[Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

[Daniel Mayer]

Jimbo wrote:
>Maybe!  But there are advantages for all of us 
>to contribute our copyrights to the foundation.  

Can we make copyright assignment compulsory for anonymous contributions to 
Wikibooks then? This is something I have often seen other Wikis do (Anon 
contribs are a special case because it is much more difficult to track them 
down in order to ask them about copyright changes). Maybe this in combination 
with requiring valid email to activate user accounts will make the copyright 
situation more bearable for Wikibooks. 

Both of these ideas might also be a good for Wikipedia too (for new accounts 
and edits made by Anons after a certain date) - but I would like to see if it 
works on Wikibooks first. 

That way we at least have some way to contact users in case of a copyright 
change (simply knowing a previous email address - even if no longer valid - 
should help a great deal in tracking someone down in order to ask them about 
relicensing). 

Aside: A prominent link to a privacy policy should be incorporated into the 
Special:userlogin page in order to assuage people's fears over giving out 
their email address - but that is needed anyway. 

>It's too late now, of course, but all of our licensing
>/relicensing questions would be a lot easier to deal
>with if the foundation owned all the copyrights.

<beating a dead horse>
Again, I would be very wary of that; there is would be no guarantee against 
the Foundation selling its soul (copyrights) to the Devil (*cough* Bill and 
Malinda Gates Foundation *cough*) for a large grant (by-laws and Foundation 
constitutions can change). By making it fairly difficult, but not impossible, 
to change copyright, we add another layer of protection and filter against 
such a thing happening. Power to the people.
</beating a dead horse>

>The FSF requires an assignment of copyrights 
>to them for any official FSF projects.  This policy 
>would not work for us -- it's too late, and would 
>interfere with the wiki model.  But if people voluntarily 
>do it, I think it's a good idea.

We should make it easy for logged-in users to assign copyright if they so 
choose - it is their text and their right (a push button interface to flag 
user accounts, and thus user edits, would be nice). But paranoid people like 
me will leave copyright assignment clauses in our Wills (or if we are rich, 
then clear instructions to our estates on how those copyrights can be used). 

But I plan on being very contactable until then, so if a relicensing of my 
work needs to occur, then just ask. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)