On 5/2/06, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
The Wikimedia Foundation maintains archives of its own mailing lists, for example this one. Is that free contents? Should I be allowed to modify and distribute the record of what you said?
Is it? No. Could it be? Sure.
I think you're making a fallacious appeal to emotion when you say "Should I be allowed to modify the record of what you said?"
So, let's get something straight: When you talk about 'modifying the record of what I said', you're not talking about anything related to copyright infringement, you're talking about fraud.
No I don't want you to modify the 'record of what I said' because that would be deceptive. Do I care if you take my words and spread them widely? No. Do I care if you alter them and make it clear that they don't necessarily reflect my views, then spread them widely? No.
People don't communicate in public forums what they wish to keep secret. Yes they sometimes desire limitations, but those are grounded in ethics, in respect, and in honesty. Copyright is too blunt a tool to try to achieve those things.
Suppose Google's big Usenet archive or the site Gmane.org had to close down, and the Wikimedia Foundation could take over the contents. That's where I think a CC-ND license could make sense.
Can you explain what you are talking about? The usenet posts are copyrighted by their posters. Their works are not licensed under CC-ND. Do you suggest that we contact all prior usenet posters, both living and dead, and ask them to replease their works under CC-ND?
Recently I've been looking into MusicBrainz.org, where the core database of CD albums, tracks, and artists is released into the public domain ("the product"), but data relating to the user community ("the factory") is released under a Creative Commons license that only allows non-commercial (NC) use.
Musicbrainz isn't a group commit ed to free content, that their output is free is as much of a response to the massive abuse of the public that the CDDB folks committed so many years ago as it is anything else.
What would be interesting here is not a mention that they license a certain way, but *why* they license a certain way.
This makes me wonder if Wikipedia user and talk pages really need to be released under exactly the same license as the main article namespace. I don't remember that this was analyzed. User pages were just introduced (in 2002) without talks of licensing. And I don't think anybody discussed the licensing for the mailing list archives, which are indeed very close to user page discussions.
When we to start permitting userpages to contain non-free content, I think that it would be clear at that point that the project had forgotten it's goals. Wikimedia websites are not myspace.
If you don't want to distribute your userpage as free content you are using it for something for which it is not intended.
I'm not sure if it was analyzed at the time, but it's certainly been analyzed since then.
This also reminds me of Erik Möller's Kuro5hin posting "Creative Commons -NC Licenses Considered Harmful", http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655 where some of the reader comments made me realize that there can be cases where NC makes sense, and other cases where it is harmful. Maybe the same goes for ND.
Are we trying to force every foot into the same shoe here?
Name a licensing scheme and there is some situation that someone can come up with that makes sense... I don't think that anyone is claiming otherwise.
A great many licensing schemes, including ND and NC, are not what any sane person who has considered the issue would consider free licenses.
Wikimedia is dedicate to free content. There are many other organizations out there which are dedicated to no-cost content. Those other organizations will likely find NC and ND licenses quite attactive, while Wikimedia finds them generally unacceptable. This isn't trying to force every foot into the same shoe, it's just a result of having a purpose.
Freedom has tremendous advantages, it also has significant costs. There is a place in the world for free content. This is what wikimedia is for, and this is why you get so much objections when you wish to introduce things which look and smell somewhat free but are not.