| Psychoslave added a comment. |
In T193728#4232253, @ArthurPSmith wrote:Some references on why CC0 is essential for a free public database:
Essential, no. Interesting, certainly.
Now the point is not whether CC-0 offer well balance convenience for factual data bases, or better long term consequences than any other license. The point is, can Wikidata really pretend that what it publishes is under CC-0 when its sources are themselves published under incompatible terms of use and licenses.
Apart from this, which is the topic we currently focus on this ticket, here is is a few off topic background reflections:
It's one thing to aim that any project financed by any government should be public domain, or in an equivalent legal status of CC-0. It happens that many scientific studies are financed by public funds. In this cases, their are argument to support that it's fair to release them with this kind of condition as public paid for it and scientists got a financial retribution for their work of data collection. The only nuance we could bring to that would be about data traceability, which arise from very different concerns than the ones that conducted to enact copyright & sisters information monopolies, a topic which is a raising concern in a world where fake news is on everyone's lips.
Now, in the Wikimedia movement, this is not how it is. Most contributors are volunteers, and no mandatory annual tax make it obvious that the next year there will still be plenty of money to support our infrastructure whatever other actors are providing as service. If we consider fine to transfer the whole collection of statements of every Wikipedia into Wikidata, then you can expect other actors to generate encyclopaedic articles using natural language generation from Wikidata derivative databases augmented with statements and means we don't have access to, under whichever terms of use they like – most probably under licenses with CC-0. As stated in the previous link the main requirement for implementing NLG is the ownership and access to a structured dataset. We can add that it also requires an adapted infrastructure and skilled people to glue the whole. A copyleft license do bring some sustainability to fate of volunteer communities and their common work that a non-copyleft license fails to provide. With that in mind, how is it different in spirit to put no clear limits of transfer of data between all Wikimedia projects into a single CC-0 project than re-licensing all this projects under CC-0?
So this question us on whether we are more concerned about making the Wikimedia community growth in a sustainable way or maximizing immediate re-use of the works it generated so far, and what are the best technical and legal tools to achieve whichever we are aiming for.
https://pietercolpaert.be/open%20data/2017/02/23/cc0.html
"However, for data on the Web, the borders between data silos are fading and queries are evaluated over plenty of databases. Then requiring that each dataset is mentioned in the user interface is just annoying end-users."
Well, law is often annoying for end-users in immediate situations, but lake of law can be even more detrimental on large scale. So it's not really a convincing argument to promote waiver the corresponding rights, is it? Yes, requiring people to recognize each other significance in their own actions is an additional constraint compared to request them to waiver any form of recognition, but certainly can not be reduced to a useless annoying demand as it comes hand in hand with respect of individual dignity.
Even we we are favourable to public domain for works resulting from public funding, we don't have to approve this kind of argument stated under such a form which are basically promoting regression of recognition for everyone dignity.
"The share alike requirement, as the name implies, requires that when reusing a document, you share the resulting document under the same license. I like the idea for “viral” licenses and the fact that all results from this document will now also become open data. However, what does it mean exactly for an answer that is generated on the basis of 2 or more datasets? And what if one of these datasets would be a private dataset (e.g., a user profile)? It thus would make it even more unnecessarily complex to reuse data, while the goal was to maximize the reuse of our dataset."
The "viral" word is itself a terminology designed to conduct noxious innuendos. Talking about inheritance as biological analogy is a both more neutral and more relevant, as only derivative works are concerned and they foster the original work beyond itself.
What it legally implies to use 2 datasets depends of the two datasets. If this is two datasets of a few items, it probably implies nothing legally because they don't generate any monopoly in the first place. If each dataset are under a legal information monopoly, then it implies that you can only mix them if you were granted the appropriate rights. Merging this two databases into a single one and claiming it's released under a license incompatible with at least one upstream database is most probably legal infringement.
Maybe the goal of some actors is to maximize immediate re-use of dataset, but this is not what is claimed as goal for the Wikimedia strategic direction, here is an extract:
We need social and technical systems that avoid perpetuating structural inequalities. We need hospitable communities that lead to sustainability and equal representation. We need to challenge inequalities of access and contribution, whether their cause is social, political, or technical. As a social movement, we need knowledge equity.
Improving sustainable accessibility to trustable knowledge for everyone seems compatible with this claimed goals. Maximizing immediate re-use at all price even in detriment of the sustainability of our community doesn't seem to hold our goals.
Cc: ArthurPSmith, SimonPoole, Scott_WorldUnivAndSch, Micru, lisong, Lofhi, Nemo_bis, TomT0m, jrbs, EgonWillighagen, sarojdhakal, Agabi10, NMaia, Simon_Villeneuve, Jarekt, Rspeer, OhKayeSierra, AndrewSu, Mateusz_Konieczny, Maxlath, Huji, Glrx, Realworldobject, Ltrlg, Papapep, Tgr, Ayack, Gnom1, MichaelMaggs, MisterSynergy, Pasleim, Cirdan, 0x010C, Sylvain_WMFr, Denny, Ivanhercaz, Pintoch, Lydia_Pintscher, Lea_Lacroix_WMDE, Aklapper, Psychoslave, Lahi, Gq86, GoranSMilovanovic, QZanden, LawExplorer, ZhouZ, Aschmidt, Mpaulson, Wikidata-bugs, aude, jayvdb, Slaporte, Mbch331, Jay8g
_______________________________________________ Wikidata-bugs mailing list Wikidata-bugs@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-bugs
