[Wikipedia-l] Allowing use of the Creative Commons license as an option

Sat Nov 1 15:55:32 UTC 2003

 From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
To: <wikilegal-l at Wikimedia.org>

> I have decided to offer the  different Creative Commons licenses as an
> option on Internet-Encyclopedia and have changed the notice at the bottom
> of the page to this:
>
> "gnunote" => "Unless some other copyright license such as one of the <a
> href='http://creativecommons.org/licenses/'>Creative Commons licenses</a>
> has been selected by the original author of an article all text is
> available under the terms of the <a
>
href='http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=GNU_Free_Documen
tati
> on_License'>GNU Free Documentation License</a>. Use of images may be
> restricted, check the description of the image for details.
>
> This should allow the use of the Public Library of Science articles and
> material available under any other licence including material available
> only for non-profit use or otherwise restricted available for use.
>
> As to whether Wikipedia should make a similar change...
>
> Fred

The question is, does invoking the group of CC licenses create invariant
sections? Or is it possible to look at this as a copyright notice under
GFDL?
I am not quite sure.

This,might just adds to the due dilligence that someone has to do if their
fork is much more than a mirror of the original site, i.e, wishes to publish
a large
number of non-transparent (i.e. paper) copies of WP. That begs the question:
is the adding all these different licenses with different conditions in
the best interests of "free" or "open content"?  Not clear to me.

 Maybe this is creating a copyleft internet ghetto where everyone speaks
about freedom, open content and sharing knowledge, but no one outside
the ghetto wants to adapt the material for fear of all the complicated
legal questions that relate to licensing conflicts, attribution rules,
and fair use provisions may rear their ugly head.

I saw an innocently incorporated song make an independently produced  film
undistributable because of copyright clearance problems. I know these
issues can be devastating to individuals who do not have the resources
to obtain the proper clearances who believed that a minor infringement
would be tolerated by a copyright owner. Wrong! These issues need to
be examined _very_ carefully in order to determine their consequences if
the intent is to make this content available for wide distribution with
varied uses.

Of course we could just do what is being done with those Dibold memos
and just keep posting them on different servers even if those sec. 512
takedown
notices keep being sent out for each alleged infringment.

Alex T.