[Wikimedia-l] "Tweet this page" from some or all sites???

[Matthew Roth]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Brion Vibber <bvibber at wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
>
> Note that desktop browsers are in some cases gaining similar capabilities;
> for instance Apple's Safari in latest versions includes a "Share" button
> similar to iOS's, with access to a couple hardcoded services. Nearly all
> browsers that I know of support sharing a link over email directly through
> a menu item, and those supporting extensions can install various social
> network goodies.
>

Happy that Brion brought this angle up, as I am perpetually vexed by how
incompatible social networks are with CC licenses (mostly with BY-SA). The
browser plug-ins bring up an even bigger problem for our projects and the
licenses.

First, note that most of the really popular social networking sites have
boilerplate language in the Terms of Service that are incompatible with
CC-BY-SA. See Michelle Paulson's legal analysis related to Facebook here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/CC-BY-SA_on_Facebook

You cannot post 3rd party CC-BY-SA licensed images to Facebook (and likely
most other social networks) because you will be violating the sublicensing
section of the CC license, and arguably the ToS of the social network. This
isn't a small matter. If you look at a number of the Wikimedia movement
partners and Wikimedians who use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. they
are posting images that violate the license. We were doing the same at WMF
until Michelle produced her guidance. We've tried to find all instances
where we had uploaded images, instead replacing them with links (the
auto-generated thumbnails are not a concern, legally).

Although the legal team hasn't published formal guidance on the other
social networks, a survey of their terms of service show a very similar
sublicensing clause. I'm not super optimistic that we can participate fully
with them, so that's why we have not had an active presence on, for
example, Pinterest. They make such heavy use of images in their pins and I
don't see a workable way forward at present, despite how much I like their
site aesthetically.

I would love to find a solution to the problem from a licensing standpoint.
IMO, using images on social networks is a fantastic way to promote the
projects and hopefully encourage more people to participate/contribute, but
I don't think it's something we can reasonably do at present.

-Matthew




-- 

Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org
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