A fascinating license question

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Yes, I wrote initially then removed it [on the grounds of being too didactic] that very different supply-demand relations pertain in these two cases. As human beings we tend to use simple emotive concepts like exploitation, but they are not accurate descriptions of what is going on. Usually, the chain of economic connections is so vast and complex, that nobody has a really accurate understanding of what is going on.

The analogy with the shop is very approximate: don't take it too seriously, Stephen!

[Derek Harkness]

If it's morally wrong to profit off of the work done by volunteers, then how does CZ's choice of licence solve this. If CZ licences the content for re-numeration then the media mogul is still going to make a profit. It might be a slightly smaller profit but it's still a profit. The addition of CZ's tax on the content doesn't solve the morality of the situation. The volunteer is still not compensated.

The only way to solve the moral problem is to ensure that the re-numeration does filter down to the authors and editors. You can't have a moral problem with someone profiting off of the work of a volunteer who was later compensated when his/her work was found to have value.

Since we can't practically pay every author a share, the only other choice is to forbid all commercial use. That means even if they offer CZ a million dollars the answer must be "No." Any other answer would be to prostitute your morality and allow profits to be made without compensating the volunteer.

Such a licence, forbidding all commercial use, even with remuneration, would not be fitting with the idea of distributing the content as widely as possible. So we stand between a rock and a hard place. Either you accept that the distributor will profit or you forbid the distribution. There is no ground in between where CZ gets a kickback for allowing the profit making. That kickback does not make the moral problem go away.

Larry is right where he said that the creator should be paid. However, he undervalues the job of the distributor. The distributor of the work should be fairly compensated for their efforts. Both author and distributor form a team. If either party is undervalued then the system fails. The media companies are distributors. They are providing a service and like any other service provider, deserve to be paid. Ergo, I don't see them as profiting from my work. They are profiting from providing a distribution service that I could not do myself.

[David Goodman]

When I said yesterday I did not want to be involved here in a commercial operation, I meant that I did not want to be in a situation where what I wrote here would be restricted beyond GFDL. I do not in the least object to existence of commercial operations, and if they wish to distribute our content, the more ways it is distributed the better. If they want to modify it, their creativity is also welcome, since the GFDL license will have it remain free.

I've  written for situations where commercial operations kept the copyright, but I always tried to negotiate  the freest distribution for my own work as possible. In the case of a cooperative community-based product prepared on a wiki, the assumption should free use--free use by all.  This is the better way.

Some creators work for money. For some types of content, that makes sense, but they should find other projects. Academic creators work primarily for recognition, and GFDL provides it. 

[Jitse Niesen]

You [Richard Jensen] object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?  If you're willing to be "exploited" by one (giant media corporations), why aren't you willing to be "exploited" by the other (i.e., yourselves as a corporate body)?

Martin made a similar point. Of course, I cannot speak for Richard but my position is as follows. I don't object to the Citizendium Foundation making money. The problem is that the Citizendium Foundation would have a privileged position. General Electric is just one of many companies with the same rights while the Foundation would be the only organization that can sell licences for commercial use. If I were sure that the interests of the Foundation were perfectly aligned with my interests then that wouldn't be an issue. However, even in the ideal case where the Foundation represents the community, the opinions of the community (however defined) will be different from mine. And I have not enough data to be certain that the Foundation will represent the community. My fear is that the Foundation will charge too much for the content, thus hinder distribution, and that is why I prefer a licence that allows commercial use, also in the success scenario that Larry sketched.

[Larry Sanger]

Still at work on the paper.

I just wanted to put in here that if I seemed to be advocating for any position, above, it was due to a desire to move the dialectic forward in an interesting direction.  In fact, I still haven't made up my mind.  It's embarrassing.  But I make a practice of not making up my mind until I really have to, and all the data is in.  I am grateful to have so many intelligent people thinking about this.  I'm also grateful that you are open to debating it on a philosophical level, as many (most) are.

Anyway, carry on if you like...I'll be reading.

[Joe Quick]

You [Richard Jensen] object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?  If you're willing to be "exploited" by one (giant media corporations), why aren't you willing to be "exploited" by the other (i.e., yourselves as a corporate body)?

Martin made a similar point. Of course, I cannot speak for Richard but my position is as follows. I don't object to the Citizendium Foundation making money. The problem is that the Citizendium Foundation would have a privileged position. General Electric is just one of many companies with the same rights while the Foundation would be the only organization that can sell licences for commercial use. If I were sure that the interests of the Foundation were perfectly aligned with my interests then that wouldn't be an issue. However, even in the ideal case where the Foundation represents the community, the opinions of the community (however defined) will be different from mine. And I have not enough data to be certain that the Foundation will represent the community. My fear is that the Foundation will charge too much for the content, thus hinder distribution, and that is why I prefer a licence that allows commercial use, also in the success scenario that Larry sketched.

This is a good point.  One might object that CZ does not, in fact, enjoy such a privileged position because authors do not give up rights to their own work and may therefore upload it to Wikipedia or another distributor.  But such an objection overlooks the collaborative process: with very few exceptions, CZ is the only single body that currently has the right to distribute our articles - the only other choice is to get explicit permission from every contributor to the article.  Now, this will change as soon as a copyleft license is put in place because everyone will have the right to distribute the content, but only under the conditions dictated by that license.  So if I want to redistribute an article that I had a significant hand in creating but to which others have contributed (maybe one of whom has left the project and is unreachable), then I may do so only under the provisions of the license that CZ applies to its content.  If I want to post it somewhere that requires content to be commercially usable, but CZ chooses CC-BY-SA-NC, then I simply cannot do so.  Freer is clearly better for such situations.

[RJensen]

Let's speculate about CZ with say 100,000 articles. The articles themselves (at say 5000 words) would fit on one 5 gig hard drive.  That's the easy part. The hard part is distribution. If 10 million people use CZ every day how many servers will we need, and how much will they cost a year (with tech staffers paid as well)? A lot of $$$, I suspect.  Who provides this $$$? Volunteers provide the articles but they do not provide much cash.

That's where Yahoo! etc come in. They have gigantic server farms, lots of programmers, have hundreds of millions of people using them every day, and know how to handle the load.  What they need is content--that's us.  In a world, we need a big commercial sponsor more than they need us.

[Warren Schudy]

You're also the second person to make this point and the second to utterly fail to see the irony in it.  You object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?  If you're willing to be "exploited" by one (giant media corporations), why aren't you willing to be "exploited" by the other (i.e., yourselves as a corporate body)?

I answered that in my post that's at the top of page 4 in this thread.

You seem to be of the opinion that CZ owns the content on CZ. It is a good thing for this to be legally true so we can switch open-source licenses, but morally, many of us believe that the authors are the owners of our work, and we are licensing our work to the CZ under an open-source license of CZ's choice. Therefore, CZ is authorized to switch open-source licenses, but cannot relicense our work under a non-open license as you're proposing.

The reason we object to CZ making money in this way is it would be violating the license by which it receives content from the authors. We are fine with either media corporations or CZ making money as long as they respect the nebulous open source license that we authors have contributed our work under.

[Stephen Ewen]

Having all those servers with crap streaming from them would make them in exceedingly more of a position of needing us then you apparently realize.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

You seem to be of the opinion that CZ owns the content on CZ. It is a good thing for this to be legally true so we can switch open-source licenses, but morally, many of us believe that the authors are the owners of our work, and we are licensing our work to the CZ under an open-source license of CZ's choice. Therefore, CZ is authorized to switch open-source licenses, but cannot relicense our work under a non-open license as you're proposing.

The reason we object to CZ making money in this way is it would be violating the license by which it receives content from the authors. We are fine with either media corporations or CZ making money as long as they respect the nebulous open source license that we authors have contributed our work under.

The licence issue should have been resolved a long time ago, but the fact that it was not must not prevent us from choosing the appropriate strategy to make CZ work in a sustainable way. Part of the philosophy we have been trying to create on CZ is that of a community, which is owned and administered by its residents. Individualist libertarian arguments (such as the above) are not conducive to building a community; this is not to say that members of a community should not have individual rights, but that those rights have to be consistent with (and frequently inferior to) the rights of the shared community. If people do not accept the underlying philosophy of the CZ community, then they should not join as citizens [i.e. editors, authors] but are welcome as users of the Citizendium.

[Anthony_DiPierro]

You're also the second person to make this point and the second to utterly fail to see the irony in it.  You object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?

The unfairness comes from the fact that CZ would be making money off licensing the content, while GE would be making money off doing something productive with the content.  If CZ wants to make money off my content by selling newspapers with it, or printing encyclopedias with it, or printing textbooks to educate students with it, or whatever way it is you think GE is going to make money, I don't have a problem with that.  What I have a problem with is CZ, or GE, or anyone else, making money off my content by threatening to sue people for copyright infringement.

Furthermore, you say that CZ is going to spend this money on behalf of me.  I don't think that's the case, because it takes very little money to support my needs.  Most of CZ's spending is likely going to be benefiting the readers of the content, not the creators of it.  That's the best case scenario, actually.  For a more likely scenario, take a look at where Wikipedia spends its money, sure, a lot of it is on servers but a lot of it is on travel and parties and salaries too.  And the majority of their board was elected democratically.  Just because I get one vote doesn't mean I have any expectation my best interests are going to be served.

[Joe Quick]

You're also the second person to make this point and the second to utterly fail to see the irony in it.  You object strenuously to CZ--i.e., all of us--making money off of content that it organizes and creates.  But you defend strenuously the right of, say, General Electric to make as much money as possible from this content without any compensation to us.  Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?

The unfairness comes from the fact that CZ would be making money off licensing the content, while GE would be making money off doing something productive with the content.  If CZ wants to make money off my content by selling newspapers with it, or printing encyclopedias with it, or printing textbooks to educate students with it, or whatever way it is you think GE is going to make money, I don't have a problem with that.  What I have a problem with is CZ, or GE, or anyone else, making money off my content by threatening to sue people for copyright infringement.

Ah, okay.  I think I get it now.  This is not an issue of direct/indirect or proximate "exploitation" at all.  It is a matter of CZ's relationship to its contributors.  I'm not sure I have the vocabulary to explain this properly, but here goes:

The Citizendium does not ask people to donate their work in the standard sense of the word "donate."  Instead, it asks people to share their work with the project.  The morality of CZ's use of its content to make money is called into question because it hasn't been given anything to sell.  If it were to do something with or to the work and then sell the product, it would be making money from its own efforts, however minimal they might be. 

It's okay for GE (or CZ) to make money from their own efforts, but not if they sell the efforts of other entities without having added value.  What people dislike, I think, is the idea that somebody else (anybody else) is making the money that they (the content creators) have forfeited by sharing their work with CZ.  Adding value (doing something to the content) means that you are making some other, different money.

[JFPerry]

Just a quick comment!

. . . Can someone possibly explain to me why you see some unfairness in CZ making money, but not in a media company that has nothing to do with creating the content?  If you're willing to be "exploited" by one (giant media corporations), why aren't you willing to be "exploited" by the other (i.e., yourselves as a corporate body)?

Sanger raises an excellent question.

I for one have no problem with CZ "making money off my content" (not precisely the way I would phrase it, but that seems to be the expression of choice). In fact, I have multi-licensed (GFDL and CC-BY-SA) my previous contributions. Thus, CZ has the same commercial use rights as any other entities to my content. In addition, there is already GFDL material on CZ (Wikipedia imports).

My problem with CZ ownership of content (and the reason I suspended work on CZ a few months back until the issue is resolved) is that it leaves the content creator potentially unable to use his/her own work in other ways, for example, on other wikis. If I were to write an article and contribute it to CZ under a copyright transfer system, then I would not necessarily be free to use the material elsewhere (because of license incompatibilities, to mention just one potential problem).

Joint copyright would solve this particular problem, but unless there is some type of "assignment of monetary rights" would not help CZ monetize the content (do you understand why?).

Copyright transfer also raises some interesting legal conundrums in the event that the article or material was first posted elsewhere. What then becomes of the previous posting, bearing in mind the license under which the material was previously posted?

If CZ is to stipulate a copyright transfer, that is there legal right to do so at least insofar as contributions made after the adoption of such a system. However, if there is no "notwithstanding clause" (with apologies to my Canadian friends!) which permits the content creator to continue to make free use of his/her own material, then that would certainly affect any decision of mine regarding further contributions to CZ.

One other point: have you considered the liability implications should CZ become in some fashion the owner of content? Wikipedia recently and successfully defended itself against an action by asserting that it was merely a "bulletin board" or carrier and hence not liable (pardon the extreme summation of the legal issues involved). However, the same defense is not available for an entity which has ownership rights.

I hope that the CZ license will be one that I can live with so that I could resume my contributions, but I need to know the ground rules.

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Again, there is a lot of muddled thinking here, about how things connect to each other. Working from quotations:

It's okay for GE (or CZ) to make money from their own efforts, but not if they sell the efforts of other entities without having added value.  What people dislike, I think, is the idea that somebody else (anybody else) is making the money that they (the content creators) have forfeited by sharing their work with CZ.  Adding value (doing something to the content) means that you are making some other, different money.

It is not a serious proposition in economics to suggest that CZ as it now stands does not add value. A lot of people who do not write much on CZ are interacting to allow CZ to "add value" to the individual contributions of authors. The only issue is that the authors understand and accept that this is happening, and agree to the use of the product with added value being resold to the benefit of the CZ community.

One other point: have you considered the liability implications should CZ become in some fashion the owner of content? Wikipedia recently and successfully defended itself against an action by asserting that it was merely a "bulletin board" or carrier and hence not liable (pardon the extreme summation of the legal issues involved). However, the same defense is not available for an entity which has ownership rights.

This is the whole point of our project and why we are not WP. If you are suggesting that writing articles -- even concerning specific legal issues -- is actually a contractual obligation with readers, then I suppose you are American! The answer, anyway, is NO. The CZ disclaimer is our rather obvious legal response to this claim: besides, who would sue an encyclopedia or newspaper for its broadly accurate content. You can sue for personal damages when the reporting concerns you, but not otherwise. [Of course, you can sue anyone for anything, but let's not waste our time with stupidities].

[Joe Quick]

Again, there is a lot of muddled thinking here, about how things connect to each other. Working from quotations:

It's okay for GE (or CZ) to make money from their own efforts, but not if they sell the efforts of other entities without having added value.  What people dislike, I think, is the idea that somebody else (anybody else) is making the money that they (the content creators) have forfeited by sharing their work with CZ.  Adding value (doing something to the content) means that you are making some other, different money.

It is not a serious proposition in economics to suggest that CZ as it now stands does not add value. A lot of people who do not write much on CZ are interacting to allow CZ to "add value" to the individual contributions of authors. The only issue is that the authors understand and accept that this is happening, and agree to the use of the product with added value being resold to the benefit of the CZ community.

I'm not in any way suggesting that CZ doesn't add value, I'm just trying to answer Larry's question from above (way above) and work out what people are thinking.  CZ adds value simply by bringing people together, but many of the objections that I've seen here to the idea that CZ might make money from its content seem to be based on the idea that it wouldn't have done anything to get that money.