On Dec 1, 2007 2:52 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 10:00 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://blog.jamendo.com/index.php/2007/12/01/breaking-news-wikipedia-switche...
I've emailed the comcom and Jimbo asking for the first-hand details.
This is interesting. I, for one, have explicitly rejected the creative commons cc-by-sa licensing terms.
I'm splitting this out to a new thread because I think it's important and can be discussed now, regardless of the exact path that's taken.
What problem do you have with CC-BY-SA? Personally, I like the basic concept (do what you want as long as you attribute others, derivatives must be under the same license), but I'm not familiar with the nitty-gritty details. There were some complaints in particular with the newer versions of CC-BY-SA, which I don't recall, but which possibly could be addressed before the compatibility is put into place.
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
A lot of problems i've heard expressed about this were actually about other CC licenses, not CC-BY-SA. I've heard complaints about CC-BY, or CC-Sample+, or other CC licenses. CC-BY-SA is similar enough in spirit to the GFDL that free-content ideologues shouldn't have much of a problem with conversion between one or the other. At least, i certainly hope there wouldnt be too many problems.
--Andrew Whitworth
On Dec 1, 2007 3:17 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
A lot of problems i've heard expressed about this were actually about other CC licenses, not CC-BY-SA. I've heard complaints about CC-BY, or CC-Sample+, or other CC licenses. CC-BY-SA is similar enough in spirit to the GFDL that free-content ideologues shouldn't have much of a problem with conversion between one or the other. At least, i certainly hope there wouldnt be too many problems.
I don't agree that cc-by-sa is actually "similar enough", certainly not when you include the statements by Creative Commons on the meaning of share alike for visual illustrations.
But that neither here nor there:
If there was actually an intention to keep the licenses "similar enough in spirit" then the issues of compatibility could simply be resolved by making the licenses compatible. (and likewise, other non-optimal aspects of the GFDL could be resolved if its your position that they are already resolved in another 'similar enough' license).
You might be interested in an old essay of mine on the subject of licensecompatibility:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/An_alternative_model_for_lic...
I don't agree that cc-by-sa is actually "similar enough", certainly not when you include the statements by Creative Commons on the meaning of share alike for visual illustrations.
I feel that the text of the license is far more important then any one particular interpretation of that license. Even interpretations by CC themselves. There are a few aspects that are, from an ideological point of view the most important here:
1) Work is free to use by other people 2) Derivatives can be made, and those derivatives must be available under a free license 3) Authors and contributors receive proper attribution for their work.
Also, the WMF has said that other things are important too:
4) Commercial use must be allowed
If CC-BY-SA covers these important points, that should be what matters most. On these points, I would say that the two licenses are definitely compatible. Of course, there are many other details that are not the same between them.
--Andrew Whitworth
On 01/12/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
I remember a very interesting comment made by someone who'd spent a lot of time contacting musicians, I think, to ask them about CC-licensing their work. One of the reasons they were getting rejected was the perception that this was another external group trying to impose its name on their work, another little label or badge to put on their product, and basically treating it as though their work would help to promote the license not the other way around.
"We're releasing our own work because we dislike brands. Why should we make our work carry *your* brand?"
This rang a lot of bells - I'd heard this sort of disquiet before, the way that CC is a snappy little logo and a lot of impassioned evangelism turning people off.
Maybe not entirely *rational*, but there are a good few out there who dislike CC as a name rather than the details of any specific license.
On Dec 1, 2007 3:03 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
What problem do you have with CC-BY-SA?
My reasons for deciding not to use the CC-By-Sa licenses are fairly long and complicated. I don't have the time right now to really dive into it as I'm rather busy. For the purpose of the Foundation's announcement it was enough to say that I have explicitly rejected those terms.
Your question is interesting and deserves a response. So I will provide some quick examples now, but by no means is this my complete position on the reasons I have decided to not use those licenses for my work.
1) Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
I use a copyleft license for my content because copyleft licenses create an incentive to release works under a free license. I see this both as the 'payment' for my works and a way of ensuring that my contribution stays free and isn't captured for the sole profit of another party. With my works copylefted someone creating a new work could choose to purchase commercial stock photography, or they could choose to freely license their work and build off mine.
When someone is really unwilling or unable to freely license their derivative I am willing to license my rates under typical commercial stock photography rates. This provides me with, well, lets just say that I make enough doing this that I report it to the IRS.
Some people are happy with using very liberal licenses (e.g. releasing their work as 'public domain') for all their work and I support their decision, but I've seen first hand how the small friction of copyleft increases the pool of content that is freely available for all, and I wouldn't want to lose that for my illustrations. (For my own works of trivial merit, I 'PD' them because I don't expect any copyleft gains)
Mr. Lessig's position on "share alike" and illustrations isn't well supported by the text of the license, but his position naturally carries a lot of weight.
2) The Creative Commons licenses come with misleading front cover text. If I released my work under these licenses I would be at constant risk of suffering disputes resulting from reusers misunderstanding their rights and obligations. We've experienced the reverse of that numerous times at Wikimedia when people using CC-By-* expect to be able to exactly stipulate how attribution is provided.
3) Speaking of 'attribution', the Creative Commons cc-by and by-sa licenses at version 2.5 and beyond contain a serious issue with their attribution. The attribution clauses in these licenses reads, in part,
"If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must (...) provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (...), and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties" (...) (through) terms of service or by other reasonable means"
So these by-attribution licenses don't actually provide attribution if a service provider specifies so in their terms of service. Jamesday (en User:Jamesday), a Wikimedian old-schooler, wrote a lot about this back when these terms came out.
Obviously the issue of attribution for collective works in a space limited medium is important, but it can be addressed without giving service providers the ability to take attribution for all freely licensed content distributed through their systems.
The exact implications of that text aren't entirely clear: If the clause only takes effect at the first point of submission it breaks the right to fork, and fails to resolve the collective attribution problem (i.e. you end up with "This article contains material by Wikia(tm), WikiHow(tm), Wikipedia(tm), GregPedia, Planet Math ..."). Or, alternatively, if any down stream service provider can invoke it .. it allows anyone who could claim to be a service provider to remove attribution at any time... which many consider to be morally offensive, and which present practical problems for people trying to keep works free.
Years ago when these terms were first released I was seriously concerned with the implications of giving an author's service provider a special rights in free content licenses. In these days of real concern over net-neutrality my worries on these matter are even greater.
And from here, we could go into the issues with the Creative Commons branding, which many people feel is exploitative, and which Creates Confusion with respect to the licenses. ... which is a matter of great concern to anyone who thinks Free Content should be more than CC-NC-ND.... but I've run out of time.
Thanks for enduring my verbosity, Greg.
Personally, I like the basic concept (do what you want as long as you attribute others, derivatives must be under the same license), but I'm not familiar with the nitty-gritty details. There were some complaints in particular with the newer versions of CC-BY-SA, which I don't recall, but which possibly could be addressed before the compatibility is put into place.
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Dec 1, 2007 9:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
And this has exactly been our interpretation of the GFDL -- this is why we permit combining GFDL works with media under any license whatsoever (limited only by policy), because we regard the media and the text to be "separate and independent" as per the GFDL.
I believe what is needed is a new, strong copyleft license for "embedded media", which is unambiguously explicit about the consequences of embedding a photo into an article, or a sound clip into a video. I've already talked about this with Larry and other CC folks, and would be happy to see you join these conversations.
- The Creative Commons licenses come with misleading front cover
text.
This is easy to fix. Do you have a document that enumerates the changes you'd like to see made?
So these by-attribution licenses don't actually provide attribution if a service provider specifies so in their terms of service.
As far as I can tell it's pretty clear: The copyright holder determines whether or not they want to designate someone else for the purpose of attribution -- and a participatory website like a wiki can _require_ such designation. Wikinews actually does: On the edit screen, it states that you agree that your edits will be attributed "to Wikinews".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Creative Commons added this option specifically to _help_ wiki communities in making attribution more manageable. They originally wanted to create a CC-WIKI license for this purpose, but instead modified their existing licenses to be more flexible.
It seems to me that CC has a history of addressing stakeholder needs. If we were to adopt one of their licenses, we would instantly become one of the most significant, if not the most significant, stakeholders -- and I do believe our concerns would be taken very seriously, as I think they already are.
I really hope that your response to this decision will not be antagonism but engagement and feedback. There's basically, as far as I can see, two likely outcomes:
- The Wikimedia community will support an immediate switch to CC-BY-SA, and the critics of the license will dig themselves into a position of extreme antagonism, asking their contributions to be removed, etc. - The Wikimedia community will work together in trying to help Creative Commons to improve CC-BY-SA, and then make the switch.
I would prefer the second scenario over the first; I do think you have legitimate concerns that we should try to work on. Please help us to make that possible.
On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
As far as I can tell it's pretty clear: The copyright holder determines whether or not they want to designate someone else for the purpose of attribution -- and a participatory website like a wiki can _require_ such designation. Wikinews actually does: On the edit screen, it states that you agree that your edits will be attributed "to Wikinews".
Interestingly, this suggests we can't practically incorporate BY-SA material first published elsewhere into Wikinews without the consent of the author(s)...
Interestingly, this suggests we can't practically incorporate BY-SA material first published elsewhere into Wikinews without the consent of the author(s)...
That would be the case anyway, I think. Wikinews is CC-BY, not CC-BY-SA. you can't re-use SA material into a document that is expressly licensed as not requiring SA. you would need per-document additions to the license, which are not practical.
--Andrew Whitworth
On 01/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
Interestingly, this suggests we can't practically incorporate BY-SA material first published elsewhere into Wikinews without the consent of the author(s)...
That would be the case anyway, I think. Wikinews is CC-BY, not CC-BY-SA. you can't re-use SA material into a document that is expressly licensed as not requiring SA. you would need per-document additions to the license, which are not practical.
Oh, sorry, my apologies - I keep getting the WN license wrong, for some reason! But I think the point still presumably stands - "It would suggest we can't practically incorporate CC-BY material, &c..." - because we can't give the attribution as originally specified.
On 01/12/2007, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 01/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
Interestingly, this suggests we can't practically incorporate BY-SA material first published elsewhere into Wikinews without the consent of the author(s)...
That would be the case anyway, I think. Wikinews is CC-BY, not CC-BY-SA. you can't re-use SA material into a document that is expressly licensed as not requiring SA. you would need per-document additions to the license, which are not practical.
Oh, sorry, my apologies - I keep getting the WN license wrong, for some reason! But I think the point still presumably stands - "It would suggest we can't practically incorporate CC-BY material, &c..." - because we can't give the attribution as originally specified.
You make an interesting point... I'm not familiar with the way Wikinews does things, but it sounds like there could be a problem.
On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
It seems to me that CC has a history of addressing stakeholder needs. If we were to adopt one of their licenses, we would instantly become one of the most significant, if not the most significant, stakeholders -- and I do believe our concerns would be taken very seriously, as I think they already are.
Yep. CC 3.01 was rephrased from CC 3.0 entirely due to our concerns re: Commons. Several CC people (including Joi Ito) are active on commons-l.
I really hope that your response to this decision will not be antagonism but engagement and feedback. There's basically, as far as I can see, two likely outcomes:
- The Wikimedia community will support an immediate switch to
CC-BY-SA, and the critics of the license will dig themselves into a position of extreme antagonism, asking their contributions to be removed, etc.
- The Wikimedia community will work together in trying to help
Creative Commons to improve CC-BY-SA, and then make the switch. I would prefer the second scenario over the first; I do think you have legitimate concerns that we should try to work on. Please help us to make that possible.
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
- d.
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Anybody who values this "feature" for use with WMF projects probably doesn't understand what exactly we are all trying to do here.
--Andrew Whitworth
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs do so for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak and of little impact.
-Robert A. Rohde
On 12/2/07, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image.
Yes, I agree. But I do not believe this to be unambiguously true for either the GFDL or CC-BY-SA.
On Dec 1, 2007 6:43 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs do so for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak and of little impact.
I could not have said this better myself. Exactly. Because of the way still illustrations are typically used and reused, a copyleft license which does not extent to all derivatives in fairly broad sense (i.e. a derivative is a work which contains the covered work) might as well not be copyleft at all.
And since the cc-by attribution clause is soft (allowing service providers to take attribution), I'd argue that if you're going to do cc-by you might as well do 'PD'. Basic kindness and respect still demands attribution for PD works, and since most people can't afford to go to court every day it is basic kindness and respect that is getting them attribution under cc-by in most cases anyways.
On 02/12/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
And since the cc-by attribution clause is soft (allowing service providers to take attribution), I'd argue that if you're going to do cc-by you might as well do 'PD'. Basic kindness and respect still demands attribution for PD works, and since most people can't afford to go to court every day it is basic kindness and respect that is getting them attribution under cc-by in most cases anyways.
Same applies to reuse of CC-by-sa and GFDL stuff in practice, I think. (Not that that means we shouldn't try to get it Right.)
- d.
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs do so for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak and of little impact.
-Robert A. Rohde
Is not the liberal use of Wikicommons to host images (which can be embedded in dozen of text pages afterwards) a bit inconsistant with this concern anyway ?
Ant
On Dec 2, 2007 12:59 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs do
so
for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak
and of
little impact.
-Robert A. Rohde
Is not the liberal use of Wikicommons to host images (which can be embedded in dozen of text pages afterwards) a bit inconsistant with this concern anyway ?
Yes, it is inconsistent, but that reflects a problem with Commons. There is nothing wrong with creating a free image repository, but using that repository to mix copyleft licensing is potentially problematic since these versions of "free" are arguably incompatible.
Wikipedia doesn't allow the inclusion of CC-SA text, but does allow CC-SA images under a theory that images and text can be understood as "seperate and independent" elements of a collection rather than part of single, unified article. Frankly, I think doing so relies on a strange interpretation of the plain language of the licenses. To put it bluntly, I think mixing CC-SA images in GFDL Wikipedia articles is already a copyright violation.
However, as far as I know, no copyright holder has ever complained about this mixing, and in the absence of a real ruling of law there is enough ambiguity that one can at least argue the issue. At a philosophical level, most people willing to license CC-BY-SA probably won't mind image use in Wikipedia, but we really ought to ensure compatibility in law and not just compatibility in spirit.
I assume that addressing the dubious compatibility between the two major avenues of copyleft is a central goal associated with the recent Foundation Resolution and the efforts underlying it.
-Robert A. Rohde
Hoi, Wikipedia allows for the inclusion of text of material licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version. This means that there is no restriction to GFDL Version 1.2. Anyone who says anything different has always erroniously contributed to Wikipedia. From some people I can believe it to be an error however, I do not believe for a moment that Gregory Maxwell among others has not been always been aware of this. When the GFDL is amended by the FSF in such a way that it becomes possible to re-license to the CC-by-sa, it is very much what the FSF intends for the GFDL. Given that officials of the FSF have been clear in the past that the GFDL was never intended for content like Wikipedia I do not appreciate / understand the crocodile tears that are being shed.
As the GFDL is more restrictive then the CC-by, it is possible to include CC-by material in an GFDL work and have the whole be available under the GFDL. In the mean time the CC-by material is still available under the original license from where it became originally available. This can be Commons. It is *not *a copyright violation as it is at best can be considered a licensing violation. Given that the GFDL is more restrictive, it can be easily argued that the reason why material was provided is still very much applicable.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 2, 2007 11:13 AM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 2, 2007 12:59 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work
as
GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL
a
pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image.
Anything
less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs
do
so
for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of
making
derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only
derivative
images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak
and of
little impact.
-Robert A. Rohde
Is not the liberal use of Wikicommons to host images (which can be embedded in dozen of text pages afterwards) a bit inconsistant with this concern anyway ?
Yes, it is inconsistent, but that reflects a problem with Commons. There is nothing wrong with creating a free image repository, but using that repository to mix copyleft licensing is potentially problematic since these versions of "free" are arguably incompatible.
Wikipedia doesn't allow the inclusion of CC-SA text, but does allow CC-SA images under a theory that images and text can be understood as "seperate and independent" elements of a collection rather than part of single, unified article. Frankly, I think doing so relies on a strange interpretation of the plain language of the licenses. To put it bluntly, I think mixing CC-SA images in GFDL Wikipedia articles is already a copyright violation.
However, as far as I know, no copyright holder has ever complained about this mixing, and in the absence of a real ruling of law there is enough ambiguity that one can at least argue the issue. At a philosophical level, most people willing to license CC-BY-SA probably won't mind image use in Wikipedia, but we really ought to ensure compatibility in law and not just compatibility in spirit.
I assume that addressing the dubious compatibility between the two major avenues of copyleft is a central goal associated with the recent Foundation Resolution and the efforts underlying it.
-Robert A. Rohde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Dec 2, 2007 6:35 AM, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Wikipedia allows for the inclusion of text of material licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version.
"or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation" CC-BY-SA fails that second half.
Can the FSF transfer that guardianship of the license text to someone else? I don't know. They certainly *shouldn't*.
Furthermore, this is only the case for the text. Taking a quick look, Gregory's images (for instance) seem to be licensed under GFDL 1.2. Period.
<quote who="Robert Rohde" date="Sat, Dec 01, 2007 at 03:43:14PM -0800">
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs do so for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak and of little impact.
My understanding, having talked to several lawyers about this issue, is that this "difference" hangs on interpretation of case law about what constitutes a derivative work. The answer to the question is incredibly ambiguous and jurisdiction specific.
It is, in fact, a matter of extra-license legal definitions and not of license or what CC/FSF/SFLC thinks. The FSF and CC each have positions on this that, in various jurisdictions, are each contradicted by existing case-law. Neither license says anything in the text of the license and neither plans to.
If the author of a work under BY-SA subscribes to the more expansive definition of derivative work and litigates in a jurisdiction that is friendly to it, they'll probably have luck. If they use the GFDL and are in a jurisdiction that has precedent saying otherwise, they won't.
There is, as I have come to understand, no difference between the licenses in this regard that would prevent compatibility.
Regards, Mako
On Sun, 2 Dec 2007, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
<quote who="Robert Rohde" date="Sat, Dec 01, 2007 at 03:43:14PM -0800"> > On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote: > >> On 12/2/07, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the >>> problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier >>> to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is >>> considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license >>> work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that >>> makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they >>> like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that >>> reason. >> >> Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-) >> >> Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers. > > In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions > unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. > Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use > photographs do so for the purposes of illustration rather than for the > purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that > apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, > are intrinsically weak and of little impact.
My understanding, having talked to several lawyers about this issue, is that this "difference" hangs on interpretation of case law about what constitutes a derivative work. The answer to the question is incredibly ambiguous and jurisdiction specific.
It is, in fact, a matter of extra-license legal definitions and not of license or what CC/FSF/SFLC thinks. The FSF and CC each have positions on this that, in various jurisdictions, are each contradicted by existing case-law. Neither license says anything in the text of the license and neither plans to.
If the author of a work under BY-SA subscribes to the more expansive definition of derivative work and litigates in a jurisdiction that is friendly to it, they'll probably have luck. If they use the GFDL and are in a jurisdiction that has precedent saying otherwise, they won't.
There is, as I have come to understand, no difference between the licenses in this regard that would prevent compatibility.
That is most interesting.
However, to the point above, one could still make a license for photographers which expressly states that one can reuse a photograph only if the surrounding text and other media (defined separately from 'derivative work') are available under a similar license.
The license [call it SA-X] under which the photograph itself is licensed would change. the copyleft clause would be passed on through derivatives and bundling (or however you name combining text with an image), and could specify a set of licenses that could be used for surrounding media.
This need not pass on the 'bundling' clause to the surrounding works. could be compatible with both by-sa and gfdl, whose notion of further compatibility is related to derivatives.
SJ
<quote who="SJ Klein" date="Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 02:22:41PM -0500">
My understanding, having talked to several lawyers about this issue, is that this "difference" hangs on interpretation of case law about what constitutes a derivative work. The answer to the question is incredibly ambiguous and jurisdiction specific.
It is, in fact, a matter of extra-license legal definitions and not of license or what CC/FSF/SFLC thinks. The FSF and CC each have positions on this that, in various jurisdictions, are each contradicted by existing case-law. Neither license says anything in the text of the license and neither plans to.
If the author of a work under BY-SA subscribes to the more expansive definition of derivative work and litigates in a jurisdiction that is friendly to it, they'll probably have luck. If they use the GFDL and are in a jurisdiction that has precedent saying otherwise, they won't.
There is, as I have come to understand, no difference between the licenses in this regard that would prevent compatibility.
That is most interesting.
However, to the point above, one could still make a license for photographers which expressly states that one can reuse a photograph only if the surrounding text and other media (defined separately from 'derivative work') are available under a similar license.
The license [call it SA-X] under which the photograph itself is licensed would change. the copyleft clause would be passed on through derivatives and bundling (or however you name combining text with an image), and could specify a set of licenses that could be used for surrounding media.
This need not pass on the 'bundling' clause to the surrounding works. could be compatible with both by-sa and gfdl, whose notion of further compatibility is related to derivatives.
Until I've thought about this more and talked to some lawyers, I won't speculate on how this might work or what legal barriers to making this work might exist. That said, I'm excited by the possibility.
I was not trying to imply that such a strong copyleft license was impossible, only that in the current situation the GFDL and CC BY-SA are effectively identical in their (in)effectiveness in this regard.
Regards, Mako
On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
The closest you could get would GSFDL with stronger preservation of copyright notices term (preservation of watermarks). For professional photographers Copyleft will never make much sense since there is not much in the way of post purchase support services to sell.
On 01/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Ah, yes, the GFDL as "CC-BY-SA online and no-one dares use it offline"...
I certainly understand that appeal :-)
On 01/12/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/12/2007, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Ah, yes, the GFDL as "CC-BY-SA online and no-one dares use it offline"... I certainly understand that appeal :-)
It's worse than that - I suspect that's been advocated as a feature to more than a few photographers to get them to put stuff onto Commons for our use. I don't *think* I've used it that way myself, but I'm currently wracking my brain trying to think of anyone who I might have. These people *will* feel ripped off.
- d.
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I don't *think* I've used it that way myself, but I'm currently wracking my brain trying to think of anyone who I might have. These people *will* feel ripped off.
We could, for a transitional phase, allow photographers to change license templates on media they hold the copyright to from an (arguably or not) permissive copyleft license, to an explicitly strong copyleft license. This would not invalidate the old templates, but at least ensure that people finding the files on our site would be asked to respect the strong copyleft provision.
After the transitional phase, strong copyleft would just be a choice for new uploads.
This all presumes the existence of a strong copyleft license in the first place. :-)
On Dec 1, 2007 7:12 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We could, for a transitional phase, allow photographers to change license templates on media they hold the copyright to from an (arguably or not) permissive copyleft license, to an explicitly strong copyleft license.
[snip]
The GFDL covered works are already under a strong copyleft license, the GFDL.
Obviously Wikimedia itself has no legal standing to change the licensing for works for which is it merely a licensee.
I am not aware of any other widely used strong copyleft license for still illustrations. Revising the GFDL in this regard may result in there being no strong copyleft license for content.
People interested in making a work only available for use in free works will either be left trying to claim their work is available only under FDL-1.2, but the confusion created by the change will likely leave them in a position of having to constantly fight with reusers who think GFDL != CC-by-sa, or they could instead choose to use CC's nearest approximation for this purpose: CC-By-NC-SA.
Since the NC licenses are CC's most popular by far it seems likely that people would choose to go that route.
[snip]
And this has exactly been our interpretation of the GFDL -- this is
This may have been *your* interpretation of the GFDL, but Wikimedia has not taken a position on this and Wikimedia board members have specifically told people in the past that their FDL licensed images could not be used in non-free works without an additional license grant.
Then again, board members have previously static that Wikimedia could not change the licensing of works written by others but Wikimedia is now claiming pubcally to do exactly that.
There are certainly many cases where it is clearly untrue.
On 02/12/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
This may have been *your* interpretation of the GFDL, but Wikimedia has not taken a position on this and Wikimedia board members have specifically told people in the past that their FDL licensed images could not be used in non-free works without an additional license grant.
Note by the way that I actually emailed the FSF asking about this and they said "reply hazy, try again later" - er, "read the license text, ask your lawyer if it's that important, we're not going to even try to summarise this one." Hence words to that effect in Commons:Reuse.
- d.
<quote who="Erik Moeller" date="Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 01:12:09AM +0100">
We could, for a transitional phase, allow photographers to change license templates on media they hold the copyright to from an (arguably or not) permissive copyleft license, to an explicitly strong copyleft license. This would not invalidate the old templates, but at least ensure that people finding the files on our site would be asked to respect the strong copyleft provision.
After the transitional phase, strong copyleft would just be a choice for new uploads.
This all presumes the existence of a strong copyleft license in the first place. :-)
This sounds like something WMF should pursue with CC now, while the foundation has leverage.
Regards, Mako
On Dec 1, 2007 6:27 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
I don't know of anyone who doesn't want their photographs being used in freely licensed work. The contention on this point is that the creative commons cc-by-sa, per the position pushed by the creative commons allows people to make non-free works out of cc-by-sa images. There are people, myself included, that think this defeats the purpose of free licensing in this context.
If you don't a work of your creation being made a part of a non-free work you should probably go ahead and release as many copyright related restrictions as possible.
On 12/2/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know of anyone who doesn't want their photographs being used in freely licensed work. The contention on this point is that the creative commons cc-by-sa, per the position pushed by the creative commons
Gregory, please drop this position, it's pointless and unconstructive. Here is what CC-BY-SA 3.0 says:
"Collection" means a collection of literary or artistic works, such as encyclopedias and anthologies, or performances, phonograms or broadcasts, or other works or subject matter other than works listed in Section 1(f) below, which, by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents, constitute intellectual creations, in which the Work is included in its entirety in unmodified form along with one or more other contributions, each constituting separate and independent works in themselves, which together are assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a Collection will not be considered an Adaptation (as defined below) for the purposes of this License.
Here's what the GFDL says:
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
- - - -
The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous; it is not clear whether a photograph in an article is "separate and independent" from the article text. Again, a license that establishes clarity on this is needed; it doesn't help us to argue that the GFDL _is_ clear on this (it isn't, and our practice contradicts your interpretation), and it doesn't help us to attack Creative Commons because their interpretation of similar language is different from the FSF's.
On 02/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous; it is not clear whether a photograph in an article is "separate and independent" from the article text. Again, a license that establishes clarity on this is needed; it doesn't help us to argue that the GFDL _is_ clear on this (it isn't, and our practice contradicts your interpretation), and it doesn't help us to attack Creative Commons because their interpretation of similar language is different from the FSF's.
The problem is that that is the interpretation of the people who have the power to change the license. Thus there interpretation can also be read as their intention and if they turn out to be wrong in their interpretation they can change the license in order to follow their intention.
On Dec 1, 2007 7:34 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous; it is not clear whether a photograph in an article is "separate and independent" from the article text. Again, a license that establishes clarity on this is needed; it doesn't help us to argue that the GFDL _is_ clear on this (it isn't, and our practice contradicts your interpretation), and it doesn't help us to attack Creative Commons because their interpretation of similar language is different from the FSF's.
The problem is that that is the interpretation of the people who have the power to change the license.
What if that power is removed? What if a clause is put in the GFDL that the work can only be relicensed under a version approved by the FSF (and "or later" is taken out of that version)?
On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 09:26 -0500, Anthony wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 7:34 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous; it is not clear whether a photograph in an article is "separate and independent" from the article text. Again, a license that establishes clarity on this is needed; it doesn't help us to argue that the GFDL _is_ clear on this (it isn't, and our practice contradicts your interpretation), and it doesn't help us to attack Creative Commons because their interpretation of similar language is different from the FSF's.
The problem is that that is the interpretation of the people who have the power to change the license.
What if that power is removed? What if a clause is put in the GFDL that the work can only be relicensed under a version approved by the FSF (and "or later" is taken out of that version)?
The comment was that the interpretation that's differing to the text is by people from within their respective organisation. What you're saying is no different to what is the case anyway. i.e. "or later" already mean a later version approved by FSF for GFDL, or CC for the CC's licenses.
On Dec 1, 2007 7:31 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Gregory, please drop this position, it's pointless and unconstructive. Here is what CC-BY-SA 3.0 says:
Erik, I have no disagreement with the *text* of the license on this matter. My comment on this point was very clearly focused on the steward organizations and their practices and intentions.
The CC-By-SA text, which you quoted incompletely, is fairly unambiguous: it even goes out of its way to point out that you are subject to the copyleft when you combine covered sound or video to create a new work
What is problematic is that the Creative Commons has advised people with advice that is at odds with the license.
You could say that only the license matters. But that simply isn't true: not everyone has the time, willingness, or the resources to litigate every confused situation that Creative Commons creates. And certainly the intention matters because subsequent license versions can be made reflect that intention.
Here's what the GFDL says: The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous;
[snip]
In fact, I've previously that the CC-by-SA is even less ambiguous, and the GFDL could use revision so that the meaning is more clear to lay readers. However, Neither license is excessively legally ambiguous.
The important distinction is that while Creative Commons has appeased certain reusers by claiming that SA doesn't extend an effective copyleft to images, in contrast to the historically established and widely understood meaning of the license, the FSF responded to Creative Common's erroneous claims that the GFDL was intended to function in the same way with a statement that affirmed the copyleft nature of the GFDL (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2007-05-08-fdl-scope).
<quote who="Gregory Maxwell" date="Sat, Dec 01, 2007 at 08:44:01PM -0500">
Erik, I have no disagreement with the *text* of the license on this matter. My comment on this point was very clearly focused on the steward organizations and their practices and intentions.
Having talked to several lawyers on this matter, I'm not particularly convinced that the license writing organization's intentions or practices in this regard have any real power to change what a derivative work is or is not.
The CC-By-SA text, which you quoted incompletely, is fairly unambiguous: it even goes out of its way to point out that you are subject to the copyleft when you combine covered sound or video to create a new work
What is problematic is that the Creative Commons has advised people with advice that is at odds with the license.
Perhaps we could ask CC to back off this position and to a do better job of explaining the ambiguous legal situation, and multiple interpretations, that the current state of the law in this matter provides.
Would CC doing so address your concerns?
This write also fails, in my opinion, to explain the real legal uncertainty and variability around this issue.
Regards, Mako
Erik Moeller wrote:
The clauses are highly similar in nature. And they are ambiguous; it is not clear whether a photograph in an article is "separate and independent" from the article text. Again, a license that establishes clarity on this is needed; it doesn't help us to argue that the GFDL _is_ clear on this (it isn't, and our practice contradicts your interpretation), and it doesn't help us to attack Creative Commons because their interpretation of similar language is different from the FSF's.
The interpretation publicly given by the license's author would probably have some weight in court, though. So isn't entirely irrelevant in practice, despite the textual similarity of the licenses. Mainly, the fact that Creative Commons gives a weaker "official" interpretation of their license than the FSF does of theirs would tend to make it harder to enforce cc-by-sa as a strong-copyleft license in court. It might also turn out not to be possible to enforce the GFDL in that manner, but at least you aren't hampered from the get-go by the license author coming in against you and saying, "no, that's not what our license says at all!".
-Mark
On Dec 1, 2007 7:22 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 6:27 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
I don't know of anyone who doesn't want their photographs being used in freely licensed work. The contention on this point is that the creative commons cc-by-sa, per the position pushed by the creative commons allows people to make non-free works out of cc-by-sa images. There are people, myself included, that think this defeats the purpose of free licensing in this context.
So would you be willing to license your images under the GFDL, and interpret that to mean that Wikipedia can still use them in its encyclopedia which is released under CC-BY-SA? If so, that seems like a reasonable compromise. Relicense the text under CC-BY-SA, but allow the authors to choose any free license for the images.
And then, when a stronger copyleft version of CC-BY-SA comes out (say CC-BY-STRONG), you could license your images under that as well as the GFDL. Personally I'd argue for "Preparation of derivative works is permitted provided that you cause any such work to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." Then it'd cover any derivative which can possibly be covered by copyright law. But it might be too US-centric.
My own license which I wrote goes as follows: "Copying, distribution, public performance, public display, digital audio transmission, and use of this work is permitted without restriction. Circumvention of any technological measure or measures which effectively control access to this work is permitted without restriction. Preparation of derivative works is permitted provided that you cause any such work to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." Very US-centric, though, and doesn't require attribution, which probably makes it unacceptable to most people.
On Dec 1, 2007 3:17 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 9:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
And this has exactly been our interpretation of the GFDL -- this is why we permit combining GFDL works with media under any license whatsoever (limited only by policy), because we regard the media and the text to be "separate and independent" as per the GFDL.
<snip>
In my opinion, this interpretation is inconsistent with the text of the GFDL. When the text of an article or other document relies upon a GFDL image to communicate part of its message to the reader, in my opinion, that text can not realisitcally be considered "seperate and independent" of the image. I do not believe embedding GFDL images in non-copyleft documents can be considered consistent with either the text or the spirit of the GFDL.
Personally, I take this issue quite seriously. For example, I reached an out-of-court settlement with a major publisher who took images I had included in Wikipedia under the GFDL and used them commercially without honoring the copyleft provisions.
-Robert A. Rohde
On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
- The Creative Commons licenses come with misleading front cover
text.
This is easy to fix. Do you have a document that enumerates the changes you'd like to see made?
Not really. You can never make a summery exactly equivalent to the legal text and are likely to make the legal text completely unreadable trying to do so.
On 01/12/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
- The Wikimedia community will support an immediate switch to
CC-BY-SA, and the critics of the license will dig themselves into a position of extreme antagonism, asking their contributions to be removed, etc.
- The Wikimedia community will work together in trying to help
Creative Commons to improve CC-BY-SA, and then make the switch.
I would prefer the second scenario over the first; I do think you have legitimate concerns that we should try to work on. Please help us to make that possible.
You are ignoring the other players. The FSF and art libre. If there were to be any changes to the CC-BY-SA we might have to talk to the EFF since we probably don't want them splitting their Open Audio License off again.
Until we see a full draft there is little community can do either way.
Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
As far as I can tell it's pretty clear: The copyright holder determines whether or not they want to designate someone else for the purpose of attribution -- and a participatory website like a wiki can _require_ such designation. Wikinews actually does: On the edit screen, it states that you agree that your edits will be attributed "to Wikinews".
If the designation can only be made by the *original author* of the work then this feature is useless for its stated purpose.
For example, say I upload some text to Wikipedia under attribution terms that allow attribution to FurryWiki. Someone else submits some content to Wikinews, someone else submits content to planetmath, etc. Eventually someone takes from all of these sources and combines them into a Wikipedia article.
Your attribution line now becomes a long list of COMPANIES (none of whom were the actual authors of any of the content) rather than a somewhat longer long list of PEOPLE. You haven't solved the problem.
You've also created a new problem: imagine if Wikipedia turns evil and screws over the FurryWiki(tm) users. The FurryWiki(tm) community and 'forks' (really, they all leave to another wiki run by someone else). The content they take from FurryWiki now must always bring attribution back to the site that screwed them over, which had little to nothing to do with the creation of the actual content (because the content authors all moved).
This is a lot like a webcaster's right and its existence removes the right to make an equitable fork.
I'm not so sure that this reading of the license text is the only reasonable one. Alternatively, you could argue that downstream reuploaders were the licensors of 'the work' when they submitted a derivative to a new site. Under this reading the above issues are gone, and they are replaced by a new issue: anyone could create a site and take away attribution at any time. Neither outcome is good.
I've proposed alternative terms in the past, basically allowing attribution for collective works (and only collective works) to be cited to any party (for example, Wikimedia's Wikipedia) who meets certain criteria, one of which would be that they provide the entire list of actual contributors. I.e. "For authorship information see XYZ".
More details on that proposed language over at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_suggestions#Attribution_requirements_for...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Creative Commons added this option specifically to _help_ wiki communities in making attribution more manageable. They originally wanted to create a CC-WIKI license for this purpose, but instead modified their existing licenses to be more flexible.
If you'll recall, back when this was added there was some dispute about this. I contacted Creative Commons and said that the CC-Wiki terms produced the problems above, and that they probably wouldn't be acceptable for Wikipedia, for example.
Creative Commons replied with something along the lines of "What do you mean? Wikipedia told us to create this" ... And I received this response after folks at Wikimedia had disavowed involvement.
I never was able to get straight answers about this exchange, and it resulted in my distrust of both you and Angela. Ultimately it looked to me like this was probably one of the earliest cases of someone negotiating with Wikia who believed they were talking to Wikimedia.
It seems to me that CC has a history of addressing stakeholder needs. If we were to adopt one of their licenses, we would instantly become one of the most significant, if not the most significant, stakeholders -- and I do believe our concerns would be taken very seriously, as I think they already are.
And my first hand experience is different. My experience is Creative Commons will perform actions for the benefit of private parties for the sake of promoting their brand name. You might call this 'addressing stakeholder needs' but I'm not sure I would.
While they've been responsive to PR-harming events, I have not found them to be at all responsive to carefully considered arguments in polite private conversation.
Most concerning to me is that Creative Commons doesn't appear to have an underlying philosophy driving their actions, at least not one beyond self-promotion. Yes, they are aggressive about making *changes* but that doesn't translate into making good changes which are in the public's interest. I'd describe it as a policy of appeasement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement), but that would imply that Creative Commons takes a position on the rightness or wrongness of any particular change to an extent which I do not believe they do.
It seems your position is that no one in a position to sway the public perception of the Creative Commons brand has to fear that they will find themselves in a disagreement with the Creative Commons. Thats exactly NOT the sort of organization which I believe should be in a position of stewardship over the content licenses.
Even if I don't define 'stakeholder' in a cynical way, their needs shouldn't be the primary concern. The public's interest should be.
Principled decision making can be difficult to navigate, because it can be impossible to find ideal solutions for everyone without abandoning those principles.
While avoiding the complexity caused by principled reasoning might be good for the parties that control groups like Wikimedia and Wikia, I don't think it is in the public's long term interest.
It's very likely that currently standing copyright will be perpetual and it would certainly be difficult to overstate the potential impacts of free licensing decisions made today. We're cheating our descendants if we carelessly put expedience in front of careful reasoning and principles.
On 12/2/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I've proposed alternative terms in the past, basically allowing attribution for collective works (and only collective works) to be cited to any party (for example, Wikimedia's Wikipedia) who meets certain criteria, one of which would be that they provide the entire list of actual contributors. I.e. "For authorship information see XYZ".
Yes, I agree that this approach is preferable, and would support it as an additional option in future CC-BY-SA revisions.
And my first hand experience is different. My experience is Creative Commons will perform actions for the benefit of private parties for the sake of promoting their brand name. You might call this 'addressing stakeholder needs' but I'm not sure I would.
I think you're misinterpreting a bunch of social interactions that may have happened. The world isn't divided into the enemies and supporters of the Truly Good Free Culture Movement. CC's proponents aren't faceless bureaucrats. Larry Lessig, Joi Ito, Jimmy Wales (who is on the CC Board) and others all have their own unique and internally consistent views of how to change the world for the better.
That doesn't mean these are your views, or mine. But recognizing them as valid interpretations of reality is the first step to extending the hand of friendship and working with others. I do believe that, in the vision of the people who run CC, responding to the people who are changing and challenging existing models of cultural production is key to doing their job well. That doesn't mean that they do not understand the reasoning of different communities, or the consequences of particular decisions.
To work with CC means to engage them in a productive dialogue about the future of culture, not to shun them as untrustworthy or unprincipled. Unfortunately, in conflicts like this one, people like yourself often respond by taking an extreme position which is untenable and, ultimately, unsuccessful. The result is that you will not convince others of your beliefs, that you will in fact alienate those who would listen to you, that the "pragmatic" faction will strive to quickly execute theirs, and that the resulting outcome is not the best one possible.
I want to invite you, Greg, to participate in creating the best possible outcome. That will _not_ be the one you _or_ I are currently thinking of. This is not about selling out your beliefs; it's about recognizing that the world out there is different from the world inside your head.
On 12/2/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting a bunch of social interactions that may have happened. The world isn't divided into the enemies and supporters of the Truly Good Free Culture Movement. CC's proponents aren't faceless bureaucrats. Larry Lessig, Joi Ito, Jimmy Wales (who is on the CC Board) and others all have their own unique and internally consistent views of how to change the world for the better.
That doesn't mean these are your views, or mine. But recognizing them as valid interpretations of reality is the first step to extending the hand of friendship and working with others. I do believe that, in the vision of the people who run CC, responding to the people who are changing and challenging existing models of cultural production is key to doing their job well. That doesn't mean that they do not understand the reasoning of different communities, or the consequences of particular decisions.
To work with CC means to engage them in a productive dialogue about the future of culture, not to shun them as untrustworthy or unprincipled. Unfortunately, in conflicts like this one, people like yourself often respond by taking an extreme position which is untenable and, ultimately, unsuccessful. The result is that you will not convince others of your beliefs, that you will in fact alienate those who would listen to you, that the "pragmatic" faction will strive to quickly execute theirs, and that the resulting outcome is not the best one possible.
I want to invite you, Greg, to participate in creating the best possible outcome. That will _not_ be the one you _or_ I are currently thinking of. This is not about selling out your beliefs; it's about recognizing that the world out there is different from the world inside your head.
Wonderful post, Erik; just wonderful.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
On 12/2/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting a bunch of social interactions that may have happened. The world isn't divided into the enemies and supporters of the Truly Good Free Culture Movement. CC's proponents aren't faceless bureaucrats. Larry Lessig, Joi Ito, Jimmy Wales (who is on the CC Board) and others all have their own unique and internally consistent views of how to change the world for the better.
That doesn't mean these are your views, or mine. But recognizing them as valid interpretations of reality is the first step to extending the hand of friendship and working with others. I do believe that, in the vision of the people who run CC, responding to the people who are changing and challenging existing models of cultural production is key to doing their job well. That doesn't mean that they do not understand the reasoning of different communities, or the consequences of particular decisions.
To work with CC means to engage them in a productive dialogue about the future of culture, not to shun them as untrustworthy or unprincipled. Unfortunately, in conflicts like this one, people like yourself often respond by taking an extreme position which is untenable and, ultimately, unsuccessful. The result is that you will not convince others of your beliefs, that you will in fact alienate those who would listen to you, that the "pragmatic" faction will strive to quickly execute theirs, and that the resulting outcome is not the best one possible.
I want to invite you, Greg, to participate in creating the best possible outcome. That will _not_ be the one you _or_ I are currently thinking of. This is not about selling out your beliefs; it's about recognizing that the world out there is different from the world inside your head.
Wonderful post, Erik; just wonderful.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Sarcastic ?
On 12/2/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
On 12/2/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting a bunch of social interactions that may have happened. The world isn't divided into the enemies and supporters of the Truly Good Free Culture Movement. CC's proponents aren't faceless bureaucrats. Larry Lessig, Joi Ito, Jimmy Wales (who is on the CC Board) and others all have their own unique and internally consistent views of how to change the world for the better.
That doesn't mean these are your views, or mine. But recognizing them as valid interpretations of reality is the first step to extending the hand of friendship and working with others. I do believe that, in the vision of the people who run CC, responding to the people who are changing and challenging existing models of cultural production is key to doing their job well. That doesn't mean that they do not understand the reasoning of different communities, or the consequences of particular decisions.
To work with CC means to engage them in a productive dialogue about the future of culture, not to shun them as untrustworthy or unprincipled. Unfortunately, in conflicts like this one, people like yourself often respond by taking an extreme position which is untenable and, ultimately, unsuccessful. The result is that you will not convince others of your beliefs, that you will in fact alienate those who would listen to you, that the "pragmatic" faction will strive to quickly execute theirs, and that the resulting outcome is not the best one possible.
I want to invite you, Greg, to participate in creating the best possible outcome. That will _not_ be the one you _or_ I are currently thinking of. This is not about selling out your beliefs; it's about recognizing that the world out there is different from the world inside your head.
Wonderful post, Erik; just wonderful.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Sarcastic ?
What!!!
That above posting by Erik I thought was one of the most thoughtful, if not *the* most thoughtful of posts by Erik I have ever read on this or any other mailing list. That is all I wanted to communicate. Seriously.
The sentiment that we need to move forward and in coöperation, is really one we should all take to heart. What on earth could I find to be sarcastic about in all that?
<boggle>
Sometimes I wonder...
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On Dec 2, 2007 12:30 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If you'll recall, back when this was added there was some dispute about this. I contacted Creative Commons and said that the CC-Wiki terms produced the problems above, and that they probably wouldn't be acceptable for Wikipedia, for example.
Creative Commons replied with something along the lines of "What do you mean? Wikipedia told us to create this" ... And I received this response after folks at Wikimedia had disavowed involvement.
I never was able to get straight answers about this exchange, and it resulted in my distrust of both you and Angela. Ultimately it looked to me like this was probably one of the earliest cases of someone negotiating with Wikia who believed they were talking to Wikimedia.
What? I had nothing to do with this. I was never involved in any of the supposed discussions with either Creative Commons or FSF.
Angela
Gregory, thanks for explaining what do others think.
I DON'T BELIEVE to Creative Commons (to Lessig, and if Jimmy continue to argue for CC licenses, I'll stop to trust to him, too) and I don't want to "share" may work under the terms which may help only to a big companies and which would prevent other people to use it.
The only usable CC license is CC-BY. At least, it doesn't prohibit anything.
So, if WMF wants to switch from GFDL/SGFDL to CC-BY-SA, I would start to think how to move GFDL work into another project as well as I will try to forget for WMF projects.
On 12/1/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:03 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
What problem do you have with CC-BY-SA?
My reasons for deciding not to use the CC-By-Sa licenses are fairly long and complicated. I don't have the time right now to really dive into it as I'm rather busy. For the purpose of the Foundation's announcement it was enough to say that I have explicitly rejected those terms.
Your question is interesting and deserves a response. So I will provide some quick examples now, but by no means is this my complete position on the reasons I have decided to not use those licenses for my work.
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
I use a copyleft license for my content because copyleft licenses create an incentive to release works under a free license. I see this both as the 'payment' for my works and a way of ensuring that my contribution stays free and isn't captured for the sole profit of another party. With my works copylefted someone creating a new work could choose to purchase commercial stock photography, or they could choose to freely license their work and build off mine.
When someone is really unwilling or unable to freely license their derivative I am willing to license my rates under typical commercial stock photography rates. This provides me with, well, lets just say that I make enough doing this that I report it to the IRS.
Some people are happy with using very liberal licenses (e.g. releasing their work as 'public domain') for all their work and I support their decision, but I've seen first hand how the small friction of copyleft increases the pool of content that is freely available for all, and I wouldn't want to lose that for my illustrations. (For my own works of trivial merit, I 'PD' them because I don't expect any copyleft gains)
Mr. Lessig's position on "share alike" and illustrations isn't well supported by the text of the license, but his position naturally carries a lot of weight.
- The Creative Commons licenses come with misleading front cover
text. If I released my work under these licenses I would be at constant risk of suffering disputes resulting from reusers misunderstanding their rights and obligations. We've experienced the reverse of that numerous times at Wikimedia when people using CC-By-* expect to be able to exactly stipulate how attribution is provided.
- Speaking of 'attribution', the Creative Commons cc-by and by-sa
licenses at version 2.5 and beyond contain a serious issue with their attribution. The attribution clauses in these licenses reads, in part,
"If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must (...) provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (...), and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties" (...) (through) terms of service or by other reasonable means"
So these by-attribution licenses don't actually provide attribution if a service provider specifies so in their terms of service. Jamesday (en User:Jamesday), a Wikimedian old-schooler, wrote a lot about this back when these terms came out.
Obviously the issue of attribution for collective works in a space limited medium is important, but it can be addressed without giving service providers the ability to take attribution for all freely licensed content distributed through their systems.
The exact implications of that text aren't entirely clear: If the clause only takes effect at the first point of submission it breaks the right to fork, and fails to resolve the collective attribution problem (i.e. you end up with "This article contains material by Wikia(tm), WikiHow(tm), Wikipedia(tm), GregPedia, Planet Math ..."). Or, alternatively, if any down stream service provider can invoke it .. it allows anyone who could claim to be a service provider to remove attribution at any time... which many consider to be morally offensive, and which present practical problems for people trying to keep works free.
Years ago when these terms were first released I was seriously concerned with the implications of giving an author's service provider a special rights in free content licenses. In these days of real concern over net-neutrality my worries on these matter are even greater.
And from here, we could go into the issues with the Creative Commons branding, which many people feel is exploitative, and which Creates Confusion with respect to the licenses. ... which is a matter of great concern to anyone who thinks Free Content should be more than CC-NC-ND.... but I've run out of time.
Thanks for enduring my verbosity, Greg.
Personally, I like the basic concept (do what you want as long as you attribute others, derivatives must be under the same license), but I'm not familiar with the nitty-gritty details. There were some complaints in particular with the newer versions of CC-BY-SA, which I don't recall, but which possibly could be addressed before the compatibility is put into place.
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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And to be more honest: CC doesn't have anything with freedom, but with lawyers' promotion and cooperation. Sorry, but, no. It shouldn't contaminate our projects.
On 12/2/07, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Gregory, thanks for explaining what do others think.
I DON'T BELIEVE to Creative Commons (to Lessig, and if Jimmy continue to argue for CC licenses, I'll stop to trust to him, too) and I don't want to "share" may work under the terms which may help only to a big companies and which would prevent other people to use it.
The only usable CC license is CC-BY. At least, it doesn't prohibit anything.
So, if WMF wants to switch from GFDL/SGFDL to CC-BY-SA, I would start to think how to move GFDL work into another project as well as I will try to forget for WMF projects.
On 12/1/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:03 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
What problem do you have with CC-BY-SA?
My reasons for deciding not to use the CC-By-Sa licenses are fairly long and complicated. I don't have the time right now to really dive into it as I'm rather busy. For the purpose of the Foundation's announcement it was enough to say that I have explicitly rejected those terms.
Your question is interesting and deserves a response. So I will provide some quick examples now, but by no means is this my complete position on the reasons I have decided to not use those licenses for my work.
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
I use a copyleft license for my content because copyleft licenses create an incentive to release works under a free license. I see this both as the 'payment' for my works and a way of ensuring that my contribution stays free and isn't captured for the sole profit of another party. With my works copylefted someone creating a new work could choose to purchase commercial stock photography, or they could choose to freely license their work and build off mine.
When someone is really unwilling or unable to freely license their derivative I am willing to license my rates under typical commercial stock photography rates. This provides me with, well, lets just say that I make enough doing this that I report it to the IRS.
Some people are happy with using very liberal licenses (e.g. releasing their work as 'public domain') for all their work and I support their decision, but I've seen first hand how the small friction of copyleft increases the pool of content that is freely available for all, and I wouldn't want to lose that for my illustrations. (For my own works of trivial merit, I 'PD' them because I don't expect any copyleft gains)
Mr. Lessig's position on "share alike" and illustrations isn't well supported by the text of the license, but his position naturally carries a lot of weight.
- The Creative Commons licenses come with misleading front cover
text. If I released my work under these licenses I would be at constant risk of suffering disputes resulting from reusers misunderstanding their rights and obligations. We've experienced the reverse of that numerous times at Wikimedia when people using CC-By-* expect to be able to exactly stipulate how attribution is provided.
- Speaking of 'attribution', the Creative Commons cc-by and by-sa
licenses at version 2.5 and beyond contain a serious issue with their attribution. The attribution clauses in these licenses reads, in part,
"If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must (...) provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (...), and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties" (...) (through) terms of service or by other reasonable means"
So these by-attribution licenses don't actually provide attribution if a service provider specifies so in their terms of service. Jamesday (en User:Jamesday), a Wikimedian old-schooler, wrote a lot about this back when these terms came out.
Obviously the issue of attribution for collective works in a space limited medium is important, but it can be addressed without giving service providers the ability to take attribution for all freely licensed content distributed through their systems.
The exact implications of that text aren't entirely clear: If the clause only takes effect at the first point of submission it breaks the right to fork, and fails to resolve the collective attribution problem (i.e. you end up with "This article contains material by Wikia(tm), WikiHow(tm), Wikipedia(tm), GregPedia, Planet Math ..."). Or, alternatively, if any down stream service provider can invoke it .. it allows anyone who could claim to be a service provider to remove attribution at any time... which many consider to be morally offensive, and which present practical problems for people trying to keep works free.
Years ago when these terms were first released I was seriously concerned with the implications of giving an author's service provider a special rights in free content licenses. In these days of real concern over net-neutrality my worries on these matter are even greater.
And from here, we could go into the issues with the Creative Commons branding, which many people feel is exploitative, and which Creates Confusion with respect to the licenses. ... which is a matter of great concern to anyone who thinks Free Content should be more than CC-NC-ND.... but I've run out of time.
Thanks for enduring my verbosity, Greg.
Personally, I like the basic concept (do what you want as long as you attribute others, derivatives must be under the same license), but I'm not familiar with the nitty-gritty details. There were some complaints in particular with the newer versions of CC-BY-SA, which I don't recall, but which possibly could be addressed before the compatibility is put into place.
But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of complaints. What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA? I'm asking this of everyone on the list.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Dec 1, 2007 12:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
Where do you stand on the question of commercial Wikipedia mirror sites having non-GFDL content on pages, such as ads and any additional information they may chose to create and release?
What's so different from that (existing, well accepted) practice and letting someone take your illustration and use it in a book?
If you want NC, then you should say so, but it's not consistent with how we use GFDL on the project now...
Hoi, The WMF does not allow for non-commercial as a restriction. So getting it in through the back door is not an option. What is an option is to make content available and select the CC-by-sa / GFDL or CC-by as a license. When a publisher uses CC-by material and complies with its license provisions, it is absolutely fine for them to use it. When they use CC-by-sa or GFDL material and they comply with the license provisions, is is absolutely fine for them to use it. When they make a bundle of money, I will be happy for them; it is perfectly legal to do so and it has always been perfectly legal to do so.
I cannot see that adverts can be considered to become part of the work that we produce. We have always been really careful to keep adverts out and to even consider that by adding adverts to our content esewhere they can becoming part of a derivative work .. I think it is a bit too much. Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 3, 2007 7:48 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 12:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
- Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the world of free content.
Where do you stand on the question of commercial Wikipedia mirror sites having non-GFDL content on pages, such as ads and any additional information they may chose to create and release?
What's so different from that (existing, well accepted) practice and letting someone take your illustration and use it in a book?
If you want NC, then you should say so, but it's not consistent with how we use GFDL on the project now...
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Dec 3, 2007 1:48 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Where do you stand on the question of commercial Wikipedia mirror sites having non-GFDL content on pages, such as ads and any additional information they may chose to create and release?
What's so different from that (existing, well accepted) practice and letting someone take your illustration and use it in a book?
If you want NC, then you should say so, but it's not consistent with how we use GFDL on the project now...
If the GFDL could reach as far as forcing mirror sites to use GFDL-licensed ads, that'd be fine with me, and I don't want NC.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org