (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/10/everything_you_ever_wanted/). The GFDL's strong DRM terms contain an intentional side effect that may help slow the market penetration of devices which subjugate the users of the technology, and I strongly support this protection because it is certan that since I use Free Software I would be unable to access content given to me by users of CPRM devices no matter their good intentions, and because only through creating 'licensed publishers' can the mass-media companies completely close the hole that allows the illegal distribution of their work. Such a future would likely deny me the effective ability to publish altogether, as long as you define effective to mean not providing a special playing device with my work and publish as covering a wider audience than some free software geeks.
... but the arguments for and against the GFDL really don't matter here: My work is licensed under the GFDL and only the GFDL. It is almost certainly not possible for User:UninvitedCompany or anyone else to change that, but it is terribly impolite for him to use space on Wikipedia (userpager or otherwise) to make such claims that disagree with our license text and the wishes of (at least) some of the editors. The argument UninvitedCompany is advocating would allow any editor to distribute wikipedia under any license he wishes no matter how more or less restrictive. Judging by the small number of people who dual license their work as PD or BSD, I suspect many would disagree.
So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited company to revise his user page. I don't think his claim has any more merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him rather than just his own.
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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the GFDL. Although he has been careful to pad his words with the expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to disregard our licensing.
<snip>
So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited company to revise his user page. I don't think his claim has any more merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him rather than just his own.
While your insistence on the GFDL is admirable, I (and IANAL) feel that the user page of UninvitedCompany does not present the same problems as that of User:Pioneer-12, because UnivitedCompany is *not* saying that they are refusing to license under the GFDL.
As I see it (and again, IANAL), the statement on [[User:UninvitedCompany]] (as of 04:25, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)), says:
1. I have contributed to Wikipedia 2. Wikipedia is NOT a collection, but a single work (which, IMHO, is contrary to consensus) 3. Wikipedia is a single work with joint authorship (again, contrary to consensus) 4. Since Wikipedia is a single work, any author can license it however they want, the rest of Wikipedia be damned (which is against the GFDL) 5. I hereby multi-license my contributions under CC-BY-SA 1.0 and 2.0 6. IANAL so anything in 1-4 must be taken with a very large grain of salt, and people should check before the distribute material 7. This is a statement of intent, not a contract.
The problems I see are in the status of Wikipedia as being a single work rather than a collection of works; and the right of a single user (namely UnivitedCompany) to change the license of the entire Wikipedia by simply saying that they want their contributions to be under the Creative Commons licenses.
Now if I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multi-licensing correctly (and again, IANAL), All Wikipedia articles are licensed under the GFDL, and only the portions written by authors who have multi-licensed under CC/BSD/whatever are licensed under those alternative licenses. So (and again, IANAL): your contributions cannot be licensed under anything except the GFDL unless you choose to do so, and even then, *they are still under the GFDL*.
- -- Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis
I posted this on Uninvited Company's talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UninvitedCompany
As for my opinion on your licensing thing, I don't think your assumptions are accurate. People speak of the Wikipedia as 'an encyclopaedia', but really it is just a collection of millions of pieces of text interspersed with Mediawiki markup. The work is not indivisible, because all the separate contributions can be identified (that's what the history pages are there for). By using [[Special:Contributions]] you can identify each of the millions of edits, which are essentially individual works released under GFDL. The articles are derivative works, created by the Mediawiki software, derived from the initial edit. Indeed, the whole website is a collection of derivative works (which are themselves GFDL licensed). And whatever your opinion of the GFDL, you really have no option but to release your contributions under it. Indeed anyone who makes an edit implicitly accepts the Wikipedia licensing system. One can choose to multi-license, but any combination of licenses must include the GFDL (with the exception of public domain).
Putting that aside, you can redistribute any derivative work (or a verbatim copy) you create from original works under the GFDL, as long as you distribute it under the GFDL also. That means you can't license the whole Wikipedia under, for example, a CC license. You can license your own contributions separately.
Finally IANAL, but IAALS, albeit one in Australia and not familiar with United States law. --~~~~
On 6/20/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the GFDL. Although he has been careful to pad his words with the expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to disregard our licensing.
<snip>
So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited company to revise his user page. I don't think his claim has any more merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him rather than just his own.
While your insistence on the GFDL is admirable, I (and IANAL) feel that the user page of UninvitedCompany does not present the same problems as that of User:Pioneer-12, because UnivitedCompany is *not* saying that they are refusing to license under the GFDL.
As I see it (and again, IANAL), the statement on [[User:UninvitedCompany]] (as of 04:25, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)), says:
- I have contributed to Wikipedia
- Wikipedia is NOT a collection, but a single work (which, IMHO, is
contrary to consensus) 3. Wikipedia is a single work with joint authorship (again, contrary to consensus) 4. Since Wikipedia is a single work, any author can license it however they want, the rest of Wikipedia be damned (which is against the GFDL) 5. I hereby multi-license my contributions under CC-BY-SA 1.0 and 2.0 6. IANAL so anything in 1-4 must be taken with a very large grain of salt, and people should check before the distribute material 7. This is a statement of intent, not a contract.
The problems I see are in the status of Wikipedia as being a single work rather than a collection of works; and the right of a single user (namely UnivitedCompany) to change the license of the entire Wikipedia by simply saying that they want their contributions to be under the Creative Commons licenses.
Now if I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multi-licensing correctly (and again, IANAL), All Wikipedia articles are licensed under the GFDL, and only the portions written by authors who have multi-licensed under CC/BSD/whatever are licensed under those alternative licenses. So (and again, IANAL): your contributions cannot be licensed under anything except the GFDL unless you choose to do so, and even then, *they are still under the GFDL*.
Alphax OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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