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

[geni]

2009/3/20 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> 2009/3/18 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>> 1 person on this list. The rest of the opposition comes from the
>> foundations unlawful and ill thought out proposed TOS.
>
> 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
> option to not supply an author name for the purposes of attribution
> ("the Original Author if supplied").

Wikipedia however currently has 293,865,193 edits by authors who have
not agreed to attribution by URL. This you cannot change this
rendering any future TOS ineffective.

> The attribution requirements are
> also tempered by the caveat that they should be "reasonable to the
> medium or means", building in flexibility for situations where, for
> example, providing attribution to all authors directly isn't feasible
> or reasonable.

That isn't always the case. And the medium or means flexibility is the
reason you proposed TOS are not needed in the first place.

> 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.

Future terms of use are irrelevant. Wikipedia currently has
293,865,455 edits which will not be under any future terms of use
agreement.

> This entire reasoning has been explicitly confirmed by Creative Commons
> General Counsel Diane Peters.

[[citation needed]]


>
> 2) Part 2: Can such an attribution model be reconciled with moral
> rights provisions in certain jurisdictions?
>
> Answer: Yes.

The only believable answers in this case are "probably", "maybe" and
"probably not". Anything else simply indicates that you have a far
from complete understanding of the situation.

> Such consent has already been given
> for existing edits (see below).

You don't address the issue of consent below.

lets look at what editors actually consent to:

Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic
content must be verifiable. You irrevocably agree to release your
contributions under the GFDL*.

*GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

The site wide copyright terms that editors agree to are those of the
GFDL not Wikipedia:Copyrights.

Or we go to commons:

By submitting text contributions, you irrevocably agree to release
your text contributions under the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.2, 1.3, or any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover
Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts). Any content posted anywhere in
violation of its copyright will be deleted on sight.

Again edits released under the terms of the GFDL (1.2 and 1.3 in this
case) not commons equivalent of Wikipedia:Copyrights

lets try de.pedia:

Ich versichere hiermit, dass ich den Beitrag selbst verfasst habe bzw.
dass er keine fremden Rechte verletzt, und willige ein, ihn unter der
GNU-Lizenz für freie Dokumentation zu veröffentlichen.

Again released under the terms of the GFDL not Wikipedia:Lizenzbestimmungen

Your suggestion that wikipedia:copyrights has any baring on what
people have agreed to have done with their work simply doesn't hold
water.

-- 
geni