Mailing List Archive

2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> This is a request for comment. I've posted a draft proposal for the
> license update here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update
>
> It is not intended to be final, but I hope we can arrive at a final
> version by February 1.
>
> We would appreciate questions, comments, feedback. If there are
> obvious edits which you feel would make the proposal clearer, please
> do go ahead and make them, but please be careful about edits that
> substantially alter the proposal itself.
>
> Thanks!
> Erik


"to clarify that attribution via reference to page histories is
acceptable if there are more than five authors."

1)This isn't legal within anything close to the current wording of the page.
2)the methods you would have to use to make this legal make wikipedia
incompatible with other CC works (and also result in the rather
amusing situation of trying to present a URL as an attribution party).
Since they could not be added to a wikipedia page since the external
author would not have agreed to such attribution parties.

While I strongly object to the use of clause 4(c)i by the foundation
on the grounds of principle alone I can see no way a URL can be
considered an attribution party within the context of the license and
thus no way the 4th part of the lead can be legal.
--
geni

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2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:

> 1)This isn't legal within anything close to the current wording of the page.

CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
and 4(c)(iii).

--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
> is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
> attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
> and 4(c)(iii).

4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is through
4(c)(i).

Again lets go through that section you have two things you can attribute to:

"the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied"

However since you reject that we have to move onto the second half:

"if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice,
terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party
or parties;"

So yes you can mess with the attribution requirements using that part
of the clause but trying to define say
"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canal&action=history" as an
Attribution Party is somewhat unreasonable in the context of the
paragraph and in the general legal use of the term party.

Remember even if you do think you can somehow squeeze this though it
still causes issues with wikipedia's habit of deleting things from
time to time and prevent the import of CC-BY-SA 3.0 text from third
parties.

--
geni

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On Wednesday 21 January 2009 03:23:51 Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> > 1)This isn't legal within anything close to the current wording of the
> > page.
>
> CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
> is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
> attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
> and 4(c)(iii).

Don't know about this wording thing, but as a Wikipedia author, I have to say
that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As a
Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same. And as a
programmer, I do not see why is this controversy necessary at all, as a
number of people have presented a variety of solutions that make it possible
to analyse the revisions and extract authors with satisfying accuracy.

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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:57 PM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> > CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
> > is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
> > attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
> > and 4(c)(iii).
>
> 4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
> is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
> attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is through
> 4(c)(i).


How is the foundation not distributing the (independently authored) work?

Attribution methods are first controlled by 4(c) - specifically " reasonable
to the medium or means You are utilizing".

If Mike believes that a URL to the page history for pages with 6 or more
authors is acceptable under the terms of the license, and the Creative
Commons' staff attorney so agrees, then I believe that they have just
defined "reasonable to the medium or means we are utilizing" in minimum
legal terms, at least. If you feel that it's morally repugnant somehow then
we can talk, of course, but I believe that this is both reasonable and on
first glance close to the optimum balance of practical (in the sense of, can
be consistently and legally followed) and ethical (in the sense of, keeping
people's credits as closely associated as we can).


Again lets go through that section you have two things you can attribute to:
>
> "the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied"
>
> However since you reject that we have to move onto the second half:
>
> "if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
> parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
> attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice,
> terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party
> or parties;"
>
> So yes you can mess with the attribution requirements using that part
> of the clause but trying to define say
> "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canal&action=history" as an
> Attribution Party is somewhat unreasonable in the context of the
> paragraph and in the general legal use of the term party.
>
> Remember even if you do think you can somehow squeeze this though it
> still causes issues with wikipedia's habit of deleting things from
> time to time and prevent the import of CC-BY-SA 3.0 text from third
> parties.


If we get common agreement with the CC's attorney and the populace as a
whole that CC-BY-SA-3.0 means (for wikis with 6+ contributors) what we say
it does, then it doesn't prevent any import or have any issue with deleting
things.

If we delete a contribution, from the page text and page history, then that
text is not part of the page that's being served up and to which the license
applies. Legally, CC-BY-SA-3.0 could be fought over by me going in and
taking all your contributions to a page and paraphrasing them, then taking
you out of the "authors list" as you didn't write any text still appearing
on the page. We take a more liberal view- if you contributed, you're in the
history. There are exceptions - we do delete revisions in extremis. But in
general, not one word you wrote can still be in a current article and you
still show up and get credit now. In some cases your ideas may still be
present, in some cases they have all been removed, but you still get credit
except for rare and narrow circumstances.


--
-george william herbert
george.herbert@gmail.com
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu>wrote:

> On Wednesday 21 January 2009 03:23:51 Erik Moeller wrote:
> > 2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> > > 1)This isn't legal within anything close to the current wording of the
> > > page.
> >
> > CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
> > is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
> > attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
> > and 4(c)(iii).
>
> Don't know about this wording thing, but as a Wikipedia author, I have to
> say
> that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As a
> Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same. And as a
> programmer, I do not see why is this controversy necessary at all, as a
> number of people have presented a variety of solutions that make it
> possible
> to analyse the revisions and extract authors with satisfying accuracy.
>


I disagree. The technical analysis misses contributions which remain in
conceptual form (layout of a page, sections completely rewritten but not
reconceptualized). It also is error prone. Original authorship of text
returned to an article by later editors after it's deleted by an
intermediate editor is often hard to properly automatically trace, as it can
require n-way compares with n large.

There's nothing wrong with this method of attribution - it's better than we
have or require now. It's less than what GFDL says it requires, sure, but
Wikipedia has never held to the letter of that, and anyone who's contributed
to Wikipedia once they were aware of that can be held to have implicitly
waived that particular GFDL clause in favor of "what we're actually doing".

This improves what we actually do. Why would you think it's worse?


--
-george william herbert
george.herbert@gmail.com
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George Herbert wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu>wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 21 January 2009 03:23:51 Erik Moeller wrote:
>>> 2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
>>>> 1)This isn't legal within anything close to the current wording of the
>>>> page.
>>> CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
>>> is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
>>> attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
>>> and 4(c)(iii).
>> Don't know about this wording thing, but as a Wikipedia author, I have to
>> say
>> that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As a
>> Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same. And as a
>> programmer, I do not see why is this controversy necessary at all, as a
>> number of people have presented a variety of solutions that make it
>> possible
>> to analyse the revisions and extract authors with satisfying accuracy.
>
> I disagree. The technical analysis misses contributions which remain in
> conceptual form (layout of a page, sections completely rewritten but not
> reconceptualized). It also is error prone. Original authorship of text

There is no one single technical analysis. There are various methods of
analysis proposed, including ones that could identify changes to layout
without change of contents. Either way, it is better to identify authors
99% of the time, than not to identify them at all.

> There's nothing wrong with this method of attribution - it's better than we

Yes, there is. I am an author, and I do not consider this method of
attribution appropriate.

> have or require now. It's less than what GFDL says it requires, sure, but
> Wikipedia has never held to the letter of that, and anyone who's contributed
> to Wikipedia once they were aware of that can be held to have implicitly
> waived that particular GFDL clause in favor of "what we're actually doing".

Translation: what we are doing right now is wrong and no one complains
too loudly, therefore we may get away with being even more wrong in the
future.

> This improves what we actually do. Why would you think it's worse?

No it doesn't. For example, German Wikireaders are published with a list
of all the authors at the end, and after this change they wouldn't have
to be.

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On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:09 AM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu> wrote:

> Translation: what we are doing right now is wrong and no one complains
> too loudly, therefore we may get away with being even more wrong in the
> future.
>

No, what we are doing now is not wrong. What we're doing now is uniformly
and universally accepted in the en.wp community and nearly all the rest of
them. Claiming that it's wrong is like calling black white.

It is not entirely consistent with the as-written text of the license. But
it is not wrong. It is what it is, and millions of people, knowing what it
says and means, have contributed.


> > This improves what we actually do. Why would you think it's worse?
>
> No it doesn't. For example, German Wikireaders are published with a list
> of all the authors at the end, and after this change they wouldn't have
> to be.
>

I don't know that listing thousands of authors on popular pages is an
improvement over a link saying "Many people wrote and edited this and you
can click <here> to see them all".

We're not a co-author credit factory. CC-BY-SA isn't an ego trip for
thousands of co-contributors. These are inappropriate uses for article
space and page display space.

I want anyone to know what I wrote in Wikipedia, which they can find... by
clicking on either a page history, or my account's Special:Contributions
page. I don't want anyone to have to wade through a thousand names at the
bottom of the article. The new license matches the technical code as
written, and community expectations of the biggest WP communities and the
vast bulk of the WP communities. One community among many can't stand up
and block a new license on the grounds that it's not widely expressive
enough.

If de.wp community wants to keep displaying more authors, nothing in the
license keeps you from doing so. But, that's wierd, and wrong, and you
should not try and impose it on the rest of us. And trying to keep it out
of the license approaches the level of active evil.


--
-george william herbert
george.herbert@gmail.com
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George Herbert wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:09 AM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu> wrote:
>> Translation: what we are doing right now is wrong and no one complains
>> too loudly, therefore we may get away with being even more wrong in the
>> future.
>
> No, what we are doing now is not wrong. What we're doing now is uniformly
> and universally accepted in the en.wp community and nearly all the rest of
> them. Claiming that it's wrong is like calling black white.

Something could be uniformly and universally accepted, and still wrong.
This is one of such things.

Anyway, you are missing the point entirely. Online, where everything is
a click away, having a link to the article history is practically the
same thing as reproducing the list of authors. Of course, it would be
even better if we would have the ability to display a list of authors,
better still if we could somehow separate major and minor contributors
and so on.

But the issue here is appropriate attribution offline. It is proposed
that appropriate attribution in a print work is a printed URL of the
list of authors. Me and other people believe that this isn't actually
appropriate.

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On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:29 AM, George Herbert <george.herbert@gmail.com>wrote:

> I don't know that listing thousands of authors on popular pages is an
> improvement over a link saying "Many people wrote and edited this and you
> can click <here> to see them all".
>

What popular page has thousands of authors? Are you counting reverted
vandals, or something?
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update


"the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License"

There are over 100 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licenses.
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The CC wrote this license and are likely to be considered authorities if there was ever a court case. If their lawyer says this is acceptable, its probably acceptable.




________________________________
From: geni <geniice@gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 6:57:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
> is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
> attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
> and 4(c)(iii).

4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is  through
4(c)(i).

Again lets go through that section you have two things you can attribute to:

"the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied"

However since you reject that we have to move onto the second half:

"if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice,
terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party
or parties;"

So yes you can mess with the attribution requirements using that part
of the clause but trying to define say
"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canal&action=history" as an
Attribution Party is somewhat unreasonable in the context of the
paragraph and in the general legal use of the term party.

Remember even if you do think you can somehow squeeze this though it
still causes issues with wikipedia's habit of deleting things from
time to time and prevent the import of CC-BY-SA 3.0 text from third
parties.

--
geni

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Maybe people don't want to spend 2 hours sorting out authors? Also, the history link allows someone to look at every single contribution,




________________________________
From: Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:09:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

George Herbert wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu>wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 21 January 2009 03:23:51 Erik Moeller wrote:
>>> 2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
>>>> 1)This isn't legal within anything close to the current wording of the
>>>> page.
>>> CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
>>> is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
>>> attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4(c)(i)
>>> and 4(c)(iii).
>> Don't know about this wording thing, but as a Wikipedia author, I have to
>> say
>> that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As a
>> Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same. And as a
>> programmer, I do not see why is this controversy necessary at all, as a
>> number of people have presented a variety of solutions that make it
>> possible
>> to analyse the revisions and extract authors with satisfying accuracy.
>
> I disagree.  The technical analysis misses contributions which remain in
> conceptual form (layout of a page, sections completely rewritten but not
> reconceptualized).  It also is error prone.  Original authorship of text

There is no one single technical analysis. There are various methods of
analysis proposed, including ones that could identify changes to layout
without change of contents. Either way, it is better to identify authors
99% of the time, than not to identify them at all.

> There's nothing wrong with this method of attribution - it's better than we

Yes, there is. I am an author, and I do not consider this method of
attribution appropriate.

> have or require now.  It's less than what GFDL says it requires, sure, but
> Wikipedia has never held to the letter of that, and anyone who's contributed
> to Wikipedia once they were aware of that can be held to have implicitly
> waived that particular GFDL clause in favor of "what we're actually doing".

Translation: what we are doing right now is wrong and no one complains
too loudly, therefore we may get away with being even more wrong in the
future.

> This improves what we actually do.  Why would you think it's worse?

No it doesn't. For example, German Wikireaders are published with a list
of all the authors at the end, and after this change they wouldn't have
to be.

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Anthony writes:

> "the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License"
>
> There are over 100 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licenses.

[citation needed]


--Mike




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Attribution by reference to a URL only seems reasonable for online
reuse to me. For content added directly to Wikimedia projects, you may
be able to get by with including permission to do so in the terms of
service, but for 3rd party content that doesn't work. If I write
something on another site, release it under CC-BY-SA, and it is them
incorporated into a Wikipedia article which is then printed and bound
in a book, I expect my name (or pseudonym) to appear in that book. I'm
easy going when it comes to the exact details of how it is included in
that book, but I expect it to be there. Nothing else seems reasonable
to me.

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On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Anthony writes:
>
>> "the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License"
>>
>> There are over 100 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licenses.
>
> [citation needed]

There are 74 due to versioning and jurisdiction ports, see
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/index.rdf

Apologies for lack of an HTML version of that list.

In any case, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update and all
previous discussion I've seen makes it clear the specific license
considered is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Everywhere CC BY and BY-SA licenses are currently used (Wikinews and
Commons) care has been taken to cite the specific version used. I
would be incredibly surprised if the same care was not exercised if
BY-SA is adopted as the main content license.

Mike

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On Wednesday 21 January 2009 17:50:38 Mike Godwin wrote:
> Anthony writes:
> > "the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License"
> >
> > There are over 100 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licenses.
>
> [citation needed]

Given various versions and localisations, this may well be true :)

Of course, no one is suggesting that it should be any other version than
CC-BY-SA-3.0. But perhaps it should be considered if it should be
CC-BY-SA-3.0-unported or CC-BY-SA-3.0-US? Or perhaps where possible each
project should use its own localised version of CC-BY-SA?

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On Wednesday 21 January 2009 17:28:23 Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> Maybe people don't want to spend 2 hours sorting out authors? Also, the
> history link allows someone to look at every single contribution,

How does the history link allow someone to look at every single contribution,
when they don't want to spend 2 hours sorting out authors?

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2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> 4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
> is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
> attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is through
> 4(c)(i).

You are making an unsupported assertion. CC-BY-SA is precisely
structured (as are all BY licenses) to support attribution URIs; that
is why 4(c)(iii) exists. CC metadata standards allow for attribution
URIs [1], and when you license a work through the CC website, you can
specify an attribution URI as an alternative to a name. You are
confused by the attribution parties clause; it has nothing to do with
the explicit provisions for URIs.

[1] http://creativecommons.org/ns
[2] http://creativecommons.org/license/
--
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Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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Mike Linksvayer wrote:

>>> There are over 100 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike
>>> Licenses.
>>
>> [citation needed]
>
> There are 74 due to versioning and jurisdiction ports, see
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/index.rdf

That sounds more likely than "over 100," although the relevance of the
total number is difficult to see, given that the only class of CC-BY-
SA licenses we'd be working with is CC-BY-SA 3.x.

> In any case, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update and all
> previous discussion I've seen makes it clear the specific license
> considered is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Yes.

> Everywhere CC BY and BY-SA licenses are currently used (Wikinews and
> Commons) care has been taken to cite the specific version used. I
> would be incredibly surprised if the same care was not exercised if
> BY-SA is adopted as the main content license.

Of course.

See also rms's excellent discussion of the issue at http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2008-12-fdl-open-letter/
.

It's hard to make the argument that CC-BY-SA 3.0 is somehow weaker
than GFDL when Stallman himself thinks it isn't.


--Mike





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2009/1/20 Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@eunet.yu>:
> Don't know about this wording thing, but as a Wikipedia author, I have to say
> that I do not think that attributing me in this way is sufficient. As a
> Wikimedian, I believe that a lot of people will feel the same.

That's probably true, Nikola. The proposed attribution language is
intended to balance the various positions (ranging from 'an URL should
always be fine' to 'names should always be given'), the established
practices, and the language of the GFDL (principal author
requirement). Our hope is that a strong majority will recognize the
value of such a compromise, and the improvement over current state:
huge complexity for re-users, legal barriers between groups that
should be able to cooperate, inconsistent and confusing
interpretations of the rules.

And I don't think we can or should take the easy way out and not make
a decision as to what the terms of re-use should be. But any decision
is likely to offend a sub-group of people who feel it's going too far,
or not far enough. Nor do we have complete freedom to pick any
solution we want: we need to make an effort to be consistent with past
practices. So there will be a certain degree of unhappiness, as is
always the case when a time period of inconsistency and arbitrary
standards is followed by a time period of equal and shared standards.
(The same happened, as you will recall, after the Board implemented a
licensing policy prohibiting NC licenses, etc.)

I realize that some community guidelines have asked or encouraged
print re-users to include a complete list of usernames alongside
articles. (This, by the way, does not satisfy the GFDL's history
inclusion requirement.) Under the proposed language, that would
continue to be necessary for articles which have no more than five
authors. The proposed language recognizes the value of direct name
attribution in those instances: for articles that are essentially the
work of just one or two people; for static multimedia works; etc. It
is consistent with the GFDL's standards of visible byline attribution
through naming the principal authors of a document.

There are various problems with making a distinction between print and
online use when it comes to name inclusion. The first problem is that
there are related questions which immediately pop up: Is it reasonable
for a one page print document to have half a page or more of author
metadata? Is it reasonable for a t-shirt to have to include a metadata
text-block? Is a DVD substantially different from a print product? Is
a screen in a flight information system? So in order to deal with
those cases, you start making more complex rules which, again,
discourage meaningful re-use. This in spite of the fact that the
usernames we are talking about, in a large number of cases, will only
be unambiguous and meaningful if resolved to username URIs; the extent
of their contributions can only be meaningfully ascertained when
reviewing a page history.

That's why I think history or credit URIs are a reasonable attribution
mechanism for works that are the result of the work of many people. I
also feel that they represent a compromise between your position and
that of others who have contributed.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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2009/1/21 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> 2009/1/20 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
>> 4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
>> is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
>> attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is through
>> 4(c)(i).
>
> You are making an unsupported assertion. CC-BY-SA is precisely
> structured (as are all BY licenses) to support attribution URIs; that
> is why 4(c)(iii) exists.

So you are claiming that it is section 4(c)(iii) that makes your
approach valid. First problem comes with the opening to section 4(c)

"You must ... keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and
provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing:"

That is an and command not an or. You have to meet everything from
4(c)(i) to 4(c)(iv)

Still lets pretend you can treat 4(c)(iii) as the sole credit clause

"to the extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that Licensor
specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not
refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work;
and"

First problem is that it clearly isn't a credit clause (since the
license repeated views copyright notices and credit as two separate
things) now it is possible we could consider "licensing information"
to include credit but I find that definition highly questionable. Then
there is the "to the extent reasonably practicable" bit. By claiming
4(c)(iii) is a credit clause you are arguing that credit only need be
given "to the extent reasonably practicable" rather than as an
absolute credit must be given (in a form reasonable to the medium or
means). Yet again this is completely unacceptable.


> CC metadata standards allow for attribution
> URIs [1],

It allows it but not in the way you are suggesting.
cc:attributionName and cc:attributionURL are separate variables. Yes
someone can put a URL into cc:attributionName but most wikipedians
have pseudonyms or names that don't qualify as URLs

>and when you license a work through the CC website, you can
> specify an attribution URI as an alternative to a name.

And you would be allowed to do exactly the same on wikipedia if the
account creator didn't blacklist all URLs. That people can chose an
URL as a pseudonym doesn't help your case at all.


--
geni

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> There are various problems with making a distinction between print and
> online use when it comes to name inclusion. The first problem is that
> there are related questions which immediately pop up: Is it reasonable
> for a one page print document to have half a page or more of author
> metadata? Is it reasonable for a t-shirt to have to include a metadata
> text-block? Is a DVD substantially different from a print product? Is
> a screen in a flight information system? So in order to deal with
> those cases, you start making more complex rules which, again,
> discourage meaningful re-use. This in spite of the fact that the
> usernames we are talking about, in a large number of cases, will only
> be unambiguous and meaningful if resolved to username URIs; the extent
> of their contributions can only be meaningfully ascertained when
> reviewing a page history.

A lot of the problems you are having there are because you are trying
to group things into "print" and "online". The correct dichotomy is
"online" and "offline". Of course you are going to have problems
classifying DVDs if your classifaction systems assumes all electronic
data is only available on the internet. I don't see a problem with
listing authors in fairly small print on the back of a t-shirt, seems
perfectly reasonable to me. If instead of names there's just a URL on
the t-shirt, does that mean I can't where it in China since people
seeing it won't have any way (without significant technical know-how)
to view the list of authors?

People choosing to submit work under a pseudonym have clearly
indicated that they are happen to be attributed under that pseudonym,
I don't see any need to provide context. (It's good to do so where
practical, of course.)

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On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin@wikimedia.org> wrote:

>
> Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>
> >>> There are over 100 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike
> >>> Licenses.
> >>
> >> [citation needed]
> >
> > There are 74 due to versioning and jurisdiction ports, see
> > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/index.rdf
>
> That sounds more likely than "over 100," although the relevance of the
> total number is difficult to see, given that the only class of CC-BY-
> SA licenses we'd be working with is CC-BY-SA 3.x.
>

Over 100 might have been a slight exggeration - I guesstimated rather than
counting each one. The total number is completely irrelevant though, Mike,
other than the fact that it's more than 1. You should spell things out
before you have people work on them.

There are over 1 different versions of CC-BY-SA 3.x. (I believe there are
over 30 of them too, but I don't care to count them.)

> In any case, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update and all
> > previous discussion I've seen makes it clear the specific license
> > considered is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
>
> Yes.
>

As in CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported? You know, the one that says "You must not
distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the
Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or
reputation"?

That'll be a hilarious license to use on the encyclopedia that anyone can
mutilate, modify or take derogatory action in relation to.

> Everywhere CC BY and BY-SA licenses are currently used (Wikinews and
> > Commons) care has been taken to cite the specific version used. I
> > would be incredibly surprised if the same care was not exercised if
> > BY-SA is adopted as the main content license.
>
> Of course.


It'd be nice if this were spelled out before removing "this page is still a
draft" from the proposal, and in particular, before voting begins.

"All text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike
License." "By submitting an edit, you agree to release your contribution
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License..."
"If you make modifications or additions to the page or work you re-use, you
must license them under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike
License." "You may import content from other sources that is available under
the CC-BY-SA license only" What version(s), and what jurisdiction(s)?

It's hard to make the argument that CC-BY-SA 3.0 is somehow weaker
> than GFDL when Stallman himself thinks it isn't.
>

What about the argument that the differences between licenses can't be
judged on a one-dimensional scale of weak vs. strong?
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