Talk:Wikinews switches to Creative Commons license

Research notes
And now, the notes I took from pages at Meta to help me write this article. Messedrocker 00:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Article: Wikinews switches to Creative Commons license


 * License chosen: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 (CC-BY 2.5)
 * 31 people in favor - majority
 * 27 of those Wikinewsies
 * Other options: Proprietary licenses, GFDL, Creative Commons Sharealike, BSD, Combinations
 * Vote held until September 25, 2005


 * Public domain not good option
 * Doesn't exist in some countries
 * Could lead to plagiarism
 * Public domain could be good choice though
 * Just plain free

Sources:
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll#CC-BY_2.5

I read the Creative Commons license...
...clueless what it all means. -Edbrown05 02:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Public domain
Surely any public statement from any government (not only the US government!) is public domain? Then there are organisations (political parties, campaign groups, thinktanks etc.) who exist in order to engage in public debate - aren't their statements often or always "public domain"? I don't have any issue with the Creative Commons Licence but I'm concerned that we don't overly constrain what can and can not be considered a "public domain" source for Wikinews stories. Rcameronw


 * I'm not sure, but it is US law that US government works are PD. The law doesn't apply to state, county, or municipal works, but if said governments want to make their things PD, then that's their prerogative. However, works of the federal government are definitely in the public domain. —M ESSED R OCKER (talk) 17:14, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The US government (state and federal) is one of the few that releases things into the public domain. In almost all of the other cases you listed the information would be usable under fair use, or because permission has been granted, but it is not public domain. --Cspurrier 15:04, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I personally dislike the decision
I love public domain, and I've considered Wikipedia as a main storefront for what public domain can be. Public domain means that the content is owned by everyone, or anyone, without regards to birth, age, national origin, race, color, height, sexual orientation, religious conviction, or being part of any select group of people. If you happen to be born, if you simply happen to exist, if you're simply a human being, then you have full right to own and acquire a copy of the content yourself without having to attribute consideration, without having to compensate anyone or anything in exchange. In a sense, access to public domain is an inalienable right, at least as long as there is such a thing as public domain. This attempt to introduce Creative Commons whereever Public Domain exists smells like a first step in subverting and completely eliminating public domain itself. In a sense, the use of the ambiguous term Commons instead of very clear term Public is a step in the way of limiting who gets to own. Though the term commons technically means no owner, it's use has generally meant that the owners are the commoners as opposed to the public, the owners are a subset of the public. Note, that unlike limited resources, information cannot suffer from the tragedy of the commons due to overuse, overconsumption, or overexploitation of a limited common resource. Unlike matter, energy, food, parking spots, land, unlike these other things, information has no natural bounds, no limits, no conservation laws. Do not erect artificial limits and barriers unless they are truly needed, and won't significantly damage the value of free access to human knowledge. For one, you, as part of the public, could miss out on the value provided to you, by self educated guys like Faraday, who were self-taught, who stole their information because they were unable to pay for it. Come on, would you like to posthumously convict Faraday for being an intellectual property thief, perhaps even make him wear a pirate-eye-patch? Just how much benefit have we all derived from his vice? There are always two sides to every story, and don't be too overconfident in either stance you take.

The issue with public domain as opposed to private domain is that whoever contributes has less incentive to contribute, because they have no way to draw enough reciprocal benefit, or consideration from it, they don't get enough from the bargaining exchange. In a sense, public domain has been a utopia, that has been surviving too well in real life to be a utopia at all. Thus, according to this point of view, utopias are unsupportable, and wikipedia could become of even higher quality "web service" if its contributors were properly compensated for their effort, because their incentive to contribute would increase, even if it were in form of micropayments.

However, the above stance forgets that there are already plenty of commercial or advertising supported encyclopedias around, with limited access in regards to who is allowed to contribute, and if people flock to wikipedia because it's low cost to them, i.e. free, even if lower quality(disputable) than such commercial encyclopedias, then let them exercise their free will, please. As far as quality is concerned, I find wikipedia to be high quality considering it's done freely, simply out of the goodwill of the contributors. Their compensation is derived in a kind of a social contract - you give a little bit, and you gain a lot in exchange from everybody else giving a little bit. Anybody with a sane mind only contributes realizing the benefit they derive from the quality content, and wishes to donate back in return. Introduce some micropayment system, and the charlatans and money making schemers will suddenly show up, showing you how you can make a million dollars out of 1 cent micropayments, and there goes the public-self-interest-quality succumbing under the pressure of the private-self-interest driven crap you see in email-spam. I find uncompensated emails in my inbox that I received for free, from peers, to be much higher quality than micropayment motivated emails. Sure, I'd love to get paid for my contributions, who wouldn't, but I wouldn't want to pay for access in the first place. And with free access, you can still find me contributing here and there anyway. Also, I derive benefit also from others educating themselves, because chances are they will become more knowledgeable and thus more sensitive to issues affecting other people. A well educated and cultured person has a smaller chance of assaulting and mugging me in a dark alley, however minute the difference education may make, it still does make a difference. I want to live in an well educated society, I consider it a benefit.

I also love wikipedia, because, in a sense, I get to own it myself, and when I see something that could be fixed, I am free to fix it, it's not forbidden. I love being free, and love to be a wikipedia-owner without regards to my birth, age, national origin, race, color, height, sexual orientation, religious conviction, or being part of any select group of people.

The majority of "wealth" or "value" in wikipedia is the content itself, and the current way or reimbursing each other is by contributing content back. Of course this does not provide for hardware to host the wiki pages, nor the network costs, which still require cold cash to be reimbursed in. But I fear if you make wikipedia into a subscription only site, people won't visit it in the first place, therefore they won't ever find themselves urged to contribute, and there goes wikipedia fading into oblivion. Be very careful with this, before you completely squat, choke and destroy such gems as wikipedia.

P.S. After reading the commons page, after looking at the bottom of that page, I realize just how much wikipedia is a system that requires management, to ensure responsibility of users, whether this happens naturally by the other users, the "contingent cooperators" undoing wrongdoings, as I see it happen now - even myself have contributed -, or via some unfortunate central authoritative model, that sanctions users, something that still might be necessary as a last resort if things go too haywire. However, this "commons" concept only applies to the contributions part, to the freedom of expresion part, and not to the consumption part, which anyone should be allowed to do, unless the physical layer such as network bandwidth limits are pushed. Wikipedia is still a reading-intensive site, where a low-bandwidth text is loaded, and one spends quite some time reading through it, digesting it, though a picture is worth a thousand words, so pictures are provided too. If it were by nature, say, a motion picture distribution site, then bandwidth physical limits pitted against free public domain might automatically become a forefront issue. But currently as it is, the wikipedia content should be provided to you as public domain, you're free to do anything you can do with public domain, go ahead, consume, however, the contribution system, now that's a common, where you are required to behave. Content is provided to you under a public domain license, but the contribution system is under a commons-law. The preceding unsigned comment was written by Sillybilly at 17:11, 25 September 2005.
 * um, did you even read the content of the licence? This isn't about the names of PD vs. CC, it's about the legalese behind it. CC and GPDL are designed so that the content remains free and isn't ripped off by the big boys. Without GFDL or CC, we could be working for Microsoft or Britannica and never know. The "tragedy of the commons" is strictly speaking the "tragedy of PD", and CC and GFDL are designed to avert that very tragedy.

GFDL incompatible?
Does this now mean wikinews cannot include wikipedia content? --216.229.237.115 14:55, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes. The GFDL requires derivative works to be copyleft aswell, the CC-BY does not. --Deprifry | +T+ 15:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It also means that a Wikinews article can no longer become a Wikipedia article. Good thing my New Orleans civil engineering article was created while it was still under PD so it could be transferred.  (SEWilco 15:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC))


 * Actually the CC-BY license is one-way-compatible with the GFDL since it only requires attribution, which is guaranteed by the GFDL. So copying Wikinews content to Wikipedia is still possible. --Deprifry | +T+ 15:42, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Ditto. Precisely even before switching Wikipedia article cannot be included into Wikinews as is because of GFDL restriction - if you release something under GFDL, it should be redistributed as GFDL-licenced. Of course, those materials from Wikipedia can be used as quotation (fair use). You can start a Wikipedia article by copying any Wikinews article. Have fun. --Aphaia 13:35, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

The last sentence doesn't make any sense
The last line is currently "Other contributors preferred a public domain license as it could be seen as copyleft without needing licenses."

There is no "public domain license" - the public domain is free from copyrights, so a license cannot have an effect. And what is meant by "copyleft without needing a license"? Public domain can never be copyleft: Copyleft depends on copyright. The person who wrote that sentence either doesn't understand copyright, copyleft, or public domain or they were working too late and made a slip.

I wasn't involved in the license debate, so I can't provide a better sentence, but I'll remove the current sentnece (quoted above) since its quality/meaninglessness/confusion just makes Wikinews look bad. 85.28.66.218 12:05, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree (and it's my sentence). It's been a long week, yerhonour. I was trying to keep as much of the original as possible since I also wasn't involved, but wanted to tidy up. --Iain 01:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

How can a wiki not have a share-alike license?
I don't understand how any wiki could use a license that does not require contributions to be licensed under the same terms. How would one even know whether it is permissible to edit an article under the CC Attribution 2.5 license?
 * I do note understand the decision either.--Kozuch (talk) 06:39, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Then, might I suggest clicking the icon for the license and reading it. CC licenses are not written in painful legalese. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:23, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If you mean creativecommons.org links - these do not tell us why Wikinews do this.--Kozuch (talk) 18:57, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Category
Please add Category:Creative Commons.--Saki (talk) 11:20, 1 July 2010 (UTC)