Mailing List Archive

Sam Johnston wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
> <cimonavaro@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not that that helps us much, since it is clear
>> we are at the cusp of _creating_ the standards for what will
>> be "customary" for attribution in such quite novel enterprises
>> as Wikipedia.
>>
>
> Exactly. There is nothing 'customary' about massively collaborative
> development of works.


Wikipedia is novel in the degree of how fine grained
the collaboration is. But there are other works that are
somewhat collaborative in nature. And the question
then is where the line is where some special yardstick
should be applied; and is there one, or should we look
more toward the medium used in each specific case.

It is clear we already handle different media on WMF
in differing ways in many respects. Does the number
of contributors on wikipedia really amount to a qualitative
change in our nature? An argument for this view might
be deduced from the migration clauses wording, but
personally I will have to ponder on this issue before
I make my mind up.


> We can lead the way here by opening the work as
> much as possible (or should I say, reasonable) for others to reuse
> rather than locking it up with arduous yet largely useless
> requirements

I really can't agree the requirements would be
useless, if they enable interoperability across
jurisdictions. (of course it hasn't been
exhaustively established yet whether any requirements
would be sufficient or necessary - I think that is what
we are fumbling around with in the dark here)



> (and in doing so creating an opportunity for someone else
> to build 'The Free[er] Encyclopedia').
>
>

Given that the "Free-est Encyclopedia" is going
to be a PD encyclopedia by some peoples lights,
that isn't going to be a consideration, ever, if we
want to remain in the copy-left continuum.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We
>> believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great
>> value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know
>> it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any
>> better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing
>> that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the
>> seven deadly sins.
>>
> And yet, the church has no problem attributing good
> works to saints by name.
>
The difference here is that the church is making these gratuitous
attributions. The saints themselves are too dead to be bothered.

Ec

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On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/1/22 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
>> Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract
>> principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article
>> [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view
>> that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire
>> history would have to be included with every copy of the article.
>> Needless to say, in a print product, this would occupy a very
>> significant amount of space. Needless to say, equally, it's a
>> significant obligation for a re-user. And, of course, Wikipedia keeps
>> growing and so do its attribution records.
>
> Well, the attribution list is about 1/6 the length of the article (in
> terms of bytes). Given that it can be in significantly smaller font
> size, doesn't have lots of whitespace and has no images, it's going to
> take up far less than 1/6 as much space on the page. It will be a
> significant amount of space, but not an impractical one (to the extent
> that copying and pasting into Word gives meaningful results, the
> article takes up 35 pages, the attribution list takes up 2).


Which is fine if you're reprinting the whole article, but what if
you're just reprinting the lede, or some other section of an article?
Should a reuser still be required to reprint 2 pages of credits for a
paragraph of article? That seems onerous. Note that just reprinting a
*section* of an article is how many print reuse cases have worked to
date (the German encyclopedia and our CafePress bumperstickers come to
mind), and this case is not something that we've discussed much so
far.

And having just actually done this, with a real book and a real
publisher, in "How Wikipedia Works," I can attest that it's a
non-trivial amount of work to get author lists for articles --
removing duplication, IPs, formatting, etc is all a good deal of work
-- and I like to think I understand how histories work. It would be a
much bigger task for someone who didn't understand histories or the
license.

The Wikiblame tool, if it were made widely accessible and prominently
integrated into the site, seems like a promising solution. In the
meantime, I think we ought to consider what "proper credit" is for
just reusing a part of an article, versus the whole thing.

-- phoebe

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Anthony wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote
>> Anthony wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, David Goodman wrote
>>>
>>>> I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism.
>>>>
>>> In any case, I find it hard to see how, in this particular context, you
>>> could be proud of your work but not at least prefer your name to be on it.
>>>
>>> If you've achieved something of great value to yourself and to others, isn't
>>>
>>> it better for you, and for everyone, if people know you achieved it?
>>>
>> I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We
>> believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great
>> value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know
>> it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any
>> better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing
>> that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the
>> seven deadly sins.
>>
> Well, David said he *is* proud of his work, so your "seven deadly sins"
> argument apparently isn't the one he was resting on. As for how sharing
> your name is better for everyone, I think it's fairly clear that a work of
> non-fiction is better if you know who wrote it, and further I think it's
> also clear that when someone creates a great work it is beneficial to know
> who created it so that one can find more works by that person. So that's
> how it benefits society.

I wouldn't want to suggest that David was a fallen angel.

Whether you know who wrote a work or not it's still the same work. It's
a non-sequitur to draw the conclusion that you do. Following your line
of reasoning we should all bow down before the Encyclopedia Britannica
and give up Wikipedia because EB is better. Sure, a person who likes
the works of a particular author will seek out more of his works, but
that can be much more about better marketing than a better book.
Where's the benefit to society.
> How it benefits the individual is even more
> obvious, to the point that I don't even think I have to explain it.
>
>
We don't really have a difference about benefit to the individual.

Ec

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So where do things stand?

By my rough count, the relicensing discussion has generated over 300
emails in the last month alone. At least within the limited confines
of people who read this list, I suspect that everyone who has wanted
to offer an opinion has done so. While, I mean no disrespect, much of
what continues to be said strikes me as either repetitious of prior
comments or simply off-topic.

Given that, I would like to ask Erik, Mike, or someone else with the
WMF to comment on what the timetable and process for the next step
will be? At the start of January, the BIG VOTE was tentatively
scheduled to start February 9th. Is that still accurate, or have we
talked ourselves into a delay? Will there be any more expansive
effort to communicate with the various communities before the vote
starts?

Thanks.

-Robert Rohde

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Robert Rohde wrote:
> So where do things stand?
>
> By my rough count, the relicensing discussion has generated over 300
> emails in the last month alone. At least within the limited confines
> of people who read this list, I suspect that everyone who has wanted
> to offer an opinion has done so. While, I mean no disrespect, much of
> what continues to be said strikes me as either repetitious of prior
> comments or simply off-topic.
>

I very much agree. Certainly anything *I* wish to add, is
very much best left off-list.
> Given that, I would like to ask Erik, Mike, or someone else with the
> WMF to comment on what the timetable and process for the next step
> will be? At the start of January, the BIG VOTE was tentatively
> scheduled to start February 9th. Is that still accurate, or have we
> talked ourselves into a delay? Will there be any more expansive
> effort to communicate with the various communities before the vote
> starts?
>
>

Just put a move on; is what I say.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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2009/2/1 Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net>:
> By way of example, I am currently working on a short (8 slide), clean
> presentation, to be licensed under a free license. It contains a slide
> with 8 thumbnail photos of generic pictures (a house, a building, a
> government chamber, a few racks in a datacenter, etc.) and a few
> samples of text. It also contains a picture of one of the original
> google racks which would be less easy to replace. Some of the photos
> have been transformed by others so there are multiple authors.

I doubt there are that many authors and crediting photo authors is not
a major challenge. Indeed in many cases wikipedia would be the long
option ("geni" is shorter than "wikipedia").


> By imposing the attribution requirements (indeed even linking to
> individual articles rather than Wikipedia itself) you are making it
> significantly more difficult for me to make use of the work and more
> likely that I will 'take my business elsewhere'.

Feel free to do so. Getty and Corbis will cost you say $100.

>That damages the
> community and thus the (apparently egotistical) needs of the few
> threaten to impose on the needs of many (both within our community and
> the general public as a whole).

Evidences?

> This type of piecemeal reuse/'remixing' is typical to that of an
> encyclopedia - for example in your average school project.

Your average school project is then a copyvio.

> The authors
> each contributed a small part to individual works which eventually
> became even smaller parts of a larger work. Their contribution at the
> end of the day is negligible and if they feel the need to have school
> kids quoting their name to teachers and the like then I suggest they
> would be better served by the various communities that cater for this
> 'need'.

This is what fair use and fair dealing is for. South Korea also has exceptions.

--
geni

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2009/2/1 Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net>:
> I wasn't aware that anyone was suggesting that we remove attribution
> altogether, just that we attribute Wikipedia as a whole for the sake
> of everyone's sanity, and in consideration of the extremely limited
> (if not negative) value that such mass attributions provide.

That would legally prevent us from importing any material first
published outside wikipedia. It would also legally prevent us from
using any material that is currently in wikipedia or added to
wikipedia before this switchover.




--
geni

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2009/2/2 phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com>:
> Which is fine if you're reprinting the whole article, but what if
> you're just reprinting the lede, or some other section of an article?
> Should a reuser still be required to reprint 2 pages of credits for a
> paragraph of article? That seems onerous. Note that just reprinting a
> *section* of an article is how many print reuse cases have worked to
> date (the German encyclopedia and our CafePress bumperstickers come to
> mind), and this case is not something that we've discussed much so
> far.

Very few articles require a page's worth of credit. Remember even the
German has an average of 23.65 edits per page and the midpoint is
likely much lower.

> And having just actually done this, with a real book and a real
> publisher, in "How Wikipedia Works," I can attest that it's a
> non-trivial amount of work to get author lists for articles --
> removing duplication, IPs, formatting, etc is all a good deal of work
> -- and I like to think I understand how histories work. It would be a
> much bigger task for someone who didn't understand histories or the
> license.

It is true we need an extension built into mediawiki to handle at
least part of this.

> The Wikiblame tool, if it were made widely accessible and prominently
> integrated into the site, seems like a promising solution. In the
> meantime, I think we ought to consider what "proper credit" is for
> just reusing a part of an article, versus the whole thing.
>
> -- phoebe

Legally you are required to credit every author who's work that
section is a derivative of.


--
geni

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2009/2/1 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>:
> So far I have not heard any arguments why the CC-by-sa cannot do this.

It can but can only do this when everyone agrees. Since wikipedia
currently has 282,180,603 edits by people who have not agreed such a
change is imposible.

>I
> have only heard a lot of FUD that I qualify as narcistic. FUD that does not
> contribute to more FREE colloaboration and re-use.

I understand license text and copyright law can be considered FUD by
some however it is FUD that is important.


> The one argument against the CC-by-sa that takes the prize is the notion
> that we will have less influence with Creative Commons ... yet another great
> narcissistic argument.

Not really. The fact is experience shows that every free license has
issues (for example CC-BY-SA 3.0 contains an invariant section clause
although I doubt that was CC's intention). Wikipedia by it's very
nature tends to hit these issues before anyone else. Having influence
means we in theory have a better chance of getting such issues fixed.


--
geni

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On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:23 AM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:
> Very few articles require a page's worth of credit. Remember even the
> German has an average of 23.65 edits per page and the midpoint is
> likely much lower.

True. Although as a caveat remember that people aren't going to be
publishing/printing a bunch of articles that are stubby or immature.
The best articles, and the ones most like to be printed and
distributed off of Wikipedia will likely be the ones that the most
hands have touched. We aren't interested in the average case of all
articles. A better metric would be the average number of edits from
among the various good or featured articles, since these are the
articles that people are going to want to print/distribute.

--Andrew Whitworth

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On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:29 PM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

> > So far I have not heard any arguments why the CC-by-sa cannot do this.
>
> It can but can only do this when everyone agrees. Since wikipedia currently
> has 282,180,603 edits by people who have not agreed such a change is
> imposible.


False. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the [edits of
the] minority who choose to disrupt the community will be quickly and
efficiently purged from it (albeit wasting resources in the process that
could have been better utilised elsewhere).

It is clear that there is a small but vocal minority intent on spreading
'important' FUD and in my opinion these people can't see the forest for the
trees. Fortunately it seems the leadership has a good grasp on community
sentiment and sanity will prevail, with any luck sooner rather than later.

Sam
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2009/2/2 Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net>:
>
> False. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the [edits of
> the] minority who choose to disrupt the community will be quickly and
> efficiently purged from it (albeit wasting resources in the process that
> could have been better utilised elsewhere).

I'm not talking about needs I'm talking about legal rights.

Remember you can't use presumed consent in this situation so if you
wanted to shift the credit to wikipedia you would need to track down
and get agreement from every author (and whoever inherited in the
cases where they have died). Given the amount of content we have from
very occasional contributers this is impossible.

> It is clear that there is a small but vocal minority intent on spreading
> 'important' FUD and in my opinion these people can't see the forest for the
> trees.

Please provide a halfway legal way to do what you propose. And no
moveing wikipedia to Afghanistan is not a valid answer.


--
geni

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Sam Johnston wrote:
> It is clear that there is a small but vocal minority intent on spreading
> 'important' FUD and in my opinion these people can't see the forest for the
> trees. Fortunately it seems the leadership has a good grasp on community
> sentiment and sanity will prevail, with any luck sooner rather than later.

The only one spreading FUD here is you. It is you who continue to insist
that distributing the knowledge while properly crediting the authors is
impossible (fear), without giving any evidence for that. You are also
the one who claims that formal copyright problems are not that important
(uncertainty), while there exist valid concerns that they are. You are
also the one who claim that your opponents are a small but vocal
minority (doubt), again without a shred of evidence.

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On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:58 PM, geni <geniice@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not talking about needs I'm talking about legal rights.
>
> Remember you can't use presumed consent in this situation so if you
> wanted to shift the credit to wikipedia you would need to track down
> and get agreement from every author (and whoever inherited in the
> cases where they have died). Given the amount of content we have from very occasional contributers this is impossible.

Nothing's impossible - where there's a will (and clearly there is[1])
there's a way. Mozilla managed to relicense to GPL years ago[2] (they
had an FAQ too[3]) and there's long been talk about moving the Linux
kernel from GPLv2 to GPLv3[4].

These moves are not easy and can be made significantly more difficult
by individuals (like yourself) working against the spirit of the
community. As Mozilla said in the FAQ, "by doing so you will make [the
work] useful to more people, which may result in others improving [the
work] to make it more useful to you", before going on to explain that
the 'spirit' of the new license was in line with that of the old.

The key difference is that they had only 450 contributors and the vast
majority were contactable. We have orders of magnitude more
contributors, many of whom are anonymous, aliased and/or without
contact details. The best we can do in this case is contact those who
we can, notify those who connect to the site and publish a notice of
our intentions.

So let's get this show on the road... there's been more than enough
compelling debate, academic wankery and downright noise already. Those
who are so concerned about the opinion others hold of them and feel
their right to self-aggrandisement is being trampled on can identify
themselves (and their edits) so as the rest of us can get on with
doing what we set out to do - building the free encyclopedia that
anyone can edit.

Sam

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Transition_to_CC-BY-SA#Discussion
2. http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4155
3. http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html
4. http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/about_gplv3_can_the_linux_kernel_relicense

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2009/2/2 Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net>:
> Nothing's impossible - where there's a will (and clearly there is[1])
> there's a way. Mozilla managed to relicense to GPL years ago[2] (they
> had an FAQ too[3])

"We have sought and obtained permission to relicense from almost
everyone who contributed code to Mozilla up until the date of the new
licensing policy on September 19th 2001. (After that date,
contribution of code was contingent on giving permission to relicense,
if the code was not immediately checked into a tri-licensed file.)
Once we have obtained responses from all the individuals, companies
and organisations concerned, we will relicense those files for which
we have received permission from all copyright holders."

If you think you can get permission from every wikipedia editor you
are free to try.



> These moves are not easy and can be made significantly more difficult
> by individuals (like yourself)

Nah. I'm a minor issue compared to the people who have been
inconsiderate enough to die

>working against the spirit of the
> community.

We are discussing copyright issues ad homs are unhelpful.

> As Mozilla said in the FAQ, "by doing so you will make [the
> work] useful to more people, which may result in others improving [the
> work] to make it more useful to you", before going on to explain that
> the 'spirit' of the new license was in line with that of the old.
>
> The key difference is that they had only 450 contributors and the vast
> majority were contactable. We have orders of magnitude more
> contributors, many of whom are anonymous, aliased and/or without
> contact details. The best we can do in this case is contact those who
> we can, notify those who connect to the site and publish a notice of
> our intentions.

The "best we can do" isn't then enough to meet the requirements of the law.


> So let's get this show on the road... there's been more than enough
> compelling debate, academic wankery and downright noise already.

The past actions of those such as User:Ram-Man make it quite clear
that you are free to ask wikipedians to relicense their content under
any license terms you wish. See
[[template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Tri-2.5]]

>Those
> who are so concerned about the opinion others hold of them and feel
> their right to self-aggrandisement is being trampled on can identify
> themselves (and their edits) so as the rest of us can get on with
> doing what we set out to do - building the free encyclopedia that
> anyone can edit.

I've known people argue that "anyone" should include those living
under Napoleonic code legal systems.

If you want to license your edits so that people can credit you with a
ref to wikipedia feel free to do so. Just don't try and carry out such
a change in the case of those who have not actively agreed to it.

--
geni

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On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 4:11 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> We are discussing all kinds of "arguments" around the license change from
> GFDL to CC-by-sa. I am not impressed at all by the quality of the arguments.
> It seems to me that there are two trains of thought. There are the people
> who want THEIR attribution and who will come up with every conceivable and
> inconceivable argument to get as much personal exposure as possible. On the
> other hand there are the people who do not care that much about their
> attribution, they care more for interoperability, they want to have the best
> license that will ENABLE cooperation and collaboration.

I don't think the trains of thought are that easily separated, but
that's a great observation.

Not entirely relevant given the constraints of this discussion (the
license update one), but it's an interesting question whether legally
required attribution gets one closer to "a world in which every
single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." In
another context (scientific data), CC (its Science Commons project)
decided the answer is definitely no, see
http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/.
Separately, in addition to seeing if there are ways CC licenses can be
improved to facilitate attribution in the context of massively
collaborative works, I'd like to see the eventual next version clarify
how one can waive attribution (CC stopped versioning licenses without
BY long ago for good simplicity and interoperability reasons).
Acknowledging again that this discussion is constrained, it is great
to see consideration of attribution in light of the needs of free
knowledge.

> So far I have not heard any arguments why the CC-by-sa cannot do this. I
> have only heard a lot of FUD that I qualify as narcistic. FUD that does not
> contribute to more FREE colloaboration and re-use. I can understand why the
> shared alike part is deemed to be important. I can understand why commercial
> organisations are not free to just use material in any context. But that is
> all beside the point because it applies equally to either license.

Just in case crazy people read the second to last sentence above in
the future -- neither license puts special restrictions on users based
on their nature, organizational or not, commercial or not. :-)

> The one argument against the CC-by-sa that takes the prize is the notion
> that we will have less influence with Creative Commons ... yet another great
> narcissistic argument.

I don't think that argument is narcissistic at all. Wikimedians either
need lots of influence or very strong reason to believe that the
steward of whatever license used is going to preserve the license as a
vehicle for promoting the goal of free knowledge. I think that with CC
BY-SA you'll get both, but I'm pretty biased, working for CC.

Mike

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On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:

> Anthony wrote:> As for how sharing
> > your name is better for everyone, I think it's fairly clear that a work
> of
> > non-fiction is better if you know who wrote it, and further I think it's
> > also clear that when someone creates a great work it is beneficial to
> know
> > who created it so that one can find more works by that person. So that's
> > how it benefits society.
>
> Whether you know who wrote a work or not it's still the same work.


Maybe, but if a work lists its authors it's not the same work as if it
doesn't.


> Following your line
> of reasoning we should all bow down before the Encyclopedia Britannica
> and give up Wikipedia because EB is better.


Absolutely not. EB has not adapted its model to the Internet at all, and
it's very unlikely it will. Just because there are some things EB does
better doesn't mean it is overall better.

Unless they decided to radically change their model and start over from
scratch, EB will never be the size of Wikipedia. It will never be as
up-to-date as Wikipedia. No, with regard to lack of attribution I think
Wikipedia has to worry much more about Knol than EB. Of course, Wikipedia
has about a 7 1/2 year head start on Knol. Pure momentum might be enough
for it to win that race, if all you care about is being better than your
nearest competitor.


> Sure, a person who likes
> the works of a particular author will seek out more of his works, but
> that can be much more about better marketing than a better book.
> Where's the benefit to society.


Where's the benefit to society in marketing? It's only because of marketing
that many of the products you use can be made, and this is especially true
with intellectual products, which benefit tremendously from economies of
scale. As you youself imply, just having a better book isn't enough. You
have to convince people to try your better book. Life doesn't work like the
Field of Dreams. Honestly promoting your work when you've done a great job
benefits everyone.
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> The only reason that "moral rights" is an issue is its inclusion in the
>> statutes of various countries. It mostly stems from an inflated
>> Napoleonic view of the Rights of Man that was meant to replace the
>> divine rights of kings. Common law countries have been loath to embark
>> in this direction. Moral rights are mentioned in the US law, but only
>> as a toothless tiger.
>>
> I would actually be interested to get the background for
> this interpretation of how moral rights came to happen
> as a legal idea. If there are such references.
>

I couldn't find the reference that I recalled from a couple of years
ago, but I did find some reference to the idea at
http://www.ams.org/ewing/Documents/CopyrightandAuthors-70.pdf in the
section "Some philosophy".

There are profound differences at a very deep level between the rights
of authors in civil law countries and the right to copy in common law
countries. In common law countries copyright has been primarily an
economic right instead of a personal right. It used to be that
copyright disputes were framed between two publishers or between
publisher and author. To the extent that the law was a balance between
interests it was the interests of publishers and authors that were being
balanced. That the using public could have interests was unthinkable
because these users flew below the radar of cost effectiveness. If it
was not economical for a person to infringe copyrights in the first
place, how could it be worthwhile to lobby politicians to have these
rights for the general using public. Today we have a third party whose
interests were never considered in the balance.

> Particularly as the legal reasons in at least Finnish legal
> manuals for laymen who have to deal with moral rights
> seem to focus on the utility moral rights have in terms of
> protecting the artisans reputation as being good at his
> craft.
>

I don't know anything about the history of Finnish jurisprudence, but
that statement seems to draw on the French model. Canada has provisions
for moral rights, but the person claiming that his reputation has been
damaged would have the burden of proving that as well as proving the
amount of damages. If one made a claim for $1,000,000 in damages he
shouldn't expect that it will be granted just because he says so.
> I have great difficulty understanding how the "right to examine"
> could be traced to some grandiose "Rights of Man" basis,
> since the argument presented for this particular moral right is
> clearly grounded on protecting the artisan/artists ability
> to examine their earlier work, to remind them self and
> refresh their memory on methods they had employed on those
> works, and thus enable them to not lose skills and methods
> they had mastered in earlier days.
>

I seem to be misunderstanding something about your stated "right to
examine". Is someone claiming that authors are prevented from examining
their own works?

Ec

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Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The only reason that "moral rights" is an issue is its inclusion in the
>>> statutes of various countries. It mostly stems from an inflated
>>> Napoleonic view of the Rights of Man that was meant to replace the
>>> divine rights of kings. Common law countries have been loath to embark
>>> in this direction. Moral rights are mentioned in the US law, but only
>>> as a toothless tiger.
>>>
>>>
>> I would actually be interested to get the background for
>> this interpretation of how moral rights came to happen
>> as a legal idea. If there are such references.
>>
>>
>
> I couldn't find the reference that I recalled from a couple of years
> ago, but I did find some reference to the idea at
> http://www.ams.org/ewing/Documents/CopyrightandAuthors-70.pdf in the
> section "Some philosophy".
>
> There are profound differences at a very deep level between the rights
> of authors in civil law countries and the right to copy in common law
> countries. In common law countries copyright has been primarily an
> economic right instead of a personal right. It used to be that
> copyright disputes were framed between two publishers or between
> publisher and author. To the extent that the law was a balance between
> interests it was the interests of publishers and authors that were being
> balanced. That the using public could have interests was unthinkable
> because these users flew below the radar of cost effectiveness. If it
> was not economical for a person to infringe copyrights in the first
> place, how could it be worthwhile to lobby politicians to have these
> rights for the general using public. Today we have a third party whose
> interests were never considered in the balance.
>
>
Aye, that is the rub. We aren't really in the job
for just helping different regimes interoperate.
(if I am allowed my sly aside - some of are trying
to pull a fast one to prevent interoperability)

The important thing is, if this change of attribution
*does* in fact go forward, there is no option of saying
it was done out of ignorance. There have been a
number of people who have spelled out the real
legal issues involved. If they are ignored, rather
than addressed, that is the responsibility of those
doing it, not an apathetic community which did not
point out that those issues were real. We have
pointed out those issues, and if they are ignored,
there is no way it can be blamed on an apathetic
community who "allowed" it to happen.

>
>> Particularly as the legal reasons in at least Finnish legal
>> manuals for laymen who have to deal with moral rights
>> seem to focus on the utility moral rights have in terms of
>> protecting the artisans reputation as being good at his
>> craft.
>>
>>
>
>
> I don't know anything about the history of Finnish jurisprudence, but
> that statement seems to draw on the French model. Canada has provisions
> for moral rights, but the person claiming that his reputation has been
> damaged would have the burden of proving that as well as proving the
> amount of damages. If one made a claim for $1,000,000 in damages he
> shouldn't expect that it will be granted just because he says so.
>

Actually there is a more profound difference of legal
systems at work. Finland works on the assumption that
claims of damages are not paramount, but protections
given by law are. So you can be fined, even if you cause
no damage. On the other hand, no ridiculous claims of
damage will give the aggrieved party an inflated
compensation claim, because the Finnish system is
not geared towards rewarding the victim, but only
assuring everybodys rights are protected.


>> I have great difficulty understanding how the "right to examine"
>> could be traced to some grandiose "Rights of Man" basis,
>> since the argument presented for this particular moral right is
>> clearly grounded on protecting the artisan/artists ability
>> to examine their earlier work, to remind them self and
>> refresh their memory on methods they had employed on those
>> works, and thus enable them to not lose skills and methods
>> they had mastered in earlier days.
>>
>>
>
> I seem to be misunderstanding something about your stated "right to
> examine". Is someone claiming that authors are prevented from examining
> their own works?
>
>


The right to examine is a Moral Right that I feel really
does not fit with your over-arching idea that they
are aggrandizing rights and not only utilitarian ones.

If you made a sculpture and sold it off, in many countries
without moral rights, that would be the end of it. Hey,
you were hired to do a job, what more do you want!?

In Finland, you used some useful skills you had gained
from apprenticeship, and study at art colleges, and
even perhaps a sojourn in Paris or Venice. And you
may have even made some hard decisions forced on you
by the material you were sculpting itself. Wow!

Now, picture yourself as the artist some 15 years later.

You are at the doddering limits of decrepitude, but you
still have enough wits to remember you had to make
some hard choices then. A mesenate asks you to make
one last work in that same material. You go and knock
on the door of the person who bought your sculpture.

Under the moral rights "right to examine", the owner
of the sculpture could not turn you away from their door.
They would have to let you see the original work, no matter
if you had used it as a door-stop or as a bedroom ornament.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

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But since most of the contributors to Wikipedia are anonymous, this is
one thing we do not and will never know, regardless of licensing. so
to the extent Wikipedia has any authority it's precisely from the fact
of community editing on a non-personal basis.
Yes, within Wikipedia it's valuable to know who contributed what , and
how the interplay of people (or pseudo-people) takes place. For the
evaluation of Wikipedia from outside, it stands, for better or worse,
on the quality of the community editing.

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote
>>> Anthony wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:14 AM, David Goodman wrote
>>>>
>>>>> I am proud of my work, not of my name being on my work. that's narcissism.
>>>>>
>>>> In any case, I find it hard to see how, in this particular context, you
>>>> could be proud of your work but not at least prefer your name to be on it.
>>>>
>>>> If you've achieved something of great value to yourself and to others, isn't
>>>>
>>>> it better for you, and for everyone, if people know you achieved it?
>>>>
>>> I guess that some of us are nothing more than unrepentant altruists. We
>>> believe that free works belong to everybody. If something is of great
>>> value to you don't need for anyone to tell you that; you already know
>>> it. How does knowing that you produced something make the idea any
>>> better or worse than it would be without that knowledge. How is knowing
>>> that you did it better for everyone? Pride, after all, is one of the
>>> seven deadly sins.
>>>
>> Well, David said he *is* proud of his work, so your "seven deadly sins"
>> argument apparently isn't the one he was resting on. As for how sharing
>> your name is better for everyone, I think it's fairly clear that a work of
>> non-fiction is better if you know who wrote it, and further I think it's
>> also clear that when someone creates a great work it is beneficial to know
>> who created it so that one can find more works by that person. So that's
>> how it benefits society.
>
> I wouldn't want to suggest that David was a fallen angel.
>
> Whether you know who wrote a work or not it's still the same work. It's
> a non-sequitur to draw the conclusion that you do. Following your line
> of reasoning we should all bow down before the Encyclopedia Britannica
> and give up Wikipedia because EB is better. Sure, a person who likes
> the works of a particular author will seek out more of his works, but
> that can be much more about better marketing than a better book.
> Where's the benefit to society.
>> How it benefits the individual is even more
>> obvious, to the point that I don't even think I have to explain it.
>>
>>
> We don't really have a difference about benefit to the individual.
>
> Ec
>
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--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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One thing that has not been brought forward yet in this discussion,
and which I think is important, is that 'author' does not equate
'editor'. It seems many here do go from that assumption in trying to
get the authors of an article. Suppose, an article has the following
edit history:

A starts the page with some text
B adds some text to it
C notes that A's text was a copyright violation, and adds a template
to that effect
D removes all the text of the page (because A's text is a copyright
violations, and B's edits make no sense without it), and replaces it
by a translation from another Wikipedia
Some vandal vandalizes the page
E reverses the vandalism
F adds some interwikis
G corrects 2 spelling mistakes
H adds a paragraph
I adds a picture from Commons.

The _editors_ of the page are A to I and the vandal. But are they also
the authors? I think not. In my opinion the _authors_ are D, H, the
authors of the translated article and the author of the picture.

Having said that, my opinion on this is that I do want to be credited,
but only where my contributions are really major. Not where I made a
'non-authorship' edit, and also not where I made a substantial but
still relatively small edit, for example adding one line to an already
extensive article. The first I don't consider authorship, and the
second I'd be more than happy to be credited as part of "wikipedia
editors". But where a page is essentially written by me with only
insubstantial (though useful) edits by others before and after, I do
want to see my name as the maker or one of the makers. Thus, I'd like
to see some credits similar to the "main credits place" in GFDL, where
a few of the major authors are mentioned, plus "other Wikipedia
editors" or something similar.

--
André Engels, andreengels@gmail.com

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But here's the virtue of contributing to Wikipedia in the first place:
anyone anywhere who wants to see who did what, will go to the actual
Wikipedia and will find your credited contributions, regardless of the
details in subsequent reproductions--as long as they know it's from
Wikipedia.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:06 AM, Andre Engels <andreengels@gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing that has not been brought forward yet in this discussion,
> and which I think is important, is that 'author' does not equate
> 'editor'. It seems many here do go from that assumption in trying to
> get the authors of an article. Suppose, an article has the following
> edit history:
>
> A starts the page with some text
> B adds some text to it
> C notes that A's text was a copyright violation, and adds a template
> to that effect
> D removes all the text of the page (because A's text is a copyright
> violations, and B's edits make no sense without it), and replaces it
> by a translation from another Wikipedia
> Some vandal vandalizes the page
> E reverses the vandalism
> F adds some interwikis
> G corrects 2 spelling mistakes
> H adds a paragraph
> I adds a picture from Commons.
>
> The _editors_ of the page are A to I and the vandal. But are they also
> the authors? I think not. In my opinion the _authors_ are D, H, the
> authors of the translated article and the author of the picture.
>
> Having said that, my opinion on this is that I do want to be credited,
> but only where my contributions are really major. Not where I made a
> 'non-authorship' edit, and also not where I made a substantial but
> still relatively small edit, for example adding one line to an already
> extensive article. The first I don't consider authorship, and the
> second I'd be more than happy to be credited as part of "wikipedia
> editors". But where a page is essentially written by me with only
> insubstantial (though useful) edits by others before and after, I do
> want to see my name as the maker or one of the makers. Thus, I'd like
> to see some credits similar to the "main credits place" in GFDL, where
> a few of the major authors are mentioned, plus "other Wikipedia
> editors" or something similar.
>
> --
> André Engels, andreengels@gmail.com
>
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--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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Here is a WikiBlame tool that serves as a demo:
http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php
I've come up with an algorithm to speed up the search when you don't know
the article title (a case this doesn't handle) but you can't get around
needing a monster index.

The easiest way to do this is to make the LuceneSearch extension grok the
full history dump and then layer the search algorithm on top of it based on
standard Lucene search.

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 11:07 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 2009/1/22 Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org>:
> >> Because I don't think it's good to discuss attribution as an abstract
> >> principle, just as an example, the author attribution for the article
> >> [[France]] is below, excluding IP addresses. According to the view
> >> that attribution needs to be given to each pseudonym, this entire
> >> history would have to be included with every copy of the article.
> >> Needless to say, in a print product, this would occupy a very
> >> significant amount of space. Needless to say, equally, it's a
> >> significant obligation for a re-user. And, of course, Wikipedia keeps
> >> growing and so do its attribution records.
> >
> > Well, the attribution list is about 1/6 the length of the article (in
> > terms of bytes). Given that it can be in significantly smaller font
> > size, doesn't have lots of whitespace and has no images, it's going to
> > take up far less than 1/6 as much space on the page. It will be a
> > significant amount of space, but not an impractical one (to the extent
> > that copying and pasting into Word gives meaningful results, the
> > article takes up 35 pages, the attribution list takes up 2).
>
>
> Which is fine if you're reprinting the whole article, but what if
> you're just reprinting the lede, or some other section of an article?
> Should a reuser still be required to reprint 2 pages of credits for a
> paragraph of article? That seems onerous. Note that just reprinting a
> *section* of an article is how many print reuse cases have worked to
> date (the German encyclopedia and our CafePress bumperstickers come to
> mind), and this case is not something that we've discussed much so
> far.
>
> And having just actually done this, with a real book and a real
> publisher, in "How Wikipedia Works," I can attest that it's a
> non-trivial amount of work to get author lists for articles --
> removing duplication, IPs, formatting, etc is all a good deal of work
> -- and I like to think I understand how histories work. It would be a
> much bigger task for someone who didn't understand histories or the
> license.
>
> The Wikiblame tool, if it were made widely accessible and prominently
> integrated into the site, seems like a promising solution. In the
> meantime, I think we ought to consider what "proper credit" is for
> just reusing a part of an article, versus the whole thing.
>
> -- phoebe
>
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