Edge of the Creative Commons (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#11

Post by hdevalence » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:24 PM UTC

putlake wrote: post #10

I'm the founder of a wiki so I know some of these legal issues better than most (although, of course IANAL). Typically how this is supposed to work is: Wiki's terms of use say (1) Users own the copyright to their contributions (authors always do; TVTropes appropriating this is not right) (2)Users grant wiki a non-exclusive irrevocable license to do use the content in any way Wiki likes, including specifically a right…

What the article points out is that (2) is actually not the case, which is why the question arises.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#12

Post by mikeash » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:26 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #3

This is 6 months old, so it doesn't seem like it went anywhere. Probably because the greater internet has no motivation to oppose moving content to a non-commercial license.

I think it speaks to a different mindset from what we as programmers are used to.

Licensing is a pretty big deal for us. Virtually every programmer has some sort of opinion on GPL vs BSD vs public domain vs whatever. Open source projects can live or die because of their license.

Wikis are basically open source projects with natural language instead of code. But I get the impression that few wiki contributors care that much about licenses.

If I had to guess, I'd say that it's because code is more modular and flexible. If you write a useful open source library, the license you put on it can have huge implications for what products end up using it. There's no wiki equivalent to e.g. large quantities of BSD code being used to build a smartphone that sells hundreds of millions of units.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#13

Post by mikeash » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:29 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #4

What about the attribution clause? If I copy an article from a CC-BY-* wiki, am I expected to cite every contributor? That doesn't seem reasonable. How does Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA) deal with this?

I'm curious, why would it be unreasonable to cite every contributor to an article you copy? They are the ones who made it, and it only seems reasonable to me to give credit where it's due.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#14

Post by LukeShu » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:37 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #13

TillE wrote: post #4

What about the attribution clause? If I copy an article from a CC-BY-* wiki, am I expected to cite every contributor? That doesn't seem reasonable. How does Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA) deal with this?

I'm curious, why would it be unreasonable to cite every contributor to an article you copy? They are the ones who made it, and it only seems reasonable to me to give credit where it's due.

Because the list can be huge. It's not unlikely that the list of contributors is longer than the article.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#15

Post by zokier » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:39 PM UTC

putlake wrote: post #10

I'm the founder of a wiki so I know some of these legal issues better than most (although, of course IANAL). Typically how this is supposed to work is: Wiki's terms of use say (1) Users own the copyright to their contributions (authors always do; TVTropes appropriating this is not right) (2)Users grant wiki a non-exclusive irrevocable license to do use the content in any way Wiki likes, including specifically a right…

> Wiki is legally within its rights to change the licensing of its content.

Would be if they had proper terms of use/service in place. But TVtropes has no terms as far as I can see, which makes the situation whole lot muddier. Basically we are working on an implicit grant of rights to TVtropes from content authors. The disagreement stems on what those rights include.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#16

Post by perlpimp » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:48 PM UTC

It seems that contributors care about availability of the content most, licencing issues less so. There are mirror tropes wikis so I don't see a problem. Clone that data and run your own version if you like.

http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

That move is a bit scummy, but then they are in the business and best business is one that delivers profit at least cost.

my 2c

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#17

Post by drdaeman » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

putlake wrote: post #10

I'm the founder of a wiki so I know some of these legal issues better than most (although, of course IANAL). Typically how this is supposed to work is: Wiki's terms of use say (1) Users own the copyright to their contributions (authors always do; TVTropes appropriating this is not right) (2)Users grant wiki a non-exclusive irrevocable license to do use the content in any way Wiki likes, including specifically a right…

For (2) you need users consent to that. That generally means, such provision must be reasonably visible and explained to user when he registers or starts editing. Linked post had shown the only thing user seems to consent before she could start editing to is that she's over 13 years old.

Edit: Oh, also. Everyone, please don't downvote parent post. While one may well disagree with what it says, that post is certainly relevant to the discussion, so pushing it down the comments page isn't a good idea. Even if what said there is plain wrong.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#18

Post by blueskin_ » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:54 PM UTC

TV Tropes is total crap now. I also departed around the time of one of the big censorship debacles, and honestly, don't miss it.

PS. thanks for indirectly sharing a link to All The Tropes (linked author's fork of TVTropes) too; might have a poke around there.

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#19

Post by mikeash » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

LukeShu wrote: post #14

mikeash wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, why would it be unreasonable to cite every contributor to an article you copy? They are the ones who made it, and it only seems reasonable to me to give credit where it's due.

Because the list can be huge. It's not unlikely that the list of contributors is longer than the article.

Storage is cheap, and you can stash the list away somewhere that doesn't interfere with the main content, so what does that matter?

Re: Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

#20

Post by blueskin_ » Thu, May 15, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #6

TillE wrote: post #4

What about the attribution clause? If I copy an article from a CC-BY-* wiki, am I expected to cite every contributor? That doesn't seem reasonable. How does Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA) deal with this?

Because Wikipedia makes the complete edit history of every page available, they suggest simply giving a link to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_co...

Wouldn't giving a pointer to the specific point in the edit history you sourced it from (so people can dig backwards if they care to) be enough? I'd have guessed so (IANAL, etc.).