[Foundation-l] Copies of Wikipedia's articles found on Knol

Fri Aug 1 04:54:26 UTC 2008

Tracy Poff writes:

> It is the position of Creative Commons, as I understand it, that if I
> use a work which is licensed to me under the CC-BY license, I can then
> license my derivative work to others under CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, GFDL,
> or any other license I choose that will preserve attribution of the
> author of the original work--or, indeed, I can choose not to grant any
> license at all to my work when distributing it. It seems to me that
> you are thinking of the sharealike licenses.
>
> See also Question 2.15 of
> http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions

I think this is a great point, but the question here is what "use"  
means. If it means simple duplication, then I don't see any huge  
problem with  Knol-to-Wikipedia transportation, although Wikipedia-to- 
Knol transportation may remain problematic.

Keep in mind that mere duplication is not normally judged to be a  
derivative work, and mere duplication is what started this thread.

But I think you have put your finger on the problem. Everyone agrees  
that free culture means free knowledge. Not everyone agrees that free  
culture means free expression (i.e., the ability of a subsequent user  
to use freely licensed content without any restriction.).

Speaking conservatively, I am not inclined to interpret CC-BY as  
authorizing mere duplication of an article that is then represented by  
a declaration that the content is available under a GFDL or CC-BY-SA  
license.

And, of course, the CC-BY option is, for various reasons, not likely  
to be the dominant license of Knol.

--Mike