[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Tue Jun 1 23:16:09 UTC 2004

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life"
> of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth.
> But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''.
> Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings,
> not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles
> (except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).

Knowledge should not be owned, nor should the expression of that knowledge,
IMO. But we live in a world where the norm *is* ownership of that expression,
so we play the game but reverse the rules in order to free the content. 

> ...
> >If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
> >proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
> >improving that content.
> 
> And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.

The statement is true since all improvements that create derivative works from 
copyleft content can be re-incorporated back into the original. That is
positive feedback. However if the original were under an attribution license,
then many of those derivative works will be proprietary and thus any
improvements made to them could not be re-incorporated back into the original.
That would not be positive feedback. 

> ...
> Then in one possible world, WikiNews is GNU FDL or CC-by-sa,
> and (following Erik's fears) is not used very much by others.
> When it ''is'' used, then the resulting derivative work is free,
> and this creates a small amount of feedback for a day or two,
> as readers not only return to WikiNews but also incorporate
> the derivative works into the original WikiNews articles.
> Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.
> However, in another possible world, WikiNews is CC-by,
> and (following Erik's hopes) is widely picked up by other news sites.
> These other news organisations often use it to create derivative works,
> which (thanks to the "by" provisions) mention WikiNews as a source.
> Interested readers flock to WikiNews in droves for a day or two,
> generating a great deal of feedback to the WikiNews articles,
> even though their edits are limited to their own material.
> Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.

Let's not just assume that copyleft content would fail to attract attention -
Wikipedia has already proved that copyleft material *can* attract a lot of
attention and can be copied all over the place (including on many otherwise
proprietary content websites). *If* a copyleft Wikinews project did not do well
and we suspected it was due to the license, then we could talk about the
possibility of changing. Due to the nature of news articles, a future change of
license would not be such a big deal. 

But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could
never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license. The CC
by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version) or my
proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that. 

Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia, an
interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the GNU
FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a
lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream
users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork
derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of that
work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article, but
we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be an
interim solution). 

>... 
> 
> >The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft
> (such
> >as the CC by-sa).
> 
> That's obviously not an absolute statement;
> the English term "like" is very vague.

Exactly, thus I stated 'IMO.' It is my interpretation from reading stuff like: 

|The goal of Wikipedia is to create an information source in an encyclopedia
|format that is freely available. The license we use grants free access to our
|content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle
|is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied,
|modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same
|freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used 
|(a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement).
|Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by
|anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that
|freedom.

>From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Notice use of the word 'copyleft' (which is even bolded), the phrase 'so long
as the new version grants the same freedoms to others' and the term 'free
forever'. 

I will not support any license whereby a downstream user could make a
derivative work of our content and be able to not grant us the same freedoms
over that work. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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