Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Here is a WikiBlame tool that serves as a demo: http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php I've come up with an algorithm to speed up the search when you don't know the article title (a case this doesn't handle) but you can't get around needing a monster index. The easiest way to do this is to make the LuceneSearch extension grok the full history dump and then layer the search algorithm on top of it based on standard Lucene search. On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 11:07 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/22 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire history would have to be included with every copy of the article. Needless to say, in a print product, this would occupy a very significant amount of space. Needless to say, equally, it's a significant obligation for a re-user. And, of course, Wikipedia keeps growing and so do its attribution records. Well, the attribution list is about 1/6 the length of the article (in terms of bytes). Given that it can be in significantly smaller font size, doesn't have lots of whitespace and has no images, it's going to take up far less than 1/6 as much space on the page. It will be a significant amount of space, but not an impractical one (to the extent that copying and pasting into Word gives meaningful results, the article takes up 35 pages, the attribution list takes up 2). Which is fine if you're reprinting the whole article, but what if you're just reprinting the lede, or some other section of an article? Should a reuser still be required to reprint 2 pages of credits for a paragraph of article? That seems onerous. Note that just reprinting a *section* of an article is how many print reuse cases have worked to date (the German encyclopedia and our CafePress bumperstickers come to mind), and this case is not something that we've discussed much so far. And having just actually done this, with a real book and a real publisher, in How Wikipedia Works, I can attest that it's a non-trivial amount of work to get author lists for articles -- removing duplication, IPs, formatting, etc is all a good deal of work -- and I like to think I understand how histories work. It would be a much bigger task for someone who didn't understand histories or the license. The Wikiblame tool, if it were made widely accessible and prominently integrated into the site, seems like a promising solution. In the meantime, I think we ought to consider what proper credit is for just reusing a part of an article, versus the whole thing. -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
One thing that has not been brought forward yet in this discussion, and which I think is important, is that 'author' does not equate 'editor'. It seems many here do go from that assumption in trying to get the authors of an article. Suppose, an article has the following edit history: A starts the page with some text B adds some text to it C notes that A's text was a copyright violation, and adds a template to that effect D removes all the text of the page (because A's text is a copyright violations, and B's edits make no sense without it), and replaces it by a translation from another Wikipedia Some vandal vandalizes the page E reverses the vandalism F adds some interwikis G corrects 2 spelling mistakes H adds a paragraph I adds a picture from Commons. The _editors_ of the page are A to I and the vandal. But are they also the authors? I think not. In my opinion the _authors_ are D, H, the authors of the translated article and the author of the picture. Having said that, my opinion on this is that I do want to be credited, but only where my contributions are really major. Not where I made a 'non-authorship' edit, and also not where I made a substantial but still relatively small edit, for example adding one line to an already extensive article. The first I don't consider authorship, and the second I'd be more than happy to be credited as part of wikipedia editors. But where a page is essentially written by me with only insubstantial (though useful) edits by others before and after, I do want to see my name as the maker or one of the makers. Thus, I'd like to see some credits similar to the main credits place in GFDL, where a few of the major authors are mentioned, plus other Wikipedia editors or something similar. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
But here's the virtue of contributing to Wikipedia in the first place: anyone anywhere who wants to see who did what, will go to the actual Wikipedia and will find your credited contributions, regardless of the details in subsequent reproductions--as long as they know it's from Wikipedia. On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:06 AM, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: One thing that has not been brought forward yet in this discussion, and which I think is important, is that 'author' does not equate 'editor'. It seems many here do go from that assumption in trying to get the authors of an article. Suppose, an article has the following edit history: A starts the page with some text B adds some text to it C notes that A's text was a copyright violation, and adds a template to that effect D removes all the text of the page (because A's text is a copyright violations, and B's edits make no sense without it), and replaces it by a translation from another Wikipedia Some vandal vandalizes the page E reverses the vandalism F adds some interwikis G corrects 2 spelling mistakes H adds a paragraph I adds a picture from Commons. The _editors_ of the page are A to I and the vandal. But are they also the authors? I think not. In my opinion the _authors_ are D, H, the authors of the translated article and the author of the picture. Having said that, my opinion on this is that I do want to be credited, but only where my contributions are really major. Not where I made a 'non-authorship' edit, and also not where I made a substantial but still relatively small edit, for example adding one line to an already extensive article. The first I don't consider authorship, and the second I'd be more than happy to be credited as part of wikipedia editors. But where a page is essentially written by me with only insubstantial (though useful) edits by others before and after, I do want to see my name as the maker or one of the makers. Thus, I'd like to see some credits similar to the main credits place in GFDL, where a few of the major authors are mentioned, plus other Wikipedia editors or something similar. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/2/2 phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com: Which is fine if you're reprinting the whole article, but what if you're just reprinting the lede, or some other section of an article? Should a reuser still be required to reprint 2 pages of credits for a paragraph of article? That seems onerous. Note that just reprinting a *section* of an article is how many print reuse cases have worked to date (the German encyclopedia and our CafePress bumperstickers come to mind), and this case is not something that we've discussed much so far. Very few articles require a page's worth of credit. Remember even the German has an average of 23.65 edits per page and the midpoint is likely much lower. And having just actually done this, with a real book and a real publisher, in How Wikipedia Works, I can attest that it's a non-trivial amount of work to get author lists for articles -- removing duplication, IPs, formatting, etc is all a good deal of work -- and I like to think I understand how histories work. It would be a much bigger task for someone who didn't understand histories or the license. It is true we need an extension built into mediawiki to handle at least part of this. The Wikiblame tool, if it were made widely accessible and prominently integrated into the site, seems like a promising solution. In the meantime, I think we ought to consider what proper credit is for just reusing a part of an article, versus the whole thing. -- phoebe Legally you are required to credit every author who's work that section is a derivative of. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/2/1 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: So far I have not heard any arguments why the CC-by-sa cannot do this. It can but can only do this when everyone agrees. Since wikipedia currently has 282,180,603 edits by people who have not agreed such a change is imposible. I have only heard a lot of FUD that I qualify as narcistic. FUD that does not contribute to more FREE colloaboration and re-use. I understand license text and copyright law can be considered FUD by some however it is FUD that is important. The one argument against the CC-by-sa that takes the prize is the notion that we will have less influence with Creative Commons ... yet another great narcissistic argument. Not really. The fact is experience shows that every free license has issues (for example CC-BY-SA 3.0 contains an invariant section clause although I doubt that was CC's intention). Wikipedia by it's very nature tends to hit these issues before anyone else. Having influence means we in theory have a better chance of getting such issues fixed. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:29 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: So far I have not heard any arguments why the CC-by-sa cannot do this. It can but can only do this when everyone agrees. Since wikipedia currently has 282,180,603 edits by people who have not agreed such a change is imposible. False. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the [edits of the] minority who choose to disrupt the community will be quickly and efficiently purged from it (albeit wasting resources in the process that could have been better utilised elsewhere). It is clear that there is a small but vocal minority intent on spreading 'important' FUD and in my opinion these people can't see the forest for the trees. Fortunately it seems the leadership has a good grasp on community sentiment and sanity will prevail, with any luck sooner rather than later. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/2/2 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: False. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the [edits of the] minority who choose to disrupt the community will be quickly and efficiently purged from it (albeit wasting resources in the process that could have been better utilised elsewhere). I'm not talking about needs I'm talking about legal rights. Remember you can't use presumed consent in this situation so if you wanted to shift the credit to wikipedia you would need to track down and get agreement from every author (and whoever inherited in the cases where they have died). Given the amount of content we have from very occasional contributers this is impossible. It is clear that there is a small but vocal minority intent on spreading 'important' FUD and in my opinion these people can't see the forest for the trees. Please provide a halfway legal way to do what you propose. And no moveing wikipedia to Afghanistan is not a valid answer. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Ray Saintonge wrote: The only reason that moral rights is an issue is its inclusion in the statutes of various countries. It mostly stems from an inflated Napoleonic view of the Rights of Man that was meant to replace the divine rights of kings. Common law countries have been loath to embark in this direction. Moral rights are mentioned in the US law, but only as a toothless tiger. I would actually be interested to get the background for this interpretation of how moral rights came to happen as a legal idea. If there are such references. I couldn't find the reference that I recalled from a couple of years ago, but I did find some reference to the idea at http://www.ams.org/ewing/Documents/CopyrightandAuthors-70.pdf in the section Some philosophy. There are profound differences at a very deep level between the rights of authors in civil law countries and the right to copy in common law countries. In common law countries copyright has been primarily an economic right instead of a personal right. It used to be that copyright disputes were framed between two publishers or between publisher and author. To the extent that the law was a balance between interests it was the interests of publishers and authors that were being balanced. That the using public could have interests was unthinkable because these users flew below the radar of cost effectiveness. If it was not economical for a person to infringe copyrights in the first place, how could it be worthwhile to lobby politicians to have these rights for the general using public. Today we have a third party whose interests were never considered in the balance. Particularly as the legal reasons in at least Finnish legal manuals for laymen who have to deal with moral rights seem to focus on the utility moral rights have in terms of protecting the artisans reputation as being good at his craft. I don't know anything about the history of Finnish jurisprudence, but that statement seems to draw on the French model. Canada has provisions for moral rights, but the person claiming that his reputation has been damaged would have the burden of proving that as well as proving the amount of damages. If one made a claim for $1,000,000 in damages he shouldn't expect that it will be granted just because he says so. I have great difficulty understanding how the right to examine could be traced to some grandiose Rights of Man basis, since the argument presented for this particular moral right is clearly grounded on protecting the artisan/artists ability to examine their earlier work, to remind them self and refresh their memory on methods they had employed on those works, and thus enable them to not lose skills and methods they had mastered in earlier days. I seem to be misunderstanding something about your stated right to examine. Is someone claiming that authors are prevented from examining their own works? Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Ray Saintonge wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Ray Saintonge wrote: The only reason that moral rights is an issue is its inclusion in the statutes of various countries. It mostly stems from an inflated Napoleonic view of the Rights of Man that was meant to replace the divine rights of kings. Common law countries have been loath to embark in this direction. Moral rights are mentioned in the US law, but only as a toothless tiger. I would actually be interested to get the background for this interpretation of how moral rights came to happen as a legal idea. If there are such references. I couldn't find the reference that I recalled from a couple of years ago, but I did find some reference to the idea at http://www.ams.org/ewing/Documents/CopyrightandAuthors-70.pdf in the section Some philosophy. There are profound differences at a very deep level between the rights of authors in civil law countries and the right to copy in common law countries. In common law countries copyright has been primarily an economic right instead of a personal right. It used to be that copyright disputes were framed between two publishers or between publisher and author. To the extent that the law was a balance between interests it was the interests of publishers and authors that were being balanced. That the using public could have interests was unthinkable because these users flew below the radar of cost effectiveness. If it was not economical for a person to infringe copyrights in the first place, how could it be worthwhile to lobby politicians to have these rights for the general using public. Today we have a third party whose interests were never considered in the balance. Aye, that is the rub. We aren't really in the job for just helping different regimes interoperate. (if I am allowed my sly aside - some of are trying to pull a fast one to prevent interoperability) The important thing is, if this change of attribution *does* in fact go forward, there is no option of saying it was done out of ignorance. There have been a number of people who have spelled out the real legal issues involved. If they are ignored, rather than addressed, that is the responsibility of those doing it, not an apathetic community which did not point out that those issues were real. We have pointed out those issues, and if they are ignored, there is no way it can be blamed on an apathetic community who allowed it to happen. Particularly as the legal reasons in at least Finnish legal manuals for laymen who have to deal with moral rights seem to focus on the utility moral rights have in terms of protecting the artisans reputation as being good at his craft. I don't know anything about the history of Finnish jurisprudence, but that statement seems to draw on the French model. Canada has provisions for moral rights, but the person claiming that his reputation has been damaged would have the burden of proving that as well as proving the amount of damages. If one made a claim for $1,000,000 in damages he shouldn't expect that it will be granted just because he says so. Actually there is a more profound difference of legal systems at work. Finland works on the assumption that claims of damages are not paramount, but protections given by law are. So you can be fined, even if you cause no damage. On the other hand, no ridiculous claims of damage will give the aggrieved party an inflated compensation claim, because the Finnish system is not geared towards rewarding the victim, but only assuring everybodys rights are protected. I have great difficulty understanding how the right to examine could be traced to some grandiose Rights of Man basis, since the argument presented for this particular moral right is clearly grounded on protecting the artisan/artists ability to examine their earlier work, to remind them self and refresh their memory on methods they had employed on those works, and thus enable them to not lose skills and methods they had mastered in earlier days. I seem to be misunderstanding something about your stated right to examine. Is someone claiming that authors are prevented from examining their own works? The right to examine is a Moral Right that I feel really does not fit with your over-arching idea that they are aggrandizing rights and not only utilitarian ones. If you made a sculpture and sold it off, in many countries without moral rights, that would be the end of it. Hey, you were hired to do a job, what more do you want!? In Finland, you used some useful skills you had gained from apprenticeship, and study at art colleges, and even perhaps a sojourn in Paris or Venice. And you may have even made some hard decisions forced on you by the material you were sculpting itself. Wow! Now, picture yourself as the artist some 15 years later. You are at the doddering
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Anthony wrote: As for how sharing your name is better for everyone, I think it's fairly clear that a work of non-fiction is better if you know who wrote it, and further I think it's also clear that when someone creates a great work it is beneficial to know who created it so that one can find more works by that person. So that's how it benefits society. Whether you know who wrote a work or not it's still the same work. Maybe, but if a work lists its authors it's not the same work as if it doesn't. Following your line of reasoning we should all bow down before the Encyclopedia Britannica and give up Wikipedia because EB is better. Absolutely not. EB has not adapted its model to the Internet at all, and it's very unlikely it will. Just because there are some things EB does better doesn't mean it is overall better. Unless they decided to radically change their model and start over from scratch, EB will never be the size of Wikipedia. It will never be as up-to-date as Wikipedia. No, with regard to lack of attribution I think Wikipedia has to worry much more about Knol than EB. Of course, Wikipedia has about a 7 1/2 year head start on Knol. Pure momentum might be enough for it to win that race, if all you care about is being better than your nearest competitor. Sure, a person who likes the works of a particular author will seek out more of his works, but that can be much more about better marketing than a better book. Where's the benefit to society. Where's the benefit to society in marketing? It's only because of marketing that many of the products you use can be made, and this is especially true with intellectual products, which benefit tremendously from economies of scale. As you youself imply, just having a better book isn't enough. You have to convince people to try your better book. Life doesn't work like the Field of Dreams. Honestly promoting your work when you've done a great job benefits everyone. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Robert Rohde wrote: So where do things stand? By my rough count, the relicensing discussion has generated over 300 emails in the last month alone. At least within the limited confines of people who read this list, I suspect that everyone who has wanted to offer an opinion has done so. While, I mean no disrespect, much of what continues to be said strikes me as either repetitious of prior comments or simply off-topic. I very much agree. Certainly anything *I* wish to add, is very much best left off-list. Given that, I would like to ask Erik, Mike, or someone else with the WMF to comment on what the timetable and process for the next step will be? At the start of January, the BIG VOTE was tentatively scheduled to start February 9th. Is that still accurate, or have we talked ourselves into a delay? Will there be any more expansive effort to communicate with the various communities before the vote starts? Just put a move on; is what I say. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:23 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Very few articles require a page's worth of credit. Remember even the German has an average of 23.65 edits per page and the midpoint is likely much lower. True. Although as a caveat remember that people aren't going to be publishing/printing a bunch of articles that are stubby or immature. The best articles, and the ones most like to be printed and distributed off of Wikipedia will likely be the ones that the most hands have touched. We aren't interested in the average case of all articles. A better metric would be the average number of edits from among the various good or featured articles, since these are the articles that people are going to want to print/distribute. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/2/2 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: Nothing's impossible - where there's a will (and clearly there is[1]) there's a way. Mozilla managed to relicense to GPL years ago[2] (they had an FAQ too[3]) We have sought and obtained permission to relicense from almost everyone who contributed code to Mozilla up until the date of the new licensing policy on September 19th 2001. (After that date, contribution of code was contingent on giving permission to relicense, if the code was not immediately checked into a tri-licensed file.) Once we have obtained responses from all the individuals, companies and organisations concerned, we will relicense those files for which we have received permission from all copyright holders. If you think you can get permission from every wikipedia editor you are free to try. These moves are not easy and can be made significantly more difficult by individuals (like yourself) Nah. I'm a minor issue compared to the people who have been inconsiderate enough to die working against the spirit of the community. We are discussing copyright issues ad homs are unhelpful. As Mozilla said in the FAQ, by doing so you will make [the work] useful to more people, which may result in others improving [the work] to make it more useful to you, before going on to explain that the 'spirit' of the new license was in line with that of the old. The key difference is that they had only 450 contributors and the vast majority were contactable. We have orders of magnitude more contributors, many of whom are anonymous, aliased and/or without contact details. The best we can do in this case is contact those who we can, notify those who connect to the site and publish a notice of our intentions. The best we can do isn't then enough to meet the requirements of the law. So let's get this show on the road... there's been more than enough compelling debate, academic wankery and downright noise already. The past actions of those such as User:Ram-Man make it quite clear that you are free to ask wikipedians to relicense their content under any license terms you wish. See [[template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Tri-2.5]] Those who are so concerned about the opinion others hold of them and feel their right to self-aggrandisement is being trampled on can identify themselves (and their edits) so as the rest of us can get on with doing what we set out to do - building the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I've known people argue that anyone should include those living under Napoleonic code legal systems. If you want to license your edits so that people can credit you with a ref to wikipedia feel free to do so. Just don't try and carry out such a change in the case of those who have not actively agreed to it. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
But since most of the contributors to Wikipedia are anonymous, this is one thing we do not and will never know, regardless of licensing. so to the extent Wikipedia has any authority it's precisely from the fact of community editing on a non-personal basis. Yes, within Wikipedia it's valuable to know who contributed what , and how the interplay of people (or pseudo-people) takes place. For the evaluation of Wikipedia from outside, it stands, for better or worse, on the quality of the community editing. On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Anthony wrote: On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote Anthony wrote: On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, David Goodman wrote I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. In any case, I find it hard to see how, in this particular context, you could be proud of your work but not at least prefer your name to be on it. If you've achieved something of great value to yourself and to others, isn't it better for you, and for everyone, if people know you achieved it? I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. Well, David said he *is* proud of his work, so your seven deadly sins argument apparently isn't the one he was resting on. As for how sharing your name is better for everyone, I think it's fairly clear that a work of non-fiction is better if you know who wrote it, and further I think it's also clear that when someone creates a great work it is beneficial to know who created it so that one can find more works by that person. So that's how it benefits society. I wouldn't want to suggest that David was a fallen angel. Whether you know who wrote a work or not it's still the same work. It's a non-sequitur to draw the conclusion that you do. Following your line of reasoning we should all bow down before the Encyclopedia Britannica and give up Wikipedia because EB is better. Sure, a person who likes the works of a particular author will seek out more of his works, but that can be much more about better marketing than a better book. Where's the benefit to society. How it benefits the individual is even more obvious, to the point that I don't even think I have to explain it. We don't really have a difference about benefit to the individual. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sunday 01 February 2009 07:14:44 David Goodman wrote: I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. You say that as if it is a bad thing. Why turn off narcissistic people if work they do is useful? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Hoi, Because their narcissism gets in the way of what we want to achieve perhaps ? Thanks, GerardM 2009/2/1 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu On Sunday 01 February 2009 07:14:44 David Goodman wrote: I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. You say that as if it is a bad thing. Why turn off narcissistic people if work they do is useful? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/2/1 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wisely remarked: You say that as if it is a bad thing. Why turn off narcissistic people if work they do is useful? Gerard Meijssen top-posted: Hoi, Because their narcissism gets in the way of what we want to achieve perhaps ? This would seem to suggest that what we want to achieve is *not* producing an encyclopedia. I suggest you reconsider. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Hoi, No, we want to create a free encyclopaedia. The restrictions imposed for narcissistic reasons do get in the way of making the encyclopaedia Free. Thanks. GerardM 2009/2/1 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com 2009/2/1 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wisely remarked: You say that as if it is a bad thing. Why turn off narcissistic people if work they do is useful? Gerard Meijssen top-posted: Hoi, Because their narcissism gets in the way of what we want to achieve perhaps ? This would seem to suggest that what we want to achieve is *not* producing an encyclopedia. I suggest you reconsider. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Ray Saintonge wrote: I have no complaints about commercial use, but I am concerned when a commercial user massively takes freely licensed or public domain material and parks them under the umbrella of his copyrights so that the users of his material unwittingly respect a copyright that has no basis in fact. If the only ones with rights of action against the fraudster are the separate owners of the fragments, we will have loosed the tactic of divide and conquer upon our own selves. I would really like to see a situation where we nominating someone as an non-exclusive agent with the right to prosecute serious copyright violations on a class action basis. Is it possible to make this work for copy-left licenses? That is can one transfer even partially the right to seek redress to another party? If so, that would be wonderful. I am sure many contributors would take the advantage of it. To be most careful, I would suggest that such party would be legally differentiated from the Foundation, and would accept on an equal basis such nominations from contributors to non-WMF projects as well. Specifically since - at least in theory - the agent might be requested to act against the Foundations stated interests. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Gerard Meijssen wrote: Hoi, No, we want to create a free encyclopaedia. The restrictions imposed for narcissistic reasons do get in the way of making the encyclopaedia Free. Thanks. People may be contributing for narcissistic reasons, but nobody has suggested any restrictions be imposed for narcissistic reasons. What people have been worried about are real laws in different jurisdictions, which have absolutely nothing to do with narcissism. Ignoring those laws will be a greater detriment to making the encyclopedia Free, since it means the content could only be completely Freely used in the US and jurisdictions that have precisely compatible legal frameworks. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sunday 01 February 2009 10:22:23 Gerard Meijssen wrote: No, we want to create a free encyclopaedia. The restrictions imposed for narcissistic reasons do get in the way of making the encyclopaedia Free. No, they don't. Please, show how they do. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. You should probably clarify what it is you're calling narcissism. For that matter, you should probably clarify what you mean by narcissism in the first place. A common dictionary definition is excessive self-love. But as a philosophical concept that's quite incomplete. What constitutes excessive? What is the proper amount of self-love? And why does wanting or not wanting your name to be on a work throw one over that threshold? In any case, I find it hard to see how, in this particular context, you could be proud of your work but not at least prefer your name to be on it. If you've achieved something of great value to yourself and to others, isn't it better for you, and for everyone, if people know you achieved it? This is not to say that there might not be circumstances where you're willing to not have your name on your work, or, indeed, where for some reason you wish to remain anonymous. But I think there's an inherent validity in the desire to be named in a work you produced in at least some circumstances which arise in Wikimedia projects. I certainly wouldn't categorically dismiss that desire as narcissism (which may or may not be what you intended to do above). ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony wrote: On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, David Goodman wrote I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. In any case, I find it hard to see how, in this particular context, you could be proud of your work but not at least prefer your name to be on it. If you've achieved something of great value to yourself and to others, isn't it better for you, and for everyone, if people know you achieved it? I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. I think there's an inherent validity in the desire to be named in a work you produced in at least some circumstances which arise in Wikimedia projects. Then let's predefine those circumstances. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Again, right at the top, I apologize for replying to a week old posting, and one I replied to at the time, besides... but perhaps my motives will be clear. Anthony wrote: Now, personally, the way I read reasonable to the medium or means You are utilitzing, I think it means what is reasonably necessary to provide proper attribution, not what is reasonably necessary to maximize reuse. Erik seems to be pushing for the latter interpretation. I commented on your interpretation of what you perceived to be Erik's wish in all of this... But I neglected to comment at all your interpretation of the wording of the license. I don't think proper attribution means anything, in relation to the phrase you are quoting. However, a benign reading of reasonable to the medium or means could easily be dovetailed with the (I really only know of the case in Finland) moral rights legislation phrasing of *only* requiring the attribution be provided in such a form which is customary in the field applicable. This would not require for instance that each product give the attribution, as long as for instance the attribution were given more centrally in a fashion that is customary in such material as which is in question. Not that that helps us much, since it is clear we are at the cusp of _creating_ the standards for what will be customary for attribution in such quite novel enterprises as Wikipedia. We do have to remember that Wikipedia really is quite unprecedented. Even if the early editions of Oxford English Dictionary relied on scraps of paper sent from a multitude of people, they would only have been giving examples of usage, not edits to the creative content of the dictionary itself. One very tentative reading would be to claim that it is indeed customary to link to the history. I don't find that to be strongly persuasive, but I am bound to admit it is possible. And even if I were to admit that it would be arguable that this quirk of the Moral Right of Paternity could be elided in this fashion, in the context of Finnish law, one has to ask whether this workaround would suffice in all other jurisdictions which are still shackled by this self same Paternity Right? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Ray Saintonge wrote: I have no complaints about commercial use, but I am concerned when a commercial user massively takes freely licensed or public domain material and parks them under the umbrella of his copyrights so that the users of his material unwittingly respect a copyright that has no basis in fact. If the only ones with rights of action against the fraudster are the separate owners of the fragments, we will have loosed the tactic of divide and conquer upon our own selves. I would really like to see a situation where we nominate someone as an non-exclusive agent with the right to prosecute serious copyright violations on a class action basis. Is it possible to make this work for copy-left licenses? That is can one transfer even partially the right to seek redress to another party? If so, that would be wonderful. I am sure many contributors would take the advantage of it. It should be. In the same way one appoints a lawyer to pursue one's case in court instead of doing so personally. The lawyer who launches a case does not do so because his own personal rights have been violated. The case here would not really be about seeking redress. We who write for the Wiki projects do not do so for direct financial gain, so we should not expect to receive such gain through a lawsuit. Any distribution of the proceeds of a successful lawsuit would be mostly symbolic. For me it all comes down to regarding what is in the public domain as belonging to everyone instead of no-one. Protecting the public domain then becomes a question of collective rights. To be most careful, I would suggest that such party would be legally differentiated from the Foundation, and would accept on an equal basis such nominations from contributors to non-WMF projects as well. Specifically since - at least in theory - the agent might be requested to act against the Foundations stated interests. I agree. If I suggested that the Foundation should be the one to do this that may have been a little too casual. In theory, my first impression would be that protecting the public domain should be a government duty, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Perhaps a separate Custodian of the Public Domain may be the answer. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Ray Saintonge wrote: I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. And yet, the church has no problem attributing good works to saints by name. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/2/2 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: Exactly. There is nothing 'customary' about massively collaborative development of works. Just about every film of any significance. TV series. Computer games. Heh just about every bit of major software. Maps of large areas can rack up very large numbers (depending on a couple of factors). The other thing to remember is most wikipedia articles don't actually have that many authors. en has a mean of 17.83 edits per page. Allowing for bot edits (which mostly don't qualify for copyright), distortion of that figure due a few very large articles histories and people editing more than once and you are pretty close to what some scientific papers rack up in terms of authors. Most things you could use content for already have customary methods of giving attribution. That isn't going to change. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Anthony wrote: On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, David Goodman wrote I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. In any case, I find it hard to see how, in this particular context, you could be proud of your work but not at least prefer your name to be on it. If you've achieved something of great value to yourself and to others, isn't it better for you, and for everyone, if people know you achieved it? I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. Well, David said he *is* proud of his work, so your seven deadly sins argument apparently isn't the one he was resting on. As for how sharing your name is better for everyone, I think it's fairly clear that a work of non-fiction is better if you know who wrote it, and further I think it's also clear that when someone creates a great work it is beneficial to know who created it so that one can find more works by that person. So that's how it benefits society. How it benefits the individual is even more obvious, to the point that I don't even think I have to explain it. As I said, there are certainly exceptions to this, but in general I think it holds, and even if it held in only some cases I think that would be enough to protect the right. I think there's an inherent validity in the desire to be named in a work you produced in at least some circumstances which arise in Wikimedia projects. Then let's predefine those circumstances. The pre in predefine implies that you're not changing the rules after the fact. And if you're not interested in changing the rules after the fact, then there's no reason to change the license. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: On Sunday 01 February 2009 10:22:23 Gerard Meijssen wrote: No, we want to create a free encyclopaedia. The restrictions imposed for narcissistic reasons do get in the way of making the encyclopaedia Free. No, they don't. Please, show how they do. By way of example, I am currently working on a short (8 slide), clean presentation, to be licensed under a free license. It contains a slide with 8 thumbnail photos of generic pictures (a house, a building, a government chamber, a few racks in a datacenter, etc.) and a few samples of text. It also contains a picture of one of the original google racks which would be less easy to replace. Some of the photos have been transformed by others so there are multiple authors. By imposing the attribution requirements (indeed even linking to individual articles rather than Wikipedia itself) you are making it significantly more difficult for me to make use of the work and more likely that I will 'take my business elsewhere'. That damages the community and thus the (apparently egotistical) needs of the few threaten to impose on the needs of many (both within our community and the general public as a whole). This type of piecemeal reuse/'remixing' is typical to that of an encyclopedia - for example in your average school project. The authors each contributed a small part to individual works which eventually became even smaller parts of a larger work. Their contribution at the end of the day is negligible and if they feel the need to have school kids quoting their name to teachers and the like then I suggest they would be better served by the various communities that cater for this 'need'. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sunday 01 February 2009 10:22:23 Gerard Meijssen wrote: No, we want to create a free encyclopaedia. The restrictions imposed for narcissistic reasons do get in the way of making the encyclopaedia Free. No, they don't. Please, show how they do. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Ray Saintonge wrote: I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. And yet, the church has no problem attributing good works to saints by name. The difference here is that the church is making these gratuitous attributions. The saints themselves are too dead to be bothered. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: This is an important point. It is precisely why it is not a good idea to remove attribution. I wasn't aware that anyone was suggesting that we remove attribution altogether, just that we attribute Wikipedia as a whole for the sake of everyone's sanity, and in consideration of the extremely limited (if not negative) value that such mass attributions provide. While working for a large US software company I never received (nor expected) any credit whatsoever for my work. You might argue that I was well remunerated for my efforts, but when I wrote network quotas for the Linux kernel (where they have lived happily for the last decade or so) my name didn't start popping up in the boot messages either. Yes you can find it if you look at the source code or edit logs but I don't care - my contribution was in the name of the community. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/22 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire history would have to be included with every copy of the article. Needless to say, in a print product, this would occupy a very significant amount of space. Needless to say, equally, it's a significant obligation for a re-user. And, of course, Wikipedia keeps growing and so do its attribution records. Well, the attribution list is about 1/6 the length of the article (in terms of bytes). Given that it can be in significantly smaller font size, doesn't have lots of whitespace and has no images, it's going to take up far less than 1/6 as much space on the page. It will be a significant amount of space, but not an impractical one (to the extent that copying and pasting into Word gives meaningful results, the article takes up 35 pages, the attribution list takes up 2). Which is fine if you're reprinting the whole article, but what if you're just reprinting the lede, or some other section of an article? Should a reuser still be required to reprint 2 pages of credits for a paragraph of article? That seems onerous. Note that just reprinting a *section* of an article is how many print reuse cases have worked to date (the German encyclopedia and our CafePress bumperstickers come to mind), and this case is not something that we've discussed much so far. And having just actually done this, with a real book and a real publisher, in How Wikipedia Works, I can attest that it's a non-trivial amount of work to get author lists for articles -- removing duplication, IPs, formatting, etc is all a good deal of work -- and I like to think I understand how histories work. It would be a much bigger task for someone who didn't understand histories or the license. The Wikiblame tool, if it were made widely accessible and prominently integrated into the site, seems like a promising solution. In the meantime, I think we ought to consider what proper credit is for just reusing a part of an article, versus the whole thing. -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
David Goodman wrote: My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely and unquestionably legally necessary is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone. Precisely! To a large extent, we are effectively releasing our work into the public domain, except for the fact that in some countries this is not allowed. Also, putting a work into the public domain means abandoning our rights of action in the event that there is infringement on that public ownership. There is no custodian of the public domain to take action when the copyrights of the general public have been infringed. I have no complaints about commercial use, but I am concerned when a commercial user massively takes freely licensed or public domain material and parks them under the umbrella of his copyrights so that the users of his material unwittingly respect a copyright that has no basis in fact. If the only ones with rights of action against the fraudster are the separate owners of the fragments, we will have loosed the tactic of divide and conquer upon our own selves. I would really like to see a situation where we nominating someone as an non-exclusive agent with the right to prosecute serious copyright violations on a class action basis. I choose to edit with a pseudonym, though my real name is certainly well known to the community. My self-esteem is not so week that I need to be publicly credited for every last edit that I make, the satisfaction of a job well-done is its own reward. We do not own the articles, and we edit each others' work mercilessly. Having a long list of names in 2-point type just so that the individual editor can see his name in print is wasteful and contrary to the spirit of our collective effort. This is not what credit and attribution is about. Expecting anything more from the downstream user than to say that he took things from Wikipedia is unrealistic. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: On Saturday 31 January 2009 11:23:33 Ray Saintonge wrote: David Goodman wrote: My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely and unquestionably legally necessary is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone. Precisely! To a large extent, we are effectively releasing our work into the public domain, except for the fact that in some countries this No, we are not, and it is ridiculous to even think that. First of all, I would most certainly not work on Wikipedia or any similar project if that would mean that my work is put in the public domain. is not allowed. Also, putting a work into the public domain means abandoning our rights of action in the event that there is infringement No, it does not. Even if we have had put our work in public domain, in most jurisdictions we would still retain our moral rights. No one would be allowed to claim to be the author, for example. on that public ownership. There is no custodian of the public domain to take action when the copyrights of the general public have been infringed. Yes, there is. For example, Copyright law of Serbia explicitly specifies (Article 56) that author's heirs, associations of authors and scientific and art institutions are entitled to protect moral rights of the authors. edit each others' work mercilessly. Having a long list of names in 2-point type just so that the individual editor can see his name in print is wasteful and contrary to the spirit of our collective effort. It is not having editors' names anywhere that is wasteful and contrary to the spirit of our collective effort. People are doing what they are because they take pride of what they do. If people are not properly credited, fewer people will work on the projects. If people are not properly credited, they will care less about their reputation and write worse. There is absolutely nothing to gain, and a number of things to lose from not crediting the authors. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
David Goodman wrote: I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism. It is a bit ego-centric to only care about how one self only views ones work as mattering. It is wise and pragmatic to acknowledge that not every individual thinks as one thinks themselves. That is pluralism. I don't myself care too much about being attributed (which is one of the reasons for a long time I just did IP-based edits), but I certainly will defend to the utmost anyones right to feel pride from name-recognition. Given that not that many books in the world are published anonymously, clearly this approach to ones name is far from exceptional. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Ray Saintonge wrote: David Goodman wrote: My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely and unquestionably legally necessary is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone. Precisely! To a large extent, we are effectively releasing our work into the public domain, except for the fact that in some countries this is not allowed. Also, putting a work into the public domain means abandoning our rights of action in the event that there is infringement on that public ownership. There is no custodian of the public domain to take action when the copyrights of the general public have been infringed. This is an important point. It is precisely why it is not a good idea to remove attribution. Because just as releasing into public domain is not allowed in many jurisdictions, equally removing attribution willy-nilly is not allowed in many jurisdictions. If we were removing attribution like that, the problems would be nearly of the same order as from releasing it all to PD. Moving modified content from one jurisdiction to another would become a nightmare. Specifically in the case of CC-BY-SA my understanding is that any provisions it has for not honouring the moral rights laws of those jurisdictions where they are active, would only be useful, if one were working on a project that never wanted it to be realistically usefully re-used in such jurisdictions; which, again in my understanding, Wikimedia is not. ...[snip].. I choose to edit with a pseudonym, though my real name is certainly well known to the community. My self-esteem is not so week that I need to be publicly credited for every last edit that I make, the satisfaction of a job well-done is its own reward. We do not own the articles, and we edit each others' work mercilessly. Having a long list of names in 2-point type just so that the individual editor can see his name in print is wasteful and contrary to the spirit of our collective effort. This is not what credit and attribution is about. Expecting anything more from the downstream user than to say that he took things from Wikipedia is unrealistic. Ec Heh. I call your pseudonymous editing, and raise you: I like to edit anonymously occasionally. See my paragraphs above. We do want to have our content to be useful within the parameters of as many jurisdictions as the CC-BY-SA license allows, clearly, and the laws of many jurisdictions are clearly not satisfied with crediting Wikipedia. Or at the very least, the arguments why they would be thus satisfied, have not been spelled out on this mailing list. There *has* been an _assertion_ that legal people have been consulted, and based on this some people *think* such could be defended; but this has been disputed by multiple parties. For that matter. Wikipedia certainly gets no warm fuzzies from receiving credit, so why should it be credited at all, and not just its contributors - purely from the reason of giving credit where is credit is due point of view. The only reason you would have for crediting wikipedia would be because you accepted that fundamentally its contributors deserved some credit for the work, if the mention was done merely for reasons of giving credit; and not other reasons such as allowing verification or the like. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Ray Saintonge wrote: The only reason that moral rights is an issue is its inclusion in the statutes of various countries. It mostly stems from an inflated Napoleonic view of the Rights of Man that was meant to replace the divine rights of kings. Common law countries have been loath to embark in this direction. Moral rights are mentioned in the US law, but only as a toothless tiger. Ec I would actually be interested to get the background for this interpretation of how moral rights came to happen as a legal idea. If there are such references. Particularly as the legal reasons in at least Finnish legal manuals for laymen who have to deal with moral rights seem to focus on the utility moral rights have in terms of protecting the artisans reputation as being good at his craft. I have great difficulty understanding how the right to examine could be traced to some grandiose Rights of Man basis, since the argument presented for this particular moral right is clearly grounded on protecting the artisan/artists ability to examine their earlier work, to remind them self and refresh their memory on methods they had employed on those works, and thus enable them to not lose skills and methods they had mastered in earlier days. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony wrote: On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: But I am sure there are no applicable moral rights to let's say correcting missing space around punctuation. I have made some studies, and it appears this last sentence is in fact complete bollocks. (xcuse my french) There is a frequently expressed view that the moral rights provision of paternity rights are there to protect the authors right to be identified as the originator of the work, but it is in fact (according to a finding by Finnish copyrights protection arbitration committee - which of course has no actual legal standing as a binding precedent on later court cases) somewhat more involved. TN 1991:7 states that the paternity right extends to the level of making it obligatory to not only mention if the original authors work has been tampered in some way (adapted, translated, modified, whatever; choose your own term) but to identify specifically by whom, if known. This is a very strong finding, though as far as I know untested in an actual court of law here. I am sure most cases of shuffling punctuation around and such is not something that can be considered creative acts, but certainly they would qualify as modifications. And I was recently reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (published as The Snake in The Republican) had a change of a single punctuation mark, which in her own view changed the meaning of it completely on its head; so even a mechanical application of considering punctuation changes as minor, is not universally defensible. I hope you don't mind my abbreviation of your original context. Anyone who didn't read the original post can scroll back a few messages to see it. Anyway, it seems to me that the purported moral right you're speaking of would be a right of the original author, and not a right of the person making the modification. Am I correct in this assumption? I think you have hit the nail on the head there. But of course there is a bigger can of worms to be opened, in the sense that even though the original author would under this theory have an imperative right to make known all modifiers, it is very unclear whether some forms of modification would confer equal authorship rights to *their own modified version*. This is of course in particular interest to translators; but in the wikipedia context would be relevant to any editors who substantively improved an article. If it were legally defensible to claim such rights, it would of course only apply to modifications made to the version they had sufficiently modified to confer a legitimate authorship right to it. There is no way to grand-father authorship rights even under the moral rights regime. If so, I think it has significance in the how that right should be protected, if indeed one is to accept that it is a right. In that sense, I'm not sure how modified by a bunch of idiots on Wikipedia is any worse than modified by [insert a bunch of psudonyms here]. On the other hand, the GFDL (via the section entitled History) certainly protects this purported right much stronger than CC-BY-SA under any interpretation. CC-BY-SA mostly attempts to punt on these issues, leaving it to the laws of the individual states (and in some cases to the terms of service of the individual ISPs where the content is first contributed). I have no opinion on this point in support of your view, but will not present my objections publicly either. Personally I think there ought to be a philosophical discussion of whether or not this is a right the WMF wishes to recognize, and if so, to what extent. Only by answering that question can this issue be rationally resolved, and once that question is answered the specifics should come quite naturally. But there seems to be a reluctance to engage in such discussion on this mailing list. This point is one I wholly subscribe to though. Yours in amity, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Michael Snow wrote: Requirements like that (the US used to require a copyright notice) have been stripped away as an unreasonable burden on authors. I don't think that that was the reason. The publishers would be the ones to make sure that the notice was there anyway. Like abandoning the requirement that registration was a precondition to copyright protection, it was a consequence to acceding to international treaties which demanded that copyright vest automatically in the author. The author could not lose his rights out of ignorance. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Ray Saintonge wrote: Michael Snow wrote: Requirements like that (the US used to require a copyright notice) have been stripped away as an unreasonable burden on authors. I don't think that that was the reason. The publishers would be the ones to make sure that the notice was there anyway. Like abandoning the requirement that registration was a precondition to copyright protection, it was a consequence to acceding to international treaties which demanded that copyright vest automatically in the author. The author could not lose his rights out of ignorance. I'm aware of the background behind the change. I don't find any of it inconsistent with saying the requirement was deemed an unreasonable burden on authors, those are simply some of the arguments why it was unreasonable. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Delirium wrote: Anthony wrote: My point of view is that the proposed license update is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. If Mike is going to deny that moral rights exist in the first place, then I feel the need to explain that they do. The problem is that moral rights in your sense---i.e. not the legal construct moral rights that exists in some countries' laws, but a more general concept of morality as it relates to authorship---boils down to settling philosophical debates on what constitutes a right, what morality is, and so on. You have some opinions on these matters, while others have other opinions, and I certainly don't expect this mailing list to be the place where centuries-long debates over what (if anything) constitutes a moral right are resolved. So I'm not too sure what the point of the discussion is. The only reason that moral rights is an issue is its inclusion in the statutes of various countries. It mostly stems from an inflated Napoleonic view of the Rights of Man that was meant to replace the divine rights of kings. Common law countries have been loath to embark in this direction. Moral rights are mentioned in the US law, but only as a toothless tiger. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
First, right up top (not top posting; but noting something intentionally at the top of this posting), let me acknowledge that responding to one of ones own postings is considered bad form. But in my defense I will note that I am genuinely not doing so in order to prolong a thread well past its sale by date, but to correct an inadvertent error I had made, which can be of some significance, after I was informed of it. Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/1/23 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Article length was 82028 bytes, and length of contributors' names is 650 bytes (or 0.8% of the article's length). If that would be printed in an encyclopedic format, the article would take some more than ten pages, and the list of authors would take 10 rows, if printed in a slightly smaller font. To me, this looks reasonable. It's a lot less unreasonable than many suggestions! :-) I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what the cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions result would be like? This might be a useful bit of data... I think it is useful to note that even in countries where moral rights are inalienable, there is a requirement of originality and creative effort. Just recently there was a question put to the Finnish Mr. Intellectual Property law (Jukka Kemppinen, who quite by the by, was one of the speakers at the seminar to mark 100 000 articles in the Finnish language wikipedia) on whether a text message could be considered to be sufficiently original to constitute a work as defined in the authors rights legislation. The situation was related to a tabloid publishing obscene text messages a government minister had sent to an exotic dancer. According to Jukka Kemppinen, a simple two line obscene rhyming text message Älä luota muihin, ota multa suihin. - giving a completely hypothetical example - would be quite sufficient to be a work. (and no, I won't translate the message). But I am sure there are no applicable moral rights to let's say correcting missing space around punctuation. I have made some studies, and it appears this last sentence is in fact complete bollocks. (xcuse my french) There is a frequently expressed view that the moral rights provision of paternity rights are there to protect the authors right to be identified as the originator of the work, but it is in fact (according to a finding by Finnish copyrights protection arbitration committee - which of course has no actual legal standing as a binding precedent on later court cases) somewhat more involved. TN 1991:7 states that the paternity right extends to the level of making it obligatory to not only mention if the original authors work has been tampered in some way (adapted, translated, modified, whatever; choose your own term) but to identify specifically by whom, if known. This is a very strong finding, though as far as I know untested in an actual court of law here. I am sure most cases of shuffling punctuation around and such is not something that can be considered creative acts, but certainly they would qualify as modifications. And I was recently reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (published as The Snake in The Republican) had a change of a single punctuation mark, which in her own view changed the meaning of it completely on its head; so even a mechanical application of considering punctuation changes as minor, is not universally defensible. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: But I am sure there are no applicable moral rights to let's say correcting missing space around punctuation. I have made some studies, and it appears this last sentence is in fact complete bollocks. (xcuse my french) There is a frequently expressed view that the moral rights provision of paternity rights are there to protect the authors right to be identified as the originator of the work, but it is in fact (according to a finding by Finnish copyrights protection arbitration committee - which of course has no actual legal standing as a binding precedent on later court cases) somewhat more involved. TN 1991:7 states that the paternity right extends to the level of making it obligatory to not only mention if the original authors work has been tampered in some way (adapted, translated, modified, whatever; choose your own term) but to identify specifically by whom, if known. This is a very strong finding, though as far as I know untested in an actual court of law here. I am sure most cases of shuffling punctuation around and such is not something that can be considered creative acts, but certainly they would qualify as modifications. And I was recently reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (published as The Snake in The Republican) had a change of a single punctuation mark, which in her own view changed the meaning of it completely on its head; so even a mechanical application of considering punctuation changes as minor, is not universally defensible. I hope you don't mind my abbreviation of your original context. Anyone who didn't read the original post can scroll back a few messages to see it. Anyway, it seems to me that the purported moral right you're speaking of would be a right of the original author, and not a right of the person making the modification. Am I correct in this assumption? If so, I think it has significance in the how that right should be protected, if indeed one is to accept that it is a right. In that sense, I'm not sure how modified by a bunch of idiots on Wikipedia is any worse than modified by [insert a bunch of psudonyms here]. On the other hand, the GFDL (via the section entitled History) certainly protects this purported right much stronger than CC-BY-SA under any interpretation. CC-BY-SA mostly attempts to punt on these issues, leaving it to the laws of the individual states (and in some cases to the terms of service of the individual ISPs where the content is first contributed). Personally I think there ought to be a philosophical discussion of whether or not this is a right the WMF wishes to recognize, and if so, to what extent. Only by answering that question can this issue be rationally resolved, and once that question is answered the specifics should come quite naturally. But there seems to be a reluctance to engage in such discussion on this mailing list. So, might as well just flip a coin. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Mike Linksvayer wrote: As others have pointed out on this or nearby threads, attribution is highly medium specific. [snip] However, if what you say happens to in fact be correct (never mind if it has been previously covered in these threads or not), that would be quite significant, in particular in those jurisdictions where moral rights are defined in law. I don't think there's much dispute that attribution is highly medium specific. A URL printed in a textbook is clearly much different from a URL encoded into a web page. The only question is whether the specifics should focus on the rights of the author, or on maximizing ease of redistribution. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony wrote: On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Mike Linksvayer wrote: As others have pointed out on this or nearby threads, attribution is highly medium specific. [snip] However, if what you say happens to in fact be correct (never mind if it has been previously covered in these threads or not), that would be quite significant, in particular in those jurisdictions where moral rights are defined in law. I don't think there's much dispute that attribution is highly medium specific. I don't think anybody can dispute you just quoted me highly out of context. A URL printed in a textbook is clearly much different from a URL encoded into a web page. The only question is whether the specifics should focus on the rights of the author, or on maximizing ease of redistribution. No, that is precisely a false dilemma. there are a whole range of issues to consider, and those aren't even the necessarily most cogent ones. In some circumstances maximizing ease of redistribution and the rights of the author go hand in hand. And in some corner cases, idiots (and I am not meaning you but specifically some of your less clueful opponents) will argue that sacrificing the authors pride of doing good in a copyleft context is a necessary price to pay to make it easier to redistribute. This is false, and I am willing to argue against this statement when posited at any forum in any fashion, if I am given my right to express my arguments. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Anthony wrote: On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Mike Linksvayer wrote: As others have pointed out on this or nearby threads, attribution is highly medium specific. [snip] However, if what you say happens to in fact be correct (never mind if it has been previously covered in these threads or not), that would be quite significant, in particular in those jurisdictions where moral rights are defined in law. I don't think there's much dispute that attribution is highly medium specific. I don't think anybody can dispute you just quoted me highly out of context. If so, I must not have understood your original comment, and I apologize. A URL printed in a textbook is clearly much different from a URL encoded into a web page. The only question is whether the specifics should focus on the rights of the author, or on maximizing ease of redistribution. No, that is precisely a false dilemma. there are a whole range of issues to consider, and those aren't even the necessarily most cogent ones. In some circumstances maximizing ease of redistribution and the rights of the author go hand in hand. And in some corner cases, idiots (and I am not meaning you but specifically some of your less clueful opponents) will argue that sacrificing the authors pride of doing good in a copyleft context is a necessary price to pay to make it easier to redistribute. This is false, and I am willing to argue against this statement when posited at any forum in any fashion, if I am given my right to express my arguments. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
David Gerard wrote: 2009/1/24 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. If you take out the subthreads of Anthony trolling and being fed with responses, you'll see there's much less to this thread than it seems at first glance. - d. I think you are precisely inaccurate on this point. Quite the contrary. I seriously feel that the part where Anthony is taking on all comers, is masking the fact that there is a serious shift underway in the way WMF is operating. WMF used to really be a (choose a heavy-weight designation) pound gorilla in the GFDL users pool. When we transition to the Creative Commons universe, we will never again regain that status, and a combative stance will do us no favors. So at the very minimum, it would well serve us to know what the established standards are within CC-BY-SA, in particular focusing on the BY part. Yours faithfully, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:56 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: WMF used to really be a (choose a heavy-weight designation) pound gorilla in the GFDL users pool. When we transition to the Creative Commons universe, we will never again regain that status, and a combative stance will do us no favors. I think gaging the relative status of Wikimedia projects in the GFDL and CC-BY-SA universes by the size alone is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Wikipedia might be the only GFDL project most people could name, but in that universe the needs of GNU software manuals carry a lot of weight. The CC-BY-SA universe is much bigger and more diverse, but Wikimedia projects would be the single most influential player (in many senses already have been for years), in what I'm certain will be a very symbiotic relationship, including the parts where some members of the community take combative stances. So at the very minimum, it would well serve us to know what the established standards are within CC-BY-SA, in particular focusing on the BY part. As others have pointed out on this or nearby threads, attribution is highly medium specific. Personally, I think the guidelines Erik has mooted are very much in line with what CC-BY-SA enables and the wiki medium, but there's no better group than this (meaning Wikimedia projects collectively, if not just foundation-l) to improve on these if needed. And back to the weight of Wikimedia projects within and symbiotic relationship with the CC-BY-SA universe, if there's anything that can be done to clarify or otherwise improve license support for attribution in massively collaborative projects, I fully expect input from Wikimedia communities/projects/staff to be the most important input into shaping such improvements in any eventual versioning of CC-BY-SA. Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Mike Linksvayer wrote: On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:56 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: So at the very minimum, it would well serve us to know what the established standards are within CC-BY-SA, in particular focusing on the BY part. As others have pointed out on this or nearby threads, attribution is highly medium specific. That has been expressed as a preference for pragmatic reasons. I don't think anyone has in fact been talking about what the current practices are in this respect in differing media in the Creative Commons world as things stand, before WMF transitioning there. There may have been very thin mentions of other parts of WMF than wikipedia which have been Creative Commons from the git-go. However, if what you say happens to in fact be correct (never mind if it has been previously covered in these threads or not), that would be quite significant, in particular in those jurisdictions where moral rights are defined in law. At least one legal out for the absolute paternity right to a work here in Finland, is the part that the form of attribution should accord with common methods of the field, and good manners. There is case-law on this. (KKO 1992:63 (Kalevala Koru)) was a decision that a jeweler did not have to include the name of the designer with the packaging of each individual piece of jewelery sold, as long as the designer was credited in a more general fashion, with the sales material etc. sent to the stores in relation to the works. In that decision it was considered that the standard of that particular field was that the name of the artist who designed the jewelery was affixed to each piece of jewelery if the artist happened to have sufficient name recognition, but not otherwise. Personally, I think the guidelines Erik has mooted are very much in line with what CC-BY-SA enables and the wiki medium, but there's no better group than this (meaning Wikimedia projects collectively, if not just foundation-l) to improve on these if needed. Equally personally, I think Erik's first suggestions were borderline legally defensible, in the sense that an argument could be framed around it, though not necessarily one that is a slam-dunk to prevail on, nor remotely a strongly persuasive one. That said, my personal view on what is the right thing to do about attribution is far more nuanced than a merely legalistic one. But I won't revisit or develop it publicly at this point. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 7:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely and unquestionably legally necessary is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone. David, I think there are many people (myself included) who think that goes too far. Personally, I care whether or not reusers attempt to follow the spirit of the copyleft and make their changes and contributions available for future reuse. If we wanted to be truly free, we would all license our work into the public domain, but instead we work under a copyleft and I consider honoring that distinction to be important. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 7:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: My view is that any restriction of distribution that is not absolutely and unquestionably legally necessary is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. We contributed to a free encyclopedia, in the sense that the material could be used freely--and widely. We all explicitly agreed there could be commercial use, and most of us did not particularly concern ourselves with how other commercial or noncommercial sites would use or license the material, as long as what we put on Wikipedia could be used by anyone. Well said - I couldn't agree more. Personally, I care whether or not reusers attempt to follow the spirit of the copyleft and make their changes and contributions available for future reuse. You're mixing issues - nobody has a problem with 'follow[ing] the spirit of the copyleft', it's making them jump through arbitrary hoops to do so that is the problem. If we wanted to be truly free, we would all license our work into the public domain, but instead we work under a copyleft and I consider honoring that distinction to be important. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. There are plenty of good reasons not to use public domain and I for one certainly value the 'protection' of CC-BY-SA without the 'exclusion' of detailed (yet meaningless) attributions. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/24 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. If you take out the subthreads of Anthony trolling and being fed with responses, you'll see there's much less to this thread than it seems at first glance. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:08 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. Who is stressed out about getting things exactly legally right? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Also, I doubt that anything remains of those articles to dive credit for. 2009/1/24 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/1/24 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. True, but since it is unlikely anyone can prove that they wrote those early articles, they can't take any legal action because of it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Jon Harald Søby http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/24 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: 2009/1/24 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. If you take out the subthreads of Anthony trolling and being fed with responses, you'll see there's much less to this thread than it seems at first glance. The same applies to most foundation-l threads, doesn't it? (Although it isn't always Anthony - plenty of people take their turns.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:08 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. Who is stressed out about getting things exactly legally right? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l This list, in the same way it overreacts to pretty much everything. The sky is blue! No it's not! I can see it outside We need a poll. Polls are evil. Maybe an unofficial straw poll then? [random CIA conspiracies about polls] Etc. I've found this format applies to pretty much all discussions on this list. It's about as predictable as a Lifetime movie. -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:08 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. Who is stressed out about getting things exactly legally right? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l This list, in the same way it overreacts to pretty much everything. The sky is blue! No it's not! I can see it outside We need a poll. Polls are evil. Maybe an unofficial straw poll then? [random CIA conspiracies about polls] Etc. I've found this format applies to pretty much all discussions on this list. It's about as predictable as a Lifetime movie. Mike took us off on a tangent when he insisted that the concept of moral rights was a purely legal construction, but up until then I thought things were going well. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/24 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: Mike took us off on a tangent when he insisted that the concept of moral rights was a purely legal construction, but up until then I thought things were going well. Or you went off on a tangent when you started talking about moral rights in a more general sense that was strictly relevant to the discussion. Either way, a tangent was certainly gone off on. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/1/24 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: Mike took us off on a tangent when he insisted that the concept of moral rights was a purely legal construction, but up until then I thought things were going well. Or you went off on a tangent when you started talking about moral rights in a more general sense that was strictly relevant to the discussion. Either way, a tangent was certainly gone off on. My point of view is that the proposed license update is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. If Mike is going to deny that moral rights exist in the first place, then I feel the need to explain that they do. I guess I could just ignore this point, as rather self-evidently false, but I was also interested in why he felt that way. Anyway, I don't know where this leaves us. At least one moderator has suggested that this needs to stop, so it's unclear whether it's possible to discuss this issue at all. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony wrote: My point of view is that the proposed license update is a violation of the moral rights of the contributors. If Mike is going to deny that moral rights exist in the first place, then I feel the need to explain that they do. The problem is that moral rights in your sense---i.e. not the legal construct moral rights that exists in some countries' laws, but a more general concept of morality as it relates to authorship---boils down to settling philosophical debates on what constitutes a right, what morality is, and so on. You have some opinions on these matters, while others have other opinions, and I certainly don't expect this mailing list to be the place where centuries-long debates over what (if anything) constitutes a moral right are resolved. So I'm not too sure what the point of the discussion is. For what it's worth, Mike's position, that there are no pre-existing moral rights outside those granted by laws and society, is also a legitimate one, and probably the dominant view in modern philosophy of ethics (natural-law theorists aren't too common these days, outside of politics anyway). For our purposes it boils down to: 1) What, legally, can we do as far as licensing goes? 2) Of the range of options we can legally take, which should we prefer? You can answer #2 based on a whole range of things, depending on your personal viewpoints on ethics, personal priorities as they relate to the project, preference for being credited versus not, interest in different kinds of reuse, etc., but for our purposes these essentially boil down to various people having different opinions. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
I can prove what I wrote :) On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/1/24 The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com: I'm not sure why we're so stressed out about getting things exactly legally right, since once edit histories for anything created before 2002 / late 2001 were wiped out, any of those articles don't have an accurate author list. True, but since it is unlikely anyone can prove that they wrote those early articles, they can't take any legal action because of it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thursday 22 January 2009 01:11:15 Erik Moeller wrote: Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire history would have to be included with every copy of the article. I have attempted to do something similar, by using the WikiBlame tool ( http://hewgill.com/~greg/wikiblame/ ) on the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens , that is also fairly large and fairly edited article. The article as of today has 6438 revisions with 2296 distinct contributors (anonymous included) of which 945 are registered Wikipedia users (for comparison, the article [[France]] has 1345 distinct contributors which are registered Wikipedia users). However, according to http://hewgill.com/~greg/wikiblame/Athens.html and to the extent its results are correct, as of sometime in 2008, the article had 480 distinct edits made by 188 distinct contributors (anonymous included) of which 103 are registered Wikipedia users. If all edits shorter than 10 characters are excluded, then the article has 273 distinct edits, 121 distinct contributors (anonymous included) of which 63 are registered Wikipedia users. They are given below: Adam Carr, Aexon79, Alekow, Alx bio, Argos'Dad, Aris Katsaris, AtanasioV, Athinaios, Avg, Bart133, Caponer, Cplakidas, D6, Dakart, Dialectric, Ductus, Edwy, El Greco, Eric82oslo, Eugenio Archontopoulos, Evzone, Grammar7878, Greenshed, Hectorian, Henry Carrington, IRelayer, Jiang, Jmco, Keizuko, Kompikos, Korenyuk, LMB, Makalp, Makedonas, MalafayaBot, Male1979, Markussep, Metallaxis, Michalis Famelis, MJCdetroit, Nasos12, Nikolas Karalis, Nlu, Odysses, Pabouk, Pangrati7878, PHG, Politis, Porfyrios, Pyrate1700, Radiojon, Recury, Rich Farmbrough, RTucker, Sabinpopa, Schizophonix, Sdornan, Sthenel, Tasoskessaris, Theiasofia, WHeimbigner, Zyxw Article length was 82028 bytes, and length of contributors' names is 650 bytes (or 0.8% of the article's length). If that would be printed in an encyclopedic format, the article would take some more than ten pages, and the list of authors would take 10 rows, if printed in a slightly smaller font. To me, this looks reasonable. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/22 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: A vast number of pseudonyms below have no meaning except for their context in Wikipedia. Apropos of which, a thought. We have spilled a good bit of ink over whether or not it is appropriate for the reuser to attribute Wikipedia users either alone or in addition to the usernames - should the project have a right to attribution, etc etc etc. In practice, wouldn't it be almost essential to name the site where the work was done *as well* as the usernames? Many of the pseudonyms, in effect, depend on that context... (Apologies if this was raised before - I don't remember seeing it) An article which has had many developments and been passed on might then wind up with an amalgamated attribution line like: by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (1962), Wikipedia contributors NukeUser, John Smith, Jane Doe and Mike Placeholder (2004-2007), Citizendium contributors Alan White, John Smith and Betty Green (2007-2009), and anonymous contributors. It's not exactly smooth, but it is comprehensible, and it does seem helpful to name the project to give some context to the names. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/23 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Article length was 82028 bytes, and length of contributors' names is 650 bytes (or 0.8% of the article's length). If that would be printed in an encyclopedic format, the article would take some more than ten pages, and the list of authors would take 10 rows, if printed in a slightly smaller font. To me, this looks reasonable. It's a lot less unreasonable than many suggestions! :-) I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what the cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions result would be like? This might be a useful bit of data... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: 2009/1/23 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Article length was 82028 bytes, and length of contributors' names is 650 bytes (or 0.8% of the article's length). If that would be printed in an encyclopedic format, the article would take some more than ten pages, and the list of authors would take 10 rows, if printed in a slightly smaller font. To me, this looks reasonable. It's a lot less unreasonable than many suggestions! :-) I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what the cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions result would be like? This might be a useful bit of data... If you define nontrivial for me, that should not be too hard... -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/23 Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com: I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what the cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions result would be like? This might be a useful bit of data... If you define nontrivial for me, that should not be too hard... Nikola's cutoff above was If all edits shorter than 10 characters are excluded... - this sounds not unreasonable, since adding three words or more will take you over it. I'm not sure quite how the results were obtained via WikiBlame, but it certainly seems a little more meaningful than just dumping every name which appears in the article history. (Admittedly, that has the advantage of not accidentally excluding anyone...) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/1/23 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Article length was 82028 bytes, and length of contributors' names is 650 bytes (or 0.8% of the article's length). If that would be printed in an encyclopedic format, the article would take some more than ten pages, and the list of authors would take 10 rows, if printed in a slightly smaller font. To me, this looks reasonable. It's a lot less unreasonable than many suggestions! :-) I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what the cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions result would be like? This might be a useful bit of data... I think it is useful to note that even in countries where moral rights are inalienable, there is a requirement of originality and creative effort. Just recently there was a question put to the Finnish Mr. Intellectual Property law (Jukka Kemppinen, who quite by the by, was one of the speakers at the seminar to mark 100 000 articles in the Finnish language wikipedia) on whether a text message could be considered to be sufficiently original to constitute a work as defined in the authors rights legislation. The situation was related to a tabloid publishing obscene text messages a government minister had sent to an exotic dancer. According to Jukka Kemppinen, a simple two line obscene rhyming text message Älä luota muihin, ota multa suihin. - giving a completely hypothetical example - would be quite sufficient to be a work. (and no, I won't translate the message). But I am sure there are no applicable moral rights to let's say correcting missing space around punctuation. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 7:13 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/1/23 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk: 2009/1/23 Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com: I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what the cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions result would be like? This might be a useful bit of data... If you define nontrivial for me, that should not be too hard... Nikola's cutoff above was If all edits shorter than 10 characters are excluded... - this sounds not unreasonable, since adding three words or more will take you over it. In the vast majority of cases, that will work fine. There will be the odd edit where less than 10 characters is significant (especially is the user has made lots of short edits), but probably not many. It may be reasonable to neglect those few corner cases. Especially if you include a URL to the full detail *as well*. Of course, the tool should be updated as the technology improves. 10 characters or the details of the tool shouldn't be spelled out somewhere irrevocably. And there should probably be some mechanism to manually override it in corner cases. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: I think it is useful to note that even in countries where moral rights are inalienable, there is a requirement of originality and creative effort. snip It is not strictly true that all countries require creativity, some jurisdictions (notably the UK) tend to use copyright to protect the expenditure of effort involved regardless of whether the work is creative. In other words, the rights follow from the fact that someone expended time and effort in creating the publication, and do not necessarily require that the publication contains an original creative expression. This is known as the sweat of the brow doctrine [1] and has been explicitly rejected in US case law. That said, I'm not sure how much effort one would have to expend in making cleanup and formatting edits to a wiki article before it could be considered enough to count. However, I do think we should give some consideration to the wikignomes that beautify and cleanup articles, even if they aren't writing lots of text. Their work, though sometimes formulaic, does improve the overall quality and consistency of the resulting product. -Robert Rohde [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: I think it is useful to note that even in countries where moral rights are inalienable, there is a requirement of originality and creative effort. snip It is not strictly true that all countries require creativity, some jurisdictions (notably the UK) tend to use copyright to protect the expenditure of effort involved regardless of whether the work is creative. In other words, the rights follow from the fact that someone expended time and effort in creating the publication, and do not necessarily require that the publication contains an original creative expression. Isn't this just an economic right which can be waived or traded in a broad range of circumstances, though? The individual workers who collected names for the phone book or fixed the typos therein don't get their names listed as authors, do they? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Mike Godwin mgod...@wikimedia.org wrote: That said, the GFDL requires authors to be listed in the section entitled History, and it clearly states that a section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document... So is current Wikipedia practice consistent with the GFDL or not? I believe that Wikipedia practice is not consistent with the GFDL. That's why I notified you that the WMF's right to use my content under the GFDL has been permanently revoked. Considering that Wikipedia practice has not changed since you made those edits, why did you make them in the first place, only to revoke them later? Do you have *any* purpose in participating in this project, and this mailing list discussion, at all, besides trolling? Did you make your edits in bad faith solely to give yourself an alleged cause of action? If you'd like to sue the Wikimedia Foundation, why didn't you: 1) do so years ago, when the alleged wrong transpired; and 2) stop harrassing the mailing list of a project whose aims you clearly oppose and have no interest in participating in. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Andrew Gray wrote: 2009/1/22 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: A vast number of pseudonyms below have no meaning except for their context in Wikipedia. Apropos of which, a thought. We have spilled a good bit of ink over whether or not it is appropriate for the reuser to attribute Wikipedia users either alone or in addition to the usernames - should the project have a right to attribution, etc etc etc. In practice, wouldn't it be almost essential to name the site where the work was done *as well* as the usernames? Many of the pseudonyms, in effect, depend on that context... (Apologies if this was raised before - I don't remember seeing it) An article which has had many developments and been passed on might then wind up with an amalgamated attribution line like: by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (1962), Wikipedia contributors NukeUser, John Smith, Jane Doe and Mike Placeholder (2004-2007), Citizendium contributors Alan White, John Smith and Betty Green (2007-2009), and anonymous contributors. It's not exactly smooth, but it is comprehensible, and it does seem helpful to name the project to give some context to the names. Just saying Wikipedia users wouldn't be a good idea, but I like this way of mentioning it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:46 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: On Wednesday 21 January 2009 19:32:15 Erik Moeller wrote: 2009/1/20 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Don't know about this wording thing, but as a Wikipedia author, I have to say that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As a Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same. That's probably true, Nikola. The proposed attribution language is intended to balance the various positions (ranging from 'an URL should always be fine' to 'names should always be given'), the established I'm not sure that these positions should be balanced. I'd say the key to this whole relicensing debate is that the positions shouldn't be balanced. It is my firm conviction that you ought not violate some individuals' rights for the good of some other (larger) group of individuals. Thus, the arguments about how difficult and onerous it is to give credit fall on deaf ears. It doesn't matter how difficult it is to credit people. People have a right to be credited, and printing a URL in a book or on a T-shirt or at the end of a movie doesn't cut it. This is especially true because *it's the Wikimedia Foundation's fault* that it's so difficult to track authors in the first place. I personally was arguing for more care to be taken in this space and/or an *opt-in* move to a dual licensing scheme (and adoption of the real name field) *over 4 years ago* (yes Mike, I double-checked this one). The fact that these concerns were ignored for so long *is not the fault of the authors*. Our rights should not be violated or balanced away. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I'd say the key to this whole relicensing debate is that the positions shouldn't be balanced. It is my firm conviction that you ought not violate some individuals' rights for the good of some other (larger) group of individuals. Thus, the arguments about how difficult and onerous it is to give credit fall on deaf ears. It doesn't matter how difficult it is to credit people. People have a right to be credited, and printing a URL in a book or on a T-shirt or at the end of a movie doesn't cut it. This is especially true because *it's the Wikimedia Foundation's fault* that it's so difficult to track authors in the first place. I personally was arguing for more care to be taken in this space and/or an *opt-in* move to a dual licensing scheme (and adoption of the real name field) *over 4 years ago* (yes Mike, I double-checked this one). The fact that these concerns were ignored for so long *is not the fault of the authors*. Our rights should not be violated or balanced away. Questions: 1) Why doesn't a URL to a comprehensive history list cut it? If anything, I would prefer the URL be used instead of a simple list of pseudonyms because the URL will contain the revision history and will display not only who has edited the page, but also the magnitude of those contributions. Also, the URL doesn't cut out only 5 of the authors from the list when a reuser adds a title page (thus removing all credit from the vast majority of contributors). 2) Printing a small list of pseudonyms of the back of a T-shirt is no more helpful then the illegible legal disclaimers on TV commercials. Sure they satisfy the letter of the law but certainly violate it's spirit. A small comma-separated list tacked on to the end of a printed version, or scribbled on the bottom of a coffee cup may satisfy the letter of the attribution clause, but certainly does not satisfy it's spirit. Is it really better to have a list of authors that may be illegible, not-searchable and not-sortable? Wouldn't attribution be better handled by a well-designed web interface? Is it better for reusers to determine what is the best way to give credit, when we can give credit in a very positive and well thought-out way and let reusers simply tap into that? --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Mike Godwin mgod...@wikimedia.org wrote: I think you and I both know that your whole business of saying there are over 100 versions of CC-BY-SA was an attempt to try to create ambiguity and anxiety when there isn't really any. No, I could have accomplished quite the same point by saying that there are over 50 versions, which is clearly true (I'm actually still not convinced that over 100 isn't correct - I counted 92 just between 2.5 and 3.0, but I may have double-counted, there doesn't seem to be a clear list of them all). My point still stands. There are many versions of CC-BY-SA 3.0. The proposal should be specific as to which one(s) it is talking about. Adding the words any version of or all versions of or the Unported version of or the US version of would make this clear. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony writes: The credit should be part of the work itself, not external to the work. This is a very odd notion, and I find nothing in the language of any free license that supports it. Freely licensed photos, for example, don't have to have the attribution as part of the photo. Freely licensed texts don't require that attribution occur *within* the text proper -- it can occur at the beginning or the end. (You can imagine how much more difficult a software manual would be to use if attribution had to occur right next to the incorporated text.) The whole notion that attribution is required part of the [substantive] work itself rather than adjacent to it, or easily reachable from it, is your invention, and, in my view, not a requirement of the language of free licenses. We honor free licenses by making it possible to determine the provenance of a work, not by making attribution part of the work itself. Nor has the notion of attribution ever been meant to be understood rigidly. As Richard Stallman says in his letter regarding the point-release change to GFDL: We have never asserted that we will not change our licenses, or that we will never make changes like this one. Rather, our commitment is that our changes to a license will stick to the spirit of that license, and will uphold the purposes for which we wrote it. Stallman also says this: We did this to allow those sites [such as Wikipedia] to make their licenses compatible with other large collections of copylefted material that they want to cooperate with. The ultimate question has to be whether we truly believe Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects really do aim to make it easier to spread free knowledge throughout the world -- there is a general acknowledgement that the particulars of the GFDL may make it hard for the projects to do this, and that is why FSF decided to allow the opportunity for dual-licensing of Wikipedia content under GFDL 1.3 and a particular subset of CC-BY-SA -- both requires attribution but acknowledge that massive collaborative projects raise special problems in balancing the need for attribution against the need to share free knowledge. If the former is ultimately seen as more important than the latter -- which is apparently your view, Anthony -- then we're scarcely better off under a free license than we were under the all rights reserved regime of traditional copyright. I think Stallman's approach of sticking to the spirit of free licenses is the right attitude to have. Otherwise we stick to the letter of your requirement, Anthony, and lose the spirit altogether. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: As Thomas said, it requires Internet access, which might not be available. I think it's a bit more than that, though. The credit should be part of the work itself, not external to the work. When you're talking about a website, it's hard to define where the work begins and where it ends, clearly a work can span multiple URLs, and it's essentially meaningless whether or not those URLs have different domain names (at least assuming they are both kept nearly 100% reliable). None of these three things are true with books, T-shirts, or movies (for a movie a URL would be especially obnoxious). As a contributor to these 'ere projects myself, I personally would prefer the less reliable but more informative URL for attribution myself. That's a personal preference only, and I don't see any need to push that on others. Frankly, I don't understand the point of printing a Wikipedia article on a T-shirt in the first place. This is a stupid example I include only for the sake of completeness, because others keep bringing it up. Sure they satisfy the letter of the law but certainly violate it's spirit. A small comma-separated list tacked on to the end of a printed version, or scribbled on the bottom of a coffee cup may satisfy the letter of the attribution clause, but certainly does not satisfy it's spirit. How many authors is a coffee cup going to have? Again, I don't understand why coffee cups are even a consideration. Think about any merchandising opportunity where text from an article is used: T-Shirts, mouse pads, coffee cups, posters, etc. We can't have a policy vis-a-vis attribution that only covers cases where its convenient to follow. If we're going to demand that attribution be treated like an anchor around the necks of our reusers, we need to make that demand uniform. Either that, or we need to recognize that the benefit to easy reuse of our content far outweighs the need to repeat gigantic author lists. Our authors contributed to our projects with the expectation that their content would be freely reusable. Requiring even 2 pages of attributions be included after every article inclusion is a non-free tax on content reuse, and a violation of our author's expectations. Demanding that authors be rigorously attributed despite having no expectations for it, while at the same time violating their expectations of free reuse doesn't quite seem to me to be a good course of action. I think reusers should determine what the best way is to give credit. However, if they can't meet a minimal standard, then they ought to not use the work at all. Letting reusers determine what is the best way is surely a pitfall. You're assuming that miraculously corporate interests are going to be preoccupied with providing proper attribution. If the requirements are too steep, people will either misapply them, abuse them, or ignore them completely. People who want to reuse our content will find themselves unable, and authors who could have gotten some attribution (even if not ideal) will end up with none. Requiring more attribution for our authors will have the effect of having less provided. Do you think this is really going to provide a benefit to our contributors? --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/22 Andrew Whitworth wknight8...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: As Thomas said, it requires Internet access, which might not be available. I think it's a bit more than that, though. The credit should be part of the work itself, not external to the work. When you're talking about a website, it's hard to define where the work begins and where it ends, clearly a work can span multiple URLs, and it's essentially meaningless whether or not those URLs have different domain names (at least assuming they are both kept nearly 100% reliable). None of these three things are true with books, T-shirts, or movies (for a movie a URL would be especially obnoxious). As a contributor to these 'ere projects myself, I personally would prefer the less reliable but more informative URL for attribution myself. That's a personal preference only, and I don't see any need to push that on others. Use my stuff, that's why I write it! I dual-licensed all my article space text and pictures as CC-by-sa any a while ago anyway. More people should do this IMO. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Mike Godwin mgod...@wikimedia.org wrote: Anthony writes: The credit should be part of the work itself, not external to the work. This is a very odd notion, and I find nothing in the language of any free license that supports it. Well, first off, I wasn't referring to free licenses, I was referring to rights. That said, the GFDL requires authors to be listed in the section entitled History, and it clearly states that a section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document... ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu wrote: We can develop tools that would identify principal authors with sufficient accuracy; and this list of authors is likely to be short enough to be practically included in full. I disagree with this assertion regarding automation and can think of many situations both in which this does not hold true, giving false negatives (e.g. single/initial uploads of large contributions, uploads using multiple aliases, imports, IP numbers and not-logged-in contributions, etc.) and false positives (e.g. minor edits not marked as such, spam/vandalism, comprehensive rewrites, deletions, abuse/'attribution whoring', etc.). The only 'tool' I can see being effective for identifying principal authors is discussion, which will invariably lead to conflict, create unnecessary risk for reusers and waste our most precious resource (volunteer time) en masse. Oh, and I would place anyone who considers their own interests taking precedence over those of the community (both within Wikipedia and the greater public) into the category of 'tool' too :) Please consider this, especially in light of recent research that shows that most Wikipedia contributors contribute from egoistic reasons ;) Wikipedia is a community and those who contribute to it for egotistic rather than altruistic reasons (even if the two are often closely related) are deluding themselves given they were never promised anything, least of all grandeur. What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? If it is relevant to their field(s) of endeavour then they can draw attention to their contribution themselves (as I do) and if they don't like it then they ought to be off writing books or knols or contributing to something other than a community wiki. I might add that the argument that you ought not violate some individuals' rights for the good of some other (larger) group of individuals is weak in this context, and that exactly the same can be (and has been) said in reverse: Requiring even 2 pages of attributions be included after every article inclusion is a non-free tax on content reuse, and a violation of our author's expectations. Sam ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: As Thomas said, it requires Internet access, which might not be available. I think it's a bit more than that, though. The credit should be part of the work itself, not external to the work. When you're talking about a website, it's hard to define where the work begins and where it ends, clearly a work can span multiple URLs, and it's essentially meaningless whether or not those URLs have different domain names (at least assuming they are both kept nearly 100% reliable). None of these three things are true with books, T-shirts, or movies (for a movie a URL would be especially obnoxious). As a contributor to these 'ere projects myself, I personally would prefer the less reliable but more informative URL for attribution myself. That's a personal preference only, and I don't see any need to push that on others. I understand that viewpoint and think it is reasonable. How about adding a checkbox to preferences, that says allow attribution by URL? Our authors contributed to our projects with the expectation that their content would be freely reusable. Requiring even 2 pages of attributions be included after every article inclusion is a non-free tax on content reuse, and a violation of our author's expectations. Demanding that authors be rigorously attributed despite having no expectations for it, while at the same time violating their expectations of free reuse doesn't quite seem to me to be a good course of action. I think it's clear that at least some people expected to be attributed directly in any print edition encyclopedias made from Wikipedia. Do you deny that, or do you just think it doesn't matter? I think reusers should determine what the best way is to give credit. However, if they can't meet a minimal standard, then they ought to not use the work at all. Letting reusers determine what is the best way is surely a pitfall. You're assuming that miraculously corporate interests are going to be preoccupied with providing proper attribution. I qualified my statement with the fact that they do need to at least meet a minimal standard. That said, I believe that corporate interests *are* best served by providing proper attribution. There may be some short-term gains to be had by violating people's rights, but in the end doing so will kill the goose that lays the golden egg, so to speak. (They'll also be unable to distribute their content legally in most any jurisdiction in the world other than the United States.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Sam Johnston s...@samj.net wrote: Please consider this, especially in light of recent research that shows that most Wikipedia contributors contribute from egoistic reasons ;) Wikipedia is a community and those who contribute to it for egotistic rather than altruistic reasons (even if the two are often closely related) are deluding themselves given they were never promised anything, least of all grandeur. What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? If it is relevant to their field(s) of endeavour then they can draw attention to their contribution themselves (as I do) and if they don't like it then they ought to be off writing books or knols or contributing to something other than a community wiki. I have Author at English Wikibooks listed very prominently on my Resume, and often reference it in cover letters I send out. This is especially true for job listings that require good communication skills. My work on Wikibooks, even if it showed nothing more then my proficiency in the English language, helped me get my current job. Part of my current responsibilities involve writing documentation, for which I was considered to be very qualified because of my work on Wikibooks. So I would say that yes, our editors can derive very real benefits from their work on Wiki. I will temper that by saying that it's up to the authors to derive that benefit themselves. We don't send out royalty checks so if authors want to be benefitted by their work here, they need to make it happen and not rely on other people properly applying attribution for them. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Sam Johnston s...@samj.net wrote: I might add that the argument that you ought not violate some individuals' rights for the good of some other (larger) group of individuals is weak in this context, and that exactly the same can be (and has been) said in reverse: Requiring even 2 pages of attributions be included after every article inclusion is a non-free tax on content reuse, and a violation of our author's expectations. Even if that were true (and it isn't), that still wouldn't justify the violation of the rights of those authors who want and expected to be credited. If your statement were true (and it isn't), it would mean that the only right thing to do is to not use the work at all. To borrow a line from the GPL, If you cannot convey a covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not convey it at all. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I understand that viewpoint and think it is reasonable. How about adding a checkbox to preferences, that says allow attribution by URL? Insofar as this satisfies my personal preference on the matter, I say that this is fine. If we added this checkbox to the software now there would be, of course, an argument about whether the box should be checked by default or not. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of user accounts are now abandoned, whatever we set for the default value of this box would become the de facto standard for attribution anyway. I think it's clear that at least some people expected to be attributed directly in any print edition encyclopedias made from Wikipedia. Do you deny that, or do you just think it doesn't matter? I don't deny it, but I am curious to see some evidence that this preference has indeed been made clear by some of our editors. I can't say that I've ever seen somebody express such a preference on Wikibooks, but then again we have a smaller community and are relatively insulated from discussions like this. To that effect, since people haven't clearly expressed this situation on Wikibooks, I think we could end up in a situation where different projects could handle their attribution requirements differently. The situation over there is sufficiently different for a number of reasons that it's probably not a good parallel anyway. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/22 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? Don't underestimate the enjoyment of looking through the page of credits at the back of a printed book and finding your name! People like to be acknowledged, even if it doesn't serve any greater purpose. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
There is an analogous project. The thousands of contributors of quotations exemplifying use to the Oxford English Dictionary have their names listed, though not with the items they sent. the principal ones are listed separately, but even those who sent in a single quotation are in a list. I know people who have done just that, and are quite reasonably very pleased to be included there. On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/22 Sam Johnston s...@samj.net: What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? Don't underestimate the enjoyment of looking through the page of credits at the back of a printed book and finding your name! People like to be acknowledged, even if it doesn't serve any greater purpose. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/22 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: That's evidently not true. Many people in this debate have said that giving all names encumbers re-use of the work when such lists get very long, so they are not 'fine' with listing all names, because they recognize that there is an additional good (ease of re-use) that needs to be served. Not really. Remember that reasonable to the medium or means statement? Any means that resulted in serious encumberment would be unlikely to be considered reasonable. Compared the issues caused by copyright notices it's a pretty minor problem. It's true that this is not the case for a large number of articles, but it's often the case for the most interesting ones. The proposed attribution language - to state names when there are fewer than six - is precisely written as a compromise. Evidences? -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2009/1/21 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: I'm not sure that these positions should be balanced. For example, everyone who believes that an URL should be fine is also OK if all names are given, but not the other way around. That's evidently not true. Many people in this debate have said that giving all names encumbers re-use of the work when such lists get very long, so they are not 'fine' with listing all names, because they recognize that there is an additional good (ease of re-use) that needs to be served. But they granted a license to use their work under the GFDL, didn't they? The GFDL certainly allows listing all names, doesn't it? If you're saying these people have a right to revoke the GFDL from their work, well, I won't argue against you. But I find it strange that you would argue this. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Milos Rancic wrote: * If it is about printed work, it should point at least to the appropriate printed work. It is really not any kind of reasonable solution to allow pointing from less advanced medium to more advanced medium. Independent of the relicensing debate, I don't understand this comment at all. Printed works very commonly include URLs to point people to material that is online. Some amount of adjustment has been involved as people sorted out the issues involved, but at this point it's quite routine. So I don't see why we should imagine for ourselves a rule against pointing to the web from print. (Or vice versa, for those people who think Wikipedia citations have to be to something available online.) --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/22 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: 2009/1/22 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/1/22 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: That's evidently not true. Many people in this debate have said that giving all names encumbers re-use of the work when such lists get very long, so they are not 'fine' with listing all names, because they recognize that there is an additional good (ease of re-use) that needs to be served. Not really. Remember that reasonable to the medium or means statement? Any means that resulted in serious encumberment would be unlikely to be considered reasonable. Compared the issues caused by copyright notices it's a pretty minor problem. I really don't see how adding 2 pages of names to a 35 page article is a serious encumberment. Now read that article outloud and record it. Reasonable to the medium or means in this case however lets people follow the common practice of putting the credit on the record sleeve /CD jewel case. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Milos Rancic wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:16 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Milos Rancic wrote: * If it is about printed work, it should point at least to the appropriate printed work. It is really not any kind of reasonable solution to allow pointing from less advanced medium to more advanced medium. Independent of the relicensing debate, I don't understand this comment at all. Printed works very commonly include URLs to point people to material that is online. Some amount of adjustment has been involved as people sorted out the issues involved, but at this point it's quite routine. So I don't see why we should imagine for ourselves a rule against pointing to the web from print. (Or vice versa, for those people who think Wikipedia citations have to be to something available online.) This is not about giving more informations, but about giving the basic informations about the work related to the legal issues. My amateur knowledge of law says to me that I am always able to ask for printed legal document, even electronic one is available and preferable. While you should better know how the right to get authors list in appropriate form is connected with my right to demand printed legal document, I see them very connected and I think that we should act as they are connected. (Note, again, that this is not about referring to a document as a literature, but to referring to the authors of the document, which is far from equal.) I'm afraid I simply don't understand what you're trying to say, then. It sounded like you were talking about having one document (web, print, whatever medium) point to another, something that might be done for attribution or a variety of other purposes. And if it's a question of pointing, I'm puzzled what difference it makes which medium is used or which direction one points across different media. I'm also not sure what you mean by a right to demand a printed legal document. It sounds sort of like you're referring to this as a right you hold as an author (whether as part of basic copyright or a moral right). That's not something I'm familiar with at all. So it's likely that I've not understood what you mean correctly there, either. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Now read that article outloud and record it. Reasonable to the medium or means in this case however lets people follow the common practice of putting the credit on the record sleeve /CD jewel case. Reasonable doesn't have to mean common practice. How about reading out the names at the end? It's going to be a worse ratio than pages of print (you can't read something in a small font size, after all), but it's still doable (especially with text-to-speech converters, so you don't have to waste time reading all the names). Reading credits at the end is pretty common practice for radio broadcasts, anyway, why not do the same for CDs?. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Because radio broadcasts have far shorter credit lists. Yeah to an extent you can do it with CDs but for 45s that is right out. However the license itself specifies Reasonable to the medium or means so this does not present a problem. Surely you couldn't fit a read out version of [[France]] onto a 45? What matters is how much space (in what medium) the credits take in comparison to the content. Reading the credits to [[France]] may take quite a while compared to reading the article (maybe half as long? Possibly less, especially if you read the names pretty quickly), but media big enough to hold the whole article read out will probably be big enough to still have plenty of room to spare (reading the article might take, what, 30 mins? Can you think of a medium that can hold 30 mins of audio but not 45?). (These numbers are all guesses, I've never done any recording like this, so I don't know how long it's likely to end up being, but these figures should give a reasonable impression, I think.) So to clarify that attribution via reference to page histories is acceptable if there are more than five authors is an attempt to fix a non problem using means of highly questionable legality under the terms of the license and non US law as well is deny wikipedia authors effective credit. It also prevents us from bringing in CC-BY-SA from third party sources which makes it further unacceptable. Yeah, that's about it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
I understand Milos' concern, actually, and this is the most reasonable objection to a URL link for attribution purposes that has been raised so far. It is true that the Internet is by its nature impermanent, evolving both in content and in structure. It's by no means guaranteed that if we include http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dentistrycurid=8005action=history; in a printed book in 2009 it will still be accessible in 2019. On the other hand, if we printed out the names in the book... then as long as you have the book you have the names, because they travel together. We may change the syntax of the history link, the most common method for locating content on the web may change (either structurally, or because of device evolution), or the sites might for some reason come down. We should also consider that ideally we want our content to be usefully credited in areas of the world where Internet access is very limited, or where Wikipedia is specifically blocked. Thinking ahead, these are the parts of the world most likely to be using a paper Wikipedia anyway. I do understand that there are mediums where this is impossible, and I think perhaps the solution requires an outline that describes different (but reasonable) standards based on medium category, broadly interpreted. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Mike Godwin mgod...@wikimedia.org wrote: That said, the GFDL requires authors to be listed in the section entitled History, and it clearly states that a section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document... So is current Wikipedia practice consistent with the GFDL or not? I believe that Wikipedia practice is not consistent with the GFDL. That's why I notified you that the WMF's right to use my content under the GFDL has been permanently revoked. Obviously, the History page reachable from a Wikipedia article could be interpreted as not being a section or a named subunit. On the other hand, the history page *could* be interpreted as being part of the Document. Historically, the community has generally interpreted this attribution requirement of the GFDL as allowing for a link to a History page. In this respect, there is no essential difference between GFDL and CC-BY- SA 3.x. For online copies, as I've said before, I don't see much problem with this. As I've said before, it's hard to draw the line as to what is part of the work and what is not part of the work, when it comes to online sources. But I don't think the same argument can be made for offline copies. If there is no essential difference, then your concern about getting credit is a wash, regardless of whether the license on Wikipedia is updated. My main concern is that CC-BY-SA will be deliberately misinterpreted to not require direct attribution - and the published draft of the RfC confirms that this concern is valid. This doesn't mean your concern is any less valid or invalid -- it just means that there's nothing inherent in the question of updating the license that should trigger it. The GFDL is much more clear on this issue. And some comments Erik has pointed us to from the CC lawyers make it clear that CC intends for CC-BY-SA to allow attribution by URL, so even if CC-BY-SA 3.0 isn't interpreted by the courts to allow this, CC-BY-SA 4.0 very well might. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
Anthony writes: On the other hand, the history page *could* be interpreted as being part of the Document. Even if it's on a different server? For online copies, as I've said before, I don't see much problem with this. As I've said before, it's hard to draw the line as to what is part of the work and what is not part of the work, when it comes to online sources. But I don't think the same argument can be made for offline copies. So, online but on a different server is okay, but online when there's an offline copy isn't? What is the legal distinction you're drawing here? (I ask for the legal distinction because you are articulating your concern in terms of what you purport to be violations of your legal rights.) My main concern is that CC-BY-SA will be deliberately misinterpreted to not require direct attribution - and the published draft of the RfC confirms that this concern is valid. So you think an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is online is direct? But an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is offline is *not* direct? What is the legal (or rights) basis for this distinction? --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: I'm afraid I simply don't understand what you're trying to say, then. It sounded like you were talking about having one document (web, print, whatever medium) point to another, something that might be done for attribution or a variety of other purposes. And if it's a question of pointing, I'm puzzled what difference it makes which medium is used or which direction one points across different media. I'm also not sure what you mean by a right to demand a printed legal document. It sounds sort of like you're referring to this as a right you hold as an author (whether as part of basic copyright or a moral right). That's not something I'm familiar with at all. So it's likely that I've not understood what you mean correctly there, either. No, I am referring to my right as a user of the content. (Implicitly, it is about my right as an author of the content, but, explicitly, it is not.) I'll try to be more formal in explaining: 1) There is a set of extended informations which I may get: * For example, I may ask for some kind of *howto* (note, not an official recommendations!) document about achieving my legal rights related to, let's say, building a house. * I also expect in a contemporary book about, let's say, astronomy, to refer to some documentation related to, let's say, some places on the Internet related to the grid computing. In both cases, strictly speaking, those are extra informations. In both cases it may be completely reasonable to have it in other form than a paper one. 2) But, there is a set of basic informations for which I have the right to get them in the appropriate form: * For example, legal documents about building a house. * List of authors of a written document which I am reading (if that document is not in public domain). In both cases, I expect that I get them in the most basic form. In both cases it is a paper form, not an electronic form. The right of a reader of a book has to be Send me the list of the authors [in the paper form]. (and, again, I think that you should know that better than me). If it is an explicit legal right (and I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be), then every publisher has the obligation to send the list of authors to every reader on demand. If it is not an explicit right, we should make a way how to fulfill this issue. A couple of months ago, I mentioned that it would be really useful to have periodicals (let's say, yearly), which would publish the list of the authors of the content of Wikimedia projects. This is not just about fulfilling the rights of readers or authors, but this is, also, a very relevant bibliographic work (maybe the most relevant) of the contemporary culture. In cooperation with relevant international institution those bibliographical informations may be available in all national and a lot of relevant libraries. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 4:21 PM, Mike Godwin mgod...@wikimedia.org wrote: Anthony writes: On the other hand, the history page *could* be interpreted as being part of the Document. Even if it's on a different server? I don't see why not. If you're talking about a different server and a different domain name, run by a different company, I think you could argue the difference is de minimis, so long as the other server is pretty much 100% accessible. For online copies, as I've said before, I don't see much problem with this. As I've said before, it's hard to draw the line as to what is part of the work and what is not part of the work, when it comes to online sources. But I don't think the same argument can be made for offline copies. So, online but on a different server is okay, but online when there's an offline copy isn't? Online when there's an offline copy clearly isn't okay. Online on a different server, run by a different company. I'm not going to say it's okay, but I really don't see much difference. What is the legal distinction you're drawing here? (I ask for the legal distinction because you are articulating your concern in terms of what you purport to be violations of your legal rights.) Actually, I'm purporting them to be violations of my moral rights. But the distinction is pretty obvious - in one case the page is a click away, in the other case it at least requires finding internet access and typing in a url, and quite possibly requires jumping through even more hoops than that. Additionally, printed copies will almost surely last longer than the url remains accessible. With online copies, the url can be updated if it moves, or the page can be copied to the local server if the remote one goes down. My main concern is that CC-BY-SA will be deliberately misinterpreted to not require direct attribution - and the published draft of the RfC confirms that this concern is valid. So you think an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is online is direct? I think it's close enough to direct that I'm not interested in complaining about it. Personally, I'd just include the attribution on the same server, especially if someone complained. But an online attribution on a separate page (or server) when the article is offline is *not* direct? What is the legal (or rights) basis for this distinction? Common sense? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
2009/1/21 geni geni...@gmail.com: So you are claiming that it is section 4(c)(iii) that makes your approach valid. First problem comes with the opening to section 4(c) You must ... keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: That is an and command not an or. You have to meet everything from 4(c)(i) to 4(c)(iv) Yes, and it's quite obvious that if no author name but a URL is supplied, then under 4(c)(i) and 4(c)(iii), a re-user would have to attribute only that URL. After all, the license clearly limits name attribution under 4(c)(i) with the clause if supplied. The 'reasonable' restriction in 4(c)(iii) is not particularly relevant to our intended use. Furthermore, the license has to be understood in the broader context of the terms of use under which people contribute; it allows for such terms exactly to define and clarify its attribution language. That's why the 'human readable' version of the license explicitly says that attribution must happen in the manner specified by the author or licensor, and even the CC website allows you to license a work with the only credit being a URL. This URL option is explained in the licensing help as 'The URL users of the work should link to. For example, the work's page on the author's site'. This is completely consistent with linking to an article or history page on Wikipedia. Your repeated assertion that attribution-by-URL is somehow inconsistent with CC-BY-SA is therefore obviously untrue. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
