[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] GFDL violation in the Wikimedia database dumps

Mon Dec 26 05:52:19 UTC 2005

On 12/25/05, The Hooded Man <hoodedman at shadowedcorner.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from
> > the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not
> > without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of
> > a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative
> > efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.
>
> I think the point is:
>
> 1.) Do you think Wikimedia would do this?
>
> 2.) They would not be able to do this.  A legal fight would be stupid;
> database dumps are publicly available that clearly show full author history.
>
> If Wikimedia wanted to steal the articles, they could delete the entire edit
> history and remove it from all database dumps.  But then people would still
> have them.  It's impossible for them to do that.
>
> 3.) There is nothing that can be legally "stolen".  By writing an article,
> the authors have released their work under the GFDL.
>
> Let's not get into conspiracy theories.

There is no conspiracy theory needed. You ask "would the foundation do
this", but we need to first be clear on what 'this' means.  If 'this'
means treating our authors in any way which is unethical today, I
stand firmly that the answer is clearly no. In the future, I can not
answer because my crystal ball is not that powerful.  If 'this' means
to work to cause changes to be made to future versions of the licenses
which temporarily increase the foundations ease at the expense at
removing the protection of the authors from unethical actions in the
future, I must answer a resounding yes because it is demonstrably
true.

The Wikimedia foundation has been quietly advocating to the Creative
Commons and the Free Software foundations alterations to further
versions of the appropriate licenses which will allow the operators of
websites such as Wikipedia the authority to permit redistribution of
content submitted to their website with attribution to the site rather
than the author of the content.  In effect, the *single* remaining
tangible return an author of freely licensed content receives (their
authorship credit) will be removed and granted to the priesthood of
intellectual property barons who have apparently earned the right to
take credit for the blood and sweat of a world of people because of
their great feat of operating a website.

For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look
at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague
attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These
changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license
flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to
include the changes into the root license with no mention in the
layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change
the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and
would probably too much attention to this difficult issue.  Although
this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one...
For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki
User:Jamesday.

The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being
submitted to  a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has
authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'.  In some cases a
compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective
single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I
contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim
that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official
legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors
simple because they operate a website which is used by that community.
 But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being
swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator
represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the
community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and
representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented
by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship
credit in the world of paper.

Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral
obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand
vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the
lowest cost possible.  This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing
with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug.  Licenses
will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this
prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.

Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy
the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content
would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I
realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both
laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it
leaves me feeling unsure and angry.

I fear that we, the community of authors and spokesmen who support the
propagation of knowledge freely to the world, have become so impatient
with the slowness of achieving our goals that we have begun to take
steps to extinguish the protective flame of decentralization which
immunizes our work from the privatization, exploitation, and
commercial imprisonment by greedy self interests, simply because the
resulting legal obligations of that decentralized existence have
become a temporary hindrance to our important goals.

Such a move to promote the notion that the operator of a
telecommunication service (isn't that what the foundation claims to be
when it invokes the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA as a
reassurance that our negligent handling of copyright matters will go
unpunished) is  granted a special position of unique control over the
creative works by the users of that service will not only be supported
by the operators of Wiki's who are currently so inconvenienced, but it
will also be strongly supported by the newly re-merged
telecommunications giants so eager to exercise their believed right to
extract maximum profit from every bit transferred across their glass.

The words "theft" and "steal" constantly create confusion when applied
to information, it is unfortunate that we use them. You are quite
correct that no one can take away what we already have, but it is
quite possible that through changes in license that powerful interests
will be able to claim special rights over the works of others because
of their ownership of telecommunications infrastructure at least that
is the notion embodied by the proposed license changes.   So that
while you will be free to use the content you helped create, another
group, by virtue of their operation of a telecommunications service,
will be far more free. You can not claim that you are free so long as
there is another group which has more freedom with the work you
created.

Welcome to the new serfdom.

Today we love and trust our telecommunications service providing
masters, but what changes does the future bring?