[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[John at Darkstar]

Probably you should focus more on whats according to present law than
what someone wants to believe they can do. It is interesting to see what
the Norwegian law says on this matter instead of trying to fight against
the law.

Åndsverksloven § 3. Opphavsmannen har krav på å bli navngitt slik som
god skikk tilsier, så vel på eksemplar av åndsverket som når det gjøres
tilgjengelig for almenheten.

"The creator of the work has a right to be attributed according to good
practice, as well on each copy of the work as when it is made available
 for the general public."

Later it says
Sin rett efter første og annet ledd kan opphavsmannen ikke fraskrive
seg, med mindre den bruk av verket som det gjelder, er avgrenset efter
art og omfang.

"The rights after first and second paragraphs can the author not
release, unless the work in question is limited in nature and scope."

Proper attribution i Norwegian law can be said to be covered in a
reference to the correct page on Wikipedia. To attribute Wikipedia as
such are probably not completely correct, even if it is done customary
in newspapers in Norway. It is although the common thing to do - it has
become according to good practice, and it is done likewise on other
similar publications. A legal alternate is to credit the principal
authors or some publication that has the same article.

The law says you should be attributed on each copy of the work, still if
the copy is limited in nature and scope you can drop the attribution.
Now, is a printed copy of a single article from Wikipedia limited in
such a way? My guess is that it is and a reference to Wikipedia is
sufficient. On a printed copy of the whole Wikipedia a reference to
Wikipedias crediting system is probably sufficient. That is, the printed
copy (the book) is limited to Wikipedia so the crediting system on
Wikipedia is used to solve the attribution for this "limited nature and
scope".

Its the necessity to identify a publication which creates some of the
problems, that is, pointing the reader to "Wikipedia". It would be an
option if for example FSF or CC had some kind of identifier for each
work licensed with their license. Then that could be used the same way
as an ISBN number. That would make it possible to credit authors and
identify the work through the number, for example "(Desperados, Emanuel;
''Norway'', GFDL 0123456789)". Note that this is an identifier for some
broker system, not an identification of the first publisher. It is not
necessary to attribute the publisher, it it only necessary to attribute
the author. Still something like "(Wikipedia/Norway)" is sufficient if
there is a description of how attribution works on Wikipedia, and again
"(Wikipedia)" is probably not sufficient.

If someone outside Wikipedia reuses an article from Wikipedia then they
probably has to credit the persons involved at that point, or give some
kind of pointer to the correct version on Wikipedia. Probably they
should describe what this kind of crediting means. They could choose to
make a history page of their own, but then that page should described
similarly.

Now if they don't want to credit Wikipedia, that is they don't want
Wikipedia to attribute the authors, then they has to attribute at least
the principal authors.

In a printed "The complete Wikipedia" i believe that an identifier that
says "rev 1234567890" on each article is a sufficient attribution if the
meaning of this is described somewhere easy to find, and it is described
what this means when it comes to attribution of authors.

What I would like to have, is a special page that generated a list of
probable principal authors, a list of major authors and a list of other
authors. If there could be a single list sorted on importance of
contributions it would be nice, as this opens for more judgment from the
reader. If principal authors can be detected they should go in the
footer on the article pages, but only if they choose to supply their
full name, because this is to important for a lot of persons. This has
become very visible in Norway as an old paper-based lexicon has taken up
the fight against Wikipedia. If someone does not provide their full name
(it is in the database but not used for the moment) it should be taken
as a grant to not use the name in the footer but only list their user
name on the special page.

Such a special page should be able to generate such lists for previous
versions, not only for the present version. Ie, The complete Wikipedia's
article for Norway (revision 1234567890) is identified as
"Special:Attribution/Norway,1234567890". Likewise
"Special:Attribution/Norway" is the present version. This should also be
linked in the footer together with any identified principal authors.
Note that those numbers are our internal revisions, not some kind of
ISBN-equivalent.

A full credit of an _article_ on Wikipedia would be
"Wikipedia/Norway/1234567890", a sufficient credit would be
"Wikipedia/Norway", and probably an insufficient one would be
"Wikipedia", given that there is a description of how the attribution
works on Wikipedia and given that the use of the article(s) are limited
in nature and scope.

I'm not sure how this works given the GFDL license, but it seems to be
within the legal boundaries for me. The overall solution is pretty much
as today but with an added focus on attribution of principal authors.