Commons talk:Creative Commons copyright tags

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Todo:

  • add "sa-1.0" listing.
  • add external links to Commons Deeds?
UED77 05:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the bash script to perform these tasks - see notes below. —RP88 08:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There appear to be 33 blue links, and 41 red. User:dbenbenn 19:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Update December 22, 2006[edit]

I've just updated this table; I've used this bash script:


 #!/bin/bash
 
 languages='ar at au be bg br ca cl cn de dk es fi fr hr hu il it jp kr mt mx my nl pe pl pt scotland se si tw uk za'
 
 # write the inner part of license table; $1 is license name (by, by-sa or sa)
 function mktable(){
 type=$1
 for lang in $languages
 do
 echo '|-' >> cctable
 echo '! '$lang >> cctable
 echo -n '|' >> cctable
 grep ^$type-1.0-$lang cclist && echo -n " {{tl|cc-$type-1.0-$lang}}" >> cctable
 echo -n ' ||' >> cctable
 grep ^$type-2.0-$lang cclist && echo -n " {{tl|cc-$type-2.0-$lang}}" >> cctable
 echo -n ' ||' >> cctable
 grep ^$type-2.1-$lang cclist && echo -n " {{tl|cc-$type-2.1-$lang}}" >> cctable
 echo -n ' ||' >> cctable
 grep ^$type-2.5-$lang cclist && echo -n " {{tl|cc-$type-2.5-$lang}}" >> cctable
 echo >> cctable
 done
 }
 
 echo Checking Creative Commons license...
 for type in by by-sa
 do
 for lang in $languages
 do
 for vers in 1.0 2.0 2.1 2.5
 do
 wget http://creativecommons.org/licenses/$type/$vers/$lang -O >(grep "File not found\." > /dev/null || echo $type-$vers-$lang >> cclist) &> /dev/null
 done
 echo $type-$lang done.
 done
 echo -- All $type licenses done.
 done
 echo All licenses checked.
 
 echo Making license table...
 
 echo '== by-sa (Attribution-ShareAlike) ==' > cctable
 echo '{| class="wikitable"' >> cctable
 echo '! cc-by-sa !! 1.0 !! 2.0 !! 2.1 !! 2.5' >> cctable
 echo '|-' >> cctable
 echo '! Generic' >> cctable
 echo '| {{tl|cc-by-sa-1.0}} || {{tl|cc-by-sa-2.0}} || || {{tl|cc-by-sa-2.5}}' >> cctable
 mktable 'by-sa'
 echo '|}' >> cctable
 echo >> cctable
 
 echo '== by (Attribution) ==' >> cctable
 echo '{| class="wikitable"' >> cctable
 echo '! cc-by !! 1.0 !! 2.0 !! 2.1 !! 2.5' >> cctable
 echo '|-' >> cctable
 echo '! Generic' >> cctable
 echo '| {{tl|cc-by-1.0}} || {{tl|cc-by-2.0}} || || {{tl|cc-by-2.5}}' >> cctable
 mktable 'by'
 echo '|}' >> cctable
 echo >> cctable
 
 echo '== sa (ShareAlike) ==' >> cctable
 echo '{| class="wikitable"' >> cctable
 echo '! cc-sa !! 1.0 !! 2.0 !! 2.1 !! 2.5' >> cctable
 echo '|-' >> cctable
 echo '! Generic' >> cctable
 echo '| {{tl|cc-sa-1.0}} || || ||' >> cctable
 mktable 'sa'
 echo '|}' >> cctable
 echo >> cctable
 
 rm cclist
 
 echo done.

The new table code is written in cctable file. - Laurentius 13:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update February 22, 2007[edit]

I've just updated this table:

  • It now includes the newly released CC 3.0 licenses (see [1])
  • As of CC 3.0, CC licenses no longer assume that the US licenses are the same as the Generic licenses. I've added 'us' to the list.
  • CC also added Colombia (co) and India (in). These are now included.

I've updated the bash script:

  • It now automatically generates the entire table, including testing for the generic licenses (no need to add "sa-1.0" listing).
  • It generates external links to the Commons Deeds.

Like before, the newly generated table code is written to the cctable file.

RP88 05:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]


#!/bin/bash
# cccheck
 
languages='Generic ar at au be bg br ca cl cn co de dk es fi fr hr hu il in it jp kr mt mx my nl pe pl pt scotland se si tw uk us za'
versions='1.0 2.0 2.1 2.5 3.0'

# write a license table header; $1 is license name (by, by-sa or sa)
function mkheader() {
	type=$1
	echo "! cc-$type" >> cctable
	for vers in $versions
	do
		echo -n '! colspan="2" | ' >> cctable
		echo "$vers" >> cctable
	done
}

# write the inner body portion of license table; $1 is license name (by, by-sa or sa)
function mkbody(){
	type=$1
	for lang in $languages
	do
		echo >> cctable
		echo '|-' >> cctable
		echo '! '$lang >> cctable
		for vers in 1.0 2.0 2.1 2.5 3.0
		do
			if [ "${lang}" == "Generic" ]; then
				if grep ^$type-$vers-$lang cclist ; then 
					echo "| {{tl|cc-$type-$vers}}   ||   [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/$type/$vers cc]" >> cctable
				else
					echo '| colspan="2" |' >> cctable
				fi
			else
				if grep ^$type-$vers-$lang cclist ; then
					echo "| {{tl|cc-$type-$vers-$lang}}   ||   [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/$type/$vers/$lang cc]" >> cctable
				else
					echo '| colspan="2" |' >> cctable
				fi
			fi
		done
	done
}

# write license table; $1 is license name (by, by-sa or sa)
function mktable(){
	type=$1
	echo '{| class="wikitable"' >> cctable
	mkheader "$type"
	mkbody "$type"
	echo '|}' >> cctable
}

echo Checking Creative Commons license...
for type in by by-sa sa
do
	for lang in $languages
	do
		for vers in 1.0 2.0 2.1 2.5 3.0
		do
			if [ "${lang}" == "Generic" ]; then
				wget http://creativecommons.org/licenses/$type/$vers -O >(grep "File not found\." > /dev/null || echo $type-$vers-$lang >> cclist) &> /dev/null
			else
				wget http://creativecommons.org/licenses/$type/$vers/$lang -O >(grep "File not found\." > /dev/null || echo $type-$vers-$lang >> cclist) &> /dev/null
			fi
		done
		echo $type-$lang done.
	done
	echo -- All $type licenses done.
done
echo All licenses checked.

echo Making license table...

echo -n 'Last update: ' > cctable
date -u "+%H:%M, %d %B %Y (UTC)" >> cctable

echo '== by-sa (Attribution-ShareAlike) ==' >> cctable
mktable 'by-sa'
echo >> cctable

echo '== by (Attribution) ==' >> cctable
mktable 'by'
echo >> cctable

echo '== sa (ShareAlike) ==' >> cctable
mktable 'sa'
echo >> cctable

rm cclist

echo done.

RP88 05:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Test PatrickC12 (talk) 11:00, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sampling licenses[edit]

Are sampling licenses considered non free? They look non-free from reading the legal code. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/legalcode) 212.183.134.130 14:00, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they are non-free even by criteria far less aggressive than ours. --Gmaxwell (talk) 18:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

question about "ND"[edit]

"nd (No Derivatives) licenses are not acceptable" <-- Why? --JWSchmidt (talk) 22:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ND licenses violate the four freedoms and Commons can only host free works as the licensing policy resolution states. --darklama 19:03, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I know that "No Derivatives" licenses are not allowed at Commons because "they say so". The answer to "why?" would also seem to involve who decided on this policy and why it makes sense for Commons to follow the policy. At the "freedomdefined.org" website these questions are not answered: "Who wrote this? Who administers the site?". "Why isn't a NoDerivatives restriction considered free?". Why isn't it "free" to allow an artist or an author to have the option to protect their work from mis-use by specifying that it cannot be altered? Then the users of such ND media at Commons could be free to decide if they want to respect the artist's desires and not make derivatives, or move on to another derivatives-allowed resource. This seems like the more free approach to me rather than letting someone else ("freedomdefined.org") try to define for me what "free" means. There are many cases where I would be happy to use a complete work, unaltered, but Commons prevents me from sharing such files. Why? It seems like Commons is taking away our freedom to share and use ND works. Why? --JWSchmidt (talk) 14:27, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How would not allowing derivatives prevent misuse? A person could use the original version in a way that was not foreseen and could be considered a misuse as well. ND might provide a bit more freedom for people to control what is done with their work, but not much more. I suppose this is a case of whether its more important for people to have the freedom to control how their work is used, or more important for people to have the freedom to use works in whatever ways they want. If people have the freedom to disallow derivatives of their work than other people won't have the freedom to make derivatives. So one group of people would gain a freedom while another group would lose a freedom. This is pretty basic stuff that applies to any freedom. I don't know why the choice was made and who was involved in the decision, but the result suggests the people involved in making the choice, thought that the freedom of people who want to use works is more important than the freedom of the people who make the works, or that people who use the work should have the same freedoms as the people who made the work. --darklama 18:39, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"How would not allowing derivatives prevent misuse?" <-- I do not understand why you are asking this question. Did you mean to ask, "If the WMF and Commons allowed ND files how would it be possible to prevent people from making derivatives of ND files?" How does Commons prevent anyone from violating the licensing terms of any file? "So one group of people would gain a freedom while another group would lose a freedom." <-- You seem to be saying that Commons best serves Wikimedians by being philosophically opposed to ND licensing of media files, no matter what the actual cost to freedom. Rather than base policy on an abstract philosophical belief, why not look at reality? I think we could obtain a good estimate of how many Wikimedians would "gain a freedom" or "lose a freedom" under each of these two options: 1) WMF does not allow ND licensing (what we have now) and 2) WMF allows ND licensing. Under the current system, every time a Wikimedian wants to use a ND-licensed media file at a Wikimedia project that person is deprived by the WMF of their freedom to use the ND media file. How does anyone "gain a freedom" under the current system? Only under the very unlikely set of conditions that a rare individual might decide to change from using a ND license in order to upload their work to Commons. I think we could obtain a good estimate of the percent of cases in which Wikimedians make derivatives of media files and I suspect that percentage is very low. So, under the current system, a vanishingly small number of people gain the freedom to make derivatives of a few files. I suspect more people "lose a freedom" under the current system than "gain a freedom". Under option #2, the situation would be reversed. A vanishingly small number of Wikimedians would "lose a freedom" and be frustrated by seeing some files that they could not use for making derivative works and they could easily just move on to use other media files for their needs. Many more Wikimedians would be happy to respect the wishes of media file creators and use the ND-licensed media files. By not allowing ND-licensed media, I think a philosophical position has been adopted and then defended by a false claim that doing so enhances freedom. I'd like to see evidence to support the claim that it is in the best interest of Wikimedians that ND-licensed media files are not allowed. --JWSchmidt (talk) 16:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

JWSchmidt, You're arguing against part of the non-negotiable fundamental mission of the Wikimedia Foundation: The Wikimedia Foundation exists to create freely licensed works, where freely licensed is stated and understood to be works which allow the public to execute certain rights with respect to those works. If you disagree with this SuperOrdinateGoal that is your prerogative, you're welcome to begin your own project which does not have this goal, though you may not being your project using the copyleft material in Wikipedia. If you wish to take away rights you must use works which are not under licenses which protect people from making less-free forks.

In any case, since the issue is a definitional one a definitional explanation is completely appropriate: We've stated our mission is to accomplish certain things, so when you argue against it an appropriate answer is "thats not the mission". It could be that the decision might have been completely arbitrary, though it is not, and that would make it no less a correct answer. For people to come work together successfully there needs to be a direction, and even an arbitrary one is often better than none at all.

But the decision is not completely arbitrary: There are many significant material reasons supporting it.

First lets consider the nature of Wiki and development on our projects: We build things many things through incremental improvement. Most media are not big collaborations, but neither are most Wikipedia articles. Yet the ability to repair, translate, and derived is used widely on all our projects, on all types and forms of content. It's a part of the wiki culture of self-empowerment: If it's broken you go fix it. A reduction in the ability of our users to fix and enhance the complete site would be a material loss.

Second, consider the motivations and drivers behind participation: When you submit a work under the licenses we accept all our contributors become nearly-equal owners of the work, they lack only the rights to take sole attribution (and to make less freely licensed forks, in the case of GFDL and CC-By-SA). This makes Wikimedia unattractive as a free web host for personal content (which is an activity outside of the WMF's chartable mission and charter) but far more attractive for most people who want to come together and build something useful (which is part of our chartable and chartered mission). Free licensing (of the Freedom Defined sort) builds community by putting contributors on equal standing and avoids OWNership issues.

Third, our usage is inherently derivative: When you combine media with a Wikipedia article you create a third work, an illustrated article, which is greater than the sum of its parts. A well written article will depend on its media, it will 'riff off' its media, and it will act as a unified whole. By containing both old and new elements combined the resulting work meets every legal definition of a derivative. The CC-By-ND license permits some kinds of derivatives, classifying derivatives which combine works "constituting separate and independent works in themselves" as 'collections' by the terms of the license, so while the aggregation of largely "separate and independent" articles in an Encyclopædia would qualify, combinations of media and text in an article would most likely not. Many commercial stock photographers have elected to offer -ND licensed copies of the works in order to allow some personal reuse without interfering with their primary income from works being reused by magazine, textbook, and web publishers (or in other words— use exactly like ours). We also must consider the licensing of the text in the projects: With the exception of Wikinews all our projects are under copyleft licenses which explicitly forbid the production of less-free enhanced versions, which is exactly what you'd get when you introduce a -ND illustration into a Wikipedia article. This is a good process: Few would want to see the results of their labours enhanced a bit and as a result give the original creator substantially less freedom with the result. So it's not at all clear that we could legally use -ND works even if we did not forbid them explicitly.

Finally, the public's ability to produce derivatives is part of what makes Wikimedia projects unique and valuable. Right now there are many commercial encyclopædias and other analogous works which you can access online at zero cost. You can also make copies from these works for your own use (either due to fair use or the effective impossibility of detecting and prosecuting you for private actions). With the works in Wikimedia projects you can expand, enhance, build upon, tailor to your needs, and redistribute the result. You may argue that these abilities are unimportant because only a small number avail themselves of them today, but that is an argument against the existence of Wikimedia more than anything else. If people don't need to create re-distributable derivatives, then the existing no cost reference works online should cover their needs. But especially when we consider the high probability of copyright being perpetual our licensing is a real value to the public which is not provided by any other major knowledge source.

If we accepted less permissive licensing an enormous number of content creators would avail themselves of it as their desire to see their works used in Wikipedia could be satisfied without even having to consider whether the 'protections' provided by the more restrictive license are at all relevant to them. As a result we'd lose a large incentive for people to select the more permissive licensing. Considered copyright holders would probably recognize that ND licensing in any form that we could use provides little value but many people do not make considered derisions with respect to licensing. When we establish licensing policy we are working on behalf of the public to negotiate with the creators of content to set rules which will maximize the public interest. If we include a term that allows content creators to provide less freedom whenever they wish regardless of the benefit to the public we would be short changing our client.

Copyright is an economic right: We the public have agreed to relinquish our ability to copy, build upon, and perform all thoughts and works freely, an inherit natural right by the very nature of intellectual works, in order to build an incentive system which encourages the creation of additional works. We allow creators a monopoly on their creations so that they may profit and create more. This trade-off has brutal consequences for society: Millions of possible works are never created as a result, access to knowledge is denied to those who need but can not afford it even though it would cost almost nothing, and we lose the ability to freely help our neighbours when we can't copy, create derivatives, or perform works for them. But the importance of the incentive copyright has created can not be denied: without copyright a great many works would also not be created, and people can not access what does not exist.

Wikimedia, along with GNU/Linux and several other examples, are examples that forgoing our natural rights isn't the only way to get intellectual materials created, at least not in the age of computers and the Internet. The free licensing systems used by these projects abandon almost all of the limitations, and yet can co-exist peacefully in parallel with the classic restrictive model of copyright. It is a system which may not work for all kinds of works, but we have proven that it works for ours.

Since we care about helping the public and we've proven that we can create enormous amounts of quality work without limitations on the public's natural rights to create derivatives it would be unconscionable to allow people to subject important components of our projects to those limitations. Doing so would defeat our mission, it would defeat our methods, and it would harm our fellow man. We've demonstrated that the copyright monopoly economic trade-off is simply not needed for us, so we simply have no excuse to further limit the natural rights of others by accepting more restrictive licensing.

--Gmaxwell (talk) 18:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"arguing against part of the non-negotiable fundamental mission of the Wikimedia Foundation" <-- I think not....that is just your characterization of what I have done. What I have actually done is try to discuss the idea that by not allowing ND-licensed media, freedom is actually reduced, not enhanced. I am calling for an examination of objective evidence so we can determine if allowing ND-licensed media at Wikimedia projects would actually help the community work in support of the Foundation's mission. "freely licensed is stated and understood" <-- Many things get "stated" and are never questioned. Only at some later time is it recognized that an error was made. I'm not impressed by arguments from authority. I think we can obtain objective evidence and that evidence can guide the community to best practices. Your claim that ND-licensed media at Wikimedia projects would result in less freedom needs to be critically examined. From above: "By containing both old and new elements combined the resulting work meets every legal definition of a derivative. The CC-By-ND license permits some kinds of derivatives, classifying derivatives which combine works "constituting separate and independent works in themselves" as 'collections' by the terms of the license, so while the aggregation of largely "separate and independent" articles in an Encyclopædia would qualify, combinations of media and text in an article would most likely not." <-- Are you claiming that GFDL-licensed text and an ND-licensed image cannot be combined in an encyclopedia? If so, please indicate the language here that you believe can be interpreted to support such a claim. "meets every legal definition of a derivative" <-- please provide one legal definition of a derivative that says including an image in a page of text creates a derivative of the image. "copyleft licenses which explicitly forbid the production of less-free enhanced versions" <-- You seem to be claiming that the GFDL is violated by illustrating GFDL-licensed text with ND-licensed media. What is the language in the GFDL that supports that claim? "You may argue that these abilities are unimportant because only a small number avail themselves of them today, but that is an argument against the existence of Wikimedia more than anything else." <-- just to be clear, I have never made such an argument. What is under discussion here is a relatively small number of media files that creators decide should be ND-licensed. I trust artists and other content creators to decide for themselves if it makes sense that their creations be ND-licensed. The question is: is it better for Wikimedia Foundation projects to be able to make use of ND-licensed media or not? What does the evidence say? "If we accepted less permissive licensing an enormous number of content creators would avail themselves of it" <-- In the case of ND-licensed media, I doubt that there would be an "enormous number of content creators" deciding to ND-license their work. However, I would be willing to live with some version of this rule: if ND-licensed media ever becomes more than 1% of uploaded media files at a Wikimedia Foundation project then further uploading of ND-licensed media will be blocked. "If we include a term that allows content creators to provide less freedom whenever they wish regardless of the benefit to the public we would be short changing our client" <-- but this is not the topic of discussion here. I think it can be shown, by the collection of objective evidence, that the Wikimedia community and the public would be better served and provided with more freedom if ND-licensed media were allowed. You seem to be claiming to opposite, but I do not see any evidence or even a reasoned argument to support your claim. I do not see how allowing ND-licensed media at Commons would have "brutal consequences for society". I believe that Wikimedia projects and the public at large would benefit from allowing ND-licensed media to be used and I previously outlined (above, on this page) ways to use objective evidence to decide the matter. "the public's natural rights to create derivatives" <-- Why not give people the freedom to decide for themselves if they want to use ND-licensed media? "right to create derivatives" <-- Part of any "human right" is exercising that right in a responsible way. You might claim the right to free speech, but there are situations where it is not responsible to say anything you can imagine saying. There are some good reasons for people to voluntarily give up their freedom of speech. Similarly, I think artists and other creators of media sometimes have good reasons to protect some of their work with a ND-license. I think the Wikimedia Foundation and the public is best served by recognizing that and allowing Wikimedia project participants to decide for themselves if they want to use ND-licensed media. Let's look at objective data and see if doing so would actually provide increased freedom and benefits to Wikimedia project participants. --JWSchmidt (talk) 18:07, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please see foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy. The Wikimedia Foundation, the community generally, and the Commons community in particular agree that no-derivative licenses are not free by that definition, which is our agreed-upon definition. However, you will find there is a strong consensus behind this; questioning it is fine, but will likely garner only opposition. We're here to pursue certain goals - if you are not, feel free to fork.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 21:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...Which is to say, "We're not going to change it because everyone said so once, and please go fork yourself." Niiiiiice. I have read over all of the above text, and in the end I remain unconvinced that allowing ND licensed works would do anything but benefit "the project", I find the reasoning against this proposed change to be tepid though extensive and without any supporting evidence ("fear" is not a form of evidence), and while I am sure that there were many long, community-wide discussions in which this particular matter was both thoroughly debated and then resoundingly and uniformly agreed upon, I am here now as a member of "the community" who has examined what has been given as a summary of those long, community-wide discussions and found it to be less than convincing reasoning for this now-immortal decision. The official policy and project scope explained at Commons:Project scope begins with the statement, "Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all. It acts as a common repository for all Wikimedia projects, but the content can be used by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose."<— nothing about that is in conflict with the ND license. Nothing. And while the Four Freedoms are all well and good, they are not part of the Commons website and do not appear anywhere in any Commons policy document I could find.
But all of this discussion took place seven years ago, and the train has long since left the station. We're not going to discuss it now. We weren't really going to discuss it then, either. And if you feel you disagree with my sense of what the scope of the project is or should be, you are welcome to... welcome only to disagree... But you are not welcome to hide behind a pillar and throw rocks. If your argument doesn't stand then the policy should be changed. Dismissing an argument is not a valid way of refuting it. (Sorry I missed the train, though, [User:JWSchmidt|JWSchmidt]] et al.— a man can only do so many things at once, and sometimes we miss our trains!) KDS4444 (talk) 09:10, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Philippines[edit]

Please include the CC licenses for the Philippines. --Bluemask (talk) 09:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm adding them in for Wikipedia Takes Manila. --Sky Harbor (talk) 03:39, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't cc0 be mentioned?[edit]

The intro reads: "This page lists all Creative Commons licenses that are accepted at Wikimedia Commons. Under our licensing policy, only "by-sa" (Attribution-ShareAlike), "by" (Attribution), and "sa" (ShareAlike) licenses are permitted; all "nc" (Noncommercial) and "nd" (No Derivatives) licenses are acceptable."

I believe the omission of cc0 could cause confusion. However, I have not been involved in Wikimedia Commons copyright discussions and therefore I'm cautious about barging in with new text. SCHolar44 (talk) 20:03, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SCHolar44: I agree. I've added a mention of it to the header, and a tiny table at the bottom.