What part of this is copyrighted? There was material there before the copyright notice was included. Much of the material was added by the city and state bot. If we're going to include copyright notices we need to indicate which PARTS are copyrighted? -- Zoe
Originally there was an invalid copyright notice (which was changed). I removed the notice from the article since it is redundant. It has been made clear that no one "owns" Wikipedia. I asked Bryce to change the notice to make it at least compatible when I wanted to add to it. -- Ram-Man
Intellectual property law reminds me of Lord Buckley[?]'s description of the bear dance,
I just say remove the notice. The notice by Bryce was originally inconsistent with Wikipedia but no longer. As I see it, just delete it. -- RM
Ed Poor says: Let's remember what it says below the "Save page" button:
There appears to be some misunderstanding regarding licensing and copyrights here. Licenses and copyrights are two different, orthogonal things. Legally, ALL material written by authors is by default copyrighted by them, unless they either explicitly state it is in the public domain, or formally sign it over to a legally registered organization (such as GNU or FSF). Often, "copyright" is used to inhibit sharing of information and to restrict the ability to make changes and re-share it, and thus it is understandable how people view it as a negative (or even evil) thing.
An "open source" style license such as the GPL or GFDL, is crafted in such a way as to use copyright against itself. That is, the license grants back the rights that are generally taken *away* by copyrights. For this reason, the practice of including a copyright statement and license grant such as the one I used is called "copylefting".
Of course, one will recognize that if the entire document - including the copylefting statement - is allowed to be modified, then what is to prevent someone from simply deleting the copylefting statement? This is why in copylefting one often says something like "anything can be changed except this license grant". I believe this is one of the reasons that the GFDL includes provision for invarient sections, and is the reason I used it in this case.
I don't believe that the original licensing statement was invalid. In fact, the reason I did it was to bring awareness to this issue, as a sort of example to make people think more about what is legally required in order to protect both wikipedia and the contributing authors under the GFDL.
The reason I removed the "invarient" clause was simply because I did not wish to see this devolve nuttiness, not because I agreed with the editor's assertion. As someone else pointed out, this was a short article and not really worth the stress and time to explain. I assumed if I removed the clause that was scaring people, then that would be that. I didn't imagine that someone would be so brazen as to remove the copyright entirely.
I know and understand that many people are of the philosophy that all information should be authorless and therefore unowned and, presumably, ownerless. It can certainly be said with confidence that the copyright system has been abused almost to the point of worthlessness. But one should not deny the fact that even if it is complicated and confusing to you, copyright law *is* law. But even more importantly, one needs to understand the whole premise of open source, and how it uses copylefting to directly use the law to subvert the law.
Deletion of my copyright statement on the article is in error, and not legally permissable. Please read section 2 of the GFDL. It is quite explicit that these *must* be retained in order for the material to be legally used. In fact, you all would do well to review the Wikipedia:Copyrights page. If there is any uncertainty or lack of clarity, I would encourage you to write to RMS and ask for the clarification directly. Heck, maybe it's me who is misunderstanding the licensing terms after all, even though it looks pretty darn explicit.
Let me be clear - you guys are *way* overreacting. ;-) I was simply trying to make a point about the importance of including copylefting statements, and to hopefully bring better awareness of Wikipedia's written policies on the subject. The assertion that my contributions were "mundane" and that I don't "deserve" to hold my copyright is disingenious. The statement that "it will be rewritten to not have copyrighted material" is in error - all material, even the stuff written to replace mine, is by default copyrighted. The difference is that now it is ambiguous and indeterminate as to who the copyright is owned by; some may view that as a plus, I suppose, but it's not legal, and provides Wikipedia with less traceability and copyright protection than if it were explicitly stated.
Since the copyright statement that the material had been submitted under was removed, that action made it impermissable for Wikipedia to use it; I have thus removed the material. I have to say I'm rather stunned to learn it is common practice to delete these statements - is it even legal to do that? Wow. You guys ought to doublecheck with RMS on that.
This is actually "experiment #2". The first was a much longer article titled "Manifest Destiny". I had used the same copyright statement, and it came to the attention of LDC. After a long and productive discussion about this and about the effect it had on Wikipedia's future, LDC agreed that it was important for Wikipedia to properly manage this information. We agreed that it would be superior for the software to manage these notices instead of having to embed them in the page itself. He committed to making the software changes to do this, and we agreed that the copylefting could then be moved there. Unfortunately, this has not been done, and instead someone simply deleted my copylefting there anyway (which is kind of exasperating). The talk page of Manifest Destiny contains a summary of the compromise that had been reached. LDC is very knowledgeable in IP law and is in fact a strong opponent to the whole idea of copyrights and information ownership, and tends to prefer things be in the public domain, so the fact that we reached the compromise that we did suggests to me that the point I am making here is correct and worth more consideration than it is being given.
The assertion that the original copylefting was inconsistent with Wikipedia is not correct; in fact quite the opposite - it stated explicitly what is normally implicit anyway. I find it rather humorous that people find it scary to see the terms under which they are already submitting material stated clearly on someone else's page. ;-)
Similarly, calling the material "putatively protected" is nutty. It's the _same terms_ that everything else is covered under, and is no differently protected, except perhaps more clearly.
The statement that a copylefting statement is "merely a sig" kind of misses the entire point. I do believe that you should allow authors to put their names to their work; to me it seems this would encourage them to strive for higher quality and do better research. But that's a whole other line of argument, better made in a different way.
I had hoped in doing this that it would engender a positive discussion about the topic of author attributions and license grant statements, with the hopes of helping Wikipedia better deal with the careful copyrighting of its material. I had expected a little acrimony, since that's sort of the 'norm' for Wikipedia these days (unfortunately). But this interaction has felt very aggressively impolite and disrespectful. Instead of asking me why it was done, and given time to have my say, I was ordered to "adapt or else", and then when I obeyed (even though I believe I was following the rules to the letter), I still got the "or else".
I don't care whether or not I have a copylefting or my name on this particular article. What I do care about is that the need for copylefting and retention of author attribution and explicit license grant not be ignored. And something I care even more deeply about is that editors treat authors fairly and with some respect, because if that is not possible, how can the project retain good contributors?
-- BryceHarrington (bryce at neptune.net)
I'm going to delete everything this nut contributes, unless he drops this stupid copyright thing. (Not you, Ortolan, the other guy). If he is quoting from his own copyrighted work, that's fine. We'll take a fair use quote, and he can send Jimbo a letter of release to that effect, which he'll keep on file somewhere.
But if he's releasing his contribution under the GNU Free Documentation License, then no special notice is required. Submitting the text is all the legal record he'll ever need to ensure that the entire world will get the benefit of reading and changing his stirling prose.
In short, give it to us and we'll keep it safe. Or don't give it to us at all, buddy. --Ed Poor
Bryce is not a nut. He just believes that our statement on the Edit Page:
is not sufficient to guarantee that published pages are actually under the GNU FDL. I and most others disagree, but we now have an automatic short FDL notice under articles, which should satisfy Bryce. --Eloquence 16:50 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
"I'm going to delete everything this nut contributes" sounds a bit like censorship to me, and contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia.
Of note: To legally use Wikipedia materials, you must "you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B [of the GFDL])". Is it possible that this is the reason that Bryce wants his name on the piece, and not for some self-gratification purpose? And perhaps it IS his intention to list everyone that contributes (editors seeming to be everyone who works on the article after the initial post), as well as to have the work revised. The copywright statement isn't to keep people from editing the text, but rather to give permission to use it legally.
It is reassuring that people are so concerned with copywright law, whatever way they feel that it should be applied, or not applied.
Despite the claim that adding an invariant section is ok, the Wikipedia:Copyrights page clearly states that anything in Wikipedia must have *no* invariant sections. Of course you can copy the databases and publish them yourselves with whatever invariant sections you want, but you implicitly agree to not have invariant sections when you add to Wikipedia. Maybe wikipedia should have some sort of page which lists the contributor's names so it has them all. -- Ram-Man
Ed, Bryce isn't a nut. He was one of Wikipedia's most active contributors in the first few months of its existence, and I'm very pleased to see him back. He is, however, forcing some valid issues about the GFDL that have been making me nervous for a long time. The GFDL is very strict on keeping track of authorship, and I don't think most Wikipedians understand it very well. Take a look at the GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.1), section 4: Modifications. According to the license, to modify a GFDL document we need a title page, a list of the original authors, a list of the modifying authors, and a completely different title unless explict permission is given by the original authors to use the same title. We also need to perserve all copyright notices, and add our own after it. Some people might argue that every article in Wikipedia is a separate document, and thus these requirements apply. In short, the GFDL was designed for software documentation with authors, not for a collorbative effort like Wikipedia. -- Stephen Gilbert 00:45 Nov 27, 2002 (UTC)
Well I have no issue with agreeing to release all my work (that's at least 30,000 articles) with no requirements for any credit whatsoever. In fact I want no credit for my mistakes ;-) -- Ram-Man
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