[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:57 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> > CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
> > is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
> > attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
> > and 4(c)(iii).
>
>  4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
> is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
> attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is  through
> 4(c)(i).


How is the foundation not distributing the (independently authored) work?

Attribution methods are first controlled by 4(c) - specifically " reasonable
to the medium or means You are utilizing".

If Mike believes that a URL to the page history for pages with 6 or more
authors is acceptable under the terms of the license, and the Creative
Commons' staff attorney so agrees, then I believe that they have just
defined "reasonable to the medium or means we are utilizing" in minimum
legal terms, at least.  If you feel that it's morally repugnant somehow then
we can talk, of course, but I believe that this is both reasonable and on
first glance close to the optimum balance of practical (in the sense of, can
be consistently and legally followed) and ethical (in the sense of, keeping
people's credits as closely associated as we can).


Again lets go through that section you have two things you can attribute to:
>
> "the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied"
>
> However since you reject that we have to move onto the second half:
>
> "if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
> parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
> attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice,
> terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party
> or parties;"
>
> So yes you can mess with the attribution requirements using that part
> of the clause but trying to define say
> "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canal&action=history" as an
> Attribution Party is somewhat unreasonable in the context of the
> paragraph and in the general legal use of the term party.
>
> Remember even if you do think you can somehow squeeze this though it
> still causes issues with wikipedia's habit of deleting things from
> time to time and prevent the import of CC-BY-SA 3.0 text from third
> parties.


If we get common agreement with the CC's attorney and the populace as a
whole that CC-BY-SA-3.0 means (for wikis with 6+ contributors) what we say
it does, then it doesn't prevent any import or have any issue with deleting
things.

If we delete a contribution, from the page text and page history, then that
text is not part of the page that's being served up and to which the license
applies.  Legally, CC-BY-SA-3.0 could be fought over by me going in and
taking all your contributions to a page and paraphrasing them, then taking
you out of the "authors list" as you didn't write any text still appearing
on the page.  We take a more liberal view- if you contributed, you're in the
history.  There are exceptions - we do delete revisions in extremis.  But in
general, not one word you wrote can still be in a current article and you
still show up and get credit now.  In some cases your ideas may still be
present, in some cases they have all been removed, but you still get credit
except for rare and narrow circumstances.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com