[Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view

[Nikola Smolenski]

Дана Friday 20 March 2009 04:30:11 Erik Moeller написа:
> For the record, our legal reasoning for the attribution terms under
> consideration is as follows (as reviewed by Mike).
>
> 1) Part 1: Can attribution-by-link be reconciled with the legal code
> of CC-BY-SA?
>
> Answer: Yes. The "attribution by link" option was explicitly made
> available to authors in CC-BY-SA 2.0 (note difference in section 4.c:
> http://tinyurl.com/cvdbe9 and related blog entry:
> http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216 ). Authors also have the

Erik, this is simply not true. The sentence in question reads [...] You must 
keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author 
credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the 
name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the 
title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the 
Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated 
with the Work [...] So, the URI has to be given *in addition* to the name of 
the author, not *instead* of it.

> Therefore terms of use which require authors to agree to be credited
> by link, and not by name, are consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA.
> This entire reasoning has been explicitly confirmed by Creative Commons
> General Counsel Diane Peters.

...who apparently hasn't read her own license.

> 3) Part 3: Is such an attribution model consistent with the past
> practice under which authors have contributed to Wikipedia and other
> projects?
>
> Answer: Yes. This is evident through the current site-wide copyright
> terms, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights . Even
> the earliest available version of the Wikipedia:Copyrights policy
> which stated re-users obligations said that users' "obligations can be
> fulfilled by providing a conspicuous link back to the home of the
> article here at wikipedia.com."
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyrights&oldid=15959
>3] Similar terms have been stated through the history of the policy, as well
> as other language versions.

This is also not completely true. It is true that Wikipedia mirrors often 
cited authors in this way; but a number of books that were printed from 
Wikipedia content have a list of all the authors. I would also argue that 
printing a link is not the same thing as providing it.