[p2p-research] Wiki Content License

[Alex Rollin]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 7:08 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Given all that has been said, especially by our two IP experts Carolina and
> Andrew,
>
> it seems to me we have to retain NC, Patrick's suggestion notwithstanding,
>

I am not as clear on determination as you, Michel.

I do not yet see a case where the NC is getting any of our users what
they are looking for, though NC may position the Foundation should a
legal issue arise.

NC, it seems to me, is a way of protecting the Foundation, and
covering up (potentially) abuse or inappropriate "Fair Dealing" on the
site.

Where users are pasting in large amounts of material from other
sources without submitting original content
Where there is no original "P2P Perspective" accompanying the pasted content
Where the content that is pasted is not pared down to what is required
to support an argument
Where content pasted in has no reference or source

NC would be convenient for protecting the Foundation in these cases.

But I see these cases as something to be avoided.  How do others feel
about that?

I just read through the Wikipedia license/copyright page at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Copyright

A few salient points:
Copyright is never transferred to Wikipedia
CC-BY-SA and GFDL (unversioned, with no invariant sections,
front-cover texts, or back-cover texts) or in the public domain, and
that this is greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under
fair use or otherwise.
There are specific instructions for everyone posting materials about
how to figure out the licensing, or to give up copyright (even though
the copyright is not transferred to Wikipedia, it seems it must be
vacated in order to be relicensed"

The wiki is an open document so as to allow the community to edit
pages together. I have done my best to collect use cases for the wiki
on http://p2pfoundation.net/Important_notice_on_COPYRIGHT

You can see them at the bottom.  Please feel free to add to them, or
to comment if you feel something is missing.

It seems to me that our needs are not unlike those of Wikipedia.  We
do need to insure that we are doing a fair bit of work to insure that
fair use and fair dealing are respected, and we do not, as it seems to
me, have any need of pushing out or inconveniencing collaborators with
a CC-BY-SA-NC license when a CC-BY-SA license will cover the needs
sufficiently.

There are currently few articles on the wiki provided instructions for
end users.  There is very little instruction for users about how Fair
Dealing works, how the Foundation interprets it, or how and what the
community can do about it.  These would be a portion of forming a
community agreement between authors and the Foundation.  These are
important documents that might simply be re-published from the links
above, or linked to appropriately.

For those interested, the opinions of Andres and Carolina, who are IP
experts and friends of the Foundation, there comments have been
integrated into this page, as well as a list of needs, by users, for
which the license ought facilitate ease of use.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Important_notice_on_COPYRIGHT#Notes_on_how_the_P2P_Foundation_Wiki_is_used

Does anyone have anything else to add to this discussion at this
point?  Are we missing anything?  Feel free to email directly if
needed.

Alex