--- On Fri, 3/20/09, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 8:07 PM
2009/3/20 geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>om>:
Your suggestion that wikipedia:copyrights has any
baring on what
people have agreed to have done with their work
simply
doesn't hold
water.
Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and
link-back
credit aren't irreconcilable after all. Now we're
apparently moving on
to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when
determining
what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a
lot of time
on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked
to from
every page has relevance when determining the terms of
use/re-use. But
even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL
doesn't
support rigorous author attribution:
<snip>
Unfortunately I haven't been able to follow all this closely so forgive me if I am
bringing up something already settled.
My biggest problem:
I can understand why using the site TOS in this way is seen as a desirable way to go.
After all it would not require any of the technical work that producing a list of
significant authors would. But I think it does have big drawback. It would hamper the
importation of similarly licensed material written under dissimilar conditions of use into
Wikimedia projects by non-authors. Having this ability was one of the highlights that
made the pain of the license transition process worthwhile for me. And if we do succeed
in seeing free content gain in mainstream usage, this will be and even bigger problem in
the future and lead to confusion over the CC brand. Labeling ourselves CC-by-SA but not
being able accept much of the material that is published under CC-by-SA unless it is
directly contributed by the original author(s) is a problem in my eyes.
Another annoyance:
There really isn't anything being said on how this will apply to projects like Commons
and Wikisource that already have a large variety of works under different licenses. How
exactly will the TOS be changed on those projects? We need to develop the tech side of
having some sort of meta license/attribution information available for those projects
anyway. Already the poster and book printing extensions cannot be legally used every work
within those projects without such development work. So choosing an uncommon attribution
model for the license will not save us that development cost forever.
Possible compromise solution:
This requires an editable tab called Attribution. We pick a date for license migration
and on that date these tabs are generated containing only a permalink to the history of
the article at that date. From this time on when editing Wikipedia there is a new field
below the edit summary asking editors to check a box if they have made a copyrightable
edit and to enter the way they would like to be attributed into the field (or also the way
the externally written CC-by-SA material requires attribution). Also there is the
possibility of setting up an attribution name in preferences where you simply check a box
that the edit is copyrightable and name is auto-filled. When saving this information is
added to the Attribution tab automatically. Admins can edit the Attribution tab manually
to add people from the old history who request it, fix mistakes entered in the field, or
remove someone spamming the field with obviously non-copyrighted changes, etc. We
recommend to reusers that they attribute the material with text that auto-generates from
the info in the Attribution tab and includes a permalink to the current version of the
article. In the terms of use we specify that if you do not opt-in for a specific
attribution by checking the box we are requiring you accept CC-by-SA with attribution by
url as Erik describes. We continue to hold the position that a link alone is and has
always been reasonable attribution as Erik's arguments describe. But from the license
migration forward, we are offering greater flexibility in attribution options in order to
be to be more compatible with free content developed externally.
Birgitte SB