Comments on: Creative Common Sense

By: Jason Scott

Jason Scott — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:21:56 +0000

I actually wasted a half-hour of my life I’m not getting back on your comment, Chris, so congratulations on that aspect of things, if nothing else.

I don’t know where you got the implication I was indicating Creative Commons directly “forks” copyright law in a legislative manner; I mean that it takes the rules laid down by copyright and then indicates the CC licenser is not going to enforce those aspects of copyright, according to a set of rules laid out in the Creative Commons Deed. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

As for the rest of it, licenses are contracts. They are not written signatory contracts, but of course they’re contracts: an agreement of rules to be followed should the user decide to integrate/use the content being licensed under CC. By using the content, they agree to the terms. But not using it, they do not agree to the terms. That’s a contract.

By: Chris Barts

Chris Barts — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 15:41:57 +0000

The Creative Commons licensing folk should have made very clear to you that licensing your works does not “fork” copyright law or create “alternate copyrights” or alter American copyright law in any way. They should have made VERY clear to you that licenses are not contracts and that trying to use contract theories or mindsets when parsing licenses (or vice versa) is a monumentally bad idea. If the information they’re providing you is that bad, they ought to be slammed with as much bad press as we can muster before their misinformation hurts someone.

By: Fred Blasdel

Fred Blasdel — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:39:13 +0000

Basically, the idea is that if you remove or fail to display previous revisions of Wikipedia articles, you violate the GFDL. Section 4 states clearly that all the details of each revision leading up to the current one must be maintained in ‘the document’.

But wait! Wikipedia routinely deletes and disappears old revisions, either because of legal threats, perceived inaccuracies, or requests on the part of living people. The process is arbitrary, weird, opaque and definitely a violation of GFDL. “For the good of Wikipedia”

It’s like they never bothered to read the parts that actually apply to them.

By: Stephen Gilbert

Stephen Gilbert — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:48:51 +0000

What part of the GFDL, specifically, is Wikipedia violating when doing a permanent deletion of material?

By: Fred Blasdel

Fred Blasdel — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:41:38 +0000

I think in cases of author incompetence in licensing (which is becoming ever so common), the licenses are going to be the first thing to get fucked, and are basically a facade for showing people how ‘cool’ you are.

Look at how blatantly Wikipedia violates the GFDL by perma-deleting stuff.

Yet at the same time they histrionically decided that MP3 was ‘encumbered’, transcoded everything to low bitrate OGG, banned MP3 encoded files from Wikimedia, and shouted down anyone that complained. Anybody that stumbles into it gets an incoherent screed and is pointed to the terrible Java-applet based player. The whole exercise is ridiculous, there is really nothing stopping them from using MP3 too.

Most of your average internet clowns understand this mess, and a number of them know just enough misinformation to be dangerous.