Gregory Maxwell wrote:

There is no conspiracy theory needed. You ask "would the foundation do this", but we need to first be clear on what 'this' means. If 'this' means treating our authors in any way which is unethical today, I stand firmly that the answer is clearly no. In the future, I can not answer because my crystal ball is not that powerful. If 'this' means to work to cause changes to be made to future versions of the licenses which temporarily increase the foundations ease at the expense at removing the protection of the authors from unethical actions in the future, I must answer a resounding yes because it is demonstrably true.

Absolutely. A solid foundation for protecting individual rights is preferable to a quick fix for the benefit of the impatent. A big part of ethics can be the consciousness of the effects and implications of one's actions. We cannot forsee all the effects of our actions, but we do have a duty to consider the most likely.

The Wikimedia foundation has been quietly advocating to the Creative Commons and the Free Software foundations alterations to further versions of the appropriate licenses which will allow the operators of websites such as Wikipedia the authority to permit redistribution of content submitted to their website with attribution to the site rather than the author of the content. In effect, the *single* remaining tangible return an author of freely licensed content receives (their authorship credit) will be removed and granted to the priesthood of intellectual property barons who have apparently earned the right to take credit for the blood and sweat of a world of people because of their great feat of operating a website.

The phrasing is a little dramatic. ;-) . Nevertheless it does point to issues around moral rights which, as I see it, go beyond copyrights. In the strict sense copyright is an economic right, and judicial systems are often established with economic rights in mind. Attempting to attach a monetary value to a moral right makes for a difficult transition.

For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to include the changes into the root license with no mention in the layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and would probably too much attention to this difficult issue. Although this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one... For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki User:Jamesday.

Having a "layman version" of a law or license only eacerbates the difficulties of having a law for the rich and a law for the poor. The layman can go on believing that his simplified version is the law until someone with greater access can trump him with some obscure clause from the full version. The only way that a simplified version can work is if any conflict the detailed cannot override the layman's version, but if that is the case then what's the point of having a detailed version. This is roughly akin to those politicians who proclaim that they want a simplification of tax forms without understanding that what is needed is a simplification of the underlying tax laws.

The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being submitted to a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'. In some cases a compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors simple because they operate a website which is used by that community. But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship credit in the world of paper.

I believe that if that website operator is going to defend the community then that defence also extends into the courts.to defend the collective rights of that community. It should be viewed as a duty. But that duty does not imply that it is the "sole" official voice. The individual authors should still reserve the right to mount their own defence, and the community needs to safeguard the evidence that will allow them to mount that defence.

Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the lowest cost possible. This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug. Licenses will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.

Retroactive changes open up yet another hornets' nest. This section is interesting:

Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version
number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered
version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you
have the option of following the terms and conditions either of
that specified version or of any later version that has been
published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the
Document does not specify a version number of this License, you
may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free
Software Foundation.

This seems to protect people from being bound by any changes which may be made to the license subsequent to their edits. Without conscious compliance to the new version the option to be bound by the old version would remain.

Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it leaves me feeling unsure and angry.

Sure! But the arguments that will convince the most people will be those rooted in convenience.

I fear that we, the community of authors and spokesmen who support the propagation of knowledge freely to the world, have become so impatient with the slowness of achieving our goals that we have begun to take steps to extinguish the protective flame of decentralization which immunizes our work from the privatization, exploitation, and commercial imprisonment by greedy self interests, simply because the resulting legal obligations of that decentralized existence have become a temporary hindrance to our important goals.

I'm encouraged by hearing someone else understand that. I have no problem with undermining the entire copyright system as it is known because it undermines the greedheads. There are no shortcuts to that goal; shortcuts could even destroy the mission.

Such a move to promote the notion that the operator of a telecommunication service (isn't that what the foundation claims to be when it invokes the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA as a reassurance that our negligent handling of copyright matters will go unpunished) is granted a special position of unique control over the creative works by the users of that service will not only be supported by the operators of Wiki's who are currently so inconvenienced, but it will also be strongly supported by the newly re-merged telecommunications giants so eager to exercise their believed right to extract maximum profit from every bit transferred across their glass.

In other words we can't have it both ways. But there is more to this than mere negligence that can be repaired when it is brought to our attention. This is why I have always maintained that the real problem will not be with rights that Wikipedia has violated, but with the rights of Wikipedians that have been violated by others.

The words "theft" and "steal" constantly create confusion when applied to information, it is unfortunate that we use them. You are quite correct that no one can take away what we already have, but it is quite possible that through changes in license that powerful interests will be able to claim special rights over the works of others because of their ownership of telecommunications infrastructure at least that is the notion embodied by the proposed license changes. So that while you will be free to use the content you helped create, another group, by virtue of their operation of a telecommunications service, will be far more free. You can not claim that you are free so long as there is another group which has more freedom with the work you created.

The introduction of terms like "theft" and "piracy" has diverted attention away from what IIRC is the Jeffersonian principle in intellectual property that if you still have the item that is purportedly stolen it hasn't been stolen.

Welcome to the new serfdom.

Today we love and trust our telecommunications service providing masters, but what changes does the future bring?

All surfers are equal, but some are more equal than others. :-)

Ec

PS: I don't know why this thread is on the Wikitech list, so I've copied this response to the Foundation list, which really seems more appropriate.

Ec