MisesWiki talk:Copyrights

Why no sharealike?

So this is something I'd like to understand. As stated on this main project page, Mises Wiki content is released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license while Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

Now. The only difference between these two is that the latter requires any derivative works to be distributed under the same or a similar license. In other words, the content itself is freely copyable, distributable, and adaptable, but any new work created using it must also be made freely copyable, distributable, and adaptable. That's the whole point of the "share alike" provision.

This means that in the case of the Mises Wiki (as it does not have this provision), the content itself is freely copyable, distributable, and adaptable, but any derivative work made using this content falls under normal copyright law...meaning that anything anyone makes using content from our Mises Wiki, they have an intellectual monopoly on, and all they have to do is attribute the base work.

My question is, why in the world would we allow this? --John James 05:42, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

This reflects the position of the Mises Institute: to make all works as free as possible. "Share-Alike," even though it ostensibly encourages freedom, is nonetheless a restriction on freedom. This was discussed in the early days of the wiki, in the google group (see the email on November 9, 2010). Stephan Kinsella is the one you'd need to convince, I suspect, to get this changed. --Forgottenman (talk) 06:17, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

Thanks for the quick response and suggestion for the info source, but I didn't find much of a discussion there. The only addressing of this was your first post (which said even less about my question than you did here), and Jeff Tucker mentioning how Kinsella suggested a hybrid to allow Wikipedia content. Is there more discussion elsewhere?

Here's what I don't understand. When you say the share-alike provision is a "restriction on freedom" what you're talking about is a restriction on the freedom to restrict freedom. In other words, you're arguing that we want to promote as free a society as possible, but we're so hell-bent on freedom, that we allow the illegitimate restriction of freedom. It's the same concept as becoming so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance. We believe so strongly in freedom, that we think others should be free to restrict freedom all they want. (Or at least we allow for it when we have the ability to prevent it, which I think is basically the same thing.)

I'm aware that Kinsella is a much more qualified authority on this, but I want to hear the argument for purposefully allowing for more copyright to exist. If we're of the position that copyright is illegitimate, IP is not property at all, and that it is a concept of nothing more than de jure monopoly that should be abolished...why in the world would we provide a platform to allow for more of it? --John James 07:01, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

It's a tough question, I agree. Kinsella explains his position here, and the key quote is "the 'Attribution Share Alike' seeks to use one’s copyright threat to force others to use this license too." (But read the whole thing, it's quite interesting) Looking at it that way I think the decision makes sense. --Forgottenman (talk) 17:02, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

Oh: the reason there wasn't more discussion is that the Mises Institute's use of CC-BY-3.0 precedes the wiki by more than a year, so naturally the wiki would follow the same copyright policy. --Forgottenman (talk) 17:07, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

That source was much better. Glad I got to hear something from the horse's mouth. I suppose he persuaded me, as the case with the publisher not wishing to use the same license is a good one, and the way he framed it is convincing. I think this comment is the most effective:

It’s a bit too paternalistic, rude, untrusting, to force others to do it like you do, to assume they’ll “abuse” their power. And, it might stop the work from being re-published. We want our libertarian ideas spread far and wide. I want an editor of a book considering reprinting one of our pieces to see no obstacles. A “viral share-alike” provision could be. Let ideas be free.

But I still don't like it. --John James 06:15, 11 May 2011 (MSD)

I don't like it either, and I think we should reconsider this decision. I vote to change it to Creative Commons Attribute Share-Alike. Can we get a consensus? Nathan Larson (talk) 14:02, 29 November 2012 (MSK)

This took me some thinking when the discussion came up the first time, but ultimately I agree with Kinsella. Not forcing others to accept your license is good by itself, but consider the wider implications: the contents of this wiki can be easily used in articles and books (unlike, surprisingly, Wikipedia content) so they lend themselves to wider distribution. I call that a massive plus. Pestergaines (talk) 15:38, 29 November 2012 (MSK)

Hmm, I guess that's why mw:Manual:$wgRightsIcon was left blank until recently! Some of our pages are imported from Wikipedia, so it's not really appropriate to have that icon at the bottom of those pages. I've thought that it might be good to create an extension that will change the copyright notice depending on how individual pages are licensed; I even filed a bug along similar (although not identical) lines. I will get to work on this immediately, and see how practicable it is. I don't like to see pages not have any license notice at all, because then people might not realize they can copy our content without asking permission.

I don't agree with Kinsella, by the way, about CC-by-SA being "paternalistic" or "rude"; paternalism is for the other party's benefit, while this would be for our benefit. :) I do think it's untrusting, though; but who says we have to be trusting? I don't think it assumes they'll abuse their power, but it does seek to minimize the possibility for it. It's sort of like an investor asking for an audit; he's not accusing anyone of fraud, but he realizes there's a possibility of it and he's not going to stake his fortune on it when he could take some measures to reduce the uncertainty. Nathan Larson (talk) 16:25, 29 November 2012 (MSK)

I installed mw:Extension:PerPageLicense, so now our pages with Wikipedia content have the Share-Alike icon in the footer. Nathan Larson (talk) 03:04, 1 December 2012 (MSK)