[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Wed Jun 2 02:55:35 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>(Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence,
>>and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work.

>Then it looks like neither of us will be able to convince the other.

I don't see why not, because this is not the basis for my position.
There was another sentence in the paragraph, after all:

>>But I refuse to condemn those who choose differently from me.)

I'm not arguing that violence in self defence is immoral,
and I would not use that argument to convince somebody
to refuse violence in self defence (to my parents regret).
What I choose for myself is not necessarily required for everybody.
Similarly, in this conversation I'm not making a moral argument
against reserving copy rights in ultimate defence of copy freedom.
Everything that I've said is based on pragmatic considerations,
and if you convince me that my arguments on ''that'' basis are wrong,
then I will acquiesce and not switch to moral arguments.

This is not to say that I never made moral/ethical arguments.
But your position is beyond any ethical objections from me.

>The comparison to public domain (merely gratis) content is not relevant to the
>issue of copyleft (libre). I have in fact been arguing against using
>attribution licenses (which essentially are grants into the public domain but
>with the requirement of attribution - thus there still is need for a license).

But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant!
The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft.
And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works
more readily than copyleft material is.  So it is not correct
to say that copyleft doesn't inhibit the creation of derivative works,
or more generally that it can never inhibit positive feedback.
Only a balance between its ''two'' effects: fewer derivative works,
but a greater percentage (indeed all) of those derivative works
becoming available for feedback.

I'm comparing copyleft to non-copyleft here,
to see which will give more positive feedback.
(You say that copyleft always gives more positive feedback,
while I say that it may depend on the circumstances.)
That's why I discussed a public domain example;
it's the example from the non-copyleft side.

-- Toby