[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Wed Jun 2 02:16:37 UTC 2004

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> 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. 

>...
> This is certainly not true in general!  Taking the Snow White example,
> the Walt Disney Company, given its profit motives, would not make
> as many derivative works from public domain (hence free but not copyleft)
> fairy tales if its derivative movies had to be free as well.
> Yet the free fairy tale community gets some feedback from Disney,
> since the Disney characters are now available for some uses in parodies.
> This is an extreme example, and all things considered,
> I would be much happier if Disney didn't make any movies,
> if that meant that the movies that other people ''did'' make
> would all be free.  

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 I will not pretend that copyright
> serves no purpose at all -- it ''does'' encourage creation
> by people motivated by profit (as we all are to some extent).

Yes, that is true. 

>...
> Thus I am not advocating that WikiNews use a non-copyleft licence.
> I am only advocating that the Wikimedia Foundation adopt a policy
> that (implicitly is enough) allows for a non-copyleft (but free) licence.

And on that point we will continue to argue. 

> ...
> >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.
> 
> I'm not sure that it's even that bad.  Standard policy with the GNU GPL
> is to place the license in a separate file, and the GNU FDL allows
> aggregates,
> so a newspaper should be able to include several FDL articles in its pages,
> each with the brief statement that its licence may be found on page A2.

The FDL is still several pages long and will take up at least one newsprint
column that could have been used for an advertisement. With the cost of
newsprint, ink, labor, and the small profit margins of most newspapers, I doubt
they would be willing to give up that space (even for no-cost content). This is
a serious issue with the FDL that needs to be fixed. 

> >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.
> 
> The CC 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, like no upgrade clause.
> (Similarly, the GNU 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws,
> but they are much older so we don't remember that. ^_^)
> The CC-sa 2.0 licences now do have an upgrade clause, like the GNU FDL
> (which of course is a very good thing for your GNU FCL proposal).

That is good to hear. 

> >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).
> 
> I wouldn't want to rely on being able to fix the incompatibility,
> so I'd want any interim solution to be viable indefinitely.
> That said, this solution probably ''is'' viable indefinitely.
> If a dual-licensed project ever wants to change to a single licence,
> then it can do so any time that the users wish.

That is a good fallback position. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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