Replace my first paragraph with this:
The question before us then is this; can we state on our Wikibooks copyright
policy page and on every edit page that by pressing save, the submitter
is agreeing to grant Wikimedia a non-exclusive license to use their
own unique and copyrightable work under both the GNU FDL /and/ any other
copyleft license the Foundation may deem fit in the future (with a defintion
of "copyleft" linked from that word)?
--mav
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change (simply knowing a previous email address - even if no longer valid -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)
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>If we just do that, we'd need some way to know
>their name in order to cite it, which is impossible.
We have already gone over this while you were gone (I forgot which list..).
Anon contributors work under the pseudonym which happens to be their IP
address. It is their choice to do so. Real names are not needed.
>Why not have it all just be the same as Wikipedia is?
>That seems to be working. I don't like ownership of
>knowledge, and I'd rather that everything contributed
>to wikibooks, anonymous or otherwise, is considered
>authored by wikibooks, just like Wikipedia.
No Dan, that is not how Wikipedia works. All unique content is owned by the
contributors on Wikipedia (same here). However, by placing their work on the
Wikimedia server they all agree to license a copy of their work to Wikimedia
under terms of the GNU FDL.
>Additionally, some textbooks (like my Algebra I
>textbook, for one) are partially based on Wikipedia
>content, so it would be nearly impossible to say that
>all of the non-anonymous contributers in any way
>own the content; that would just be too broad.
In order to comply with the GNU FDL you need to do more to cite just what
material you are using from Wikipedia. On the Algebra I authors page, IMO,
you should list (maybe in a subpage) the Wikipedia articles you copied and
provide link backs to them.
Come to think of it, we need to form a policy on how to use Wikipedia content
(how to cite being the most important thing to consider).
Aside: It would also be nice if links to other Wikimedia projects looked
different than external links. A green color would be nice..
--- 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)