Mike & I have made some updates to the Q&A today:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers
Please let me know or edit the page if you feel further clarifications and answers are needed. Otherwise I'll prepare a translation request, probably on Friday.
Meanwhile, I'm also working on the actual re-licensing proposal, so that we can discuss it with the Board this weekend. One question I'm struggling with, and would appreciate input on, is what voting method and process should be used to make the decision. I anticipate that it will be a simple yes/no vote, possibly with an explicit abstain option. I can see two approaches to implement the actual vote:
1) Use the BoardVote software. It's secure, well-tested and well-understood. It's more burdensome to set up, the process for counting votes is quite rigorous (accurate but burdensome), and it may be overkill for this purpose. Votes are private. 2) Use a vote on Meta, like we did for e.g. the Wikinews and Wikiversity project launch votes. It's easy, but suffers from edit conflicts, and accurate vote counting is hard. Votes are public.
In the second case, the vote result would be less defensible - but since it's not a legal necessity to run a vote at all, that might be OK. It would be also easier to add comments, have detailed discussions on the talk page, etc. Importantly, since this is a complex problem, misunderstandings may be common, and in a public vote, they could be more easily corrected. In the first case, we could add a prominent link to the full proposal, the Q&A and all discussions to the voting interface, but it would still be a less wiki-like way of doing things.
I'd appreciate thoughts & comments.
2009/1/8 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
I'd appreciate thoughts & comments.
Working from bottom to top:
Most of the answer to "If the migration occurs, will it change what image licenses are allowed to be used on WMF projects?" is unhelpful. Historically the foundation has not been involved in determining the freeness of any given license and this is not something I feel that it is in a position to get involved in. For example the "However, this will only happen" is questionable. For example if caselaw evolved to the point where the GFDL was clearly found to be hard copyleft then obviously we would have to remove such images even with no change to CC-BY-SA. I also suspect we have if not more FAL images that GFDL 1.2 only then a similar number and failing to consider both cases doesn't look ideal.
heh technically the "Does this migration affect both text and images, or only text?" is in error (GFDL CC-BY-SA 3.0 duel licensed images are likely not to be effected and legally won't be) but only a technicality
FSF vs CC? Probably the first section should mention that the FSF is firmly okey with this. At the moment mostly focuses on what CC have done.
"How will re-users determine whether or not an article is available under GFDL?"
Could you explain what "licensing guidelines" is going to entail? In addition where is the "where it was originally published" clause in CC-BY-SA?
Even more fun if we consider the statement "Wikipedia can release their newly written text under both GFDL and CC-BY-SA in parallel. However, if they imported any external material that's available under CC-BY-SA and not under GFDL, Wikipedia is bound by that."
The use of wikipedia in this sentence doesn't really make sense but lets assume it is meant to be taken to be read as "people editing wikipedia"
Now suppose I publish something under CC-BY-SA somewhere other than wikipedia then import it into wikipedia. I don't have to make any special mention that I'm importing it but the work would then become CC-BY-SA only. Your suggested methods provide no way for reuses to spot that.
I would go onto the rest of the section but I think I have made my views on the whole duel licensing thing clear.
I'm curious (and not arguing it is the case) why due diligence here does not involve e-mailing every person who has ever made an edit and has their e-mail address in their profile.
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Mike & I have made some updates to the Q&A today:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers
Please let me know or edit the page if you feel further clarifications and answers are needed. Otherwise I'll prepare a translation request, probably on Friday.
Meanwhile, I'm also working on the actual re-licensing proposal, so that we can discuss it with the Board this weekend. One question I'm struggling with, and would appreciate input on, is what voting method and process should be used to make the decision. I anticipate that it will be a simple yes/no vote, possibly with an explicit abstain option. I can see two approaches to implement the actual vote:
- Use the BoardVote software. It's secure, well-tested and
well-understood. It's more burdensome to set up, the process for counting votes is quite rigorous (accurate but burdensome), and it may be overkill for this purpose. Votes are private. 2) Use a vote on Meta, like we did for e.g. the Wikinews and Wikiversity project launch votes. It's easy, but suffers from edit conflicts, and accurate vote counting is hard. Votes are public.
In the second case, the vote result would be less defensible - but since it's not a legal necessity to run a vote at all, that might be OK. It would be also easier to add comments, have detailed discussions on the talk page, etc. Importantly, since this is a complex problem, misunderstandings may be common, and in a public vote, they could be more easily corrected. In the first case, we could add a prominent link to the full proposal, the Q&A and all discussions to the voting interface, but it would still be a less wiki-like way of doing things.
I'd appreciate thoughts & comments.
-- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Another question: Given the WMF admission in the FAQ that the GFDL has * never* been followed in re-use of Wikipedia content due to the insane difficulty of doing so, and given its rampant "illegal" re-use on the web, and the WMF's ignoring this illegal re-use for years on end, what chance is there that a court of law would find that the GFDL actually applies to this content were someone to sue a re-user?
Isn't it true that the efforts to force re-users to appropriately atrribute the content have not actually asked them to follow the letter of the GFDL?
Is a license that is never enforced truly a license, in the legal sense?
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:04 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I'm curious (and not arguing it is the case) why due diligence here does not involve e-mailing every person who has ever made an edit and has their e-mail address in their profile.
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Mike & I have made some updates to the Q&A today:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Questions_and_Answers
Please let me know or edit the page if you feel further clarifications and answers are needed. Otherwise I'll prepare a translation request, probably on Friday.
Meanwhile, I'm also working on the actual re-licensing proposal, so that we can discuss it with the Board this weekend. One question I'm struggling with, and would appreciate input on, is what voting method and process should be used to make the decision. I anticipate that it will be a simple yes/no vote, possibly with an explicit abstain option. I can see two approaches to implement the actual vote:
- Use the BoardVote software. It's secure, well-tested and
well-understood. It's more burdensome to set up, the process for counting votes is quite rigorous (accurate but burdensome), and it may be overkill for this purpose. Votes are private. 2) Use a vote on Meta, like we did for e.g. the Wikinews and Wikiversity project launch votes. It's easy, but suffers from edit conflicts, and accurate vote counting is hard. Votes are public.
In the second case, the vote result would be less defensible - but since it's not a legal necessity to run a vote at all, that might be OK. It would be also easier to add comments, have detailed discussions on the talk page, etc. Importantly, since this is a complex problem, misunderstandings may be common, and in a public vote, they could be more easily corrected. In the first case, we could add a prominent link to the full proposal, the Q&A and all discussions to the voting interface, but it would still be a less wiki-like way of doing things.
I'd appreciate thoughts & comments.
-- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Another question: Given the WMF admission in the FAQ that the GFDL has * never* been followed in re-use of Wikipedia content due to the insane difficulty of doing so, and given its rampant "illegal" re-use on the web, and the WMF's ignoring this illegal re-use for years on end, what chance is there that a court of law would find that the GFDL actually applies to this content were someone to sue a re-user?
Isn't it true that the efforts to force re-users to appropriately atrribute the content have not actually asked them to follow the letter of the GFDL?
Is a license that is never enforced truly a license, in the legal sense?
The license is between the author and the re-user, the fact that the WMF has tolerated it being violated is irrelevant. You can lose a trademark by not defending it, but I don't think the same applies to copyrights, so unless the individual owner can be shown to have said it was all right not to follow the license to the letter, I don't see why they can't sue. (IANAL, YMMV, BBQ)
I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their "illegal" re-use.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Another question: Given the WMF admission in the FAQ that the GFDL has * never* been followed in re-use of Wikipedia content due to the insane difficulty of doing so, and given its rampant "illegal" re-use on the
web,
and the WMF's ignoring this illegal re-use for years on end, what chance
is
there that a court of law would find that the GFDL actually applies to
this
content were someone to sue a re-user?
Isn't it true that the efforts to force re-users to appropriately
atrribute
the content have not actually asked them to follow the letter of the
GFDL?
Is a license that is never enforced truly a license, in the legal sense?
The license is between the author and the re-user, the fact that the WMF has tolerated it being violated is irrelevant. You can lose a trademark by not defending it, but I don't think the same applies to copyrights, so unless the individual owner can be shown to have said it was all right not to follow the license to the letter, I don't see why they can't sue. (IANAL, YMMV, BBQ)
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On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their "illegal" re-use.
The WMF doesn't hold a copyright over the dumps, they merely distribute it (in violation of copyright law, I might add).
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their "illegal" re-use.
IANAL, but I think you need to have had a creative input in the work to hold a copyright to it, what creative input has WMF had is combining all the articles into one dump?
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of the dumps?
http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat092303.html
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their "illegal" re-use.
IANAL, but I think you need to have had a creative input in the work to hold a copyright to it, what creative input has WMF had is combining all the articles into one dump?
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On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of the dumps?
You are citing a proposed bill from 2003-04 that never made it to the floor for a vote.
To the more general point, I would personally argue that Feist v. Rural [1] applies to the dumps and the selection / arrangement is ineligible for copyright. Hence, in my opinion, there is no copyright for the dump as a whole, though the individual articles in contains are certainly eligible for copyright.
-Robert Rohde
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
Specifically I cite the historical perspective as laid out by their general counsel, and not the entire bill. I will read this case.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of
the
dumps?
You are citing a proposed bill from 2003-04 that never made it to the floor for a vote.
To the more general point, I would personally argue that Feist v. Rural [1] applies to the dumps and the selection / arrangement is ineligible for copyright. Hence, in my opinion, there is no copyright for the dump as a whole, though the individual articles in contains are certainly eligible for copyright.
-Robert Rohde
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
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http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20081008/
These subcollections obviously pass the threshold for creativity. A court case on telephone directories, which is simply a two or three column output, has very little applicability to the complex formats published by the WMF.
I also recognize this to be a legal grey area, and my opinion unfounded.
But I believe this would have significant consequences, no?
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of
the
dumps?
You are citing a proposed bill from 2003-04 that never made it to the floor for a vote.
To the more general point, I would personally argue that Feist v. Rural [1] applies to the dumps and the selection / arrangement is ineligible for copyright. Hence, in my opinion, there is no copyright for the dump as a whole, though the individual articles in contains are certainly eligible for copyright.
-Robert Rohde
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
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2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20081008/
These subcollections obviously pass the threshold for creativity. A court case on telephone directories, which is simply a two or three column output, has very little applicability to the complex formats published by the WMF.
I also recognize this to be a legal grey area, and my opinion unfounded.
But I believe this would have significant consequences, no?
That's not obvious to me at all. I think anyone putting together a collection of dumps of Wikipedia would do so in essentially the same way.
The specific reason I would claim that the telephone directory case does not apply is that the dumps are in a machine readable format that is intended to be read by one, and only one, machine: MediaWiki. There must be another domain of applicable case law.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20081008/
These subcollections obviously pass the threshold for creativity. A court case on telephone directories, which is simply a two or three column
output,
has very little applicability to the complex formats published by the
WMF.
I also recognize this to be a legal grey area, and my opinion unfounded.
But I believe this would have significant consequences, no?
That's not obvious to me at all. I think anyone putting together a collection of dumps of Wikipedia would do so in essentially the same way.
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On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
The specific reason I would claim that the telephone directory case does not apply is that the dumps are in a machine readable format that is intended to be read by one, and only one, machine: MediaWiki. There must be another domain of applicable case law.
The main article dumps are in a human readable XML format. Myself and others use them in various ways without parsing them through Mediawiki.
The principle point though is whether the selection or arrangement of the dumps contain the minimal spark of creativity necessary for an independent copyright (the core issue of Feist). Personally, I would argue they do not. The selection is comprehensive (all data of a give class), and the arrangement is quite obvious. (Perhaps not as obvious as a phone book, but still a fairly standard presentation consistent with the way comparable databases are communicated.)
I suppose one could try to argue the point, but I would definitely take the side that the arrangement and selection of information in the dumps is not a creative act.
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20081008/
These subcollections obviously pass the threshold for creativity. A court case on telephone directories, which is simply a two or three column
output,
has very little applicability to the complex formats published by the
WMF.
I also recognize this to be a legal grey area, and my opinion unfounded.
But I believe this would have significant consequences, no?
That's not obvious to me at all. I think anyone putting together a collection of dumps of Wikipedia would do so in essentially the same way.
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2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of the dumps?
There is no selection, they contain everything (or, at least, everything from certain namespaces, and the community puts things in those spaces). Coordination doesn't sound like something that would entitle someone to copyright. The arrangement is simply putting everything together in one file in a fairly obvious way, that doesn't seem very creative to me.
Brian wrote:
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of the dumps?
Given that no one selects, coordinates or arranges the dumps, no one owns the copyright on them.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their "illegal" re-use.
IANAL, but I think you need to have had a creative input in the work to hold a copyright to it, what creative input has WMF had is combining all the articles into one dump?
Hoi, That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The dump of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to create. It is for this reason easy to argue that the WMF has the copyright on the collection. Given that it is a composite of separately copyrighted material and given that there is no selection involved, the WMF may be insulated from people objecting to material that is of interest to them being included. That is however a different issue. Thanks, GerardM
2009/1/9 Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu
Brian wrote:
Who owns the copyright for the selection, coordination or arrangement of
the
dumps?
Given that no one selects, coordinates or arranges the dumps, no one owns the copyright on them.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/8 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their
"illegal"
re-use.
IANAL, but I think you need to have had a creative input in the work to hold a copyright to it, what creative input has WMF had is combining all the articles into one dump?
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The dump of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
And simplistic arguments are not convincing. If you would like to explore the space with me, you'll have to try more than one sentence at a time.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The
dump
of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to
create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
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Hoi, That is only for US law. It is also debatable if this is just "sweat of the brow" because a lot of creativity is involved in creating this collection. It does not even necessarily apply to you as you are in a different jurisdiction. Thanks, Gerard
2009/1/9 Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The
dump
of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to
create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is only for US law. It is also debatable if this is just "sweat of the brow" because a lot of creativity is involved in creating this collection. It does not even necessarily apply to you as you are in a different jurisdiction.
Other laws do have similar provisions, specifically the one in my jurisdiction. A huge amount of creativity involved in making computer programs that made the collection still do not translate in even a small amount of creativity involved in selecting their contents.
2009/1/9 Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The
dump
of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to
create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The
dump
of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to
create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
I haven't seen anyone trying to lay claim to a copyright on the dumps. I would venture to say that it's merely a transformative work, as it doesn't do anything but collect them in a machine-readable format. The various dumps are designed to organize the information, not change them in any way.
-Chad
Chad wrote:
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The dump
of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
I haven't seen anyone trying to lay claim to a copyright on the dumps. I would venture to say that it's merely a transformative work, as it doesn't do anything but collect them in a machine-readable format. The various dumps are designed to organize the information, not change them in any way.
While at first glance it might seem as though there was a compilation copyright in the dumps the fact that they are generated by a mechanical process would suggest that the lack the originality that is a fundamental requirement for copyrightability.
Ec
I think this is probably true.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Chad wrote:
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu
wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The
dump
of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to
create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Huge effort is not copyrightable.
I haven't seen anyone trying to lay claim to a copyright on the dumps. I would venture to say that it's merely a transformative work, as it doesn't do anything but collect them in a machine-readable format. The various dumps are designed to organize the information, not change them in any way.
While at first glance it might seem as though there was a compilation copyright in the dumps the fact that they are generated by a mechanical process would suggest that the lack the originality that is a fundamental requirement for copyrightability.
Ec
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On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Mike & I have made some updates to the Q&A today:
I saw your answer. Thanks. "Transition period" began at the time of announcing license migration up to the license migration; so, we are in the transition period. Conservatively speaking, Wikimedia projects shouldn't take any GFDL content from similar projects up to the time when license conditions would be compatible [again] because according to GFDL 1.3 conditions, no material made under the terms of GFDL can't be added after [if I remember well] November 1st, 2008. While it wouldn't be so big deal, it is good to have some official recommendation like "if you want to do the same license migration, please express your intention".
- Use the BoardVote software. It's secure, well-tested and
well-understood. It's more burdensome to set up, the process for counting votes is quite rigorous (accurate but burdensome), and it may be overkill for this purpose. Votes are private. 2) Use a vote on Meta, like we did for e.g. the Wikinews and Wikiversity project launch votes. It's easy, but suffers from edit conflicts, and accurate vote counting is hard. Votes are public.
I'd vote for the BoardVote method - I'd say deciding what license we're releasing things under is more important than electing board members, so it doesn't seem like overkill to me.
Other decisions that need to be made regarding the vote are suffrage and what level of majority is required.
Options for suffrage are many - you could say just 1 edit is required on the grounds that anyone with a single edit is directly affected by this proposal, so why shouldn't they be able to vote on it? You could use the same suffrage requirements as board votes, since they are commonly taken as a definition of community membership for the purpose of votes. You could even weight votes by number of edits (one vote per edit sounds like a bad idea to me but weighting by log(edits) may be worth discussing).
As for majority required, I would say something more than 50% should be necessary. We traditionally favour the status quo in pretty much everything we do (except, for some reason, with the 3RR, I've never understood that... but that's a discussion for another time and place). Also, if we say 50% is all that's required and the result comes out as 50.3% or something, you should know it's going to cause massive drama (if we chose 60% and the results is 60.3% there is still going to be plenty of drama, of course, but hopefully less). I'd go with a requirement of 60%, but that's really just a number plucked out of thin air, I welcome suggestions from people with actual reasons!
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
As for majority required, I would say something more than 50% should be necessary. We traditionally favour the status quo in pretty much everything we do (except, for some reason, with the 3RR, I've never understood that... but that's a discussion for another time and place). Also, if we say 50% is all that's required and the result comes out as 50.3% or something, you should know it's going to cause massive drama (if we chose 60% and the results is 60.3% there is still going to be plenty of drama, of course, but hopefully less). I'd go with a requirement of 60%, but that's really just a number plucked out of thin air, I welcome suggestions from people with actual reasons!
I'd say 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right to attribution without their permission.
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
As for majority required, I would say something more than 50% should be necessary. We traditionally favour the status quo in pretty much everything we do (except, for some reason, with the 3RR, I've never understood that... but that's a discussion for another time and place). Also, if we say 50% is all that's required and the result comes out as 50.3% or something, you should know it's going to cause massive drama (if we chose 60% and the results is 60.3% there is still going to be plenty of drama, of course, but hopefully less). I'd go with a requirement of 60%, but that's really just a number plucked out of thin air, I welcome suggestions from people with actual reasons!
I'd say 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right to attribution without their permission.
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required. I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors), but it seems clear to me that we can require people to link back to Wikipedia (in particular, the history page) so that everyone is, at least indirectly, attributed. Given that that's how most people are using the GFDL anyway, I really don't see the problem.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
As for majority required, I would say something more than 50% should be necessary. We traditionally favour the status quo in pretty much everything we do (except, for some reason, with the 3RR, I've never understood that... but that's a discussion for another time and place). Also, if we say 50% is all that's required and the result comes out as 50.3% or something, you should know it's going to cause massive drama (if we chose 60% and the results is 60.3% there is still going to be plenty of drama, of course, but hopefully less). I'd go with a requirement of 60%, but that's really just a number plucked out of thin air, I welcome suggestions from people with actual reasons!
I'd say 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right
to
attribution without their permission.
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required.
Maybe, but that's not what the FAQ says.
I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of
CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
Yes, CC-BY-SA is extremely confusing on this point. That's another reason not to use it.
but it seems clear to me that we can require
people to link back to Wikipedia (in particular, the history page) so that everyone is, at least indirectly, attributed. Given that that's how most people are using the GFDL anyway, I really don't see the problem.
There are very few offline reusers of Wikipedia content. I know of none that are using more than de minimis portions of my content without attributing me. If you know of any, please, tell me who they are, and I'll send a cease and desist to them.
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing one or more URLs. In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch. The WMF condoning and facilitating such behavior is absolutely unacceptable, no matter how many people "vote" to do so.
You actually seem to recognize this to some extent, in that you realize that a 51% vote is not sufficient. But then you randomly pick 60% as a magic threshold to use instead. You welcomed alternate suggestions with actual reasons, and I gave you one. 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right to attribution without their permission.
Even Mike Godwin seemed to recognize this principle in his early discussions on the topic, when he suggested that there would be a way to opt-out of the relicensing. But my single question which I presented for the FAQ was left unanswered. How can I opt out?
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing one or more URLs. In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch.
That is incorrect and an assumption of bad faith. If you read the actual Q&A the reasons for re-licensing are very clearly and correctly stated. The primary and motivating reason for offering content under CC-BY-SA has always been full license compatibility. The secondary reason has been the overall complexity of the GFDL which makes it burdensome for re-users. Full duplication of history sections is only one aspect of that overall complexity.
That said, it's always been an accepted practice for web use to attribute by linking to the history. Because CC-BY-SA allows attribution requirements to be detailed in terms of use, it will make it straightforward for us to codify attribution requirements in a manner that is accepted and largely mirrors current practice. In fact, the language that could be used for this purpose could be very similar to the one proposed by Gregory Maxwell here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_suggestions#Proposed_attribution_text
My question for anyone opposed to this approach is this: Do you acknowledge that there is a problem with GFDL-licensing in terms of compatibility and ease of re-use, and if so, how do you propose to solve it? As far as I am concerned, if there is any moral case to be made here, it's a clear and strong moral case for maximizing information freedom through license compatibility and clear, consistent usage guidelines.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond
listing
one or more URLs. In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the
switch.
That is incorrect and an assumption of bad faith. If you read the actual Q&A the reasons for re-licensing are very clearly and correctly stated.
I've read your FAQ. I've already read your "declaration of bias" and your "ideology". I'm not assuming bad faith. I've concluded it.
My question for anyone opposed to this approach is this: Do you acknowledge that there is a problem with GFDL-licensing in terms of compatibility and ease of re-use, and if so, how do you propose to solve it?
I don't think there's a problem with GFDL-licensing. I think there's a problem with the fact that the WMF (and before that, Wikia) have refused to facilitate the application of it.
As far as I am concerned, if there is any moral case to be made here, it's a clear and strong moral case for maximizing information freedom through license compatibility and clear, consistent usage guidelines.
Sure, you're strongly opposed to all types of "intellectual property". Of course, I can't really figure out why. You say you're not a libertarian, and you say you're not a socialist. What's your problem with intellectual property?
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
I don't think there's a problem with GFDL-licensing. I think there's a problem with the fact that the WMF (and before that, Wikia) have refused
to
facilitate the application of it.
What? Wikia predates WMF? News to me...
The other one :)...Bomis (really, Jimbo, but technically, Bomis).
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
Maybe, but that's not what the FAQ says.
Where exactly does it say that attribution is not required under CC-BY-SA 3.0?
Yes, CC-BY-SA is extremely confusing on this point. That's another reason not to use it.
""Original Author" means, in the case of a literary or artistic work, the individual, individuals, entity or entities who created the Work"
It's all editors (unless the most recent version is not derived from previous versions). If you find that "extremely confusing" what makes you think you are in a position to have informed opinions in this area? Compared to many issues related to free licenses it is very simple.
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing one or more URLs.
That would depend on the legal system and is somewhat questionable even then. Arguing that a URL is "reasonable to the medium or means" in the case of say a book would be tricky to do.
In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch.
Not at all. There are quite a number of benefits. In fact one thing the switch doesn't do is address the problem that copyright law as we know it doesn't work to well about 20 authors. Other than MITT and BSD style licenses all free licenses break down when you throw enough authors at them.
The WMF condoning and facilitating such behavior is absolutely unacceptable, no matter how many people "vote" to do so.
Ever read the foundation mission statement? See the "disseminate it effectively and globally" bit. I would regard it as unacceptable for them not to switch.
You actually seem to recognize this to some extent, in that you realize that a 51% vote is not sufficient. But then you randomly pick 60% as a magic threshold to use instead. You welcomed alternate suggestions with actual reasons, and I gave you one. 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right to attribution without their permission.
Reasons that are consistent with reality would probably do rather better.
Even Mike Godwin seemed to recognize this principle in his early discussions on the topic, when he suggested that there would be a way to opt-out of the relicensing. But my single question which I presented for the FAQ was left unanswered. How can I opt out?
By not editing wikimedia foundation projects other than some wikinews projects.
2009/1/8 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Not at all. There are quite a number of benefits. In fact one thing the switch doesn't do is address the problem that copyright law as we know it doesn't work to well about 20 authors. Other than MITT and BSD style licenses all free licenses break down when you throw enough authors at them.
Depends what you call "enough", but the GPL is doing okay.
- d.
2009/1/8 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/1/8 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Not at all. There are quite a number of benefits. In fact one thing the switch doesn't do is address the problem that copyright law as we know it doesn't work to well about 20 authors. Other than MITT and BSD style licenses all free licenses break down when you throw enough authors at them.
Depends what you call "enough", but the GPL is doing okay.
Heh try using linux kernal code in a software manual while properly following the GPL. Screenshots also don't look to pretty either. Remember under GPL 2.0 section 3 it can be argued that screenshots of a system running linux need to at least come with an offer to distribute the source code of the version of Linux being run (gets even more fun with multiple bits of software running). While GPL 2.0 doesn't suffer from having to credit too many people the copyright notices (aka back door invariant sections) and the requirement to preserve references to the GPL will tend to build up in much the same way.
Anthony wrote:
There are very few offline reusers of Wikipedia content. I know of none that are using more than de minimis portions of my content without attributing me. If you know of any, please, tell me who they are, and I'll send a cease and desist to them.
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing one or more URLs. In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch. The WMF condoning and facilitating such behavior is absolutely unacceptable, no matter how many people "vote" to do so.
This is a bad thing? Whatever happened to that "spreading free content" goal we had? Or does that only apply on the internet?
There probably aren't many offline reusers because they're either entirely non-compliant and we have no idea that they exist or they want to be compliant, read the terms of the GFDL, and decide not to bother with our content.
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required.
Maybe, but that's not what the FAQ says.
Um... yes it is...
I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
Yes, CC-BY-SA is extremely confusing on this point. That's another reason not to use it.
but it seems clear to me that we can require people to link back to Wikipedia (in particular, the history page) so that everyone is, at least indirectly, attributed. Given that that's how most people are using the GFDL anyway, I really don't see the problem.
There are very few offline reusers of Wikipedia content. I know of none that are using more than de minimis portions of my content without attributing me. If you know of any, please, tell me who they are, and I'll send a cease and desist to them.
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing one or more URLs. In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch. The WMF condoning and facilitating such behavior is absolutely unacceptable, no matter how many people "vote" to do so.
I don't think that's clear at all. I don't know how many authors you are meant to attribute things to under CC-BY-SA, it may well be all of them. I need to do more research (or, I need someone to tell me the answer!).
You actually seem to recognize this to some extent, in that you realize that a 51% vote is not sufficient. But then you randomly pick 60% as a magic threshold to use instead. You welcomed alternate suggestions with actual reasons, and I gave you one. 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right to attribution without their permission.
My reason for thinking we need more than 50% has nothing to do with the acceptability or otherwise of the proposal but rather, as I said, our tradition of favouring the status quo. Yes, you gave a number with a reason, thank you for that, I just disagree with the reason.
Even Mike Godwin seemed to recognize this principle in his early discussions on the topic, when he suggested that there would be a way to opt-out of the relicensing. But my single question which I presented for the FAQ was left unanswered. How can I opt out?
I'm not sure Mike was thinking clearly when he said that - I don't see any way someone that has made a significant number of edits could opt-out. The work required in tracing what parts of what articles are derivative of your edits would make removing your edits infeasible, so every article you've edited would have to remain under only GFDL, which dramatically reduces the usefulness of the changeover. And that's before we consider articles that have been merged and other means by which text is moved from one article to another.
On 8 Jan 2009, at 22:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I don't think that's clear at all. I don't know how many authors you are meant to attribute things to under CC-BY-SA, it may well be all of them. I need to do more research (or, I need someone to tell me the answer!).
My preference would be: all authors that have contributed to the article, where that contribution has not been reverted, unless the authors say that they don't want to be attributed. There is a large amount of leeway here, though: I think even "Wikipedia" would satisfy the license, or on the other scale a complete list of every editor of the wiki. The WMF really needs to state up front what the attribution should be before we have the vote / start using the license (assuming we do).
Note that for the GFDL the requirement is that five (or all if less than 5) of the principle authors of the document (which I would interpret as an article) should be attributed.
Personally, for everything I've written, and any photograph I've taken, I want to be attributed when it is / they are used, with the option to waive the attribution if I dislike the usage of it. That applies both to content I've submitted to Wikipedia et al., and in general to anything else I do. I'm happy for that attribution to be relegated to an "et al." in the case of being one author among many, where my contributions are less than the N authors being attributed.
Mike Peel
2009/1/8 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
On 8 Jan 2009, at 22:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I don't think that's clear at all. I don't know how many authors you are meant to attribute things to under CC-BY-SA, it may well be all of them. I need to do more research (or, I need someone to tell me the answer!).
My preference would be: all authors that have contributed to the article, where that contribution has not been reverted, unless the authors say that they don't want to be attributed.
I would agree, except that I would exclude non-creative contributions (spelling corrections, say). It would probably be easier for a re-user to include them anyway, though.
There is a large amount of leeway here, though: I think even "Wikipedia" would satisfy the license, or on the other scale a complete list of every editor of the wiki. The WMF really needs to state up front what the attribution should be before we have the vote / start using the license (assuming we do).
"Wikipedia" would only satisfy the license if the author specifically said that was ok. The FAQ says there will not be a requirement to designate "Wikipedia" or anything else to receive the attribution. I would expect the attribution requirements to be made perfectly clear before we vote, if they're not, I would almost certainly vote against the proposal.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"Wikipedia" would only satisfy the license if the author specifically said that was ok. The FAQ says there will not be a requirement to designate "Wikipedia" or anything else to receive the attribution. I would expect the attribution requirements to be made perfectly clear before we vote, if they're not, I would almost certainly vote against the proposal.
I concur. The WMF should clearly state what they anticipate attribution to look like. Whether one agrees that the WMF position is adequate might end up being an important issue in the decision on whether to support the vote. However the absence of any guidance about what is appropriate attribution strikes me as a strong reason to be critical.
If attribution rules are going to change, I think it is important to be as unambiguous as possible about what they are changing to, and encourage a uniform interpretation rather than leaving it for every user to ponder what the license expects of them.
-Robert Rohde
2009/1/8 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
I concur. The WMF should clearly state what they anticipate attribution to look like. Whether one agrees that the WMF position is adequate might end up being an important issue in the decision on whether to support the vote. However the absence of any guidance about what is appropriate attribution strikes me as a strong reason to be critical.
Not really. Firstly the WMF is in no position to provide such advice. It is not a significant copyright holder and it doesn't write the license. Major wikipedia authors and CC are in a far better position.
Secondly you hit the issue that the license states that attribution should be reasonable "reasonable to the medium or means". Quite apart from the problem that this will vary from legal system to legal system the range of medium means that the resources needed for the guidance section are immense consider:
Plastic models stained galss Globes with maps on them Cameo (carving) Wood pannel painting knitting Portrait photographs Ceramic sculpture metal cannon models maps computer games documentaries quiz books magazines Ceramic cups Engravings on Tankards music on magnetic tapes music by popular beat combos on vinyl records popularly known as ah "45s" etc
All of which I can see without moveing from where I'm sitting or indeed turning around.
In fact if you actually feel that there is some benefit in non binding guidelines that are very firmly not legal advice then it may be time to start a new wikimedia project or the very least some form of project on commons. A new wikimedia project would probably be a better way of addressing it.
2009/1/8 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/1/8 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
I concur. The WMF should clearly state what they anticipate attribution to look like. Whether one agrees that the WMF position is adequate might end up being an important issue in the decision on whether to support the vote. However the absence of any guidance about what is appropriate attribution strikes me as a strong reason to be critical.
Not really. Firstly the WMF is in no position to provide such advice. It is not a significant copyright holder and it doesn't write the license. Major wikipedia authors and CC are in a far better position.
The WMF will, however, decide what people need to agree to in order to contribute to Wikipedia (and the other projects, of course, I've been kind of ignoring them in this thread for convinience). There will almost certainly be a message written by the WMF (after community consultation) saying something along the lines of "By clicking "submit" you are agreeing to release your content under CC-BY-SA with the following attribution requirements and no others: ...", just as there is currently (and will continue to be) a message saying you have to release things under GFDL with no invariant sections, etc.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/8 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
I concur. The WMF should clearly state what they anticipate attribution to look like. Whether one agrees that the WMF position is adequate might end up being an important issue in the decision on whether to support the vote. However the absence of any guidance about what is appropriate attribution strikes me as a strong reason to be critical.
Not really. Firstly the WMF is in no position to provide such advice. It is not a significant copyright holder and it doesn't write the license. Major wikipedia authors and CC are in a far better position.
<snip>
As a major organization with legal council, the WMF is in a much better position to understand what the license requires than most reusers. Yes, we could ask major Wikipedia authors what they "want" when Wikipedia content is reused, but that is not necessarily the same as asking what the license requires and is certainly impractical at the large scale.
I'm looking for guidance of the sort: Doing X, Y, and Z, is generally sufficient to comply with CC-BY-SA. It need not be minimally sufficient, and probably shouldn't be, since any advice we give ought to be at a level that is clearly black and white, and not gray. Maybe we necessarily limit that advice to text and certain traditional print mediums, but I do think there needs to be something direct about acceptable standards for attribution.
It is not sensible to have a proposal that WMF wants to relicense everything CC-BY-SA and then also say that the WMF is in no position to say what that means for the reuse of Wikipedia content.
-Robert Rohde
2009/1/9 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
As a major organization with legal council, the WMF is in a much better position to understand what the license requires than most reusers.
The law however doesn't care how easy licenses are for reusers to understand. The WMF cannot provide legal advice and in that case finding out what authors view as acceptable may well be more worthwhile than legally meaningless advice.
Yes, we could ask major Wikipedia authors what they "want" when Wikipedia content is reused, but that is not necessarily the same as asking what the license requires and is certainly impractical at the large scale.
Not really. You don't have to ask everyone just a reasonable sample and you build it up over time.
So you would have say the page on 45s
==Authors views==
*Credit written on the centre of the record -author1 *Credit written on the center of the record -author2 *Credit spoken aloud at the start of the record -author3 *Credit written on the center of the record -author4
==Resuers views==
*Credit written on record sleeve -reuser1 *Credit written on the centre of the record -reuser2
==what people have actually done==
*Credit spoken at end of song (because they took the vorbis files and transfered them straight to the 45) <ref>source</ref>
==Caselaw==
*none found
So at a glance you can tell what most authors think it should be and we can spot disagreements and see what can be done to deal with them.
I'm looking for guidance of the sort: Doing X, Y, and Z, is generally sufficient to comply with CC-BY-SA.
Assuming you are in the united states your medium is X and the credits don't contain any born secret information.
It need not be minimally sufficient, and probably shouldn't be, since any advice we give ought to be at a level that is clearly black and white, and not gray. Maybe we necessarily limit that advice to text and certain traditional print mediums, but I do think there needs to be something direct about acceptable standards for attribution.
One of the standard cases for the GFDL being flawed is that it is impossible to use GFDL images on postcards but if you want to ignore that case.....
geni wrote:
2009/1/9 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
As a major organization with legal council, the WMF is in a much better position to understand what the license requires than most reusers.
The law however doesn't care how easy licenses are for reusers to understand. The WMF cannot provide legal advice and in that case finding out what authors view as acceptable may well be more worthwhile than legally meaningless advice.
It's not quite legally meaningless, in that legal decisions in practice aren't nearly as much like formal-logic inference as many people would like to pretend. In an ambiguous area of law with little precedent and a license that could be interpreted multiple ways, "I reused Wikipedia content in accordance with how Wikimedia said the license should be interpreted" would probably be granted some deference, if the Wikimedia interpretation were within the range of reasonable ones.
-Mark
2009/1/8 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
I'm looking for guidance of the sort: Doing X, Y, and Z, is generally sufficient to comply with CC-BY-SA. It need not be minimally sufficient, and probably shouldn't be, since any advice we give ought to be at a level that is clearly black and white, and not gray. Maybe we necessarily limit that advice to text and certain traditional print mediums, but I do think there needs to be something direct about acceptable standards for attribution.
I agree. We'll try to formulate that attribution guideline as part of the full proposal (and it'll be discussed further from there before we go into voting). As I mentioned earlier up-thread, it'll likely look similar to what is suggested here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_suggestions#Proposed_attribution_text
Codifying a similar clause in the Wikimedia-wide terms of use is fully consistent with attribution requirements of the GFDL. There seems to be some confusion related to the "History" section of GFDL documents, the purpose of which is clearly change-tracking, not attribution, as its preservation is only explicitly required for modified versions. A reasonable attribution expectation of someone who licensed edits under GFDL would be to be attributed where possible (i.e. where there are five authors or fewer), and to be otherwise referred to the full list of authors.
Once these attribution requirements are consistent and clear, it should be more straightforward to bring some internal use cases into compliance (e.g. transwiki copying, attribution in the page footer, dumps).
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/1/8 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
I'm looking for guidance of the sort: Doing X, Y, and Z, is generally sufficient to comply with CC-BY-SA. It need not be minimally sufficient, and probably shouldn't be, since any advice we give ought to be at a level that is clearly black and white, and not gray. Maybe we necessarily limit that advice to text and certain traditional print mediums, but I do think there needs to be something direct about acceptable standards for attribution.
I agree. We'll try to formulate that attribution guideline as part of the full proposal (and it'll be discussed further from there before we go into voting). As I mentioned earlier up-thread, it'll likely look similar to what is suggested here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GFDL_suggestions#Proposed_attribution_text
Erik, who, in your view, is/are "the Original Author"?
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: ...
Secondly you hit the issue that the license states that attribution should be reasonable "reasonable to the medium or means". Quite apart from the problem that this will vary from legal system to legal system the range of medium means that the resources needed for the guidance section are immense consider:
Plastic models stained galss Globes with maps on them Cameo (carving) Wood pannel painting knitting Portrait photographs Ceramic sculpture metal cannon models maps computer games documentaries quiz books magazines Ceramic cups Engravings on Tankards music on magnetic tapes music by popular beat combos on vinyl records popularly known as ah "45s" etc
All of which I can see without moveing from where I'm sitting or indeed turning around.
Ha! I would like to immediately challenge community members to come up with some way to reuse wikimedia content in one of the media listed by geni, above... (a knitted article, authors embroidered on the back? An engraved-tankard with PD picture? A spoken-wikipedia 45?). Best example brought to Wikimania this summer will win a prize, with categories: most creative, best craftsmanship, best use of/compliance with the GFDL, etc. If a contributor sues you over content reuse, I'll help pay the legal fees, any items produced/sold commercially excepted.
-- phoebe
A prize for best cross-media reuse of content - I love it. I will contribute to the prize pool one large gnu, and one piece of similarly huggable CC swag, signed by free-content luminaries To Be Named. --SJ
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:57 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: ...
Secondly you hit the issue that the license states that attribution should be reasonable "reasonable to the medium or means". Quite apart from the problem that this will vary from legal system to legal system the range of medium means that the resources needed for the guidance section are immense consider:
Plastic models stained galss Globes with maps on them Cameo (carving) Wood pannel painting knitting Portrait photographs Ceramic sculpture metal cannon models maps computer games documentaries quiz books magazines Ceramic cups Engravings on Tankards music on magnetic tapes music by popular beat combos on vinyl records popularly known as ah "45s" etc
All of which I can see without moveing from where I'm sitting or indeed turning around.
Ha! I would like to immediately challenge community members to come up with some way to reuse wikimedia content in one of the media listed by geni, above... (a knitted article, authors embroidered on the back? An engraved-tankard with PD picture? A spoken-wikipedia 45?). Best example brought to Wikimania this summer will win a prize, with categories: most creative, best craftsmanship, best use of/compliance with the GFDL, etc. If a contributor sues you over content reuse, I'll help pay the legal fees, any items produced/sold commercially excepted.
-- phoebe
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On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:13 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
A prize for best cross-media reuse of content - I love it. I will contribute to the prize pool one large gnu, and one piece of similarly huggable CC swag, signed by free-content luminaries To Be Named. --SJ
How does this help in creating a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge?
Nice gimmick, but c'mon. Engraved tankards aren't the best way to share knowledge.
Granted, including full change histories is overkill, but at the very least I think you ought to mention the names of the authors who want to be attributed. If their contributions are so small as to make that infeasible, you probably have a good case for fair use/fair dealing. There's absolutely no reason the license should allow for anything else.
Erik claims that a link to the change history is attribution. But then he claims that the change history itself isn't there for attribution. Then he goes on to point out that it's possible to do more. That's great that it's possible, but a license should make due credit mandatory, not just possible.
Fix Mediawiki first and then get back to us, Erik.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:57 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: ...
Secondly you hit the issue that the license states that attribution should be reasonable "reasonable to the medium or means". Quite apart from the problem that this will vary from legal system to legal system the range of medium means that the resources needed for the guidance section are immense consider:
Plastic models stained galss Globes with maps on them Cameo (carving) Wood pannel painting knitting Portrait photographs Ceramic sculpture metal cannon models maps computer games documentaries quiz books magazines Ceramic cups Engravings on Tankards music on magnetic tapes music by popular beat combos on vinyl records popularly known as ah
"45s"
etc
All of which I can see without moveing from where I'm sitting or indeed turning around.
Ha! I would like to immediately challenge community members to come up with some way to reuse wikimedia content in one of the media listed by geni, above... (a knitted article, authors embroidered on the back? An engraved-tankard with PD picture? A spoken-wikipedia 45?). Best example brought to Wikimania this summer will win a prize, with categories: most creative, best craftsmanship, best use of/compliance with the GFDL, etc. If a contributor sues you over content reuse, I'll help pay the legal fees, any items produced/sold commercially excepted.
-- phoebe
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Anthony wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:13 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
A prize for best cross-media reuse of content - I love it. I will contribute to the prize pool one large gnu, and one piece of similarly huggable CC swag, signed by free-content luminaries To Be Named. --SJ
How does this help in creating a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge?
Nice gimmick, but c'mon. Engraved tankards aren't the best way to share knowledge.
With that comment you would certainly win a bobblehead of Richard Stallman if such a thing were available. This could be awarded for a single-minded devotion to whatever topic is at hand to an extent where all shmoos and tribbles march past unnoticed.
Sam, Phoebe and perhaps Geni were all able to accept the spirit of a pleasant diversion, and develop new ideas accordingly. After all, there is more to Wikieschatology than the knowledge itself.
Ec
Granted, including full change histories is overkill, but at the very least I think you ought to mention the names of the authors who want to be attributed. If their contributions are so small as to make that infeasible, you probably have a good case for fair use/fair dealing. There's absolutely no reason the license should allow for anything else.
Erik claims that a link to the change history is attribution. But then he claims that the change history itself isn't there for attribution. Then he goes on to point out that it's possible to do more. That's great that it's possible, but a license should make due credit mandatory, not just possible.
Fix Mediawiki first and then get back to us, Erik.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:57 PM, phoebe ayers wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:59 PM, geni wrote: ...
Secondly you hit the issue that the license states that attribution should be reasonable "reasonable to the medium or means". Quite apart from the problem that this will vary from legal system to legal system the range of medium means that the resources needed for the guidance section are immense consider:
Plastic models stained galss Globes with maps on them Cameo (carving) Wood pannel painting knitting Portrait photographs Ceramic sculpture metal cannon models maps computer games documentaries quiz books magazines Ceramic cups Engravings on Tankards music on magnetic tapes music by popular beat combos on vinyl records popularly known as ah "45s" etc
All of which I can see without moveing from where I'm sitting or indeed turning around.
Ha! I would like to immediately challenge community members to come up with some way to reuse wikimedia content in one of the media listed by geni, above... (a knitted article, authors embroidered on the back? An engraved-tankard with PD picture? A spoken-wikipedia 45?). Best example brought to Wikimania this summer will win a prize, with categories: most creative, best craftsmanship, best use of/compliance with the GFDL, etc. If a contributor sues you over content reuse, I'll help pay the legal fees, any items produced/sold commercially excepted.
-- phoebe
2009/1/11 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
With that comment you would certainly win a bobblehead of Richard Stallman if such a thing were available. This could be awarded for a single-minded devotion to whatever topic is at hand to an extent where all shmoos and tribbles march past unnoticed.
Sam, Phoebe and perhaps Geni were all able to accept the spirit of a pleasant diversion, and develop new ideas accordingly. After all, there is more to Wikieschatology than the knowledge itself.
Not a diversion as such. Testing licenses is a fairly standard activity. Debian have their carefully thought out scenarios to test for freeness (which the GFDL fails btw). Testing usability is harder but one way to approach it is to try and work out how the license applies in media and situations there authors were not really thinking about. 45s are useful since they put some rather firm constraints with regards to what you can do while still holding enough information (several minutes of sound) to make the question of some interest. Sculpture and other 3D options are another useful thought (or practical) experiment since with the possible exception of the Free art license the license authors don't appear to have thought that hard about that scenario.
In terms of making it a wikimania challenge it might be interesting to have categories along the lines of:
*most creative reuse *most technically challengingly meeting of licensing terms *most creative meeting of licensing terms
2009/1/11 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
Granted, including full change histories is overkill
Thanks for acknowledging this.
The GFDL (including prior versions) deals with author names for three different purposes:
* author credit on the title page; * author copyright in the copyright notices; * author names for tracking modifications in the history section.
For its author credit provisions, the GFDL includes specific permission to limit credit to the five principal authors. It is evident that this permission exists precisely to avoid an eternally inflating byline. Even then, it was clear that the covers of software manuals did not have infinite space.
In the context of Wikipedia, authors do not receive credit alongside the page title as suggested for software manuals. Indeed, the closest there is in Wikipedia to the byline suggested in the GFDL is a link to the document history close to the page title. In the context of Wikipedia, authors are not named as part of the copyright notice.
Wikipedia contributors have therefore interpreted the GFDL in the context of Wikipedia to allow for principal author attribution, with a link to the history as a reasonable alternative. There is a legitimate argument that, under a literal reading of the GFDL, any re-user _also_ has to include a full copy of the change history. The fact that author credit and change history are combined in the context of Wikipedia is irrelevant, as they are covered by separate provisions in the GFDL.
Wikipedia contributors, including you above, widely agree that a requirement to include full change histories is "overkill" and would make re-use extremely cumbersome if not completely infeasible for heavily edited articles. No contributor has ever attempted to enforce this provision of the GFDL, and it seems quite likely that such an attempt would be rejected by a court on grounds of established guidelines, practices and expectations, including site-wide copyright terms such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights , which contributors agree to when making edits.
The FSF agrees that this requirement is not in the spirit of the license when dealing with heavily edited documents, or at least it does not disagree, for it has not insisted on switching to a license which preserves this onerous change tracking requirement. Instead, for massive multi-author collaborations, it has given permission to use a license, CC-BY-SA, which only requires to indicate that modifications have been made (section 3.b), not to include a full record of such modifications.
What we are left with, then, is to come up with attribution guidelines in the context of CC-BY-SA which are consistent with reasonable expectations and established practices for author credit per the GFDL. Given its clear reference to five principal authors for author credit, and given established practices to link to the page history (or even the article, as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights ), the proposed attribution-by-URL in certain circumstances is a fully legally and ethically acceptable way to meet this need.
This does not close the door to improvements to attribution guidelines and practices, including software changes, but such improvements are a separate issue from the license update itself. That update, as I've expressed before, is motivated by many factors, chiefly including compatibility and - in summary - the overall complexity of the license for re-users. The change history inclusion requirement is only one element of that complexity.
2009/1/11 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
What we are left with, then, is to come up with attribution guidelines in the context of CC-BY-SA which are consistent with reasonable expectations and established practices for author credit per the GFDL.
False. Read the CC-BY-SA again. Neither of those terms appear in it.
Given its clear reference to five principal authors for author credit, and given established practices to link to the page history (or even the article, as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights ), the proposed attribution-by-URL in certain circumstances is a fully legally and ethically acceptable way to meet this need.
Your conclusion is technically correct but meaningless and your line of reasoning is highly questionable at best.
2009/1/11 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/1/11 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
What we are left with, then, is to come up with attribution guidelines in the context of CC-BY-SA which are consistent with reasonable expectations and established practices for author credit per the GFDL.
False. Read the CC-BY-SA again. Neither of those terms appear in it.
I don't understand, which terms don't appear and how is that relevant? CC-BY-SA allows authors to specify how they wish to be attributed, so we can (at least try to) choose a way that ought to be acceptable to people that have accepted the GFDL.
2009/1/11 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
I don't understand, which terms don't appear and how is that relevant? CC-BY-SA allows authors to specify how they wish to be attributed, so we can (at least try to) choose a way that ought to be acceptable to people that have accepted the GFDL.
They can specify but that means nothing. The CC-BY-SA 3.0 actually says:
provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied
For clarity the license opening defines the original author to be the individual or individuals who created the thing.
The critical term is "reasonable to the medium or means" for mediawiki our current method of crediting is probably reasonable to the medium or means. For other applications different forms of crediting are required. Any 5 author stuff is completely irrelevant.
2009/1/11 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/1/11 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
I don't understand, which terms don't appear and how is that relevant? CC-BY-SA allows authors to specify how they wish to be attributed, so we can (at least try to) choose a way that ought to be acceptable to people that have accepted the GFDL.
They can specify but that means nothing. The CC-BY-SA 3.0 actually says:
provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied
Interesting - the "human-readable" version says: "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor". Now that I look for it, however, I can't find anything like that in the license itself...
2009/1/11 geni geniice@gmail.com:
The critical term is "reasonable to the medium or means" for mediawiki our current method of crediting is probably reasonable to the medium or means. For other applications different forms of crediting are required. Any 5 author stuff is completely irrelevant.
I never said that CC-BY-SA makes reference to principal authors in a similar fashion as the GFDL does. Of course it does not. However, it allows attribution by name and/or by URI, and also states that "The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner". If, by terms of service of Wikipedia, we ask contributors to give permission to be attributed by URL under certain circumstances, this is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA, and is consistent with the attribution requirements of GFDL.
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
If, by terms of service of Wikipedia, we ask contributors to give permission to be attributed by URL under certain circumstances, this is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA, and is consistent with the attribution requirements of GFDL.
Even if the terms of service are modified *after* the contribution is made? That's horrible.
2009/1/12 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
If, by terms of service of Wikipedia, we ask contributors to give permission to be attributed by URL under certain circumstances, this is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA, and is consistent with the attribution requirements of GFDL.
Even if the terms of service are modified *after* the contribution is made? That's horrible.
Yeah, you have a point there... It can't be done via terms of service since that requires getting people to agree to them and it's too late for that. Another method is required.
2009/1/12 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
If, by terms of service of Wikipedia, we ask contributors to give permission to be attributed by URL under certain circumstances, this is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA, and is consistent with the attribution requirements of GFDL.
Even if the terms of service are modified *after* the contribution is made?
Yes, because it's consistent with the past licensing terms (attribution/credit requirements of the GFDL) and, to the extent that terms of service have been published through pages like Wikipedia:Copyrights, with those terms as well.
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/1/11 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
Granted, including full change histories is overkill
Thanks for acknowledging this.
The GFDL (including prior versions) deals with author names for three different purposes:
- author credit on the title page;
- author copyright in the copyright notices;
- author names for tracking modifications in the history section.
That may have been the intention of the author of the GFDL (though you haven't proven this). But the simple fact of the matter is that the history section *does* provide credit to *all* the authors.
Thus, the rest of your convoluted argument is irrelevant.
There is a legitimate
argument that, under a literal reading of the GFDL, any re-user _also_ has to include a full copy of the change history.
The problem with that argument is that "the change history" isn't in the format or location that "the section entitled 'History' would be".
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 7:03 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
There is a legitimate argument that, under a literal reading of the GFDL, any re-user _also_ has to include a full copy of the change history.
The problem with that argument is that "the change history" isn't in the format or location that "the section entitled 'History' would be".
In fact, while we're talking about intent, wasn't the software implementation of the change history created before the GFDL was adopted? It seems to me that the change history couldn't possibly have been intended to represent the GFDL section entitled history. In fact, there used to be a [[Wikipedia:GFDL History]] page provided this. It wasn't deleted until 28 December 2006. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:GFD...)
2009/1/11 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
That may have been the intention of the author of the GFDL (though you haven't proven this). But the simple fact of the matter is that the history section *does* provide credit to *all* the authors.
It does so, in the context of Wikipedia.org, because change tracking and attribution are served by the same software function. That a listing of all authors would always be included directly (as opposed to by reference) with any copy of a Wikipedia article is not a reasonable inference from this fact, especially given that the language in GFDL which clearly exists for purpose of giving credit includes reasonable limitations (principal authors). After all, even you yourself agree that including the full change history with each copy is overkill.
Hence, we are having a practical debate about what is and isn't reasonable. I base my argument on the language of the GFDL when it comes to author credit, which includes limitations, as well as established guidelines and practices on Wikipedia. Your argument, on the other hand, appears to be pulled out of thin air. It is neither a direct requirement of the GFDL, nor an established practice, nor a reasonable expectation of a volunteer contributor. I can only conclude that it is your personal preference.
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
2009/1/11 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
That may have been the intention of the author of the GFDL (though you haven't proven this). But the simple fact of the matter is that the
history
section *does* provide credit to *all* the authors.
It does so, in the context of Wikipedia.org, because change tracking and attribution are served by the same software function. That a listing of all authors would always be included directly (as opposed to by reference) with any copy of a Wikipedia article is not a reasonable inference from this fact, especially given that the language in GFDL which clearly exists for purpose of giving credit includes reasonable limitations (principal authors).
I fail to see how you can follow the GFDL without crediting all authors.
After all, even
you yourself agree that including the full change history with each copy is overkill.
I don't think you understand what I meant by that. I don't think the GFDL should require including a full change history, but I do think it should require every author to be credited directly in the document, and it should ensure that these authors are credited in a way that they are not considered responsible for modifications made by others.
Hence, we are having a practical debate about what is and isn't
reasonable. I base my argument on the language of the GFDL when it comes to author credit, which includes limitations, as well as established guidelines and practices on Wikipedia.
Why?
Your argument, on the other hand, appears to be pulled out of thin air.
I assure you that the concept of the right to attribution is not something I pulled out of thin air.
It is neither a
direct requirement of the GFDL, nor an established practice, nor a reasonable expectation of a volunteer contributor. I can only conclude that it is your personal preference.
It most certainly is a requirement of the GFDL (not sure what your weasel-word of "direct" is supposed to mean). It most certainly is an established practice (it's part of the Berne Convention, though it's a part which the United States has failed to implement). And it most certainly is a reasonable expectation of a volunteer contribution (plagiarism is a violation of a natural right which even a five-year old would recognize).
2009/1/12 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
It most certainly is a requirement of the GFDL (not sure what your weasel-word of "direct" is supposed to mean).
The GFDL requires crediting principal authors, and it requires change tracking. Given the obvious intent of the principal authors clause to limit inflating bylines, and given the way these clauses have always been interpreted, specified and implemented, you really have no case that simplifying the change tracking requirements through CC-BY-SA constitutes an unreasonable change.
On 11 Jan 2009, at 21:46, Erik Moeller wrote:
The GFDL (including prior versions) deals with author names for three different purposes:
- author credit on the title page;
- author copyright in the copyright notices;
- author names for tracking modifications in the history section.
... In the context of Wikipedia, authors are not named as part of the copyright notice.
I'm curious: why isn't a copyright notice displayed at the bottom of each article, stating the copyright owners of the material?
That appears to be how GFDL is supposed to be used (as per "How to use this License for your documents"), taking "document" to mean an article. It's also standard practice to state the copyright owners (look at the large majority of webpages, or any book).
Mike
I'm curious: why isn't a copyright notice displayed at the bottom of each article, stating the copyright owners of the material?
Because the copyright owners is often a very long list. The notice: "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.)" is displayed, and that's pretty much all that is practical. Another link to the history page might be good, I guess.
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:14 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
I'm curious: why isn't a copyright notice displayed at the bottom of each article, stating the copyright owners of the material?
Because the copyright owners is often a very long list. The notice: "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.)" is displayed, and that's pretty much all that is practical. Another link to the history page might be good, I guess.
Perhaps this could read something like:
"All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details and History for contribut[ions|ors].)"
I hope we can get to the point where referencing the article itself is enough both for the copyright notices and the attribution(s) - refer to other thread.
Sam
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"Wikipedia" would only satisfy the license if the author specifically said that was ok. The FAQ says there will not be a requirement to designate "Wikipedia" or anything else to receive the attribution. I would expect the attribution requirements to be made perfectly clear before we vote, if they're not, I would almost certainly vote against the proposal.
I concur. The WMF should clearly state what they anticipate attribution to look like. Whether one agrees that the WMF position is adequate might end up being an important issue in the decision on whether to support the vote. However the absence of any guidance about what is appropriate attribution strikes me as a strong reason to be critical.
If attribution rules are going to change, I think it is important to be as unambiguous as possible about what they are changing to, and encourage a uniform interpretation rather than leaving it for every user to ponder what the license expects of them.
Agreed. It might not be possible to provide completely unambiguous rules, given this is free content we're talking about :P -- but at the very least it would be extremely helpful, from a practical sense, for the WMF to provide clear guidelines for attribution under a wide variety of circumstances: reprinting an article on a website, in a book, using a photo, etc. etc. Heck, even if the license doesn't change, it would be super useful to write up such guidelines and make them widely available. AFAIK the document that directly addresses this question on en: was primarily written by a non-lawyer, many years ago, and it could probably use some help.
As for voting, I think both would be useful -- a straw poll on meta for discussion, but boardvote for actual taking and counting of the votes, since this a community-wide issue.
-- phoebe
Hoi, Anthony, what is it that you want to achieve by cooperating in Wikipedia? Why is it that you give such an emphasis on YOUR copyright in this. What makes what you have done so special ? Thanks, Gerard
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
2009/1/8 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Thomas Dalton <
thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
As for majority required, I would say something more than 50% should be necessary. We traditionally favour the status quo in pretty much everything we do (except, for some reason, with the 3RR, I've never understood that... but that's a discussion for another time and place). Also, if we say 50% is all that's required and the result comes out as 50.3% or something, you should know it's going to cause massive drama (if we chose 60% and the results is 60.3% there is still going to be plenty of drama, of course, but hopefully less). I'd go with a requirement of 60%, but that's really just a number plucked out of thin air, I welcome suggestions from people with actual reasons!
I'd say 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's
right
to
attribution without their permission.
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required.
Maybe, but that's not what the FAQ says.
I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of
CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
Yes, CC-BY-SA is extremely confusing on this point. That's another reason not to use it.
but it seems clear to me that we can require
people to link back to Wikipedia (in particular, the history page) so that everyone is, at least indirectly, attributed. Given that that's how most people are using the GFDL anyway, I really don't see the problem.
There are very few offline reusers of Wikipedia content. I know of none that are using more than de minimis portions of my content without attributing me. If you know of any, please, tell me who they are, and I'll send a cease and desist to them.
This switch to CC-BY-SA is clearly going to open the door for offline reusers to use Wikipedia content without attributing authors beyond listing one or more URLs. In fact, it's quite clear from discussions which have taken place on this list that this is the main point of making the switch. The WMF condoning and facilitating such behavior is absolutely unacceptable, no matter how many people "vote" to do so.
You actually seem to recognize this to some extent, in that you realize that a 51% vote is not sufficient. But then you randomly pick 60% as a magic threshold to use instead. You welcomed alternate suggestions with actual reasons, and I gave you one. 100%, because you shouldn't purport to take away someone's right to attribution without their permission.
Even Mike Godwin seemed to recognize this principle in his early discussions on the topic, when he suggested that there would be a way to opt-out of the relicensing. But my single question which I presented for the FAQ was left unanswered. How can I opt out? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 6:02 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, Anthony, what is it that you want to achieve by cooperating in Wikipedia? Why is it that you give such an emphasis on YOUR copyright in this. What makes what you have done so special ?
I only have a right to complain about the violation of MY copyright. For all I know, everyone else is happy to have their rights violated.
Hoi, The first question, in my opinion the most relevant, is the one that you do not answer.. What is it that you aimed to achieve and why is copyright so important to you?
In my opinion your current behaviour is as destructive as that of any other owner of proprietary information. I do not understand how to square this with your "defence" of the GFDL. If anything, it makes the best possible case against this fine license. Thanks. GerardM
2009/1/9 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 6:02 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, Anthony, what is it that you want to achieve by cooperating in Wikipedia? Why is it that you give such an emphasis on YOUR copyright in this. What makes what you have done so special ?
I only have a right to complain about the violation of MY copyright. For all I know, everyone else is happy to have their rights violated. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2009/1/8 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required. I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
My reading of the Attribution requirements per CC-BY-SA (4.c) in the context of a wiki is as follows:
* every substantial edit is a copyrighted creative work; * every such edit must be, per the terms of the license and the terms of use of the wiki, made available under CC-BY-SA; * per the terms of that license, if the edit is originally created for the wiki, the person submitting it is its "Original Author" (while the combined work is an Adaptation per CC-BY-SA).
A wiki page would therefore have multiple "Original Authors" per CC-BY-SA.
but it seems clear to me that we can require people to link back to Wikipedia (in particular, the history page) so that everyone is, at least indirectly, attributed. Given that that's how most people are using the GFDL anyway, I really don't see the problem.
I agree. The attribution requirements in CC-BY-SA are reasonably flexible, and we can specify in the terms of use that e.g. with more than five authors, attribution happens through a link to the History page.
I want to add something which I forgot to point out (and Kat reminded me of): Requiring that authors be named where it can be reasonably expected is especially important in the context of media files such as sounds and images which very frequently have just a single author who can reasonably expect to be attributed. I think the above approach addresses this in a medium-independent fashion.
2009/1/10 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
2009/1/8 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required. I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
My reading of the Attribution requirements per CC-BY-SA (4.c) in the context of a wiki is as follows:
- every substantial edit is a copyrighted creative work;
- every such edit must be, per the terms of the license and the terms
of use of the wiki, made available under CC-BY-SA;
- per the terms of that license, if the edit is originally created for
the wiki, the person submitting it is its "Original Author" (while the combined work is an Adaptation per CC-BY-SA).
A wiki page would therefore have multiple "Original Authors" per CC-BY-SA.
I disagree, I don't think each edit is a work but rather each revision is a work, derived from the revision before. The question is then who is the Original Author of the latest revision, is it just the person that made the last edit or is it everyone before (ie. are authors of a work automatically authors of a work derived from it)?
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/10 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
2009/1/8 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required. I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
My reading of the Attribution requirements per CC-BY-SA (4.c) in the context of a wiki is as follows:
- every substantial edit is a copyrighted creative work;
- every such edit must be, per the terms of the license and the terms
of use of the wiki, made available under CC-BY-SA;
- per the terms of that license, if the edit is originally created for
the wiki, the person submitting it is its "Original Author" (while the combined work is an Adaptation per CC-BY-SA).
A wiki page would therefore have multiple "Original Authors" per CC-BY-SA.
I disagree, I don't think each edit is a work but rather each revision is a work, derived from the revision before. The question is then who is the Original Author of the latest revision, is it just the person that made the last edit or is it everyone before (ie. are authors of a work automatically authors of a work derived from it)?
I don't know the answer with respect to CC-BY-SA, but I once tried to resolve a similar question with regards to US copyright registration. The answer from the Copyright Office, as I understood it, may be analogous. Their answer seems to be that "a work" is defined by an act of publication (i.e. making available to the public), and the "authors" of the "work" from the point of view of registration are the people who contributed to it since the last act of publication. Prior works still need to be identified during registration, but the prior authors are not given the same standing as current authors during the registration process.
So if one were to apply those rules, each whole revision that appears online would be considered a "work" and the primary "author" is only the most recent one.
I'm not saying that this interpretation is necessarily the best one (laws haven't exactly kept up with the tools for digital collaboration), but it is one perspective. CC-BY-SA could be written or interpreted to define the terms differently. I haven't tried to study the license in sufficient detail to be sure.
-Robert Rohde
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/10 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
2009/1/8 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
We discussing a move to CC-****BY****-SA, attribution is still required. I'm not an expert on the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA (I've just read them, but it isn't entirely clear to me whether Original Author is, in the context of a wiki, just the latest editor or all editors),
My reading of the Attribution requirements per CC-BY-SA (4.c) in the context of a wiki is as follows:
- every substantial edit is a copyrighted creative work;
- every such edit must be, per the terms of the license and the terms
of use of the wiki, made available under CC-BY-SA;
- per the terms of that license, if the edit is originally created for
the wiki, the person submitting it is its "Original Author" (while the combined work is an Adaptation per CC-BY-SA).
A wiki page would therefore have multiple "Original Authors" per CC-BY-SA.
I disagree, I don't think each edit is a work but rather each revision is a work, derived from the revision before. The question is then who is the Original Author of the latest revision, is it just the person that made the last edit or is it everyone before (ie. are authors of a work automatically authors of a work derived from it)?
I don't know the answer with respect to CC-BY-SA, but I once tried to resolve a similar question with regards to US copyright registration. The answer from the Copyright Office, as I understood it, may be analogous. Their answer seems to be that "a work" is defined by an act of publication (i.e. making available to the public), and the "authors" of the "work" from the point of view of registration are the people who contributed to it since the last act of publication. Prior works still need to be identified during registration, but the prior authors are not given the same standing as current authors during the registration process.
So if one were to apply those rules, each whole revision that appears online would be considered a "work" and the primary "author" is only the most recent one.
Depends in part on whether or not you consider online distribution to be "publication" or "public display". Under copyright law, "A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication." And "To perform or display a work "publicly" means "to transmit [...] a performance or display of the work [...] to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times." Sure sounds like webserving to me.
There's at least an argument that Wikipedia articles are unpublished works of joint authorship. Of course, that would put a kink in the whole GFDL thing (you could probably argue that publication under the GFDL is the only right given to joint authors under an implicit joint authorship agreement, though). On the other hand, it would remove the requirement to deposit two copies of the best edition of every single revision ever created with the copyright office.
2009/1/10 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On the other hand, it would remove the requirement to deposit two copies of the best edition of every single revision ever created with the copyright office.
No such requirement exists under US law.
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 12:18 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/10 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On the other hand, it would remove the requirement to deposit two copies of the best edition of every single revision ever created with the copyright office.
No such requirement exists under US law.
Title 17, Section 407.
2009/1/10 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
Title 17, Section 407.
Not actionable unless we receive an actual demand. Which I'm pretty sure we haven't.
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 9:47 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/10 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
Title 17, Section 407.
Not actionable unless we receive an actual demand. Which I'm pretty sure we haven't.
It's not required unless the work is published anyway.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I disagree, I don't think each edit is a work but rather each revision is a work, derived from the revision before. The question is then who is the Original Author of the latest revision, is it just the person that made the last edit or is it everyone before (ie. are authors of a work automatically authors of a work derived from it)?
One might even regard many articles as having a homeopathic nature. Someone starts the article, and over time and many successive edits that person's contribution becomes diluted until it vanishes. There's often nothing of left of it to copyright.
Ec
On Saturday 10 January 2009 10:02:11 Ray Saintonge wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
I disagree, I don't think each edit is a work but rather each revision is a work, derived from the revision before. The question is then who is the Original Author of the latest revision, is it just the person that made the last edit or is it everyone before (ie. are authors of a work automatically authors of a work derived from it)?
One might even regard many articles as having a homeopathic nature. Someone starts the article, and over time and many successive edits that person's contribution becomes diluted until it vanishes. There's often nothing of left of it to copyright.
That might happen on some of the most visited articles. But on most articles I made or signifficantly contributed to, I continue to see my text for years and years.
2009/1/9 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
My reading of the Attribution requirements per CC-BY-SA (4.c) in the context of a wiki is as follows:
- every substantial edit is a copyrighted creative work;
- every such edit must be, per the terms of the license and the terms
of use of the wiki, made available under CC-BY-SA;
- per the terms of that license, if the edit is originally created for
the wiki, the person submitting it is its "Original Author" (while the combined work is an Adaptation per CC-BY-SA).
A wiki page would therefore have multiple "Original Authors" per CC-BY-SA.
For the record, this interpretation has been confirmed by Creative Commons General Counsel. The application of an edit results in an Adaptation with multiple Original Authors. They've also confirmed that an attribution regime where edits are attributed via reference to the history page is fully consistent with CC-BY-SA.
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