On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > In my mind, any normalisation which removes a > license/copyright would be in breach by default > - no question in my mind.
Actually, "license/copyright" should be the least controversial stuff to remove during a reformatting operation. The reason is that removing such data can do no harm to the publisher. Copyright law defines the maximum level of control that a creator or publisher has over content unless there are explicit contracts in force. Nothing that a publisher can put into their content can, in any way, restrict third-party use of the content any more than copyright already does by default. Thus, the worst you can do by removing any sort of licensing language from a feed is to cause the feed to be controlled by raw copyright. You say: "many licenses require attribution". I think you may be referring here to things like Creative Commons licenses... However, no Creative Commons license actually *restricts* the use of content. What Creative Commons does is grant rights that would normally not be granted by copyright. Thus, an "attribution required" license really says: "You can copy this content, even if copyright law would normally prevent such copying, as long as you provide attribution." Creative Commons doesn't "prohibit" copying without attribution, copyright does that. What Creative Commons does is "permit" copying if there is attribution. Removing the Creative Commons license actually imposes *greater* restrictions on the use of the data -- by preventing all non-facilitative copying instead of permitting some such uses. The same is true of things like "Non-Commercial Use Only" Creative Commons licenses. These things don't actually forbid commercial use, they actually just say that non-commercial use is permitted while commercial use remains prohibited if copyright would prohibit such copying. bob wyman On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Pádraic Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > It's always been a gray area. For myself, I think the acid test is whether > the information presented by the format is altered (the format itself > shouldn't matter). So long as the modifications present the information > accurately, preserve any required copyright/licensing, and only reduce (not > add) information (as with normalisation a lot), it should be fine. Adding > information is often hard if it can be viewed downstream as the work of the > original source. The licensing is the sticky bit - many licenses require > attribution to be made clear when copying/distributing. In my mind, any > normalisation which removes a license/copyright would be in breach by > default - no question in my mind. It's ethically unsound to strip such > information in my opinion. > > > Paddy > > Pádraic Brady > > http://blog.astrumfutura.com > http://www.survivethedeepend.com > OpenID Europe Foundation Irish Representative<http://www.openideurope.eu/> > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *Sent:* Mon, December 28, 2009 7:16:46 PM > > *Subject:* Re: [pubsubhubbub] Normalizing Fat Pings to Atom > > BTW, I'm not saying it's wrong to do. That is between a service and it's > customers. Just that it shouldn't be part of a spec because of the > considerations mentioned. > > On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Matthew Terenzio <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Does a hub have a right (legal or ethical) to modify a feed in any way >> before delivery? >> >> Yes, I choose the hub, but the spec allows for federation. Could three >> hubs down the chain take my feed and make modifications to it that may not >> be to my liking? >> >> I hope not. Maybe Corp A doesn't want their feed being converted to Corp >> B's protocol. >> >> >> >
