I'm posting this to wikipedia-l as it concerns all Wikipedias; albums are in that respect language independent.
As you may know, freedb.org provides a huge open content database of existing music CDs. Overall, the statistics page currently lists 882172 individual CDs. For each album it provides the name, band, track information (including length) and sometimes other details such as the genre.
In part because FreeDB already exists, I believe we need a strict policy against mere CD database entries for Wikipedia that provide no additional information about an album. If there are no objections, I will create the respective policy page on the English Wikipedia.
My reasoning:
1) If we imported all entries from FreeDB into Wikipedia, some facilities of Wikipedia would become unusable. "Random page" would lose much of its current value. The search would be massively slowed (because the database size would drastically increase) and return many useless hits, because song titles use pretty much every word in every language. Possible future facilities such as an "Ancient pages" feature to view the pages that have been edited the longest time ago would also be drastically impaired.
2) Much of the imported information would be neglected -- FreeDB database entries are generated automatically by running an application on a computer while a CD is inserted, which is why there are so many of them. We cannot and should not keep up with this process. We would only duplicate existing work.
3) Wikipedia is not a mirror for source material. As far as only album data is entered, in my opinion the criterion of "source material" is satisfied.
4) Not allowing the import of FreeDB entries but allowing manual entry of album track lists is even worse. We create an extremely incomplete list, and encourage our users to duplicate existing work.
What we should do instead, I think, is this:
1) Make a clear policy that pages which only contain track lists and nothing else of value can be deleted (they still need to be put on the "Votes for deletion" page or equivalent on other Wikipedias, but they can be deleted quickly).
2) Make another policy that pages about bands should *not* contain links to the individual albums. These links should be created on demand, not for all album titles. Instead, add an external link to the FreeDB query for that band to the band page.
3) Supply criteria for what kind of pages about albums are acceptable -- provide good examples. For instance, a detailed discussion of the music on a particular album, with excerpted lyrics, notes etc. is certainly acceptable. In such a discussion, a track listing could also be added to the article.
Please note: This is not at all intended as an offense against the Albums WikiProject. Good, comprehensive articles about albums should most definitely be added. What I believe we should avoid is to turn Wikipedia into Everything2 and to import everything that could possibly at some point be turned into an article. This is also not a general policy against bot import of articles, only in this case, where there is already a collaborative open content project that fulfills the need perfectly and no point for us to duplicate its work.
Even if this policy is not implemented, I will point out at this juncture that I am strongly opposed to an import of the FreeDB data, should that ever come up. But to be consistent and to avoid unnecessary work, I think we should apply these rules even to existing, manually added album pages.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller writes
Yes, you can use Wikipedia articles. They are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which mainly means that articles that use them also have to be FDL-licensed. Note that the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights, only that others will be able to copy and modify the so- licensed text. We consider this fair:
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
Robert has of course the option to use for his translation tutorial only those Wikipedia texts that have been released into the public domain, and all public domain texts listed on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3APublic_domain_resources
Axel
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Erik Moeller writes
Yes, you can use Wikipedia articles. They are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which mainly means that articles that use them also have to be FDL-licensed. Note that the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights, only that others will be able to copy and modify the so- licensed text. We consider this fair:
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
Robert has of course the option to use for his translation tutorial only those Wikipedia texts that have been released into the public domain,
Are there any? I know that you release all of your contris into the public domain, but once someone else starts working on them, they become FDL licensed.
Regards,
Erik
Robert has of course the option to use for his translation tutorial only those Wikipedia texts that have been released into the public domain,
Are there any? I know that you release all of your contris into the public domain, but once someone else starts working on them, they become FDL licensed.
The specific parts contributed by authors who release their work to the PD still are, and always will be, PD. Additions made by others are, as you say, under the FDL by default. But there are still some pretty significant chunks of PD text in the wiki, notably mine.
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
The most briljant move of the GPL is *using* the copyright framework in order to reverse it. It's not hypocritical, it's pure genius. It converts the public domain from a "tragedy of the commons" to a "comedy of the commons".
W.
Le Fri, 28 Feb 2003 04:41:42 +0100, inspiré(e) Wouter Vanden Hove wouter.vanden.hove@pandora.be écrivait la plume alerte :
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
The most briljant move of the GPL is *using* the copyright framework in order to reverse it. It's not hypocritical, it's pure genius. It converts the public domain
Still the same debate : there are using authors right protection. To use copyright protection they shoud have to pay k$ to register the Free Software (TM) and give licence of use to who they want.
Friendly,
On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 19:09, Axel Boldt wrote:
Erik Moeller writes
Note that the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights, only that others will be able to copy and modify the so- licensed text. We consider this fair:
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for* intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
We protect everyone's right to use our material by using a license that explicitly grants rights of use that are by default denied by intellectual property law, and protecting the public from third party abusers who would abridge those rights in regards to derivative works (a protection not afforded by the public domain, for better or worse).
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for* intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
I prefer Brion's formulation, if I had to pick one, but I feel compelled to say here that we're not *primarily* a project that "fights" for or against anything related to intellectual property rights. We're primarily a free encyclopedia. If our work has some beneficial educational effects on people's thinking about how copyrights should be handled, that's a good thing, too.
--Jimbo
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 19:09, Axel Boldt wrote:
Erik Moeller writes
Note that the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights,
only
that others will be able to copy and modify the so- licensed text. We consider this fair:
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as
hypocritical.
It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for* intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
... as long as it is understood that "everyone" is defined as "everyone who is able and willing to use a license compatible with GFDL". Those who for various reasons use one of the couple dozen incompatible open content licenses are granted by us only a single right: the right to read. That's exactly what they get from encyclopedia.com as well.
Axel
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On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 08:58, Axel Boldt wrote:
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for* intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
... as long as it is understood that "everyone" is defined as "everyone who is able and willing to use a license compatible with GFDL". Those who for various reasons use one of the couple dozen incompatible open content licenses are granted by us only a single right: the right to read. That's exactly what they get from encyclopedia.com as well.
Nonsense. They have the right to use and reuse and redistribute and modify and rerelease the GFDL content _under the GFDL license_. They just can't rerelease it _under a different license_. This is *the whole point* of using such a license -- ensuring that those rights continue to be protected by requiring the same license terms to be used for redistribution.
This doesn't hurt people who use other licenses for other works -- as you may or may not be aware, one isn't required to use the same license for everything one does in life. :)
It may "hurt" people who have decided to use YAOCL and want to integrate free content into another work without providing the same set of protections that allowed them to get it. Well sorry, bub, but that's the point. If we dilute the protections by letting any old license be used, you can expect a read-only embraced & extended version of Wikipedia peppered with material that's uncopyable under any license. If that's your idea of freedom, I suppose that prisoners are "free" to try to escape from prison at any time. ;)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 08:58, Axel Boldt wrote:
--- Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
It might, if this were a project that fights against intellectual property rights. It isn't. It's a project that fights *for* intellectual property rights *for everyone*.
... as long as it is understood that "everyone" is defined as "everyone who is able and willing to use a license compatible with GFDL". Those who for various reasons use one of the couple dozen incompatible open content licenses are granted by us only a single right: the right to read. That's exactly what they get from encyclopedia.com as well.
Nonsense. They have the right to use and reuse and redistribute and modify and rerelease the GFDL content _under the GFDL license_.
You will notice that that is exactly the case I excluded above.
Concretely, the guy who is writing or contributing to a science textbook under a license that prohibits commercial distribution, or doesn't require authorship acknowledgements, or doesn't allow invariant sections, or allows modifications without changing the title etc. etc. does not get anything out of Wikipedia. No intellectual property rights for this dude.
And there will be many dudes like him. Lawrence Lessig just collected a cool $2M grant for his little crappy project of polluting the world with a maze of countless open content licenses, all slightly different.
If we dilute the protections by letting any old license be used, you can expect a read-only embraced & extended version of Wikipedia peppered with material that's uncopyable under any license. If that's your idea of freedom,
So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the Wikipedia contents, locks them up and improves upon them. Does that hurt me in any way? Or anybody else for that matter? I still have precisely the same amount of freedom I had before they decided to to that. Wikipedia is still free. If anything, I benefit because more people get to read my material and I get to read Britannica's improvements.
Axel
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On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 18:21, Axel Boldt wrote:
Concretely, the guy who is writing or contributing to a science textbook under a license that prohibits commercial distribution, or doesn't require authorship acknowledgements, or doesn't allow invariant sections, or allows modifications without changing the title etc. etc. does not get anything out of Wikipedia. No intellectual property rights for this dude.
This hypothetical dude remains free to republish and release derivative works of the GFDL material under the GFDL. He can run a handsome side business printing and selling GFDL'd textbooks with Wikipedia material if he likes.
However, if he wants to publish GFDL'd material under a different license (which does not provide the same guarantees to the next set of users that he enjoys), he needs the explicit permission of the copyright holder(s). So no, without that (which may be difficult to get on a project like Wikipedia where there are many anonymous contributors) he can't use it in his non-free, business-hating, anti-author science textbook. ;)
So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the Wikipedia contents, locks them up and improves upon them. Does that hurt me in any way? Or anybody else for that matter? I still have precisely the same amount of freedom I had before they decided to to that. Wikipedia is still free. If anything, I benefit because more people get to read my material and I get to read Britannica's improvements.
Read, yes. Republish and further improve upon, no.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 1 Mar 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:
However, if he wants to publish GFDL'd material under a different license (which does not provide the same guarantees to the next set of users that he enjoys),
Or even if he wants to publish it under a different license that holds exactly the same guarantees.
Andre Engels
Le Thu, 27 Feb 2003 19:09:14 -0800 (PST), inspiré Axel Boldt axelboldt@yahoo.com écrivait la plume alerte :
Erik Moeller writes
Yes, you can use Wikipedia articles. They are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which mainly means that articles that use them also have to be FDL-licensed. Note that the FDL does not mean that you "lose" your copyrights, only that others will be able to copy and modify the so- licensed text. We consider this fair:
Not all of us, as fighting against intellectual property rights using the tools of intellectual property strikes some as hypocritical.
There is a slight confusion in the speech of IP : copy-right is the protection made through a patent or a registration (c) (tm) (r), it is the historical anglo-saxon point of view (Bern Convention) author's right is the automatic protection of the creation (Geneva Convention) this conception comes from the 1789 revolution. It covers espcially the "moral right" (such as paternity) of the creation
FDL is based on the second concept. It is quite abusive (even though it is made in official translation of UNO or WTO) to translate droit d'auteurs in copyright.
The first concept is more editor-friendly than the second one which is clearly authors-friendly.
Friendly yours,
Jul
(julien tayon julien@tayon.net):
There is a slight confusion in the speech of IP : copy-right is the protection made through a patent or a registration (c) (tm) (r), it is the historical anglo-saxon point of view (Bern Convention) author's right is the automatic protection of the creation (Geneva Convention) this conception comes from the 1789 revolution. It covers espcially the "moral right" (such as paternity) of the creation
FDL is based on the second concept. It is quite abusive (even though it is made in official translation of UNO or WTO) to translate droit d'auteurs in copyright.
You are both confused and mistaken here; "moral rights" ("droit d'auteurs") is a European concept not recognized by US law at all. The FDL is entirely based on US copyright law. We still follow the Berne convention rule that copyright exists automatically without registration (this is not new), but the copyright itself is still nothing but a simple monopoly on certain uses: reproduction, public performance, etc. The FDL grants an exception to that monopoly control to anyone who agrees to its terms. This is entirely a matter of using the government-granted power to achieve a specific end; it has nothing at all to do with author's rights.
I'm not sure that I agree 100% with everything, but I do think Erik has said a lot of wise things here.
Some thoughts:
1. FreeDB contains many duplicate or near-duplicate entries. It's designed around the ability to have a software program on my computer "magically" recognize what CD I just put into the computer, in order to show the album track names. There are many slight variations on CD's, apparently, so the same "album" (in a sense) will often appear multiple times in their listings.
2. Even if that problem were solved by sticking to unique artist/title combinations, the data is of limited value for our purposes. If there ever did arise a big clamor for that sort of thing, we could probably serve that interest better by setting up a software engine to allow people to easily include FreeDB links into articles. I'm thinking of something like an 'album:' namespace that interfaces realtime into the freedb listings, without actually importing them as wiki-text.
I'm not advising that we do that, I'm just saying that it would be a heck of a lot better than free-texting data that's already formatted by someone else.
- Make another policy that pages about bands should *not* contain
links to the individual albums. These links should be created on demand, not for all album titles.
I think that the first sentence is too strong, but I think the second sentence softens it nicely. Basically, I think contributors should use good judgment here -- some albums are of historical importance and will of course need an entry. Others, well, maybe, maybe not.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I'm not sure that I agree 100% with everything, but I do think Erik has said a lot of wise things here.
Some thoughts:
- FreeDB contains many duplicate or near-duplicate entries. It's
designed around the ability to have a software program on my computer "magically" recognize what CD I just put into the computer, in order to show the album track names. There are many slight variations on CD's, apparently, so the same "album" (in a sense) will often appear multiple times in their listings.
- Even if that problem were solved by sticking to unique artist/title
combinations, the data is of limited value for our purposes. If there ever did arise a big clamor for that sort of thing, we could probably serve that interest better by setting up a software engine to allow people to easily include FreeDB links into articles. I'm thinking of something like an 'album:' namespace that interfaces realtime into the freedb listings, without actually importing them as wiki-text.
I'm not advising that we do that, I'm just saying that it would be a heck of a lot better than free-texting data that's already formatted by someone else.
- Make another policy that pages about bands should *not* contain
links to the individual albums. These links should be created on demand, not for all album titles.
I think that the first sentence is too strong, but I think the second sentence softens it nicely. Basically, I think contributors should use good judgment here -- some albums are of historical importance and will of course need an entry. Others, well, maybe, maybe not.
MusicBrainz is an established open-content project, with a mixed public domain / Creative Commons licensing policy. See http://www.musicbrainz.org/products/server/download.html Like Wikipedia, they intend to create a non-profit corporation to act as a vehicle for the project.
I've been speaking to Ben Roeder, who has been speaking to the MusicBrainz people --- he has made the excellent suggestion that the right approach is to _cross-link_ wikipedia and MusicBrainz.
That way, Wikipedia articles can link to the MusicBrainz database, providing instant discographies and track listings without having to import them into Wikipedia, and -- more to the point -- the MusicBrainz database would link to Wikipedia as the default place for _articles_ on bands.
This seems to me to be an ideal compromise: the Wikipedia is not gunged up by music listings (in particular, people are dissuaded from data-dumping MusicBrainz/FreeDB into Wikipedia), and both sites gain from more traffic and contributors.
See also: * http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think14.html
-- Neil
Neil Harris wrote:
That way, Wikipedia articles can link to the MusicBrainz database, providing instant discographies and track listings without having to import them into Wikipedia, and -- more to the point -- the MusicBrainz database would link to Wikipedia as the default place for _articles_ on bands.
This sounds totally sweet to me.
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