[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> David Goodman wrote:
>   
>> My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely
>> and unquestionably legally  necessary is a violation of the moral
>> rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in
>> the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all
>> explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did
>> not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or
>> noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what
>> we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone.
>>
>>   
>>     
> Precisely!  To a large extent, we are effectively releasing our work 
> into the public domain, except for the fact that in some countries this 
> is not allowed.  Also, putting a work into the public domain means 
> abandoning our rights of action in the event that there is infringement 
> on that public ownership. There is no custodian of the public domain to 
> take action when the copyrights of the general public have been infringed.
>
>   

This is an important point. It is precisely why it is not a
good idea to remove attribution. Because just as
releasing into public domain is not allowed in many
jurisdictions, equally removing attribution willy-nilly
is not allowed in many jurisdictions.

If we were removing attribution like that, the problems
would be nearly of the same order as from releasing
it all to PD. Moving modified content from one
jurisdiction to another would become a nightmare.

Specifically in the case of CC-BY-SA my understanding
is that any provisions it has for not honouring the moral
rights laws of those jurisdictions where they are active,
would only be useful, if one were working on a
project that never wanted it to be realistically
usefully re-used in such jurisdictions; which, again
in my understanding, Wikimedia is not.

...[snip]..
>
> I choose to edit with a pseudonym, though my real name is certainly well 
> known to the community.  My self-esteem is not so week that I need to be 
> publicly credited for every last edit that I make, the satisfaction of a 
> job well-done is its own reward.  We do not own the articles, and we 
> edit each others' work mercilessly.  Having a long list of names in 
> 2-point type just so that the individual editor can see his name in 
> print is wasteful and contrary to the spirit of our collective effort.  
> This is not what credit and attribution is about.  Expecting anything 
> more from the downstream user than to say that he took things from 
> Wikipedia is unrealistic.
>
> Ec
>
>   

Heh. I call your pseudonymous editing, and raise you: "I like
to edit anonymously occasionally."

See my paragraphs above. We do want to have our content
to be useful within the parameters of as many jurisdictions
as the CC-BY-SA license allows, clearly, and the laws of many
jurisdictions are clearly not satisfied with crediting Wikipedia.
Or at the very least, the arguments why they would be thus
satisfied, have not been spelled out on this mailing list.
There *has* been an _assertion_ that legal people have
been consulted, and based on this some people *think*
such could be defended; but this has been disputed by
multiple parties.

For that matter. Wikipedia certainly gets no warm fuzzies
from receiving credit, so why should it be credited at all,
and not just its contributors - purely from the "reason" of
"giving credit where is credit is due" point of view.

The only reason you would have for crediting wikipedia
would be because you accepted that fundamentally its
contributors deserved some credit for the work, if the
mention was done merely for reasons of giving credit;
and not other reasons such as allowing verification or
the like.



Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen