geni writes:
(BTW, one benefit of the licensing proposal is that it will be easier for Wikipedia and Citizendium to cross-fertilize each other.)
Nope. The "to clarify that attribution via reference to page histories is acceptable if there are more than five authors." bit will mean that it is imposable for wikipedia to take content from Citizendium without Citizendium adopting some very strange TOS specifically for the benefit of wikipedia which I would rather doubt it would do. Even that would not make it possible to copy content on Citizendium to wikipedia at the moment were the 5 names +URL proposal to be enacted.
I don't regard the 5 names+URL implementation proposal to be written in stone. We might choose to modify it (by, e.g., increasing the number of names, or allowing editors who insist on being listed to be listed) based on feedback here and elsewhere. But the aspect of the license update has always been to maximize the extent to which Wikipedia can import and export CC-BY-SA-licensed content. Citizendium uses a CC-BY-SA 3.0 (unported) license already. Presumably Citizendium wants both to import and export CC-BY-SA content. Any implementation by us that would require us to ask Citizendium for some kind of exemption -- which I agree would be unlikely -- is out of the question.
Note that I used the word "easier," which is a comparative, rather than "easy," which is an absolute.
--Mike
2009/1/22 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
allowing editors who insist on being listed to be listed
I think unless that is opt-out, not opt-in, it won't help and if it's opt-out if probably won't make things much easier.
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/22 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
allowing editors who insist on being listed to be listed
I think unless that is opt-out, not opt-in, it won't help and if it's opt-out if probably won't make things much easier.
Why?
If we assert a default "sense of the community" that the URL is reasonable, and allow individual authors to override that (and consequently annoy readers and redistributors in the future) how does that negatively affect any author's rights or property?
2009/1/23 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/22 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
allowing editors who insist on being listed to be listed
I think unless that is opt-out, not opt-in, it won't help and if it's opt-out if probably won't make things much easier.
Why?
If we assert a default "sense of the community" that the URL is reasonable, and allow individual authors to override that (and consequently annoy readers and redistributors in the future) how does that negatively affect any author's rights or property?
Either it's reasonable, or it's not. If you feel the need to give people the option of opting out, then obviously you think it isn't reasonable. Also, why should people that have edited in the past and then moved on not get the same rights as current editors?
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/23 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/22 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
allowing editors who insist on being listed to be listed
I think unless that is opt-out, not opt-in, it won't help and if it's opt-out if probably won't make things much easier.
Why?
If we assert a default "sense of the community" that the URL is
reasonable,
and allow individual authors to override that (and consequently annoy readers and redistributors in the future) how does that negatively affect any author's rights or property?
Either it's reasonable, or it's not. If you feel the need to give people the option of opting out, then obviously you think it isn't reasonable. Also, why should people that have edited in the past and then moved on not get the same rights as current editors?
No, I think it is reasonable. If I were the License Czar we'd just do that and be done with it.
But this is a community, with some people with aggressively diverse opinions. Imposing from above without flexibility causes pain and suffering and hurt feelings and people leaving the project and firey poo-flinging monkeys on UFOs to descend from the heavens.
I think that overall, we have to do something like the proposed CC-BY-SA-3.0 details to balance author, reader, project, and content reuser interests, and I believe that that's ultimately not negotiable.
Optimizing the implementation of BY so that people who agree that GFDL -> CC is good but who disagree on the BY credit-by-web approach can still stay included, while still balancing reader and project and content reuser needs with author needs, is a good thing. A default to the reasonable approach, with exception allowed for objectors, works fine for that.
2009/1/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
If we assert a default "sense of the community" that the URL is reasonable, and allow individual authors to override that (and consequently annoy readers and redistributors in the future) how does that negatively affect any author's rights or property?
Either it's reasonable, or it's not. If you feel the need to give people the option of opting out, then obviously you think it isn't reasonable. Also, why should people that have edited in the past and then moved on not get the same rights as current editors?
Essentially, by doing this, you'd be saying: "We disagree with you, but we're not interested in engaging in a prolonged battle over perceived author rights in a massively collaborative work with you. So if you really have a beef with our attribution model, which is the result of many months of deliberation and consultation, you can use this setting to be attributed in a way for your past edits that's consistent with your perception and beliefs about what rights you have retained under the terms of use in the past. "
"However, we think that the notion that print-outs of massively collaborative works should carry author attribution over multiple pages, that spoken versions should contain many seconds of text-to-speech generated author lists, that indeed any re-user will have to worry about this problem, is completely counter to the principles of free culture. So, for your past edits, please click this button. We will always attribute you by name as long as we use your text, and we will probably remove your edits over time. For your future edits, we've made it abundantly clear that this isn't something we believe is required or needed. If you think it is, please contribute somewhere else."
It would be, IMO, a completely defensible way to deal with a situation where a minority is trying to impose standards on an entire community which are counter to its objectives. I'm not necessarily saying that this reflects the situation we have today: I don't know how widespread the belief in the need for distribution of excessive author metadata is. I think it would be worth the effort to find out. It's my personal belief that such metadata requirements are harmful examples of non-free licensing terms, and I would be surprised to see many people defend excessive attribution as in the http://books.google.com/books?id=BaWKVqiUH-4C&pg=PT979#PPT959,M1 example (even if it's aesthetically well done and obviously pleasing to lots of German mothers).
The above solution would still result in the odd situation where the article on [[France]] would say: 'See (url) for a list of authors, including Foo and Bar'. But that is a problem that could be solved over time by removing those people's contributions. It seems to me that, essentially, some people have been operating under the assumption that they are contributing in a fashion that would make the resulting work effectively non-free in much the same way other onerous restrictions do. It's too bad that they've made that assumption, given how strongly and clearly we've always emphasized the principles of freedom.
I think it would be fully ethically and legally defensible to ignore this assumption as incorrect and unreasonable, but it would be nicer (and possibly less noisy) to accommodate these people as much as reasonably possible while explaining that the 'free' in 'free encyclopedia' is inconsistent with hassling re-users about the inclusion of kilobytes worth of largely meaningless author metadata. I'm not advocating one path over another at this point, though.
Flexible and vague clauses can work well when you're dealing with issues with few stakeholders who all have a shared and tacit understanding of what they want to accomplish. By definition, massive collaboration isn't such a situation: any one of hundreds or thousands of contributors to a document can behave unreasonably, interpreting rules to the detriment of others. The distributed ownership of copyright to a single work is an example of what Michael Heller calls 'gridlock' or an 'anticommons'. Ironically, even with free content licenses, the gridlock effects of copyright can still come into play.
I believe it's our obligation to give our reusers protection from being hassled by people insisting on heavy attribution requirements, and to create consistency in reuse guidelines. Really, WMF and its chapters can hardly develop partnerships with content reusers if we can't give clarity on what's required of them. A great deal of free information reuse may not be happening because of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I would much rather remove all doubt that our content is free to be reused without onerous restrictions.
2009/1/23 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
E our attribution model, which is the result of many months of deliberation and consultation,
Evidences?
"However, we think that the notion that print-outs of massively collaborative works should carry author attribution over multiple pages, that spoken versions should contain many seconds of text-to-speech generated author lists, that indeed any re-user will have to worry about this problem, is completely counter to the principles of free culture.
{{fact}}
So, for your past edits, please click this button. We will always attribute you by name as long as we use your text, and we will probably remove your edits over time.
Questionable. For example the heavily edited [[Siege]] has text that is recognizably mine from 2004.
It would be, IMO, a completely defensible way to deal with a situation where a minority is trying to impose standards on an entire community which are counter to its objectives. I'm not necessarily saying that this reflects the situation we have today: I don't know how widespread the belief in the need for distribution of excessive author metadata is. I think it would be worth the effort to find out. It's my personal belief that such metadata requirements are harmful examples of non-free licensing terms, and I would be surprised to see many people defend excessive attribution as in the http://books.google.com/books?id=BaWKVqiUH-4C&pg=PT979#PPT959,M1 example (even if it's aesthetically well done and obviously pleasing to lots of German mothers).
Err your proposed solution wouldn't greatly change the situation there since it could require up to a quarter of a million credits and about 50,000 urls. Since most wikipedia nics are rather shorter than URLs I find it questionable that that would count as an improvement.
Hmm it has pics as well attaching urls to the pics instead of author nics actively makes things worse.
The above solution would still result in the odd situation where the article on [[France]] would say: 'See (url) for a list of authors, including Foo and Bar'. But that is a problem that could be solved over time by removing those people's contributions. It seems to me that, essentially, some people have been operating under the assumption that they are contributing in a fashion that would make the resulting work effectively non-free in much the same way other onerous restrictions do. It's too bad that they've made that assumption, given how strongly and clearly we've always emphasized the principles of freedom.
The phrase "Reasonable to the medium or means" in the CC license pretty much makes what you suggest impossible using credits. If you want to do that copyright notices are a far better attack line.
Flexible and vague clauses can work well when you're dealing with issues with few stakeholders who all have a shared and tacit understanding of what they want to accomplish. By definition, massive collaboration isn't such a situation: any one of hundreds or thousands of contributors to a document can behave unreasonably, interpreting rules to the detriment of others. The distributed ownership of copyright to a single work is an example of what Michael Heller calls 'gridlock' or an 'anticommons'. Ironically, even with free content licenses, the gridlock effects of copyright can still come into play.
If you think CC licenses don't have large flexible and vague areas you haven't read them or have a poor understanding of international IP law.
I believe it's our obligation to give our reusers protection from being hassled by people insisting on heavy attribution requirements, and to create consistency in reuse guidelines.
Those two directly contradict.
Really, WMF and its chapters can hardly develop partnerships with content reusers if we can't give clarity on what's required of them.
You cannot give clarity for them whatever you do. You are not a government. The cost however of your attempt would be that wikipedia is unable to be a reuser.
A great deal of free information reuse may not be happening because of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
"may". So speculation.
I would much rather remove all doubt that our content is free to be reused without onerous restrictions.
You might want to but there is no way you can actually do it. There is very little caselaw when it comes to free licenses (heh we can't even show that CC licenses are something that can be meaningfully agreed to in say France).
2009/1/22 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Err your proposed solution wouldn't greatly change the situation there since it could require up to a quarter of a million credits and about 50,000 urls. Since most wikipedia nics are rather shorter than URLs I find it questionable that that would count as an improvement.
A single URL could point to a list of all contributors for all articles. I agree that under the proposed principles of attribution, a lot of individual names would still have to be included, though probably far fewer than right now. (They could actually be more visibly included as 'credit: foo, bar' under the articles, which IMO underscores that the proposed regime, where direct credit is given, encourages it to be more visible and significant.) One of the interesting things about the German book is that it's a collection of many thousands of tiny article summaries, which still triggers the worst of any attribution regime that requires direct name attribution.
I do agree with you, Mike and others who have pointed out that we want to retain flexibility in application. I'm not arguing for absolutely rigid attribution requirements, and to the extent that the current proposal suggests that, it should be revised. I am, however, arguing for articulating principles and demonstrating them through guidelines and examples, so that there's no ambiguity about our general understanding of what we mean with reasonable applications.
2009/1/23 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A single URL could point to a list of all contributors for all articles.
Not under your proposal "attribution via reference to page histories is acceptable if there are more than five authors."
I do agree with you, Mike and others who have pointed out that we want to retain flexibility in application. I'm not arguing for absolutely rigid attribution requirements, and to the extent that the current proposal suggests that, it should be revised. I am, however, arguing for articulating principles and demonstrating them through guidelines and examples, so that there's no ambiguity about our general understanding of what we mean with reasonable applications.
What we mean? Err we didn't write the license or the laws that it operates under. What we mean isn't relevant.
By way of top-posting a brief preamble, let me apologize if someone thinks it tacky to reply to a week old posting, but I personally needed to reflect a bit before my precise position has clarified on some issues, which I do want to address.
Erik Moeller wrote:
Flexible and vague clauses can work well when you're dealing with issues with few stakeholders who all have a shared and tacit understanding of what they want to accomplish. By definition, massive collaboration isn't such a situation: any one of hundreds or thousands of contributors to a document can behave unreasonably, interpreting rules to the detriment of others. The distributed ownership of copyright to a single work is an example of what Michael Heller calls 'gridlock' or an 'anticommons'. Ironically, even with free content licenses, the gridlock effects of copyright can still come into play.
I think the problem I have with this is the view that wikipedia is merely a massive collaboration. It certainly is that too, but we certainly have not shied away from also importing works from already published sources, while their licensing has been compatible. If it is your intention to indicate a radical shift that would forever prevent this practice, and require that all content be composed on-site, it would be useful if you came right out and said so, so we could all address this issue head on.
But there is a real problem of saying that those who have created such material under a compatible license, have also implicitly agreed with site terms of use.
I believe it's our obligation to give our reusers protection from being hassled by people insisting on heavy attribution requirements, and to create consistency in reuse guidelines. Really, WMF and its chapters can hardly develop partnerships with content reusers if we can't give clarity on what's required of them. A great deal of free information reuse may not be happening because of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I would much rather remove all doubt that our content is free to be reused without onerous restrictions.
Well, I think it would be really bad if WMF and its chapters willfully mislead their partners on what was legally required to allow reuse in the maximum of jurisdictions that are compatible with the base licensing, never mind what site terms of use say.
It is a simple inescapable fact that international laws on Intellectual Property are complex, and it is because of this that the Creative Commons accommodate multiple jurisdictions interoperability as far as possible. If it were the case that WMF in the interest of claiming to "clarify" issues, when they in fact will cloud the real complexity by expressing a false simplicity, where none obtains; well, in my personal opinion, that would not be all that useful.
Terms of use can require things beyond the licensing, I suppose, such as waiving rights, in jurisdictions where that can be done (I believe in Canada you can waive moral rights for instance), or contractually agree to not pursue some rights, even though they theoretically are still yours, but that still leaves jurisdictions where moral rights are inalienable, and the conundrum of content not created under site terms of use, but merely imported under a license which would be compatible with the license our content would be under, but not under any reasonable understanding of the terms of use further requirements to rescind some rights that are not impinged upon by the license itself.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org