I have a question about the GNU FDL. What is meant by "the work"? If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing website, would just that page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) be released under GNU FDL?
Matt
Matt M. wrote:
I have a question about the GNU FDL. What is meant by "the work"? If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing website, would just that page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) be released under GNU FDL?
I don't know.
This probably applies:
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
On 3/4/03 9:29 AM, "Matt M." matt_mcl@sympatico.ca wrote:
I have a question about the GNU FDL. What is meant by "the work"? If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing website, would just that page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) be released under GNU FDL?
Forgive me if I get semantic here--it's necessary when we're discussing the specificity of law.
Including the picture doesn't release anything under the GFDL. The correct question is:
"If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing website, what would I have to release under the GFDL for that inclusion not to violate Wikipedia's license? Would I need to release that page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) under GNU FDL?"
The reality is that my answer to that question is the same as Jimbo's: I don't know. But I believe releasing just the page would be sufficient.
"If I took a picture from Wikipedia and incorporated it into one page on an existing website, what would I have to release under the GFDL for that inclusion not to violate Wikipedia's license? Would I need to release that page, my entire website, or neither (just the picture) under GNU FDL?"
I'll echo the "I don't know"s, and add a complication: pictures and text are a bit different. Almost all the text in Wikipedia was made collaboratively, and is therefore unquestionably FDL. But many of the pictures are either public domain or used under "fair use", so using them in another work would have no affect at all on that work.
--- Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com wrote:
I'll echo the "I don't know"s, and add a complication: pictures and text are a bit different. Almost all the text in Wikipedia was made collaboratively, and is therefore unquestionably FDL. But many of the pictures are either public domain or used under "fair use", so using them in another work would have no affect at all on that work.
I'll second the "I don't know" and add that images should be treated carefully, becaue when someone gets images from someone else, while that someone else might grant use of the image to W, that same someone else may not grant the use of the image for any other derivative work that is not part of W. Thus, the someone else needs to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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(Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com):
--- Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com wrote:
I'll echo the "I don't know"s, and add a complication: pictures and text are a bit different. Almost all the text in Wikipedia was made collaboratively, and is therefore unquestionably FDL. But many of the pictures are either public domain or used under "fair use", so using them in another work would have no affect at all on that work.
I'll second the "I don't know" and add that images should be treated carefully, becaue when someone gets images from someone else, while that someone else might grant use of the image to W, that same someone else may not grant the use of the image for any other derivative work that is not part of W. Thus, the someone else needs to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.
If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed itself, or usable under "fair use".
On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed itself, or usable under "fair use".
Could I get some indication on when an image falls uner fair use, and when it does not?
Andre Engels
(Andre Engels engels@uni-koblenz.de): On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
If you find such an image on wikipedia (i.e., one for which permission was granted only to wikipedia), it should probably be replaced if at all possible by a more freely usable one, either PD, or FDL licensed itself, or usable under "fair use".
Could I get some indication on when an image falls uner fair use, and when it does not?
It's very likely that just about any use of an image on Wikipedia would fall under fair use. The only ones likely to fail that test are things like drawings made specifically for technical articles that are under copyright.
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
It's very likely that just about any use of an image on Wikipedia would fall under fair use.
Fair use *for us*, but not necessarily for people who repurpose our content. It's a thorny issue.
I'd prefer it if we had nothing "fair use" in the 'pedia, but that's not a reasonable position, since even quoting from copyrighted books in the usual fashion is "fair use".
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
I'd prefer it if we had nothing "fair use" in the 'pedia, but that's not a reasonable position, since even quoting from copyrighted books in the usual fashion is "fair use".
I'm very concerned about fair use materials as well. Maybe we need to recognize a spectrum of fair use. Short quotes from copyrighted books should be safe for just about any use; even the New York Times does that on a regular basis. Fetching a photo from some website and claiming fair use because the photo somehow relates to the subject at hand is dangerously close to copyright infringement though. We can probably get away with it, since we have an educational goal, no commercial interests, and are not an attractive target for lawsuits, but selling (extracts from) Wikipedia in any form is made almost impossible by these fair use landmines.
I would favor a policy against all fair use photos.
At the very least, every image page needs to state clearly where the image came from and why it can be used.
Axel
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Axel Boldt wrote:
At the very least, every image page needs to state clearly where the image came from and why it can be used.
Agreed. On Wikipedia, if someone complains, we can just delete the image. but a paper or CD version would have to be cautious -- because if someone complained we'd have to pulp or destroy a whole batch, probably.
Axel:
I would favor a policy against all fair use photos.
That would seriously undermine the quality of Wikipedia as an educational resource. We cannot realistically acquire licenses, so fair use is often the only way we can get photos, esp. of dead people or important historic events, into the Wikipedia.
Instead of doing this, we should implement the category scheme I have suggested on wikitech-l. Then we could put
[[Category:Fair use photo]]
on image pages that contain fair use photos, and any user whose use would go beyond the limits as defined by the US Copyright Code could opt to exclude such photos from his edition of Wikipedia relatively easily (by replacing all links to such photos with external links, for example).
Of course, fair use should not be used as a blanket excuse to import photos into Wikipedia. The pictures imported should have clear and obvious educational value. Is that true for every album cover? Certainly not. Is it true for photos of war crimes? Almost certainly.
The fair use issue is a thorny one, but we need to find a middle ground that does not impose a too strict regime of self-censorship, but which also does not get us into legal trouble.
Regards,
Erik
I would favor a policy against all fair use photos.
That would seriously undermine the quality of Wikipedia as an educational resource...
Yep, we're pretty much stuck with needing "fair use". But there's really no need to get paranoid about it. The description page for each image should list its source, and as long as we have such records we're fine. 90% of the other uses to which Wikipedia data might be put will also qualify for the same fair use provisions, and I don't think it's worth our effort to worry about the other 10% unless and until /we/ produce one of those products.
How can I use these tags in wikipedia :
<a name="NAME"></a> Creates a target name inside the document.
<a href="#NAME"></a> Links to the target in the document.
( from [[HTML tag]] ).
Regards.
(Pedro M.V. macv@interlap.com.ar): How can I use these tags in wikipedia :
<a name="NAME"></a> Creates a target name inside the document.
<a href="#NAME"></a> Links to the target in the document.
( from [[HTML tag]] ).
Internal anchors were a feature I added and then removed by the consensus of the community. If you can come up with a /really good/ example of how an internal anchor will make an article better in a way that can't be done without it, and won't sacrific simplicity of editing, then I'm certainly open to putting the feature back.
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 20:42, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
Internal anchors were a feature I added and then removed by the consensus of the community. If you can come up with a /really good/ example of how an internal anchor will make an article better in a way that can't be done without it, and won't sacrific simplicity of editing, then I'm certainly open to putting the feature back.
As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support and encourage long pages.
Long pages, in turn, are frowned upon because they're difficult to navigate internally and intimidating to edit. (And of course, very long pages can run afoul of browser limitations, making it impossible for some people to edit them.)
The preferred solution is to break up long articles into smaller, more self-contained blocks.
Anchors, of course, would potentially simplify internal navigation -- for readers only. When it comes time to change a small paragraph in the middle of a 25kb article through a tiny textarea in a web page, you gotta do a lot of scrolling. Short pages are much easier to work with, and as a wiki project that's committed to being read-write, editing ease is of great importance to us.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com writes:
As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support and encourage long pages.
Very long pages are bad, but pages up to 20 or 30 KB are perfectly okay and there fragment links (#fragment) are very useful. Short articles suffering from the fact that they are often nothing more than a list of pointers to other articles (internal and external) ;)
Also they are to easy to edit. Thus poeple always add stupid lists of terms and names to short articles ;-)
(And of course, very long pages can run afoul of browser limitations, making it impossible for some people to edit them.)
What's a very long article? We should encourage people to go for proper editors. I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks. Any advice?
The preferred solution is to break up long articles into smaller, more self-contained blocks.
I simply disagree :) Short page maybe easy to edit (caveat, see above) and they are a pain to read. Esp. when Internet connection isn't that good. Even here in Germany at certain times it can happen that I must more than 30-45 seconds for an article. Bandwidth here isn't the problem.
Anchors, of course, would potentially simplify internal navigation -- for readers only. When it comes time to change a small paragraph in the middle of a 25kb article through a tiny textarea in a web page, you gotta do a lot of scrolling. Short pages are much easier to work with, and as a wiki project that's committed to being read-write, editing ease is of great importance to us.
Yes, but 25kb articles are perfectly okay. I'd say the barrier should be something like 30-50kb, depending on pictures includes etc. One should judge form case to case.
At 07:03 AM 3/5/03 +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com writes:
As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support and encourage long pages.
Very long pages are bad, but pages up to 20 or 30 KB are perfectly okay and there fragment links (#fragment) are very useful. Short articles suffering from the fact that they are often nothing more than a list of pointers to other articles (internal and external) ;)
Also they are to easy to edit. Thus poeple always add stupid lists of terms and names to short articles ;-)
(And of course, very long pages can run afoul of browser limitations, making it impossible for some people to edit them.)
What's a very long article? We should encourage people to go for proper editors. I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks. Any advice?
Yes. Don't tell people they can't use Wikipedia with their current software.
Emacs is many things, but simple it's not. The Wiki software is *deliberately* easy to use.
---- Original Message ----- From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 3:34 PM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] article length and fragment identifiers/pointers (Re: HTML tag)
At 07:03 AM 3/5/03 +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com writes:
As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support and encourage long pages.
Very long pages are bad, but pages up to 20 or 30 KB are perfectly okay and there fragment links (#fragment) are very useful. Short articles suffering from the fact that they are often nothing more than a list of pointers to other articles (internal and external) ;)
The point is fragment links drive the user to the desired part of the article. You only perhaps need read a little bit of the little article ( 2 or 3 lines ) to obtain a system idea of something that is in various articles. The reusability argument is important.
Regards.
At 11:04 PM 3/5/03 +0100, Pedro M. V. wrote a message that had my header, and none of my content:
---- Original Message ----- From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 3:34 PM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] article length and fragment identifiers/pointers (Re: HTML tag)
At 07:03 AM 3/5/03 +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com writes:
As I recall, the primary argument against anchors is that they support and encourage long pages.
Very long pages are bad, but pages up to 20 or 30 KB are perfectly okay and there fragment links (#fragment) are very useful. Short articles suffering from the fact that they are often nothing more than a list of pointers to other articles (internal and external) ;)
The point is fragment links drive the user to the desired part of the article. You only perhaps need read a little bit of the little article ( 2 or 3 lines ) to obtain a system idea of something that is in various articles. The reusability argument is important.
Regards. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
This is kinda scary... How would this new ruling affect Wikipedia projects?
w/ regards, Jay B.
"A California court ruling could reverse long-standing legal protections that have cleared Web sites of responsibility for content published by online users. The ruling, which concerns a false personals ad posted on Matchmaker.com that included the real name and address of a "Star Trek" actress, could force Web sites to choose between actively policing public forum content or risking litigation over inaccurate information." http://cl.com.com/Click?q=01-9o0DI2jfOIW3jeU2Hl6nGrgZY97C
Sounds icky, but I have every confidence that the 9th Circus will do the right thing here.
If it did stand, all the way to the Supreme Court, it could very negatively affect everything that we're doing. It would make the Wikipedia non-profit vulnerable to a lawsuit based on the actions of a user, which would mean -- in practice -- that we'd have to police things a lot more centrally, etc. It'd be crushing to our whole development model.
But, I'm not too worried. This sounds like it'll be a slam-dunk on appeal.
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
[about http://news.com.com/2009-1023-991264.html]
If it did stand, all the way to the Supreme Court, it could very negatively affect everything that we're doing. It would make the Wikipedia non-profit vulnerable to a lawsuit based on the actions of a user, which would mean -- in practice -- that we'd have to police things a lot more centrally, etc. It'd be crushing to our whole development model.
I don't think it affects us: the reasoning of the court was that Matchmaker.com is partly responsible for the content because they partly created it, by providing the user with a long series of yes/no questions and targeted essay questions to produce the ad. But the Wikipedia non-profit doesn't do anything like that. Any harmful content posted on Wikipedia was created completely independently by the (ab)user. All the prodding they got from us was a textbox and a blinking cursor.
Axel
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On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:38:48PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
I don't think it affects us: the reasoning of the court was that Matchmaker.com is partly responsible for the content because they partly created it, by providing the user with a long series of yes/no questions and targeted essay questions to produce the ad. But the Wikipedia non-profit doesn't do anything like that. Any harmful content posted on Wikipedia was created completely independently by the (ab)user. All the prodding they got from us was a textbox and a blinking cursor.
More realistic scenario: somone puts something defamatory on. Another person tries to remove it. Rest of Wikipedia dogpiles on person doing the removing, forming a "consensus" that the information should remain in. Said person is then banned by Jimbo for his edits. I think the case would be pretty clear that the Wikipedia as a group, and Jimbo Wales in particular, had "taken responsibility" for the content at that point.
Jonathan
On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:05:45 -0800, Jonathan Walther krooger@debian.org wrote:
More realistic scenario: somone puts something defamatory on. Another person tries to remove it. Rest of Wikipedia dogpiles on person doing the removing, forming a "consensus" that the information should remain in. Said person is then banned by Jimbo for his edits. I think the case would be pretty clear that the Wikipedia as a group, and Jimbo Wales in particular, had "taken responsibility" for the content at that point.
It was fairly silly of the person to simply delete rather than raise a point of discussion. However, if there is evidence that a discussion has taken place, I guess that Jonathan is right and that there is some consensus approval of the material.
Perhaps Wikipedia needs some formal process (a page?) where individuals concerned can register a complaint that they believe maretial about or conencted to them to be unfair/defamatory?
Axel Boldt wrote:
I don't think it affects us: the reasoning of the court was that Matchmaker.com is partly responsible for the content because they partly created it, by providing the user with a long series of yes/no questions and targeted essay questions to produce the ad. But the Wikipedia non-profit doesn't do anything like that.
That's right, to an extent. But the Wikipedia non-profit does have a significant hand in directing the content. If I edit (which I rarely do), this is more obvious.
Under this good part of DMCA, if the nonprofit neglects to police the pages, and someone posts libel or similar, the nonprofit is not liable in any way, plus the nonprofit has a simple defense that gets the whole suit tossed out before it gets to a jury, so the cost of defense is low.
Without this defense, i.e. if someone argues that by setting standards, occassionally editing, posting here in the mailing list to set policy and mediate conflicts, that I (representative of the nonprofit) am "partly responsible for the content", then a case like that could end up before the jury.
Any harmful content posted on Wikipedia was created completely independently by the (ab)user. All the prodding they got from us was a textbox and a blinking cursor.
That would certainly be the argument that I'd make in court.
--Jimbo
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
What's a very long article? We should encourage people to go for proper editors. I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks. Any advice?
Yes, my advice is: don't do this! We should _not_ encourage people to go for proper editors. We should encourage _ourselves_ to preserve simplicity.
--Jimbo
|From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com |Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 06:38:55 -0800 | |Karl Eichwalder wrote: |> What's a very long article? We should encourage people to go for proper |> editors. I'll evaluate Emacs solutions the next weeks. Any advice? | |Yes, my advice is: don't do this! We should _not_ encourage people to |go for proper editors. We should encourage _ourselves_ to preserve |simplicity. | |--Jimbo
Right again, requiring emacs for Wikipedia editing would be a big mistake. There are ways Karl might help out with emacs, however.
A lot of the emacs gestures are already in the editor, at least the easy ones like c-a, c-e, c-k, c-t. It would be nice if more of them were there, silently, for those of us whose fingers go that way first anyway.
And, an emacs minor mode for use on our own editors would also be nice.
Tom P. O88
Tom Parmenter tompar@world.std.com writes:
Right again, requiring emacs for Wikipedia editing would be a big mistake.
I'd ask for making Emacs a requirement ;) I'd require a minimized SGML, but that's a completely different story I don't want to discuss at the moment.
A lot of the emacs gestures are already in the editor, at least the easy ones like c-a, c-e, c-k, c-t.
Yes, I'm away of those keycombo (I'm using Mozilla's builtin editor). But many a lot key are either missing or, more dangerous, act different. That's merely my fault: using lynx or w3m you can call an external editor--now the question is how well lynx will play with wikipedia.
It would be nice if more of them were there, silently, for those of us whose fingers go that way first anyway.
Agreed. But it will never work as nice as it would using Emacs. I'm used to press the "Alt" labeled key for word boundery related actions (moving, transposing, marking, cutting) and I use Ctrl-w to cut ("kill") a marked region. In the past it already happened that I lost some edited paragraphs pressing "wrong" keys.
And, an emacs minor mode for use on our own editors would also be nice.
Yes. Most probably you can base it on emacs-wiki.el; I'll check it out.
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 19:36, Christopher Mahan wrote:
I'll second the "I don't know" and add that images should be treated carefully, becaue when someone gets images from someone else, while that someone else might grant use of the image to W, that same someone else may not grant the use of the image for any other derivative work that is not part of W. Thus, the someone else needs to be asked essentially whether their image is going in the public domain, or in the FDL, or for W use only.
There shouldn't be any images on wikipedia that are for Wikipedia use only. That would be a gross violation of the GFDL.
--- The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
There shouldn't be any images on wikipedia that are for Wikipedia use only. That would be a gross violation of the GFDL.
I agree, and I don't personally upload images to the W (crappy scanner anyway), but I think it needs to be clear to contributors that images they make available to the W may be used by others.
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