Talk:Definition/Unstable

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Rewording Edit

I submitted a relatively large change. While the diff itself may be big, especially in the preamble, but I don't think I've made significant changes to the tone of the content. As a result, I think it is probably alright coming this late.

Here's a summary of the larger changes or set of changes that I made:

I removed a number of "therefores", and a number of comma-separated clauses acting as parenthetical asides that I thought it could survive without. I tried to break up a few long sentences. This was all purely stylistic.

I dropped the "in addition to a requirement of author attribution" from the preamble because it's clear without it (IMHO) and because it seems to qualify a statement about essential freedoms which we speak out against below. I think it's best to state clearly that there are essential freedoms and then there are some extra restrictions that do not in fact have an impact on these essential freedom. Attribution is one of these but need not be specially cases. This way it doesn't sound like an exception but an explanation that it is by definition free.

In two paragraphs of the first three paragraphs there are these two lists:

artistic works, scientific and educational materials, commentary, reports, and documents

Works built by communities collaborating as volunteers, art created for the purpose of shared enjoyment, essential learning materials, scientific research funded through taxpayer money, and many other works do not benefit from artificial scarcity.

They seem to be redundant so I've tried to reduce it to just one list where the the first list was.

I've removed "regardless of their profession, their beliefs, their country of origin, or any other criteria" and just say "anyone, anywhere, for any purpose." I think it's just as clear and more general.

I switched the strange switch into the second person in the paragraph with the god like creator. It read nice but was a jarring switch.

I added a line or two mentioning that some licenses are also used purely to take away people's freedoms. ASCAP is a licensing organization. The last draft talks about licenses as if they are only used to give away freedom but they were first used to sell freedom in restrained ways.

I was confused by the line: "Indeed, depending on the nature of the work, it may even be unethical to deny any of the enumerated freedoms above." It seems like our argument in this document is that it's always unethical, on some level, to restrict essential freedom. I think that this sort of confuses the issue and, in any case, don't add much where it was.

I removed this phrase:

This definition only covers freedom in terms of copyright law; usage of a work may be restricted by other laws.

I guess I have two issues here. First, it's not clear what these other laws and this sounds very legalistic for a statement of principles. More importantly, it seems like we would want to oppose other types of freedoms articulated in other types of law as well. The FSD is useful in opposing patents just as well as copyright (which the overly forumlate OSD could not). I don't think it's necessary.

I've removed this phrase:

"Explicitly, it must not limit commercial use of the work."

Because I basically moved it into the list of essential freedoms above. There was already an example there and I think that this is important enough it's worth dealing with a little higher up in the document. I think it's now more clear and doesn't need to be mentioned below.

-- Benjamin Mako Hill 02:01, 30 April 2006 (CEST)

I'll have another edit later. The main problem I have is with the changes in the first few paragraphs about "information goods". First, I don't like this phrase because it essentially adopts the language of information as property, a commodity. I find it somewhat amusing that you would choose this language given your objections to the word "content". ;-) I find the argument against attempts to equate information with physical property very persuasive, and am inclined to remove this phrase entirely from the document.

The second problem is with the change to the examples enumerated in the beginning. The ones chosen - "Works built by communities collaborating as volunteers, art created for the purpose of shared enjoyment, essential learning materials, scientific research funded through taxpayer money, .." - were chosen explicitly because the argument that these works should be free is strongest and most persuasive. Reworded, it essentially sounds like a declaration against copyright on "anything that can be represented as a sequence of bits". This can definitely not stay this way.--Erik Möller 02:54, 30 April 2006 (CEST)

Sounds good. "Information goods" was clumsy and we're better off with out it.

I'm still worried by the list of things. We're suggestion, but not defining, the scope of the document here. Something to think about and work out in drafting period. --Benjamin Mako Hill 05:36, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

Fair Use

Angela made the point that we should position our definition vs. the existing rights of fair use. This echoes some of the sentiments of Larry's response. So we should think about that before we take it live.--Erik Möller 17:09, 30 April 2006 (CEST)

Made some further edits as per the above. Avoided explicitly mentioning fair use for now to avoid confusion, might add that later.--Erik Möller 02:28, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

I'm not entirely clear defining our position in regards to fair use should mean here. I'm concerned because (a) fair use is only in the US a few other countries. Some other juristictions have similar "fair dealing" law but there are important differences. It's also a balancing act left up to judges and can sometimes be very unclear. I'm also concerned because (b) fair use is a set of compromises that is supposed to balance what would be overly restricted copyright. Our argument here is that copyright is always overly restricted and that we need to not settle for fair use rights but for something more meaningful. Or am I completely off-base here? --Benjamin Mako Hill 05:44, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

No, I think you're right. From an ethical perspective, I think that it is important that fair use rights are also protected and broadened, but I'm not sure if this belongs into this definition. For now, I have added the phrase "Only very limited freedoms are granted to others" to clarify that copyright is not absolute; perhaps that is sufficient.--Erik Möller 05:47, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

I think an argument can be made that it is important that any definition expressly acknowledge fair use (US) or fair dealing (rest of the world) and/or any other exception or limitation to copyright law. This is because of recent judicial decisions that tend to find, for example, that one can contractually override exceptions to copyright law (such as reverse engineering). Thus, I think it could be important to clarify that licenses that satisfy the free content/expression definition are "fair use/fair dealing plus" and grant a layer of permissions in addition to and on top existing exceptions to copyright law. Happy to leave this up to community discussion, however.--Mia Garlick 10:12, 1 May 2006 (PDT)

Fair use is not unified at all among countries, so referring to it in the definition would introduce uncertainty and complication (unless the definition also gives its own definition of fair use). Moreover, fair use is completely covered by the rights specified in the definition AFAIU. --Antoine 20:43, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

Effective Technical Measures

In regards to the little back-and-forth about "effective technical measures." I now realize that you are using the term as a little legal term-of-art to distinguish between TPMs and things like formats or compression. However, I'm afraid it still blocks things like GPG/PGP encrypted email. I'm going to suggest a phrasing like, "technical measure designed to restrict the freedoms above from being exercised by the person to whom the work is distributed."

This phrasing doesn't block things like encrypted email, compression, formats, etc. and doesn't require using a relatively obscure legal term. --Benjamin Mako Hill 05:52, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

Physical works (non-digital)

User:Rgladwell said: How does the definition handle digital works (such as images, documents, etc) versus non-digitual works (such as hard-copy books, paintings, sculptures, etc)?

A requisite would be to replace "modified versions" with "modified copies". If one is allowed to make a "modified version" of a physical, autographic work of art, then the original is destroyed in the process. Not something we would like to encourage. --Antoine 22:02, 1 May 2006 (CEST)

Source code

User:Erik_Möller said: Is it possible for something to be free content without the "source code" (or something equivalent) being available? Under the current definition, it is. Perhaps we need to find a wording that requires source availabiliy where such sources are essential to modifying the work.

The common position among the Free Art License people (not that I always agree with them ;-)) is that providing the source code is a subcase of allowing to study the work. They argue that the source code is necessary to study software, while there is no such necessity for works of art.

One could counter-argue that even if source code is not necessary to study a piece of non-software content, it is nonetheless very practical for doing modifications (the GNU GPL defines source code as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it").

Of course another problem is that some kinds a work do not allow any notion of source code. --Antoine 22:11, 1 May 2006 (CEST)