Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[mathieu lovato stumpf guntz]

Although we discussed about that more extensively off-list, I just 
wanted to make publicly clear that:


- I don't make "forum-shopping", I batch reply to some messages where my 
name was explicitely appearing in the message body. I have close to 2000 
untreated messages in the Wikimedia directory of my mailbox alone.
- On the phabricator ticket I refered to an email that Karima posted on 
mailling list, but didn't quoted the message itself as I prefered to not 
be out of terms of use of the list. I thought that the mailling list was 
reserved to WMfr members, Denny rightfully pointed that it was hard to 
judge on a message he didn't have access to.
- I thought that was ambarassing not to be able to give access to this 
information, and in order not to fall in the same ambarrassing situation 
again I thought it would be great to make future posts public by default
- I didn't asked for "for total and absolute transparency and openness" 
however. To make it perfectly clear and explicit I don't support any 
form of absolutism. And in the end it happened that the mailling list 
archives in question was already accessible to anyone subscribing freely 
online, unlike what we had previously as a policy for some lists in WMfr 
which led me to wrong assumptions. It's a fine level of transparency 
from my expectations which might be high, but not absolute.
- Karima wen't out of the mailling list demanding the message I was 
referring to to be deleted, and saying that in fact she was not a 
Wikidata contributor. Anyone is free to look at that more closely and 
draws its own conclusions.
- I don't expect any change in Wikidata license, and anyone interested 
in the legal issue should proferably look at the phabricator ticket as 
it was previously suggested


I hope that giving a bit of context might help dispel misinterpretations.

Cheers.

Le 06/07/2018 à 23:37, Alphos OGame a écrit :

Hello,

Mathieu, not only are you forum-shopping here as Maarten pointed out, you
are also consecutively trying one "what if" after the other instead of
providing an actual formal case against the CC0 license currently in effect
on Wikidata.
So far each of your individual arguments has been debunked :
- incompatibly licensed database imports (Nemo_bis [1] and Denny [2][3]
replied to that concern on May 14th on Phabricator ; same applies to
CC-BY-SA on Wikipedia : we get rid of incompatible stuff all the time)
- provenance and traceability of data (Maarten Dammers replied to that
concern on this email thread on July 4th ; licenses have nothing to do with
either of those things : references are there for that, and edit history
can help too)
- conflation of licensing of an entire text and facts stated within it -
which is pretty much one of the main purposes of Wikidata, or am I mistaken
? - (Martijn Hoekstra replied to that concern on this email thread on July
4th ; facts aren't long blobs of complicated text that are works of the
mind, although it could be a tad more complex when it comes to large
compilations of facts - but the definition of "large" is nowhere properly
determined)
On May 25th, you mentionned on Phabricator "discussing face to face with a
professional lawyer specialized on free licenses" [4]. She was supposed to
forward you "more information later". Has she done that ? Barring anything
new from her or any other lawyer, I see no reason whatsoever to keep going
on with that discussion which, so far, seems to only be able to determine
the morals and ethos of sticking to CC0, and not the actual legality of it.

However, I'd like to point out as an aside that in the process of your - so
far it seems purely intellectual - exercice, you have pushed Karima out of
a mailing list, which culminated in you asking from Wikimedia France that
all messages from all their mailing lists be immediately and irrevocably
made public "for total and absolute transparency and openness" as I recall
it, for the measly sake of this very argument. Your request was thankfully
denied on the basis of, if anything, privacy protection of their members.
Her message on May 4th on Phabricator [5] doesn't leave much to the
imagination that her leaving the Wikimedia France Wikidata mailing list and
your actions are directly related.

I suggest you either provide a strong legal argument (which is more than
"this thing and that stuff could happen", I mean something with actual
legal babble, including law and case law, with help from an actual lawyer)
or drop the splintered stick you hit that long-since dead horse with. And
whichever you choose, if you could stop bullying people to get your point
across, that'd be swell.

Thank you.

Roger / Alphos

[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4204583
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4204771
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4204779
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4231434
[5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4182444



2018-07-05 20:30 GMT+02:00 Yann Forget :

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[mathieu lovato stumpf guntz]

Hi Andra,


Le 04/07/2018 à 13:00, Andra Waagmeester a écrit :



No, Wikidata is not going to change the CC0. You seem to be the
only person wanting that and trying to discredit Wikidata will not
help you in your crusade. I suggest the people who are still
interested in this to go to
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728
 and make useful
comments over there.

It seems all this assertions are following some erroneous assumptions. 
This ticket is not about changing Wikidata license. It aims at making 
sure what can and what can not be legally imported into a database using 
CC0, and in which juridiction it can be legally used safely or not in 
downstream projects.


It would certainly be interesting that Wikimedia infrastructure would 
allow to host projects using Wikibase with other topic/license scopes 
that are queriables within other Wikimedia projects. Surelly it would 
make a good match with the "become the essential infrastructure of the 
ecosystem of free knowledge" goal. But that's an other story, and I 
didn't found time to work on that topic so far.


It would also be great if we could avoid to imput the title of "crusader 
dedicated to discredit Wikidata" to someone that not later than this 
afternoon helped a new contributor to make its first edit on this project.


Cheers.



Maarten


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[Alphos OGame]

Hello,

Mathieu, not only are you forum-shopping here as Maarten pointed out, you
are also consecutively trying one "what if" after the other instead of
providing an actual formal case against the CC0 license currently in effect
on Wikidata.
So far each of your individual arguments has been debunked :
- incompatibly licensed database imports (Nemo_bis [1] and Denny [2][3]
replied to that concern on May 14th on Phabricator ; same applies to
CC-BY-SA on Wikipedia : we get rid of incompatible stuff all the time)
- provenance and traceability of data (Maarten Dammers replied to that
concern on this email thread on July 4th ; licenses have nothing to do with
either of those things : references are there for that, and edit history
can help too)
- conflation of licensing of an entire text and facts stated within it -
which is pretty much one of the main purposes of Wikidata, or am I mistaken
? - (Martijn Hoekstra replied to that concern on this email thread on July
4th ; facts aren't long blobs of complicated text that are works of the
mind, although it could be a tad more complex when it comes to large
compilations of facts - but the definition of "large" is nowhere properly
determined)
On May 25th, you mentionned on Phabricator "discussing face to face with a
professional lawyer specialized on free licenses" [4]. She was supposed to
forward you "more information later". Has she done that ? Barring anything
new from her or any other lawyer, I see no reason whatsoever to keep going
on with that discussion which, so far, seems to only be able to determine
the morals and ethos of sticking to CC0, and not the actual legality of it.

However, I'd like to point out as an aside that in the process of your - so
far it seems purely intellectual - exercice, you have pushed Karima out of
a mailing list, which culminated in you asking from Wikimedia France that
all messages from all their mailing lists be immediately and irrevocably
made public "for total and absolute transparency and openness" as I recall
it, for the measly sake of this very argument. Your request was thankfully
denied on the basis of, if anything, privacy protection of their members.
Her message on May 4th on Phabricator [5] doesn't leave much to the
imagination that her leaving the Wikimedia France Wikidata mailing list and
your actions are directly related.

I suggest you either provide a strong legal argument (which is more than
"this thing and that stuff could happen", I mean something with actual
legal babble, including law and case law, with help from an actual lawyer)
or drop the splintered stick you hit that long-since dead horse with. And
whichever you choose, if you could stop bullying people to get your point
across, that'd be swell.

Thank you.

Roger / Alphos

[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4204583
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4204771
[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4204779
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4231434
[5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4182444



2018-07-05 20:30 GMT+02:00 Yann Forget :

> Hi,
>
> 2018-07-04 12:50 GMT+02:00 Maarten Dammers :
>
> > Hi Mathieu,
> >
>
>
> > So I see you started forum shopping (trying to get the Wikimedia-l people
> > in) and making contentious trying to be funny remarks. That's usually a
> > good indication a thread is going nowhere.
> >
> > No, Wikidata is not going to change the CC0. You seem to be the only
> > person wanting that and trying to discredit Wikidata will not help you in
> > your crusade. I suggest the people who are still interested in this to go
> > to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728 and make useful comments
> > over there.
>
>
> I concur totally with analysis.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann Forget
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[Yann Forget]

Hi,

2018-07-04 12:50 GMT+02:00 Maarten Dammers :

> Hi Mathieu,
>


> So I see you started forum shopping (trying to get the Wikimedia-l people
> in) and making contentious trying to be funny remarks. That's usually a
> good indication a thread is going nowhere.
>
> No, Wikidata is not going to change the CC0. You seem to be the only
> person wanting that and trying to discredit Wikidata will not help you in
> your crusade. I suggest the people who are still interested in this to go
> to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728 and make useful comments
> over there.


I concur totally with analysis.

Regards,

Yann Forget
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[Maarten Dammers]

Hi Mathieu,

On 04-07-18 11:07, mathieu stumpf guntz wrote:

Hi,

Le 19/05/2018 à 03:35, Denny Vrandečić a écrit :


Regarding attribution, commonly it is assumed that you have to 
respect it transitively. That is one of the reasons a license that 
requires BY sucks so hard for data: unlike with text, the attribution 
requirements grow very quickly. It is the same as with modified 
images and collages: it is not sufficient to attribute the last 
author, but all contributors have to be attributed.
If we want our data to be trustable, then we need traceability. That 
is reporting this chain of sources as extensively as possible, 
whatever the license require or not as attribution. CC-0 allow to 
break this traceability, which make an aweful license to whoever is 
concerned with obtaining reliable data.

A license is not the way to achieve this. We have references for that.


This is why I think that whoever wants to be part of a large 
federation of data on the web, should publish under CC0.
As long as one aim at making a federation of untrustable data banks, 
that's perfect. ;)
So I see you started forum shopping (trying to get the Wikimedia-l 
people in) and making contentious trying to be funny remarks. That's 
usually a good indication a thread is going nowhere.


No, Wikidata is not going to change the CC0. You seem to be the only 
person wanting that and trying to discredit Wikidata will not help you 
in your crusade. I suggest the people who are still interested in this 
to go to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728 and make useful 
comments over there.


Maarten

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[mathieu stumpf guntz]

Hi,

Le 19/05/2018 à 03:35, Denny Vrandečić a écrit :


Regarding attribution, commonly it is assumed that you have to respect 
it transitively. That is one of the reasons a license that requires BY 
sucks so hard for data: unlike with text, the attribution requirements 
grow very quickly. It is the same as with modified images and 
collages: it is not sufficient to attribute the last author, but all 
contributors have to be attributed.
If we want our data to be trustable, then we need traceability. That is 
reporting this chain of sources as extensively as possible, whatever the 
license require or not as attribution. CC-0 allow to break this 
traceability, which make an aweful license to whoever is concerned with 
obtaining reliable data.


This is why I think that whoever wants to be part of a large 
federation of data on the web, should publish under CC0.
As long as one aim at making a federation of untrustable data banks, 
that's perfect. ;)


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Solve legal uncertainty of Wikidata

[Denny Vrandečić]

Thank you for your answer, Sebastian.

Publishing the Gutachten would be fantastic! That would be very helpful and
deeply appreciated.

Regarding the relicensing, I agree with you. You can just go and do that,
and given that you ask for attribution to DBpedia, and not to Wikipedia, I
would claim that's what you're doing. And I think that's fine.

Regarding attribution, commonly it is assumed that you have to respect it
transitively. That is one of the reasons a license that requires BY sucks
so hard for data: unlike with text, the attribution requirements grow very
quickly. It is the same as with modified images and collages: it is not
sufficient to attribute the last author, but all contributors have to be
attributed.

This is why I think that whoever wants to be part of a large federation of
data on the web, should publish under CC0.

That is very different from licensing texts or images. But for data
anything else is just weird and will bite is in the long run more than we
might ever benefit.

So, just to say it again: if the Gutachten you mentioned could be made
available, that would be very very awesome!

Thank you, Denny



On Thu, May 17, 2018, 23:06 Sebastian Hellmann <
hellm...@informatik.uni-leipzig.de> wrote:

> Hi Denny,
>
> On 18.05.2018 02:54, Denny Vrandečić wrote:
>
> Rob Speer wrote:
> > The result of this, by the way, is that commercial entities sell modified
> > versions of Wikidata with impunity. It undermines the terms of other
> > resources such as DBPedia, which also contains facts extracted from
> > Wikipedia and respects its Share-Alike terms. Why would anyone use
> DBPedia
> > and have to agree to share alike, when they can get similar data from
> > Wikidata which promises them it's CC-0?
>
> The comparison to DBpedia is interesting: the terms for DBpedia state
> "Attribution in this case means keep DBpedia URIs visible and active
> through at least one (preferably all) of @href, , or "Link:". If
> live links are impossible (e.g., when printed on paper), a textual
> blurb-based attribution is acceptable."
> http://wiki.dbpedia.org/terms-imprint
>
> So according to these terms, when someone displays data from DBpedia, it
> is entirely sufficient to attribute DBpedia.
>
> What that means is that DBpedia follows exactly the same theory as
> Wikidata: it is OK to extract data from Wikipedia and republish it as your
> own dataset under your own copyright without requiring attribution to the
> original source of the extraction.
>
> (A bit more problematic might be the fact that DBpedia also republishes
> whole paragraphs of Text under these terms, but that's another story)
>
>
> My understanding is that all that Wikidata has extracted from Wikipedia is
> non-copyrightable in the first place and thus republishing it under a
> different license (or, as in the case of DBpedia for simple triples, with a
> different attribution) is legally sound.
>
>
> In the SmartDataWeb project https://www.smartdataweb.de/ we hired lawyers
> to write a legal review about the extraction situation. Facts can be
> extracted and republished under CC-0 without problem as is the case of
> infoboxes.. Copying a whole database is a different because database rights
> hold. If you only extract ~ two sentences it falls under citation, which is
> also easy. If it is more than two sentence, then copyright applies.
>
> I can check whether it is ready and shareable. The legal review
> (Gutachten) is quite a big thing as it has some legal relevancy and can be
> cited in court.
>
> Hence we can switch to ODC-BY with facts as CC-0 and the text as
> share-alike. However the attribution mentioned in the imprint is still
> fine, since it is under database and not the content/facts.
> I am still uncertain about the attribution. If you remix and publish you
> need to cite the direct sources. But if somebody takes from you, does he
> only attribute to you or to everybody you used in a transitive way.
>
> Anyhow, we are sharpening the whole model towards technology, not
> data/content. So the databus will be a transparent layer and it is much
> easier to find the source like Wikipedia and Wikidata and do contributions
> there, which is actually one of the intentions of share-alike (getting work
> pushed back/upstream).
>
> All the best,
> Sebastian
>
>
> If there is disagreement with that, I would be interested which content
> exactly is considered to be under copyright and where license has not been
> followed on Wikidata.
>
> For completion: the discussion is going on in parallel on the Wikidata
> project chat and in Phabricator:
>
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193728#4212728
>
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Wikipedia_and_other_Wikimedia_projects
>
>
> I would appreciate if we could keep the discussion in a single place.
>
> Gnom1 on Phabricator has offered to actually answer legal questions, but
> we need to come up with the questions that we want to ask. If it should be,
> for example, as Rob Spe