[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Fri Jun 4 00:13:49 UTC 2004

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
> Certainly we can't blame the Grimm brothers for not copylefting their work.
> But we can observe the consequences of their work's public domain status
> and compare this to what might have happened had it been copyleft instead.

Even if they did the situation for their original work would be the same: It
would have fallen into the public domain by the time Disney got their hands
onto it. 

> >My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those
> >proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never
> be
> >combined to create something better.
> 
> Even in the case of Disney, this is not entirely true!
> Disney's proprietary fork on the Snow White fairy tale
> feeds back to the free storytellers' community in parodies.
> That's not very much, and as I indicated in my previous post,
> I'd be much happier if Disney couldn't create such forks.
> But even this situation is not as absolute as you claim.

When content goes into the public domain anybody can do whatever they want with
it. This is especially fine by me for reference works since by the time its
copyright expires it is already old and probably way out of date. I see nothing
wrong with that. I just want to make sure that before that happens the
reference content Wikimedia creates is protected by copyleft. Eventually all
Wikimedia content will also enter the public domain, but so long as derivative
works are being made, then the most recent and useful versions of that content
will be copyleft. 

> The Disney example isn't ideal; the WikiNews example is better.
> But for that example, you just state, as if you know for a fact,
> that it will be used just as much if it's copyleft as if it isn't.
> The Disney example is a clear case where it would have been used less.
> The fact remains, however, that until you demonstrate that copyleft
> does ''not'' decrease usage, then your argument is not valid.

Hm. Proving a negative. Interesting logic.  Prove to me that UFOs do not exist!
;) 

> Let's go through the argument carefully:
> 
> * There are two free possibilities: copyleft (A) and non-copyleft (B).
> * Under possibility (A), essentially all of the derivative works
>   can be fed back into the original programme.
> * Under possibility (B), some of the derivative works can be fed back,
>   while some of them will become proprietary and thus can not.
> * Conclusion: More deriviative works will be available for positive feedback
>   under (A) than under (B).

Yes, possibility B creates more forks. Exactly my point - thank you for proving
it for me. :) Under possibility B the number of content forks (not just
mirrors) is greatly increased, thus update energy is diluted. Under possibility
A update energy is concentrated on a smaller number of forks and when there are
forks any modifications made to them can be used by all the others. This
reduces duplicated effort and gives more time to create more content (mirrors
will and abridged versions will also propogate all over the place). Let me
illustrate:

All content created by U.S. federal employees as part of their work immediately
goes into the public domain. But this work is very often rather rough and needs
to be fixed and streamlined - which thousands of different organizations and
individuals do (there is a whole industry for this surrounding census and GIS
data). And by default, none of those improvements can be back-ported to improve
the original or any other fork. 

As a matter of fact, I've never heard of this ever happening for federal data
(I'm sure it has, but not on any significant scale I've seen). Yet, by default,
anything under a copyleft license *can* be backported to improve the original
or any other fork. This encourages cooperation and discourages forks. That in
turn increases the number of eyes on any particular version of the content.  

> Now, this conclusion does not in fact follow.
> Here is a conclusion that ''does'' follow:
> * Valid conclusion: A greater proportion of derivative works
>   will be available for positive feedback under (A) than under (B).
> 
> Your original conclusion would then follow from this premise:
> 
> * Just as many derivative works will be made under (A) as under (B).

If I indicated that (which I'm pretty sure I did not), then I was mistaken. See
above why having a greater number of derivative works is a bad thing and why
copyleft discourages that by default whereas PD and attribution-only encourages
it. What matters is the amount of effort that goes into creating the content vs
the number of end users who use the information contained in it. 

> ... 
> In any specific case, there will still be a lot of precedent to overcome
> before Wikimedia puts out anything that doesn't have a copyleft licence.
> But if there's a reason good enough to overcome Wikimedians' objections,
> then it shouldn't have to go through a by-law change as well.

By-laws can be changed by a simple majority of the trustees. If in the future
we find that a particular project, such as Wikinews, isn't doing so well and we
suspect it is the fact that it is using a copyleft license, then a change can
be made to make an exception. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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