On Dec 2, 2007 4:52 AM, Javier Candeira javier@candeira.com wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I do not believe there is any point to having a copyleft license for media which isn't strong. Does anyone here disagree?
I do, my photos are by-sa but newspaper using them for illustration doesn't have to be (that's my intention when licensing, at least them), as long as the photos themselves are labeled with the proper attribution and licensing.
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 19:59 -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 4:52 AM, Javier Candeira javier@candeira.com wrote:
I do, my photos are by-sa but newspaper using them for illustration doesn't have to be (that's my intention when licensing, at least them), as long as the photos themselves are labeled with the proper attribution and licensing.
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
You're missing the part when Javier (or at least someone else in this discussion) also want the reuser to explicitly specify that the illustration is available for their customers / audience to reuse with attribution (and similar specification).
KTC
On Dec 2, 2007 11:07 PM, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 19:59 -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 4:52 AM, Javier Candeira javier@candeira.com wrote:
I do, my photos are by-sa but newspaper using them for illustration doesn't have to be (that's my intention when licensing, at least them), as long as the photos themselves are labeled with the proper attribution and licensing.
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
You're missing the part when Javier (or at least someone else in this discussion) also want the reuser to explicitly specify that the illustration is available for their customers / audience to reuse with attribution (and similar specification).
If Javier wrote that I must be thread split, since I have no such message from him. He did, however, respond to my message while I was writing this, I've included my reply below.
I'll assume for a moment that he did... What would the significance of that be? Someone might want, for example a license which was 'NC-SA' for 5 years then turned just 'SA'. Someone else might want a 'No use by the military'. For any possible license variation we can imagine a person who might want those terms. The pre-existing standard system of law allows them to do that. They don't need CC's help.
For CC to be effective it needs to make copyright simpler for both producers and consumers (and everything in between because the world is no longer so black and white). To achieve that there needs to be a reasonable number of straightforward options, no more, no less. Since the options need to be limited then it makes sense that they should cluster around the most individually needed and socially advantageous options.
It seems to me that some people who do not care if non-free works are made out of their works are using CC-By-SA rather than CC-By because they have some concern that their exact work will end up out of the free-content world, and they expect CC-By-SA to prevent that. This seems to me like enough of a corner case that CC-By could be augmented to resolve it (by the license depending on a copy of the unmodified cc-by work being available at no cost), rather than imposing the extra restrictiveness of copyleft (of any type) where it really is not desired.
Javier wrote:
Because I want to allow for modifications: paint on my photos and modify them to make posters or desktop backgroun ds, make an animation or a slideshow of them, improve my panoramas of which I post the "source" (a .xcf gimp file)... and in those cases I would like the copyleft rule apply.
If someone takes your CC-By-SA work, and crops it to desktop aspect.. do you really gain much by the result being CC-By-SA? Couldn't you simply perform the same change with almost as much ease as copying? What if they printed it out and you only received the print version; wouldn't it be easier and better to simply make the same changes rather than scanning their low resolution print?
When you start talking about making slideshows and animations, to me it starts sounding a lot like a case that people do not expect a weak copyleft to cover. In a classic 'weak copyleft', only changes to your images themselves would be encumbered. A slideshow which was merely created with your images may not be covered. If it was, then why wouldn't associated educational text which explained your images be covered? Is there something magic about displaying things one-after-the-other that is different from displaying things side by side? :)
In any case you could always use the more restrictive license and distribute an additional permission to allow the extra uses which you wish to allow. But it's better for the world if you use the most standardized licensing possible.
How big of an impact has this aspect of license behavior had for you?
For clarification...
Wikinews is CC-BY-2.5 for good reason - we want reused, and we want credit given to the project. It is a small project and any recognition we can get helps build our reputation. That means permitting commercial use with appropriate attribution. Google news refuses to list us, so it is small aggregator sites that copy our stories and add some Google adverts that are listing our material; plus, of all things, a couple of blogs.
As I say, there are a number of small news aggregator sites who sometimes pick up our stories and credit them back correctly, anyone who has not has, when contacted, put correct attribution or ceased copying us.
I made a minor adjustment to the actual copyright footer on the Wikinews site some time ago due to Commons having different licensing on images, and certain not 100% free images being allowed under the EDP.
The text now reads, "All text created after September 25, 2005 is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. Copyright terms on images may vary, please check individual image pages prior to duplication." I added the detail on images.
One offshoot from this is that we now credit virtually every image as best we can. Right down to PD stuff from NASA. It dovetails with our policy to source stuff, and even were Commoners releasing stuff as PD I'm sure they'd appreciate the small thanks that being credited for their work is.
We're being practical about copyright, the volume of emails and such on this list doesn't exactly indicate that all parties on foundation-l are being reasonable. Mike Godwin has pointed out that the FSF has proposed making changes to make GFDL and CC-BY-SA compatable (or interoperable?), likely based on issues WMF has raised, but it is the FSF's proposal that will be worked from. This organisation produced the current GFDL that some are so enamoured of; why lose trust in the FSF because they've been talking to Jimmy Wales and Mike Godwin?
Brian McNeil -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gregory Maxwell Sent: 03 December 2007 06:39 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List; cc-licenses@lists.ibiblio.org; javier@candeira.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [cc-licenses] [Commons-l] Requirements for astrong copyleft license
On Dec 2, 2007 11:07 PM, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 19:59 -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 4:52 AM, Javier Candeira javier@candeira.com wrote:
I do, my photos are by-sa but newspaper using them for illustration
doesn't
have to be (that's my intention when licensing, at least them), as
long as
the photos themselves are labeled with the proper attribution and
licensing.
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
You're missing the part when Javier (or at least someone else in this discussion) also want the reuser to explicitly specify that the illustration is available for their customers / audience to reuse with attribution (and similar specification).
If Javier wrote that I must be thread split, since I have no such message from him. He did, however, respond to my message while I was writing this, I've included my reply below.
I'll assume for a moment that he did... What would the significance of that be? Someone might want, for example a license which was 'NC-SA' for 5 years then turned just 'SA'. Someone else might want a 'No use by the military'. For any possible license variation we can imagine a person who might want those terms. The pre-existing standard system of law allows them to do that. They don't need CC's help.
For CC to be effective it needs to make copyright simpler for both producers and consumers (and everything in between because the world is no longer so black and white). To achieve that there needs to be a reasonable number of straightforward options, no more, no less. Since the options need to be limited then it makes sense that they should cluster around the most individually needed and socially advantageous options.
It seems to me that some people who do not care if non-free works are made out of their works are using CC-By-SA rather than CC-By because they have some concern that their exact work will end up out of the free-content world, and they expect CC-By-SA to prevent that. This seems to me like enough of a corner case that CC-By could be augmented to resolve it (by the license depending on a copy of the unmodified cc-by work being available at no cost), rather than imposing the extra restrictiveness of copyleft (of any type) where it really is not desired.
Javier wrote:
Because I want to allow for modifications: paint on my photos and modify them to make posters or desktop backgroun ds, make an animation or a slideshow of them, improve my panoramas of which I post the "source" (a
.xcf
gimp file)... and in those cases I would like the copyleft rule apply.
If someone takes your CC-By-SA work, and crops it to desktop aspect.. do you really gain much by the result being CC-By-SA? Couldn't you simply perform the same change with almost as much ease as copying? What if they printed it out and you only received the print version; wouldn't it be easier and better to simply make the same changes rather than scanning their low resolution print?
When you start talking about making slideshows and animations, to me it starts sounding a lot like a case that people do not expect a weak copyleft to cover. In a classic 'weak copyleft', only changes to your images themselves would be encumbered. A slideshow which was merely created with your images may not be covered. If it was, then why wouldn't associated educational text which explained your images be covered? Is there something magic about displaying things one-after-the-other that is different from displaying things side by side? :)
In any case you could always use the more restrictive license and distribute an additional permission to allow the extra uses which you wish to allow. But it's better for the world if you use the most standardized licensing possible.
How big of an impact has this aspect of license behavior had for you?
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On 03/12/2007, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
You're missing the part when Javier (or at least someone else in this discussion) also want the reuser to explicitly specify that the illustration is available for their customers / audience to reuse with attribution (and similar specification).
Stupid question - don't we resolve this simply by a matter of how we stipulate attribution to be given?
"By Joe Smith, licensed under Creative-Commons Whatever"
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 4:52 AM, Javier Candeira javier@candeira.com wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I do not believe there is any point to having a copyleft license for media which isn't strong. Does anyone here disagree?
I do, my photos are by-sa but newspaper using them for illustration doesn't have to be (that's my intention when licensing, at least them), as long as the photos themselves are labeled with the proper attribution and licensing.
Greetings. Why not use the cc-by license instead? It has the same attribution behavior as cc-by-sa.
For many of us, we want to use cc-by-sa because we want the copyleft provision, while at the same time, we do not intend to "overreach" by claiming an expansive vision of "derivative work".
If you take my cc-by-sa image and modify it, I insist that your modified version be made available under cc-by-sa. If you merely use my image *near* something else, then I do not insist that your entire work be made available under cc-by-sa, because I do not believe that your newspaper article is a "derivative work" of my photograph.
(There can be edge cases, of course, but they are a bit difficult to construct.)
A desire for "strong copyleft" should not lead us into overly expansive claims of copyright on interactions that do not actually constitute the making of a derivative work.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
(There can be edge cases, of course, but they are a bit difficult to construct.)
They're not that difficult to construct, though. One example that Gregory pointed out is an illustrated textbook or how-to manual. A loose interpretation whereby a copyleft image can be used in a non-copyleft work would allow a textbook publisher to lift all the illustrations from this free-content textbook for their own proprietary textbook without having to release anything back.
Of course in that case, the tie-in between the text and the illustrations might be sufficiently tight that a court would rule it a derivative work anyway, regardless of what the Creative Commons organization says about the matter. In my view it makes a big difference how closely integrated the text and images are---a newspaper article about John Doe that just happens to have an image of John Doe accompanying it is quite different from an illustrated instruction manual.
-Mark
On Dec 3, 2007 11:53 AM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote: [snip]
If you take my cc-by-sa image and modify it, I insist that your modified version be made available under cc-by-sa. If you merely use my image *near* something else, then I do not insist that your entire work be made available under cc-by-sa, because I do not believe that your newspaper article is a "derivative work" of my photograph. (There can be edge cases, of course, but they are a bit difficult to construct.) A desire for "strong copyleft" should not lead us into overly expansive claims of copyright on interactions that do not actually constitute the making of a derivative work.
Jimmy, intentionally or not you're addressing a strawman. No one *here* has advocated that any copyleft license would only permit you to use a covered work if everything 'near' it is freely licensed, as such it's not helpful to refute that position.
The reason that we in the world of free content group should tolerate its imposition at all is because when used correctly copyleft has a substantial pay-off. Copyleft can create that little bit of friction needed to move people into the realm of freely licensing their own works.
For example, a programmer is making a command line app and he wants command history and line editing ... if he freely licenses his work he can use GNU READLINE, saving himself about 30,000 lines of tricky programming. If he doesn't freely license his work, he can write his own or find some other alternative, perhaps one that costs a bit of money.
Likewise, consider a teacher writing a supplemental guide for a class. The teacher needs illustrations for the guide. They (or their institution) could pay a fee to use an image library, they could create their own images, or hire a photographer, or perhaps they could choose to freely license their work and gain access to copyleft illustrations which they can use to build their guide.
In either of these cases, programming or educational materials, the majority of the copyrighted works created are never intended to be sold as a product. Freely licensing them is harmless. But because of the weak possibility of future income from these works, and simply because of the power of the default people usually do not choose to freely release these works. Copyleft can create the needed incentive, and at the same time allow everyone feel like they are getting a fair deal.
It's true that many copyleft licenses have additional characteristics. For example, they might help ensure that the original unmodified work doesn't somehow fall out of the free world. But these effects can be achieved without copyleft.
The exact functionality needed to make copyleft work the best differs from work to work. People use software applications in different ways from scientific illustrations or poetry.
It's been my position, and that of at least several others here, that in the case of illustrations that copyleft somehow bound to the image borders doesn't accomplish much -- because the normal way the people build new works out of images is through synchronization, not internal modification. Our experience on Wikimedia Commons is that, even for images taken from outside sources like flickr, we seldom make modifications to images themselves... and that the modifications which do get made are generally trivial (cropping, rotation, perhaps color correction).
A copyleft that doesn't substantially encourage people to make more freely licensed works is just another copyright related imposition, it's harmful and without public or even private benefit and should be avoided.
[quoting the part I removed from the top]
For many of us, we want to use cc-by-sa because we want the copyleft provision, while at the same time, we do not intend to "overreach" by claiming an expansive vision of "derivative work".
I have no doubt that there are many people and companies who will profit greatly from the effective removal or substantial reduction of the copyleft status of many works in wikis currently under the GFDL. However, that isn't how the authors choose to license their works.
On 04/12/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The reason that we in the world of free content group should tolerate its imposition at all is because when used correctly copyleft has a substantial pay-off. Copyleft can create that little bit of friction needed to move people into the realm of freely licensing their own works.
[...]
In either of these cases, programming or educational materials, the majority of the copyrighted works created are never intended to be sold as a product. Freely licensing them is harmless. But because of the weak possibility of future income from these works, and simply because of the power of the default people usually do not choose to freely release these works. Copyleft can create the needed incentive, and at the same time allow everyone feel like they are getting a fair deal.
It's true that many copyleft licenses have additional characteristics. For example, they might help ensure that the original unmodified work doesn't somehow fall out of the free world. But these effects can be achieved without copyleft.
[...]
A copyleft that doesn't substantially encourage people to make more freely licensed works is just another copyright related imposition, it's harmful and without public or even private benefit and should be avoided.
I find Greg's arguments on this topic very persuasive (and concisely stated to boot). IMO the best course of action would be to NOT introduce any more licenses, strengthen CC-BY-SA to be "strong copyleft" in the manner he describes, and encourage people like Jimmy, me and others to offer additional freedoms on top of the license if they wish.
That way, CC-BY-SA is strong copyleft as default (and that's surely the best thing for the growth of the commons -- all of them), and people who want to extend "weak copyleft" still can. And we don't get confusion caused be an extra official (CC) license.
For the good of the commons we need the default to be strong copyleft, no?
cheers, Brianna
On Dec 4, 2007 12:04 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 3, 2007 11:53 AM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote: [snip]
If you take my cc-by-sa image and modify it, I insist that your modified version be made available under cc-by-sa. If you merely use my image *near* something else, then I do not insist that your entire work be made available under cc-by-sa, because I do not believe that your newspaper article is a "derivative work" of my photograph. (There can be edge cases, of course, but they are a bit difficult to construct.) A desire for "strong copyleft" should not lead us into overly expansive claims of copyright on interactions that do not actually constitute the making of a derivative work.
Jimmy, intentionally or not you're addressing a strawman. No one *here* has advocated that any copyleft license would only permit you to use a covered work if everything 'near' it is freely licensed, as such it's not helpful to refute that position.
FWIW, I've advocated that position, but there's no need to refute my extreme views. :)
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