I remember reading Erik’s blog post a decade or so ago, which convinced me that -NC was useless due to its ambiguity - where exactly is the line drawn between what is commercial and what is not? I can’t find it now

Is there any way we could convince CC to deprecate the useless -NC licenses?

This was brought up during the 4.0 drafting process, but it was ultimately rejected: https://creativecommons.org/2012/08/29/ongoing-discussions-noncommercial-an… We also proposed renaming NC to "Commercial Rights Reserved" to make it clearer what NC does, but that too had insufficient support. https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2012-December/008087.html I'm not sure what the current attitudes are at CC but I think it's no more likely than before. -Kat licenses? https://freedomdefined.org/The_non-commercial_provision_obfuscates_intent https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Hi James :) (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit on this list.) videos) I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy, and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default license. I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now, Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to Wikimedia projects? If a license is "exceedingly poor" and harmful to the goals of the free culture movement, incorporating more information under such terms strikes me as neither idealistic nor pragmatic -- it would just be short-sighted. Warmly, Erik _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not provide such options?

So the problem of the NC module remains that many who apply it are not always conscious about undesired consequences, while some who apply it use the module very consciously for a specific reason - e.g. in a hybrid model, to distribute content but not to share it, to reserve commercial use exclusively for oneself. I do not want to judge about this intention, but I imagine that it can become problematic when your goal is to build a knowledge *commons*.

On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of individuals.  Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are *only* willing to submit material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose out on material from them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some people who submit material to us under a free license but would choose an NC license if it were available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of their work being freely licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter pool is far larger than the former. When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having any image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us to use that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is available right now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be much less incentive to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such stopgaps would likely become permanent. Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly confidently say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by edge cases; we must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion, and unfairness that we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of the additional headache we would create for reusers). Emufarmers _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

The question is however as well: how many open licensed content creators would switch to NC if they were aware that this would be 'good enough' for Wikipedia - even if that means in reality only English Wikipedia (but who cares about other languages) and without actually allowing to build on top of it? I have found the argument 'don't use NC because then it can't be used on Wikipedia' rather convincing in the past. It will not always work, and I also wish it would convince /more/ organizations. But then, I would also wish that enwiki wouldn't use fair use exceptions - so maybe I'm not the benchmark you'd be looking at anyway. Lodewijk On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 5:32 PM James Heilman &lt;jmh649(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: that wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I simply wish that such a position would convince more organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.

At least, we should start centralizing that non-free material locally uploaded since it's already there. I would like logos of Universities and coat of arms of public administration and doubtful old images that according to some platforms are free but for Commons are not (gray areas), to be on a NC part of Commons, or a dedicated platform (i always link https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki_(2).

Erik, thanks for posting the essay here. Glad to see the interest in this topic. I wrote this because I have found that when somebody asks me about the NC provision, I often want to point them to a simple webpage (rather than "reinventing the wheel" every time it comes up). There are some pages out there (I listed some in the "See also" section), but I have yet to find somewhere this particular point -- the need of a general license to issue clear guidance -- articulated anywhere in a concise, accessible way. I'm surprised (and a little disappointed) to see that the possibility of Wikimedia generally accepting NC-licensed work is being discussed. But apart from that discussion, I think many of you in this discussion have, at one time or another, wanted to help guide someone toward using a more permissive license, rather than a NC license. For those who have, do you have favorite webpages you find helpful to share? Does this one seem like a useful addition? I'd appreciate any feedback or constructive edits to this essay; I also think it would be useful to have some of the other arguments, currently collected in longer documents, expressed in more "bite-sized" pieces like this, which could be linked together. Do others agree, and if so, are you inclined to help draft some complementary pages? -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 3:23 PM effe iets anders &lt;effeietsanders(a)gmail.com wrote: for top > of it? > I have found the argument 'don't use NC because then it can't be used on > Wikipedia' rather convincing in the past. It will not always work, and I > also wish it would convince /more/ organizations. But then, I would also > wish that enwiki wouldn't use fair use exceptions - so maybe I'm not the > benchmark you'd be looking at anyway. > Lodewijk > On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 5:32 PM James Heilman &lt;jmh649(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > > Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is > that > > it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open > > licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more > > organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are > > already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us. > > > James > > > On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller &lt;eloquence(a)gmail.com&gt; > wrote: > > > > Hi James :) > > > > > (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit > > > on this list.) > > > > > > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons > > > > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy > > > videos) > > > > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use. > > > > > I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF could > > > perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy, > > > and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default > > > license. > > > > > > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism. > > > > > I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to it about > > > altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now, > > > Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive > > > licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly > > > poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a > > > nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how > > > is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in > > > some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to > > > Wikimedia projects? > > > > > If a license is "exceedingly poor" and harmful to the goals of the > > > free culture movement, incorporating more information under such terms > > > strikes me as neither idealistic nor pragmatic -- it would just be > > > short-sighted. > > > > > Warmly, > > > Erik > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > > -- > > James Heilman > > MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I don't think we should mix NC with free-knowledge licenses . I do absolutely think we should maintain an archive, visible to the public with at most a simple hoop to jump through, of material that is offered to us in any legal way but not yet free.

Centralized Wiki for NC files will work. It's the same debate when we started to put metadata on Commons, it did not stop the process, it just made it slower and less efficient, but it remained kinda inevitable. It's the same background, the frustration and confusion of the current situation is projected to the future one, it's mostly a "passive" resistance with a little bit of patronizing attitude toward other communities. It happens also because the more some users assume this future scenario is inevitable, the easier it is for them to consider the present situation as inevitable as well and skip any responsibility, it's a little bit an identity element. Local users are not confused or irritated in general because they are moody, it's mostly because the Commons community is moody. Local communities are not three or four isolated users, they are structured, with a spectrum of established competences. The mass of users involved will come from that pool. I am pretty sure that if you build a repository without all the users who encouraged most of the dysfunctional attitude we have now on Commons, it's going to be better, if not fine. For some of us in the end the local user repeating a wrong concept to get a file kept is very similar to the Commons user doing the same to make it deleted, the same stubborn attitude with limited overall perspective that few people really wanted in the first place. These two profiles find a balance but it's not the best balance for the general workflow, it's a "social thing". Whatever disrupt the situation, give us some chance to improve that. Of course many users will show there to oppose. And if approved, for the first two or three years at every single minor misstep of the process they will jump there foretelling disasters: They usually find the time to oppose to this sort of requests, more than doing a lot of other tasks probably, and the concepts are usually the same. That's why its getting more and more difficult to give to it a big weigh. In any case, some way to centralize existing NC will be found. For example, think about Wikidata item for logos and connect them to local files. It will be more tortuous, in a way it's not noticed immediately, probably. Until we get there somehow, personally I skip many activities regarding NC including their conversion, and focus on something else. I am probably not the only one adopting more or less this attitude. Good outreach for me is not about a single aspect, is a method, and will always include a spectrum of results. The statement "no Wikipedia if you don't remove NC" is not really so effective, it sounds cheap especially after many years Wiki exists and people know what they want. For the high-quality material we miss, I think it's more about proposing a good project, a structured project and in that framework I can suggest to update some NC. I have refused to trick people to give files with no NC, I clearly tell them to understand the license. There are many files which were not uploaded initially, but those users ended up giving more new files later. If I could be a user with a flag for NC upload, I will put a very limited amount of files per year, but the process behind such files will be very valuable. A. Il martedì 14 luglio 2020, 09:41:05 CEST, Erik Moeller < eloquence(a)gmail.com&gt; ha scritto: James wrote: I agree of course that this sort of institutional inertia can be incredibly frustrating, especially in cases like WHO -- a publicly funded international institution which should be putting its work in the public domain. For all its own institutional failings (and there are many, past and present), the US was at least able to get that much right in its copyright laws more than 100 years ago. I don't believe we should let publicly funded institutions that use restrictive licensing terms off the hook, and there's a degree to which positive persuasion needs to be coupled with public pressure here. Like Pete, I'm curious about resources & practices folks have found useful in persuading individuals or institutions to release materials under free licenses. I'll reiterate that my sense is that _new_ partnerships that focus on material yet to be created may be a good way to get a foot in the door, so to speak. Alessandro wrote: uploaded arms I agree that a nonfree wiki that does not alter existing policies (i.e. is not intended to open the door to NC) is a reasonable thing to consider for practical reasons; however, I personally oppose these proposals on practical grounds. While the opposition to the main proposal is currently a minority, I suspect the ratio would change rather quickly if the proposals were more widely announced. I see two primary scenarios for how a nonfree wiki could play out: - scenario A: a nonfree wiki is successful at policing uploads and usage consistent with the policies across wikis. Uploaders from those communities are frequently frustrated and confused by deletions, discussion, and policies of the nonfree wiki, just as they are frustrated by deletions, discussions, and policies on Wikimedia Commons today. With one more wiki in the mix, the process of uploading files is increasingly seen to be akin to a Klingon Pain Stick Ritual. - scenario B: a nonfree wiki is unsuccessful at policing uploads, and becomes a DMCA magnet or worse. Communities are frustrated because their own rules for limiting nonfree uploads are frequently violated through the transclusion of files from the nonfree repository. In fact, a combination of those two scenarios -- where there's deep frustration about both enforcement and lack thereof -- seems most likely to me. It's worth asking whether there are good ways to improve the handling and patrolling of nonfree files. I suspect there are many, but I'm pretty sure the creation of a separate repository for this stuff is an idea that doesn't withstand scrutiny. Exemptions must be considered in a project-local context, both in terms of policy and concrete use, by a community in its own language, and any improvements to efficiency must start from this central premise. Warmly, Erik _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

There should be no 'collaborative and transformative work' done on this archive

Erik, to your point — yes, this should also include old books that are in the process of relicensing, if those books have been uploaded to us by or on behalf of a license holder, and we are confirming that and working through related steps.

It helps our work to have a persistent public place (not randomly deleted from time to time!) to discuss determining their license status, getting formal and informal license clearance, discussions with the contributors to refine their understanding of options, debates among ourselves about whether a license grant was sufficient and how to obtain more clarity, &c.