Re: licensing

[Lyno Sullivan]

At 11:09 PM 6/7/99 -0700, Kevin Shrieve wrote:
>When I think about how to approach licensing within
>an open-source culture-making community I am shaping,
>I oscillate between...
>
>1) the urge to build in a protocol of attribution,
>   so as to take advantage of the motivational appeal
>   of being recognized as contributors (more people
>   might work harder), and
>
>2) the desire to free participants (including myself)
>   from the tedium and the companion text files that
>   strict attribution would require.

Yes, to my way of thinking you have struck to the very heart of the matter.  The general solution to this problem would require that every object (text, image, sound, etc.) editor program would have to understand and preserve the matter of an attribution trail (I sometimes use the term "pedigree" for this issue).

For example, if I produce a synchronized multi-media object, its pedigree would be very complex because of the diversity of object browsers and editors that would be required, each able to display the pedigree of any part of the object.

This is a solvable problem but it would take many years of programming.  The problem is further complicated by the fact that the object editors and mixers would need to warn whenever the producer attempted to affiliate objects with incompatible licenses.

The mere pondering of these complexities has given me many a headache.  That is part of the motivation for the WGPL.  I have also thought of a whole different way to solve the problem that, I believe, fuses the two points of your oscillation into a single point.  It may not be ideal but it's a solution that is attainable quickly.

ANOTHER WAY

Those individuals and organizations, that favor the expansion of copyleft to the entire domain of copyrighted works, would form an Association.  Ideally for me, this Association would be a sibling of the GNU Project under the FSF, but it could also be a distinct organization.

The Association creates a suitable Repository GPL (RGPL) license that affords copyleft protection for the breadth of "Title 17 of the United States Code,  Chapter 1, Section 102. Subject matter of copyright: In general" (*1).  The RGPL would have, copyleft-style RGPL domain closure, the "without attribution" condition, and any other conditions deemed mandatory by the Association members.  For example, the matter of performance rights and similar copyright legalities, that were intentionally defined out of scope in the GPL (which pertains only to copying, modification, and distribution).

The Association creates a time-serialized Repository into which producers might submit digital copies of their RGPL'd works.  Any producer my pull any objects or parts of objects out of this Repository, and derive and combine them (with or without attribution) in any manner, and put the new object under the WGPL, and, if they wish, submit the new work back into the Repository.

The Repository would become a treasure-trove of copylefted works.  The entire Repository or chosen parts could be freely mirrored to sites throughout the earth.  Heck, I will shortly have .07 terabytes on my own server.

Any person, desiring to know the original creator of any part of an object, might search the Repository archives to determine the first creator of the object part.


FOOTNOTES

(*1) <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/chapter1.pdf>
"102. Subject matter of copyright: In general
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:
(1) literary works;
(2) musical works, including any accompanying words;
(3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music;
(4) pantomimes and choreographic works;
(5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;
(6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
(7) sound recordings; and
(8) architectural works.12
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."

--
Copyright(c) 1999 Lyno Sullivan; this work is free and may
be copied, modified and distributed under the GNU Library
General Public License (LGPL) and it comes with absolutely
NO WARRANTY <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lgpl.html>;
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