On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 6:15 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 9:37 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 22 December 2015 at 12:27, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
It's surely not beyond human skill to devise a licence for Wikidata
that
requires re-users to include the three words above on their website,
while
placing no other duties or restrictions on them.
You appear to be suggesting a homebrew license
+1
Pete,
As I understand it, people here have raised the objection that in order to follow the letter of CC BY-SA, re-users would have to list all contributors, the way some of the Wikipedia-based books do for example. I think we all agree that this would be completely impractical for something like a Knowledge Graph box, and not in the end user's interest.
What would make sense is the sort of attribution Bing uses today to credit Freebase and Wikipedia.
Anyone wishing to argue that CC BY-SA requires all re-users to list all contributors has to realise that if that were true, Google, Bing and others infringe Wikipedia's CC BY-SA licence billions of times a year.
As I've said before, I'm pretty sure that if you were to take them to court for not listing all the contributors who participated in creating the snippets and timelines they display in their SERPs' Knowledge Graph/Snapshot boxes, you would not prevail.
As I understand it, the CC BY-SA licence only requires attribution that is "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing". I think a court would agree that given the inherent space limitations, Google and Bing are being "reasonable" by providing a link to the Wikipedia article they're excerpting, and providing no more attribution than that.
Do you disagree? Is anyone arguing that Google are in fact breaking CC BY-SA by restricting their attribution to a link to Wikipedia? Because if not, we can lay that one to rest.
Now, if that works for Wikipedia, why can't we have the same for Wikidata?
Requiring that reusers credit the *web site* would be new in the Wikimedia world, and I don't see the advantage.
The advantage is transparency about data provenance, as well as creating a path to Wikidata where users can contest, correct and refine the information.
This is a benefit to the end user, and in line with Foundation values like transparency and user engagement. Do you disagree?
Certainly, serious reusers who wish to establish credibility should be transparent about the source of their data;
I have never seen Google credit Freebase (Bing does, probably because Freebase is a Google property), and I think neither Google nor Bing will credit Wikidata either.
but it's not our proper role to compel them to do so.
Could you explain why in your view it is not out proper role to do so?
Attribution requirements in CC licenses are about crediting the *copyright holders*.
Andreas, I realize this has been much discussed in this thread, but I don't think I've seen this angle addressed directly: In order for any copyright license to apply, somebody has to hold the copyright. Who do you imagine has a legitimate claim to copyright over the emergent database that grows as multiple individuals and automated processes add individual, non-copyrightable claims/statements/facts?
See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#The_legal_definiti...
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From a legal perspective, a database is any organized collection of
materials — hard copy or electronic — that permits a user to search for and access individual pieces of information contained within the materials. No database software, as a programmer would understand it, is necessary. In the US, for example, Black’s Law Dictionary defines a database as a "compilation of information arranged in a systematic way and offering a means of finding specific elements it contains, often today by electronic means."[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#cite_note-1 *Databases may be protected by US copyright law as "compilations."* In the EU, databases are protected by the Database Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive, which defines a database as "a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means."
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So according to that page, created by Wikimedia legal staff, databases may be protected even by US copyright law as "compilations". In the EU (is Wikidata currently based in the EU, given that it's a Wikimedia Deutschland project?) the protections are still more stringent. As I understand it, the community as a whole holds the copyright, but you'd have to check with Foundation legal staff or some other lawyer to be sure.
Best, Andreas