[WikiEN-l] Text of proposed updated copyright notice

Fri Sep 19 19:47:25 UTC 2003

--- Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sorry that I am late to this debate. In Alex's
> proposal, I read
> 
>    "[...] you further affirm that such text is not
> defamatory or in
>     violation of any law; [...]"
> 
> I strongly object to this language. I do not feel a
> moral 
> obligation to be bound by all laws, not even by all 
> laws I happen to know about or that apply to me.
> Also, 
> I am not capable to decide whether a given piece of 
> text violates any law, not even those laws I happen 
> to know about or that apply to me. I however do 
> feel a moral obligation to be honest, which would
> therefore
> preclude me from affirming the above.
> 
> Axel
> 
> P.S. Minor point: presumably there are or have been
> laws 
> against defamation somewhere, so it is not necessary
> to 
> mention defamation specifically.

That's a good point, now that you mention it. In
general, Alex's proposal sounds too much like the
legalese that no one reads and most websites come
with.  Wikipedia is a wiki, so because of its dynamic
nature and social pressures, I don't think we need any
legalese in order to submit stuff; just in plain
English that you're licensing it under the GNU FDL and
that, if someone else wrote it, they gave you
permission to licence it that way. It's kind of
implied that you can't break the law on wikipedia. You
can't break the law off wikipedia, but you don't have
to read a paragraph of legalese every hour to make
sure that you don't. And you ARE allowed defame people
in a legal way (ie. not liebel), and we shouldn't make
additional laws. We're loosing sight of the original
concept of a wiki: no hard-bound rules and contracts,
just social pressure and the dynamic nature of a wiki.

LDan

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