[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Michael Snow]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
>   
>> I'm afraid I simply don't understand what you're trying to say, then. It
>> sounded like you were talking about having one document (web, print,
>> whatever medium) point to another, something that might be done for
>> attribution or a variety of other purposes. And if it's a question of
>> pointing, I'm puzzled what difference it makes which medium is used or
>> which direction one points across different media.
>>
>> I'm also not sure what you mean by a right to demand a printed legal
>> document. It sounds sort of like you're referring to this as a right you
>> hold as an author (whether as part of basic copyright or a moral right).
>> That's not something I'm familiar with at all. So it's likely that I've
>> not understood what you mean correctly there, either.
>>     
> No, I am referring to my right as a user of the content. (Implicitly,
> it is about my right as an author of the content, but, explicitly, it
> is not.)
>   
In that case, I really don't know where you get the notion of a right to 
a printed legal document. If the user has been given a license, then the 
user has whatever rights are in that license. But neither the GFDL nor 
any of the Creative Commons licenses indicate that you have a right to 
be provided with a printed form. And in the context of copyright law 
more generally, there's nothing at all like this.
> The right of a reader of a book has to be "Send me the list of the
> authors [in the paper form]." (and, again, I think that you should
> know that better than me). If it is an explicit legal right (and I
> don't see a reason why it shouldn't be), then every publisher has the
> obligation to send the list of authors to every reader on demand.
It's an interesting concept, but simply doesn't exist anywhere that I 
know of. Perhaps you should suggest to those who want to have the 
identity of people editing from IP addresses exposed, that they push 
this idea as legislation. As it currently stands, I can publish 
something with no identifiable authors, no copyright notice, and no 
legal information whatsoever. Requirements like that (the US used to 
require a copyright notice) have been stripped away as an unreasonable 
burden on authors.

--Michael Snow