Jimbo wrote:
>Maybe! But there are advantages for all of us
>to contribute our copyrights to the foundation.
Can we make copyright assignment compulsory for anonymous contributions to
Wikibooks then? This is something I have often seen other Wikis do (Anon
contribs are a special case because it is much more difficult to track them
down in order to ask them about copyright changes). Maybe this in combination
with requiring valid email to activate user accounts will make the copyright
situation more bearable for Wikibooks.
Both of these ideas might also be a good for Wikipedia too (for new accounts
and edits made by Anons after a certain date) - but I would like to see if it
works on Wikibooks first.
That way we at least have some way to contact users in case of a copyright
change (simply knowing a previous email address - even if no longer valid -
should help a great deal in tracking someone down in order to ask them about
relicensing).
Aside: A prominent link to a privacy policy should be incorporated into the
Special:userlogin page in order to assuage people's fears over giving out
their email address - but that is needed anyway.
>It's too late now, of course, but all of our licensing
>/relicensing questions would be a lot easier to deal
>with if the foundation owned all the copyrights.
<beating a dead horse>
Again, I would be very wary of that; there is would be no guarantee against
the Foundation selling its soul (copyrights) to the Devil (*cough* Bill and
Malinda Gates Foundation *cough*) for a large grant (by-laws and Foundation
constitutions can change). By making it fairly difficult, but not impossible,
to change copyright, we add another layer of protection and filter against
such a thing happening. Power to the people.
</beating a dead horse>
>The FSF requires an assignment of copyrights
>to them for any official FSF projects. This policy
>would not work for us -- it's too late, and would
>interfere with the wiki model. But if people voluntarily
>do it, I think it's a good idea.
We should make it easy for logged-in users to assign copyright if they so
choose - it is their text and their right (a push button interface to flag
user accounts, and thus user edits, would be nice). But paranoid people like
me will leave copyright assignment clauses in our Wills (or if we are rich,
then clear instructions to our estates on how those copyrights can be used).
But I plan on being very contactable until then, so if a relicensing of my
work needs to occur, then just ask.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
The [[staff lounge]] had some talk about loading public
domain books on the site with space to make annotations to
them. While I thought little about it now I realized that
we could put up the works of William Shakespeare and allow
people to add comments and explanations on the margin. That
would be so cool !! There is no site out there that I know
of that does this. Little by little we could amass a huge
volume of knowlege on these works in one place that is
currently only available dispersed throughout various
printed texts as well as the minds of teachers and
professors at large. Shakespeare seems like the place to
start, along with maybe a public domain translation of the
Bible, or parts of both of those works.
-- Karl
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I just realized something I should have a long time ago; Our use of the GNU
FDL is completely copyleft. Read below;
:Permission is granted to copy, distribute
:and/or modify this document under the
:terms of the GNU Free Documentation
:License, Version 1.2 or any later version
:published by the Free Software Foundation;
:with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover
:Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
Note especially "with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no
Back-Cover Texts." Hence, we only give permission to use our text if the 3rd
part does /not/ add Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover
Texts.
Therefore, for example, Britannica could never legally incorporate Wikipedia's
content and add a Britannica-ad in an Invariant Section linked from every
article. That way, every improvement they make to the Wikipedia content can
be backported into Wikipedia. The cycle of positive-feedback continues.
This makes me feel much better about our use of the GNU FDL.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Tomasz wrote:
>It's legally impossible. Copyright assignment
>requires a real legal contract, and you can't
>make those with anonymous people, no way.
Have you taken any law classes? IANAL, but I have. Most contracts are informal
but still binding - like when Jimbo assigned his own Wikipedia copyrights to
the Foundation.
And also by using your logic we could not let Anons contribute at all since,
under your reasoning, we could not bind them to the terms of our license.
Having an easy to find copyright policy and a one line sentence in the edit
window "By clicking save you indicate that you agree to the copyright terms
of this website" is more than enough.
Oh and newspapers, magazines and the equivalent online counterparts very
routinely state that all letters to the editor or posts made to them by the
public are their property.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Toby wrote:
>Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
>>Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
>>could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
>>in a free and open copyleft spirit.
>
>This sounds like a very interesting idea!
Yes - for /anonymous contributions/ it does sound interesting. Logged-in users
should retain copyright. Otherwise way too much power and control is being
entrusted to the Foundation.
But making it easy for logged-in users to assign copyright if they want too
should be fine.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Karl wrote:
>...I realized that we could put up the works of
> William Shakespeare and allow people to add
>comments and explanations on the margin. That
>would be so cool !! There is no site out there
>that I know of that does this. Little by little
>we could amass a huge volume of knowledge on these
>works in one place that is currently only available
>dispersed throughout various printed texts as well
>as the minds of teachers and professors at large.
>Shakespeare seems like the place to start, along
>with maybe a public domain translation of the
>Bible, or parts of both of those works.
Exactly. Our focus should be on creating book-based
resources for the student; think of all the books a
student is required to have for any given class
(other than encyclopedias or dictionaries). Those are
the books we should focus on creating (textbooks and
other related works of nonfiction) or annotating (out
of copyright versions of many books that are studied
in the classroom). We could also summarize books in
booklet form (akin to CliffsNotes) for at least books
that are still under copyright and maybe for the
public domain ones as well.
--mav
=====
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Why not use a format like Docbook
and _generate_ other formats from it?
AFAIK, from Docbook you can generate PS, PDF,
RTF, HTML.
Docbook is used widely for technical documentations,
so why not use it for textbooks as well?
Volker
What can we do to bring more attention to this project ?
Are there ways to get it registered in online directories
more quickly ? What about submitting it for a Slashdot
article ? (Should we wait until more work has been done
before we get it Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with
the announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)
--Karl
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Anonymous contributions are problematic when licensing changes are
needed. Wikipedia is big, but it will be a lot bigger in 10 years from
now, with a lot more anonymous contributions.
The need for a license changes (in the future) is not zero:
1) Copyright law itself changes regularly, so we can't look far in the
future and know what will be necessary then.
2) We don't know if FDL and CC-AT-SA are going to reach compatibility,
3) we don't know how a judge might rule if the "moral rights" in the
European copyright-system conflict with public domain or copyleft
licences.
4) The GNU licenses are english only, there is an internationalisation
effort at CC. In many countries terms of use of a product need to be
stated in the official languages of the country.
Therefore wouldn't it be better to ask the transfer of copyright from
anonymous contributors instead of an actual license under the GFDL? This
is not a vote against the FDL at all, but it would retain the
possibility of a license change in the future. Now, with each anonymous
contribution, a license change becomes more and more something of an
impossibility.
Copyright could be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. A disclaimer
could be issued that states that the contributions always will be used
in a free and open copyleft spirit.
For contributors that have an account with a valid emailadres, nothing
need to change. But if they loose interest, they should have the
possibility to easy transfer their copyrights the Wikimedia Foundation.
What dou you think?
Wouter Vanden Hove
www.open-education.orgwww.opencursus.be
Wow, what a cool-looking site. Where has this been hiding
all along ?
Mav: Why PS instead of PDF ? Is there a reader for it ? ( I
tried to download a PS document a while back and could not
figure out how to use it). I imagined that the textbook
pages could compile into one big HTML document ... what are
the advantages of each of these options (PS, PDF, HTML ?)
It seems like either big PDF or HTML documents can be
unwieldly. It seems sometimes like the world is lacking a
decent open-source word processing / printing file format.
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