Anthony writes:
On the other hand, the history page *could* be interpreted as being part of the Document.
Even if it's on a different server?
For online copies, as I've said before, I don't see much problem with this. As I've said before, it's hard to draw the line as to what is part of the work and what is not part of the work, when it comes to online sources. But I don't think the same argument can be made for offline copies.
So, online but on a different server is okay, but online when there's an offline copy isn't? What is the legal distinction you're drawing here? (I ask for the "legal distinction" because you are articulating your concern in terms of what you purport to be violations of your legal rights.)
My main concern is that CC-BY-SA will be deliberately misinterpreted to not require direct attribution - and the published draft of the RfC confirms that this concern is valid.
So you think an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is online is "direct"? But an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is offline is *not* "direct"? What is the legal (or "rights") basis for this distinction?
--Mike
So, online but on a different server is okay, but online when there's an offline copy isn't? What is the legal distinction you're drawing here? (I ask for the "legal distinction" because you are articulating your concern in terms of what you purport to be violations of your legal rights.)
It all boils down to how you define "reasonable", and that's usually left to laymen, not lawyers.
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
So, online but on a different server is okay, but online when there's an offline copy isn't? What is the legal distinction you're drawing here? (I ask for the "legal distinction" because you are articulating your concern in terms of what you purport to be violations of your legal rights.)
It all boils down to how you define "reasonable", and that's usually left to laymen, not lawyers.
Which is why I for one say shame on CC for using such crappy phrasing. Essentially they're saying "require attribution, but what form that attribution comes in is what author(s) deem to be reasonable."
Easy enough when there's a small number of authors who can easily agree on what's reasonable. Harder when you've got thousands of users each with their own opinions of how attribution should be handled. In this situation, who the hell defines "reasonable?"
I'm not the one to decide, nor do I have particularly strong feelings about one method of attribution or another. Just thought I'd lay the blame for this mess where it belongs: a vaguely worded license with highly debatable terms.
-Chad
2009/1/22 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
It all boils down to how you define "reasonable", and that's usually left to laymen, not lawyers.
Which is why I for one say shame on CC for using such crappy phrasing. Essentially they're saying "require attribution, but what form that attribution comes in is what author(s) deem to be reasonable."
It's what a jury deems reasonable, rather than the author(s), isn't it?
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/22 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It all boils down to how you define "reasonable", and that's usually left to laymen, not lawyers.
Which is why I for one say shame on CC for using such crappy phrasing. Essentially they're saying "require attribution, but what form that attribution comes in is what author(s) deem to be reasonable."
It's what a jury deems reasonable, rather than the author(s), isn't it?
The author(s) set the terms. If it ends up in court, it would be the judge/jury who decides if the author(s)' idea of 'reasonable' is in fact reasonable.
Of course, this all depends on the court's idea of 'reasonable' too, so we're back to the same issue :)
-Chad
2009/1/22 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
The author(s) set the terms. If it ends up in court, it would be the judge/jury who decides if the author(s)' idea of 'reasonable' is in fact reasonable.
I know the human-readable summary of the license says that, but when I looked I couldn't find anything in the license proper along those lines. Quote you quote the relevant section?
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/22 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
The author(s) set the terms. If it ends up in court, it would be the judge/jury who decides if the author(s)' idea of 'reasonable' is in fact reasonable.
I know the human-readable summary of the license says that, but when I looked I couldn't find anything in the license proper along those lines. Quote you quote the relevant section?
Well it does refer to using the URIs as specified by the licensor 4(c)(iii):
"to the extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work...."
And it also mentions that the licensor specifies who is to be credited 4(c)(i):
"...if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties"
I guess I walked away from reading it under the impression that the licensor and/or original author would be the judge of whether the attribution is "reasonable." Can't say there's explicit language stating this, it just seemed to follow and makes common sense, really.
-Chad
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/1/22 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It all boils down to how you define "reasonable", and that's usually left to laymen, not lawyers.
Which is why I for one say shame on CC for using such crappy phrasing. Essentially they're saying "require attribution, but what form that attribution comes in is what author(s) deem to be reasonable."
It's what a jury deems reasonable, rather than the author(s), isn't it?
Isn't it what a jury deems the grantee of the license to have intended?
"You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), [...] provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties."
Now, personally, the way I read "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilitzing", I think it means "what is reasonably necessary to provide proper attribution", not "what is reasonably necessary to maximize reuse". Erik seems to be pushing for the latter interpretation.
On the other hand, I think it's a terrible idea to use such an ambiguous license in the first place.
Anthony wrote:
Now, personally, the way I read "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilitzing", I think it means "what is reasonably necessary to provide proper attribution", not "what is reasonably necessary to maximize reuse". Erik seems to be pushing for the latter interpretation.
Without stipulating that that is what Erik really wants, I will just say that I fear what he has been so far proposing, in the absolute will not accomplish that end.
Instead it can completely prevent some reuse of material derived from wikipedia. That is prevent reuse of reused wikipedia material, breaking the viral nature of the inherent "copyleft"; in those jurisdictions where moral rights are inalienable. At least that is my understanding. I of course Am Not a Lawyer.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Again, right at the top, I apologize for replying to a week old posting, and one I replied to at the time, besides... but perhaps my motives will be clear.
Anthony wrote:
Now, personally, the way I read "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilitzing", I think it means "what is reasonably necessary to provide proper attribution", not "what is reasonably necessary to maximize reuse". Erik seems to be pushing for the latter interpretation.
I commented on your interpretation of what you perceived to be Erik's wish in all of this...
But I neglected to comment at all your interpretation of the wording of the license.
I don't think "proper attribution" means anything, in relation to the phrase you are quoting.
However, a benign reading of "reasonable to the medium or means" could easily be dovetailed with the (I really only know of the case in Finland) moral rights legislation phrasing of *only* requiring the attribution be provided in such a form which is "customary" in the field applicable. This would not require for instance that each product give the attribution, as long as for instance the attribution were given more centrally in a fashion that is "customary" in such material as which is in question. Not that that helps us much, since it is clear we are at the cusp of _creating_ the standards for what will be "customary" for attribution in such quite novel enterprises as Wikipedia.
We do have to remember that Wikipedia really is quite unprecedented. Even if the early editions of Oxford English Dictionary relied on scraps of paper sent from a multitude of people, they would only have been giving examples of usage, not "edits" to the creative content of the dictionary itself.
One very tentative reading would be to claim that it is indeed "customary" to "link to the history". I don't find that to be strongly persuasive, but I am bound to admit it is possible.
And even if I were to admit that it would be arguable that this quirk of the Moral Right of Paternity could be elided in this fashion, in the context of Finnish law, one has to ask whether this workaround would suffice in all other jurisdictions which are still shackled by this self same Paternity Right?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Not that that helps us much, since it is clear we are at the cusp of _creating_ the standards for what will be "customary" for attribution in such quite novel enterprises as Wikipedia.
Exactly. There is nothing 'customary' about massively collaborative development of works. We can lead the way here by opening the work as much as possible (or should I say, reasonable) for others to reuse rather than locking it up with arduous yet largely useless requirements (and in doing so creating an opportunity for someone else to build 'The Free[er] Encyclopedia').
Sam
2009/2/2 Sam Johnston samj@samj.net:
Exactly. There is nothing 'customary' about massively collaborative development of works.
Just about every film of any significance. TV series. Computer games. Heh just about every bit of major software. Maps of large areas can rack up very large numbers (depending on a couple of factors).
The other thing to remember is most wikipedia articles don't actually have that many authors. en has a mean of 17.83 edits per page. Allowing for bot edits (which mostly don't qualify for copyright), distortion of that figure due a few very large articles histories and people editing more than once and you are pretty close to what some scientific papers rack up in terms of authors.
Most things you could use content for already have customary methods of giving attribution. That isn't going to change.
Sam Johnston wrote:
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Not that that helps us much, since it is clear we are at the cusp of _creating_ the standards for what will be "customary" for attribution in such quite novel enterprises as Wikipedia.
Exactly. There is nothing 'customary' about massively collaborative development of works.
Wikipedia is novel in the degree of how fine grained the collaboration is. But there are other works that are somewhat collaborative in nature. And the question then is where the line is where some special yardstick should be applied; and is there one, or should we look more toward the medium used in each specific case.
It is clear we already handle different media on WMF in differing ways in many respects. Does the number of contributors on wikipedia really amount to a qualitative change in our nature? An argument for this view might be deduced from the migration clauses wording, but personally I will have to ponder on this issue before I make my mind up.
We can lead the way here by opening the work as much as possible (or should I say, reasonable) for others to reuse rather than locking it up with arduous yet largely useless requirements
I really can't agree the requirements would be useless, if they enable interoperability across jurisdictions. (of course it hasn't been exhaustively established yet whether any requirements would be sufficient or necessary - I think that is what we are fumbling around with in the dark here)
(and in doing so creating an opportunity for someone else to build 'The Free[er] Encyclopedia').
Given that the "Free-est Encyclopedia" is going to be a PD encyclopedia by some peoples lights, that isn't going to be a consideration, ever, if we want to remain in the copy-left continuum.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Anthony writes:
On the other hand, the history page *could* be interpreted as being part of the Document.
Even if it's on a different server?
I don't see why not. If you're talking about a different server and a different domain name, run by a different company, I think you could argue the difference is de minimis, so long as the other server is pretty much 100% accessible.
For online copies, as I've said before, I don't see much problem with this. As I've said before, it's hard to draw the line as to what is part of the work and what is not part of the work, when it comes to online sources. But I don't think the same argument can be made for offline copies.
So, online but on a different server is okay, but online when there's an offline copy isn't?
Online when there's an offline copy clearly isn't okay. Online on a different server, run by a different company. I'm not going to say it's okay, but I really don't see much difference.
What is the legal distinction you're drawing here? (I ask for the "legal distinction" because you are articulating your concern in terms of what you purport to be violations of your legal rights.)
Actually, I'm purporting them to be violations of my moral rights. But the distinction is pretty obvious - in one case the page is a click away, in the other case it at least requires finding internet access and typing in a url, and quite possibly requires jumping through even more hoops than that. Additionally, printed copies will almost surely last longer than the url remains accessible. With online copies, the url can be updated if it moves, or the page can be copied to the local server if the remote one goes down.
My main concern is that CC-BY-SA will be deliberately misinterpreted
to not require direct attribution - and the published draft of the RfC confirms that this concern is valid.
So you think an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is online is "direct"?
I think it's close enough to "direct" that I'm not interested in complaining about it. Personally, I'd just include the attribution on the same server, especially if someone complained.
But an online attribution on a
separate page (or server) when the article is offline is *not* "direct"? What is the legal (or "rights") basis for this distinction?
Common sense?
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