[Foundation-l] Knol: on the bright side of things... - Wikimedia-l

David Goodman

29 Jul 29 Jul

12:53 p.m.

I am going to suggest the heretical proposition that we have everything to gain by changing our licensing so export to them under their present policies (or some attainable modification of them) is interpreted as being within our license, even if it allows the creation of unfree derivatives, and accepts a link to a Wikipedia article as adequate author designation for previously contributed content. (I am aware of the difficulties in making the transition) The principle I suggest is that the increase in freely accessible content is more important that the principle of libre publication--that we are more likely to add to the existing structure of publication in the world than to replace it. On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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Knol allow us to track massive copyright violations. Example: http://knol.google.com/k/knol/system/knol/pages/Search?nodeId=32qv6k5e4j8yx… This author copied a collection of french speaking wikipedia articles. All are taggued cc by 3.0. Now, if you go to this one for example: http://knol.google.com/k/maxime-seligman/thalassothrapie/32qv6k5e4j8yx/13# On the right hand side, you'll see Similar Content on the Web spa.fr 100% distanteyes.net 100% wikipedia.org 100% So, I clicked on distanteyes... http://distanteyes.net/la-thalassotherapie.html?00ae24bc0e7eeb85a75e1e95743… 100% copied from Wikipedia. No licence, no mention of Wikipedia, no link. And I clicked on spa.fr http://www.spa.fr/la%20balneotherapie%20et%20la%20thalassotherapie.php Copyright (c) 2007 La maison du spa Ant _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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Samuel Klein

7:39 p.m.

Yes, that's crazy talk. Utterly mad. Allowing unfree derivatives sounds dangerously close to the "public domain" the anarchists like to talk about. <looks for a tar-pot> SJ On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com>wrote;wrote:

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I agree, you are an heretic. Can someone bring in the oil and the feathers ? Ant David Goodman wrote:

I am going to suggest the heretical proposition that we have everything to gain by changing our licensing so export to them under their present policies (or some attainable modification of them) is interpreted as being within our license, even if it allows the creation of unfree derivatives, and accepts a link to a Wikipedia article as adequate author designation for previously contributed content. (I am aware of the difficulties in making the transition) The principle I suggest is that the increase in freely accessible content is more important that the principle of libre publication--that we are more likely to add to the existing structure of publication in the world than to replace it. On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com>

wrote:

> Knol allow us to track massive copyright violations. > > > Example: >

http://knol.google.com/k/knol/system/knol/pages/Search?nodeId=32qv6k5e4j8yx…

> > This author copied a collection of french speaking wikipedia articles. > All are taggued cc by 3.0. > > Now, if you go to this one for example: >

http://knol.google.com/k/maxime-seligman/thalassothrapie/32qv6k5e4j8yx/13#

> > On the right hand side, you'll see > > Similar Content on the Web > > spa.fr 100% > distanteyes.net 100% > wikipedia.org 100% > > So, I clicked on distanteyes... >

http://distanteyes.net/la-thalassotherapie.html?00ae24bc0e7eeb85a75e1e95743…

> > 100% copied from Wikipedia. No licence, no mention of Wikipedia, no

link.

And I clicked on spa.fr http://www.spa.fr/la%20balneotherapie%20et%20la%20thalassotherapie.php Copyright (c) 2007 La maison du spa Ant _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Andrew Lih

2:14 p.m.

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 8:53 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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I am going to suggest the heretical proposition that we have everything to gain by changing our licensing so export to them under their present policies (or some attainable modification of them) is interpreted as being within our license, even if it allows the creation of unfree derivatives, and accepts a link to a Wikipedia article as adequate author designation for previously contributed content. (I am aware of the difficulties in making the transition) The principle I suggest is that the increase in freely accessible content is more important that the principle of libre publication--that we are more likely to add to the existing structure of publication in the world than to replace it.

Even if your proposal were popular (and given the history of previous dicussions of this type in this forum, it is likely highly unpopular...) is it even worth discussing given that you would have to go back and request all previous authors of Wikipedia articles to re-release their edits under a new license? It's not just "difficult" but approaching impossible. -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

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Thomas Dalton

8:08 p.m.

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(I am aware of the difficulties in making the transition)

It's not difficult, it's impossible. There is work going on to try and make GFDL compatible with CC-BY-SA, that's the best we can hope for.

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Thomas Dalton

8:23 p.m.

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The best we could hope for is a huge shift from SA-like license preference to merely BY-like license preference among the community. Highly unlikely.

Not just the community, everyone that has ever edited a Wikipedia article.

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Perfectly acceptable would be a community effort by people who accept BY-like licenses to rewrite stuff from WP and our sources into Knol, under BY. The question is whether that's worth it...

We could move small amounts across by persuading everyone that's edited a particular article to dual license their contributions to it under CC-BY and agree to give Google the more extensive rights, which is achievable for some articles (some small amounts could be rewritten, as you say). I don't see the point though. Why is having them on Knol a good thing when they're already on Wikipedia (it's not a bad thing, certainly, but I don't see that it's a good one)?

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Ilario Valdelli

8:11 a.m.

I fully agree and we *must* understand that any article is a collaborative work. If one editor doesn't license it's contribution in CC-BY the whole article cannot be licensed in CC-BY. And what about IP contributions? Can the CC-BY be assigned to an IP? Ilario On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Massimiliano <m.lincetto(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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I still don't understand why we should reject the copyleft philosophy and change to an attribution license. I think that our mission is not only to provide free information and knowledge, but also to be sure that it will be kept free. I don't think that we should change our licensing policies in order to be published on Google Knol: why we should do it? If Knols wants to allow its users to publish Wikipedia-derivative content they should change their terms, IMHO. Massimiliano _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Marco Chiesa

8:58 a.m.

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Massimiliano <m.lincetto(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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I still don't understand why we should reject the copyleft philosophy and change to an attribution license. I think that our mission is not only to provide free information and knowledge, but also to be sure that it will be kept free. I don't think that we should change our licensing policies in order to be published on Google Knol: why we should do it? If Knols wants to allow its users to publish Wikipedia-derivative content they should change their terms, IMHO.

I think giving up copyleft only to be reusable by a big guy like Knol would sign the death of copyleft. It is a rather different situation compared to using a small part of a Wikipedia article without having to release the whole content under copyleft - particularly with the mammoth clause of putting the whole letter of GFDL. There are endless discussions about which licence between cc-by or cc-by-sa is freer. I believe that at the moment there is little improvement of the content of Wikipedia done outside Wikipedia, so whether this is freely licensed (what would be imposed by -sa) or copyrighted is not that relevant on a practical point of view. If people will create new content with derivatives of Knol and will copyright it, than the point of copyleft will be more clear (and people may debate whether copyleft is an obstacle to the creation of knowledge). Cruccone

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