[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 2:39 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
> > 2008/10/22 Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>:
> >
> >> I might add that the attribution requirement of the GFDL talks about
> >> listing at least five principal authors, "unless they release you from
> >> this requirement." A fairly straightforward argument can be made that
> >> existing and accepted practice on Wikipedia, and for that matter on
> >> nearly all wikis, amounts to releasing subsequent distributors from this
> >> requirement. If the authors can make this implicit release, then you
> >> have to look at whatever attribution is customary in a given context,
> >> along with any moral rights issues.
> >>
> > In any case, this discussion has already reached the stage of counting
> > angels dancing on the heads of pins and assuming that law is as
> > brittle as computer code. It just ain't so.
> >
> > The threat model we're taking about is: what does a reuser say if
> > taken to court by an insane and obsessive author? Would a judge
> > consider the reuser's actions reasonable, given accepted behaviour
> > regarding said licence to date? That sort of squishy, arguable, grey
> > area thing.
>
> There is no inoculation to prevent insanity and obsession.  Whatever
> model is chosen can provide opportunities for the litigious.  Thus if we
> go with the five principal authors, what's to prevent number six from
> arguing that he should be in the top five.
>

> In the general case I think that any reuser who exercises a modicum of
> good faith and due diligence will likely be safe  Accepted behaviour
> will also be influenced by past practice including the chronic failure
> of rights owners (not WMF) to protect their own rights


Going with "the five principal authors" is a terrible idea both from the
standpoint of avoiding litigation and from the standpoint of protecting the
right to attribution.  Of course, the GFDL doesn't mention "the five
principal authors", it mentions "five of the principal authors", which may
seem like a small difference in English language, but it represents an
enormous difference in terms of meaning.  Of course, this phrasing is even
worse from the standpoint of protecting the right to attribution, because it
means essentially that no one writing an article with six principal authors
has a right to attribution.  But really, setting a limit to the number of
principal authors is meaningless anyway, because *anyone can modify the text
without permission*, so even if you work your ass off and produce a 10,000
word text, all a reuser has to do is take 5 other 10,001 word texts, append
it to the end, and now you get no attribution at all.

Of course, the phrase "five of the principal authors" only occurs in the
GFDL when talking about the title page.  This whole section should probably
be eliminated, because it offers no protection to authors and only invites
litigation - maybe it could be turned into a strong suggestion.
Fortunately, there is at least an argument that all authors need to be
included in the section entitled History.  Of course, there's still the
problem, which is fairly specific to wikis, of how to define "all authors".
I'd say here that the most expansive view of this would be all logged-in
authors who have contributed more than a de minimus amount of copyrightable
expression to the final end-product.  That's a real-life definition, which
maximizes the protection of the right to attribution, but perhaps invites
litigation.  Even then I'm not so sure.  I think most judges would handle a
borderline case of this nature and award nominal damages if any.  Of course,
the drop-off-the-cliff clause of the GFDL that any violation of it results
in an immediate revocation of the license needs to be removed.

Maybe that definition is too expansive for Wikipedia, but I'm not going to
say this for sure until I see some hard numbers on it.  What is the ratio of
characters of attribution to characters of text if we include the names of
any logged-in non-reverted authors?

Only attributing "the five principal authors" is utterly unacceptable.  Only
attributing "five of the principal authors" is utterly unacceptable.  Any
attribution clause which doesn't ensure the attribution of *all* significant
contributors, is unacceptable.  Within that framework I think there are a
lot of reasonable solutions.

Anthony