| MisterSynergy added a comment. |
In T193728#4231813, @Psychoslave wrote:In T193728#4214437, @MisterSynergy wrote:If any of those happened (or had to happen), I’d be out here and I guess many other Wikidata editors would also discontinue their efforts. There is great support for CC0 in Wikidata, since anything else that required attribution would render it useless; large-scale purging would tear down so much content that we would basically have to start again from the beginning. We are 5.5 years into this project and many of us have spent thousands of hours of effort into it, based on the unchallenged assumption (by WMF) that Wikipedia imports as we are doing them are legally fine.
How would it render it useless? Or more useless than today? For some actors like OSM it is useless because they don't trust Wikidata claim that this data can legally be released under CC-0. For those who don't care about acting legally, any license will make the same effect.
Users of Wikidata can compile datasets of any form and content with the query service, and re-use it according to the CC0 license (i.e.: do whatever they want to, particularly without attribution). If there was a convolution of individual licenses per fact involved, it would be practically impossible to get this sorted so that use of data was in line with all the licenses involved; even if one would be able to manage this, one could easily end up in a situation where one has to display thousands of sources in some way. Databases with more restrictive licenses than CC0 are useless for re-users, and Wikidata just aims to be useful for re-users.
I agree that we should ensure to put only compatible data into Wikidata, yet I am still not convinced that there is a systematic problem. From my point of view, there is no concern about the validity of Wikidata’s declaration that all content (in main and property namespace) is available under the CC0 license.
Is there any official claim by the WMF that said this kind of import were legally fine? Before Wikidata was launched, @Denny used to agree that Wikipedia imports would not be possible including for legal reasons, that is at the time he was officially working for WMDE. If any official statement clearly exposed otherwise in the mid-time, it would be nice to highlight this information. Not being challenged by some entity doesn't mean what an action is legal, just as any legal infraction it doesn't become more legal because no one bother challenging the issue.
We use imports from Wikidata for years now, and this is not a hidden activity than one could have missed. WMF definitely knows about this for years. There were occasionally some dissenting opinions (not by WMF, AFAIK), but I cannot remember that anyone was able to raise concern strong enough to reconsider the import practice. Until now, this has not changed in this conversation as well.
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