MediaWiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing

Possible Relicensing?

So, Wikipedia is moving from the GFDL to a Creative Commons license, which will make it incompatible with most Wikia sites from then on. (Presumably; I haven't heard if Wikia at large or any of its individual wikis--like the old Transformers one-- are making the same transition.) Should TFWiki consider switching, too? Pretty much everyone outside the Wikipedia/Wikia family goes with CC, which is a lot simpler in a lot of ways than the GFDL.

Apparently, GFDL-licensed wikis can only make the change before August 1, 2009. And unlike them, we probably wouldn't have to worry about having added any content from non-wiki GFDL-licensed things, at least. And it would completely eliminate legal copying/pasting between this wiki and its rival. --Fleb 17:47, 6 June 2009 (EDT)

I would support this, at least tentatively. - SanityOrMadness 19:16, 6 June 2009 (EDT)

On the surface, at least, it looks like a good move. It keeps the same free-info spirit, but is incompatible with Wikia's license and any info-quoting or copying from us further requires attributing the wiki, if I'm reading it right. --Jeysie 21:18, 6 June 2009 (EDT)

Hmm. I thought about bringing this Creative Commons thing up awhile back, but I'm not Legal Smarts (S-M-R-T) enough to fully understand it. Perhaps our staff should comment on this? The final decision is probably theirs. --FFN 04:06, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

I don't really have much to say, other than it sounds like a good idea. If nothing else, the legal terms of the GFDL are nightmarish at best and I'd be happy to never think of them again. --Suki Brits 14:02, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

IANAL, but based on Wikimedia's page, it looks like "relicensing" the site is just a matter of changing all the text that mentions "GFDL" now. The one requirement is that we're using version 1.3. Transformers Wiki:Copyrights doesn't specify a version, and neither does the edit page or the footer, so that's probably okay. (If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.) --fleb 18:30, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

One thing that's confusing me, looking again at that - Wikipedia's new licensing structure seems confusing in that all non-imported-under-a-CC-licence content will still be dual-licensed under the GDFL. If we adopted that, Wikia could import from us, but we couldn't import from Wikia. CAN the GDFL be dropped completely? - SanityOrMadness 19:31, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Oh, definitely. The dual-licensing is just Wikipedia's own, weird thing to keep the Free Software Foundation loyalists from bitching and Leaving Forever. (Those CC-only things should actually "poison" individual pages so they're not truly GFDL-licensable anymore without reverting, so they'll probably eventually drop it completely.) --fleb 22:05, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Which CC license would we use? Seems like from the Wikipedia CC page that a by-nc-nd license would be what we're after? --abates 19:16, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

It would be CC-by-sa. --Jeysie 19:23, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

That looks like a good idea to me. --abates 20:07, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Definitely By-SA -- If we do a No-Derivatives, how would we even edit any of our own pages? --fleb 22:05, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

Seems I misunderstood how the licensing applied. :) --abates 23:44, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

ARE we going to relicence?

So, are we going to do it, is it being investigated, or are we going to just leave it until the grace period expires and we have to stick with the GDFL after all? - SanityOrMadness 17:09, 15 June 2009 (EDT)

I vote we do it. Anyone else? --abates 20:14, 16 June 2009 (EDT)

It seems to be a less onerous license, and one which we have a window of opportunity to switch to. I'd say go for it.--Rosicrucian^Talk 20:18, 16 June 2009 (EDT)

+1 vote in favor of relicensing. --Jeysie 21:29, 16 June 2009 (EDT)

-1, I'm against it unless we find a copyright lawyer. The GFDL provides no provisions against re-use in commercial projects. While I'm all for 'Hasbro' poking around on this wiki and recycling bios/names/ideas/what-have-you, if someone else decides to redistribute this content for commercial purposes (for example, selling an iPhone/Android app that's basically an offline cache of the wiki,) I want to make sure that we're not on the hook for it. I get that Hasbro is turning a gleefully blind eye to us as long as we're just trying to stay alive as a volunteer effort, but if we end up attached to someone's attempt to profit off of our work, which is in itself a derivative work of at least a dozen various IP holders, the resulting storm of litigation would shut us down within hours. (And no, I am in fact the 'least' qualified person around to give advice on this situation. I'm just a paranoid freak.) --McFly 12:07, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

...I have no idea what you just said. Literally. It seems vaguely like you're trying to argue against using the GDFL on the grounds that someone could resell the wiki content. But we're ALREADY using the GDFL and talking about changing to a Creative Commons licence (Which includes the option for a -nc flag, although no-one here has proposed that as yet that I can see - and given that we carry ads, we may not be allowed to use a -nc flag. That's one I'd like a lawyer's opinion on).

[And could you login just to prove that's you? You posted that as an anon] - SanityOrMadness 13:45, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, under our current GDFL license, the content of this wiki can already be sold. Staying with the GDFL won't fix that.

On that note, I will say I'd actually prefer to change to the non-commercial version of the Share-Alike CC license myself, but I had gotten the feeling that there was that only one specific CC license you could switch to. Was I mistaken on that? --Jeysie 14:08, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

They specifically mention CC-BY-SA 3.0, so you're probably right about -nc not being an option, I suppose. For the avoidance of doubt, the GDFL section on relicensing follows in its' own section, the GDFL as a whole is here, a summary of CC-BY-SA 3.0 is here and the full CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence is here - SanityOrMadness 14:25, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Hrm. I guess that's something we should ask... someone? Who's in charge of all this wiki relicensing as a whole?

But for what it's worth, we could use an -nc flag despite the ads, if it's allowed:

Can I still make money from a work I make available under a Creative Commons licenses?

Absolutely. Firstly, because our licenses are non-exclusive which means you are not tied down to only make a piece of your content available under a Creative Commons license; you can also enter into other revenue-generating licenses in relation to your work. One of our central goals is to encourage people to experiment with new ways to promote and market their work.

Secondly, the noncommercial license option is an inventive tool designed to allow people to maximize the distribution of their works while keeping control of the commercial aspects of their copyright. To make one thing clear that is sometimes misunderstood: the "noncommercial use" condition applies only to others who use your work, not to you (the licensor). So if you choose to license your work under a Creative Commons license that includes the “noncommercial use” option, you impose the ”noncommercial” condition on the users (licensees). However, you, the creator of the work and/or licensor, may at any time decide to use it commercially. People who want to copy or adapt your work, "primarily for monetary compensation or financial gain" must get your separate permission first.|Creative Commons FAQ}}

Of course, we obviously actually can't outright sell the work ourselves either, but that answer does seem to mean that, even if showing ads technically counts as "commercial use", we can still use an NC license. --Jeysie 14:31, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, if the GDFL only allows us to go to CC-BY-SA3, and not CC-BY-SA-NC, it's kind of a moot point. Which is annoying, since the -nc version DEFINITELY seems more desirable, since it would absolutely lock Wikia out from copying us if true) - SanityOrMadness 14:33, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I decided to send off the following e-mail to the GDFL folks' contact e-mail:

Greetings. I'm one of the editors on a Mediawiki-based wiki dedicated to the Transformers franchise: http://tfwiki.net/

We are currently discussing the prospect of also switching from the GDFL to the CC-BY-SA3. However, we were wondering if the CC-BY-SA3 is truly the *only* BY-SA that can be switched to, or if CC-BY-NC-SA3 would also be possible. Since our wiki is obviously based off writing about copyrighted material, it would help us greatly in remaining on the franchise's parent company's good side if we could ensure that our content cannot be sold.

Your answer on this would be much appreciated.

Signed,

Liz Calkins

With any luck I'll get an answer I can pass along. --Jeysie 14:55, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

GDFL section 11, relicensing

11. RELICENSING

"Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site" (or "MMC Site") means any World Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of such a server. A "Massive Multiauthor Collaboration" (or "MMC") contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.

"CC-BY-SA" means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization.

"Incorporate" means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of another Document.

An MMC is "eligible for relicensing" if it is licensed under this License, and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.

The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.

Derik causes problems

What is the actual difference between these liscences? Is there a breakdown somewhere?

The explanations I hear online are "They're exactly the same, only CC-BY-SA is worded clearer!"

Is there a more substantial difference?

Regardless, I'm going to suggest TFWiki, in addition to whatever base license we adopt, add a (God help me) signing statement making clear that our legal ability to license the content on this wiki extends only to our own value-added contributions, and not the content which is copywritten by Hasbro.

A fundamental problem with the GFDL (originally a license intended for creating collaborative software documentation) and CC-SA (a license for artists to release their work while still retaining some control of how it is used) is that both licenses operate under the assumption that the people collaborating to produce this content own the content they're uploading. If they produced it, they have the right to give other people the right to use it.

...we didn't produce Transformers. We don't have the right to distribute Screencaps-- our use of those screencaps falls under "fair use," anyone wishing to re-use screencaps posted on this wiki is not granted the use of them via our release of the screencaps... they are claiming fair use from Hasbro again. Even our article text content is a melange of "we can claim ownership" and "derived fromHasbro to such an extent that we cannot claim ownership over it" (moreso than Memory Alpha, because for many obscure characters, their entire bio is nothing but a rephrasing of their tech-spec. The amount of 'value added' work done by us in relation to hasbro's copyright on the original text is very low.)

And that's even separate from McFeely's concern that someone could create an "offline TFWiki" as an iPhone app-- citing their right to use our content under GFDL-- and then never paying Hasbro a dime. In that scenario-- we are the 'leak' for Hasbro's lawyers to plug by shutting us down. Adopting a "NC" (non-commercial use only) license just means they couldn't charge for it... they could still create a free downloadable or java app (Transformer tech-spec viewers are fairly popular as mobile downloads, apparently) with the same result. Besides-- a NC license would technically mean that Hasbro's own people couldn't use the Wiki as a resource anymore. (At least, under sufficiently draconian lawyers, like Disney's.)

Equally undesirable, IMO, is someone who has a TF license via Hasbro, like a book company, that might decide to cheap-out on their content and simply re-present wiki articles-- under GFDL from us for our contributions and fully licensed from Hasbro for the portion of the content that they own. I don't fucking want TF guidebooks cheeping out liek that-- and I'm really uncomfortable with any part of our user-generated content becoming primary source material. That's how Daken got created!

A way around that might involve a second license on our content that's dependent on a commercial producer having the TF license. (This sounds murky, but I think it can make sense...)

...

*scrolls up* Um, wow. That's a lot of text.

Basically what I'm saying is;

1. As long as we're updating our license, I think we should take the time to make it the right license, one that;
   1. Allows users to freely contribute.
   2. Allows creators to freely play.
   3. Reflect that a good deal of our content (particularly graphics) is not owned by us.
   4. Respects Hasbro's legal and business needs vis-a-vis copyright.
   5. Recognizes that TFWiki is used as a resource for commercial products. (Share-and-share-alike is good, but it can have some bad consequences on 'child' derived works, rendering them uncopyrightable.)
   6. Attempt to make sure we're not the only resourced used by those products

No existing license (that I'm aware of) actually reflects the special needs of media fandom wikis. and the degree of disconnect isn't small-- it's legally significant, and it inhibits our ability to control what happens to our content to protect both our own interests and those of Hasbro.

I think we can do that without breaking our brains or hiring a lawyer-- but it requires acting with intention. Like-- forming an exploratory committee seriously peck the problem apart. The upshot might be... well... considerable. We're hardly the only wiki in this position, and taking the hammer out a standard approach stands a decent chance of being adopted elsewhere. (That's kinda meta-benefit to TFWiki, but it's certainly reputation-building. In terms of "moral authority" a lot of people seem to feel like TFWiki is the place that did things right; our approach to WP:NPOV, leaving Wikia, stance on spoilers, our protective attitude towards the brand, etc... at least I keep running into references to TFWiki in the weirdest places, and they're almost always complimentary in terms not just related to our content.)

Is anyone else with an interest in (or at least tolerance for) copyright law interested in doing this right? -Derik 17:37, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Actually, there's no reason whatsoever that Hasbro couldn't use the wiki as a resource under a NC license. They just wouldn't be able to sell any of the exact content of the wiki, if that makes sense. It's the difference between being able to look up that Optimus Prime did some obscure thing in a certain episode, and quoting the wiki article for Optimus Prime verbatim.

Plus, AFAIK, all CC licenses allow for the licensees to make individual exceptions, meaning that even if Hasbro did want to verbatim print some part of the wiki for some reason, we could make an exception for them to do so.

And personally I don't see any big deal with someone giving copies of the wiki away as a free resource, at least in a legal sense, seeing as how the wiki is basically a free guide to Transformers. As long as we're given credit and it's made clear that it's not in any way an official product, it's exactly the same practical result as someone surfing to the wiki itself on their iPhone browser or whatever, just made more convenient. (The only difference is that we don't get the pageviews for ad revenue if people read our material elsewhere, but that's our problem to deal with, not Hasbro's.)

Having said all that, a license that allows for protections on things like screenshots and scans would be useful.

However, that's not something that could be handled before August, I don't think. Personally I'd rather change to some sort of CC license now as an interim measure, and then change again later down the road if a better CC license or other license becomes available.

Otherwise, we may end up locked into a GDFL license we can't change away from anyway, even if we do later come up with something better. --Jeysie 17:51, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Actually, there's no reason whatsoever that Hasbro couldn't use the wiki as a resource under a NC license. They just wouldn't be able to sell any of the exact content of the wiki, if that makes sense.

I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that CC-NC also stipulates that any derived work must also be CC-NC. So if they rewrite any portion of our content-- or re-create a diagram we created-- that's a derived work they can't include in a comercial product. And since the license actually says that any CC-NC element caused the entire resulting work to be CC-NC, that means that if (for example) IDW did photomanip work on a CC-NC image from here and threw it in as an image on a monitor for Spotlight: Brunt-- the entirely of Spotlight: Brunt would fall out of copyright. Anyone could copy it, alter it, and legally distribute copies of it.

What are the odds of a singe identifiable sentence lifted from the wiki ever making it into a TF guidebook by accident? If so-- the entire book is now CC-NC, legal to pirate.

At least, that's my understanding of how CC-NC works-- and I ended up having to read the entire damn license for a software thing I was working on two years ago that used a PHP-library that was CC-NC. It's the same license, right? It's not like CC-NC is "made for wikis," it covers a wide range of products. Am I wrong on this? -Derik 18:37, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Clarification-- I'm actually referring to CC-SA3 in the previous section, not CC-NC. but since we're considering moving to a license that would be SA3, the scenario still stands.

It's right there in plain english. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license. If any of our content leaked into an official product, that product would suddenly be creative-commons and freely distribuitable.

...why do you think the "free information" people have been braying for the license change? This is a stealth copyright-subversion scheme. as accidental direct lifts from Wikipedia (or any product derived from wikipedia content) slip into comercial products, they will become legally contaminated, and then contaminate anything that uses content FROM them. It's better than the Public Domain, because derived works based on the public domain are copyrightable... derived works based on CC-SA are not, they are inherently "free." -Derik 18:51, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, once again, the license outright states that "Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder." So again, even if Hasbro or another licensee wanted to sell any wiki-based work, we could just waive the Share-Alike and Non-Commercial aspects for them alone. So that's not a problem/issue.

And again, I'd rather just make the switch now, then we can always switch again if we find something better down the road. Rather than trying to be hasty about it to fit it in before August, so we don't get locked into the GFDL for good.

Further, it's not like we don't already have all of the potential problems you state under our current license anyway. Doesn't the GDFL already require you to release any derivative material under the GDFL license too? --Jeysie 18:58, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

"The Copyright holder" in this case is every person who has ever edited an article on this wiki, or Wikia before we moved.

Did you collect thousands of legal proxies that allow you to speak for them? You can't just legally decide to 'wave a copyright,' nor can a steering committee. The copyright has to be waived by the holder.

And what the waiver notice is really saying is "you can shortform a separate license understanding independent of this liscence as long as you deal directly with the person who owns the copyright on the work." That's always true, it's not a CC thing. You'd have to get a list of every person who's ever edited an article and get them all to agree to waive their rights for Hasbro, which you so casually hand-wave over.

Maybe a better question-- if the primary reason to switch licenses is this "SAS" clause tyhat infects all derived work-- and we want to exempt Hasbro from that clause... why are we even switching?

I'm not even against switching licenses... I just think it should be a thought out decision, not a casual one. This discussion has basically consisted of "Everyone is switching, it's a good idea u wanna?" "LOL, sure why not!"

There are actual not-irrelevant legal ramifications of this decision-- and I'm not sure it's in our best interests or Hasbro's best interests to do this. Can we actually look at what we're signing off on before putting it to an up-and-down vote? -Derik 19:56, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but my end of the discussion is more like, "We only have a month and a half to make the decision, the CC switch looks like it wouldn't add any problems that don't already exist under the GDFL, it might give us some benefits that don't already exist under the GDFL, and the CC seems to be less binding anyway, so we can switch easier down the road."

Furthermore, considering how we're already going to be able to switch to the new license without requiring everyone's sign-off anyway, I don't see why we can't just put the waiver for Hasbro and their licensees into the switch from the get-go.

Then on top of that, if you want to get absolutely technical, since Hasbro and their licensees are the copyright holders for all this stuff to begin with, they get an automatic waver on our derivative work anyway, because we don't have the legal right to lock them out of their own copyright. All we can do is lock non-Hasbro-licensees out of our take on Hasbro's copyright.

So, hey, if someone here can get a lawyer to knock out a good alternative in a month and a half, go for it. Otherwise, seeing as how the GDFL we're under already has all the problems you're complaining about, I see no reason that switching would at least put us any worse off than we are already. All of your alleged problems either already exist anyway under the current GFDL license, or aren't actually problems. --Jeysie 20:12, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I don't see why we can't just put the waiver for Hasbro and their licensees into the switch from the get-go.

Because then you're committing a legal offense against both the copyright holders and the FSF? That's actually worse than your last suggestion.

I'd be a lot more confident in your judgment about the legal ramifications of the switch if you didn't keep suggesting things that were illegal. -Derik 20:48, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

"Then on top of that, if you want to get absolutely technical, since Hasbro and their licensees are the copyright holders for all this stuff to begin with, they get an automatic waver on our derivative work anyway, because we don't have the legal right to lock them out of their own copyright. All we can do is lock non-Hasbro-licensees out of our take on Hasbro's copyright."

As in, I already know that part, thanks.

As for the FSF part, I'm not sure how it's a legal offense against the FSF to insitute a waiver during the switch that the new license already explicitly allows as being possible.

I'd be a lot more interested in your rebuttals if you sounded like you read not only what I already wrote, but what the legal articles themselves say. --Jeysie 20:58, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

In any case, like I said, if someone here can afford to ask a lawyer about this, I've got no objections to that. But I have to admit you haven't said how staying with the GFDL solves any of your concerns, seeing as how AFAIK said concerns all exist under our current GDFL too. *shrug* --Jeysie 21:03, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I'm not sure how it's a legal offense against the FSF to insitute a waiver during the switch that the new license already explicitly allows as being possible.

1. You don't have the legal right to act as the proxy of everyone who's edited this wiki by declaring a waiver in any circumstance.
2. You intend to muddy those legal waters by making the acceptance of this waiver a rider on the license switchover-- the FSF debated for almost a year before finally deciding the two liscences were close enough to make the switch-- they have the legal right to determine what new licensing is and is not permissible under GFDL. That's like taking a EULA for a piece of software, agreeing to it, then declaring, "And now I'm going to make unilateral revisions to it without the other side of this contract's knowledge or agreement-- but they're totally legally binding and I can grant myself extra rights with them." And that's even aside from making them an an accessory of your unlawful claim of proxy over the thousands of editors who've created content. -Derik 21:16, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

1. We're already making a claim of proxy over the editors by being able to switch the license to begin with.
2. The whole point is moot anyway, because way I see it, we have to effectively give Hasbro a waiver on using anything on this wiki in their own commercial copyright, because we don't have any copyright powers over their content anyway. I don't see how we could legally force Hasbro to have no control over their own copyright to begin with, just because we wrote about it under a share-alike license, because we never had the copyrights to begin with! And that exact same problem already exists under the GFDL we're already under.
   Again, the only right we have at all is to keep non-Hasbro-licensees from using our content in certain ways.
3. In short, you're the one being silly by making the claim we have the right to ever lock Hasbro out of their own copyright to begin with. You can't be unlawful by having people give up rights they don't actually have anyway. --Jeysie 21:54, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

We're already making a claim of proxy over the editors by being able to switch the license to begin with.

No, you're not. All of those original users granted you the right to make a specific proxy call (switch from GFDL 1.3 to CC-BY-SA3 only) under an obscure clause in GFDL. That right was granted every time an edit was made, and has lain dormant ever since. And relicensing not explicitly made provision for under an updated GFDL would require you to contact all those users and get them to sign off on it. This specific license change only was pre-approoved. It's like checking the "Organ doner, eyes" tab on your driver's license. You granted themt he right to take your eyes if the opportunity came up. When you show up in an operating room brain dead, they can't just arbitrarily decide to take your liver too without the permission of your legal custodian. (In this metaphor, that would be "going back to the original editors or their Power of Attorney heir and asking them to sign off on it.")

STOP TRYING TO STEAL MY DAMN LIVER! I SWEAR, EVERY DAY... THAT DAMN BIRD! -Derik 22:33, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

You still have yet to explain how any license we apply can possibly block out Hasbro from having the rights to their own copyright. Therefore, yet again, the whole point is moot, because Hasbro would already technically exempt from the SA (& NC) parts of the license anyway no matter what we try to claim. Yet again, you can't take away rights from our editors that they never had to begin with.

The best you can possibly do is state that our claim of being under the GFDL is already invalid anyway, because we don't have the right to ever force Hasbro to release their own copyrighted material under the same GFDL license if they use our writings. In which case we might as well just ignore this whole deal that thus doesn't apply to us anyway, and switch to whatever Memory Alpha does. --Jeysie 22:47, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

We would not be locking Hasbro out of their own copyrights-- Hasbro would be at risk to involuntarily surrender many of their rights. That's a different thing.

Devaluation of the Transformers license? That too. -Derik 22:59, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Why would Hasbro surrender any of its rights? We have the right to say how our content is used, but we don't have any right to say how Hasbro gets to use its own copyrighted material, whether they use our writings or not. You don't get to claim copyright over something just by writing about it. --Jeysie 23:19, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

If you don't grasp the concept that we have some copyright claim over our own article text here (the starting point) I don't really feel like going another round explaining everythign that follows after that to you, because it's a non-starter. There's no point in laying out the problems involved if you're stuck on the givens at the starting point.

Refer to my previous example with Spotlight: Brunt for why SA3 would be undesirable for IDW. See how that legal ambiguity makes the TF License (which IDW pays an annual fee for) worth less money. Listen as I tell you that the people pushing for this license change intend that legal ambiguity because they have an axe to grind against copyright, and they intend to cause so much suffering (and hopefully few landmark legal cases) that copyright law gets reformed.

That's great. I think copyright law needs reform. But their method for doing so involves creating massive legal headaches for vast numbers of people. I'd prefer TFWiki and Hasbro not be among those numbers of people. -Derik 00:04, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

But like Jeysie said, GFDL already has those problems, it's a Share-Alike-style license and has all the weird ambiguities that CC-By-SA has for a fandom wiki, so I'm not sure how switching advances the Brave Copyright Cause and exposes TFWiki to legal troubles anymore than the license we're already stuck with? --fleb 00:43, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

^^ This. And, you're still not paying attention to anything else I've said either.

Hasbro has control over their copyright. And, to be perfectly honest, in the end Hasbro has full control over our stuff too anyway because it's technically unauthorized derivative works. I've known several fangames once where the parent company basically made them either sign control of the game over to them or delete the games entirely. What the fangame people wanted to do with their games regards licensing meant precisely jack, because they didn't control the copyright their work was based on. This is exactly the same situation.

We can get away with making people not licensed by Hasbro follow our rules regards our content, but that's it. If Hasbro wants to use our content, they have the right to dictate the terms of use, not us.

Now, if we were writing entirely original work here that wasn't based on any existing property, then we could dictate terms, because Hasbro would be using something that we had full copyright control over. That's where forcing people into using the same Share-Alike license comes into play. But since Hasbro made the initial things we're deriving our work from, we have to play by their rules for their content. --Jeysie 01:21, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

But copyright-- even with derived works-- is not a black-and-white thing with one owner. If I made a "Freddy Krueger vs. Aliens" fanfilm, New Line Cinema can't claim 100% ownership over my work simply by virtue of the fact that they can't claim ownership over aliens. But they also can't claim ownership over my original character heroine. That belongs to me, not New Line or Fox.

Either New Line or Fox could scuttle my project (if I was insane enough to try and distribuit it) or even keep me from putting it up on YouTube-- because the work cannot exist without their copyrighted characters.

But, even after that happened, there's nothing to prevent me from re-filming the movie as "Dr. Jeckel vs. the Moorlocks" with my fanchar heroine intact. Despite not having the right to use Fox and new Lines characters... the "value added" elements of my copyright-violating production remain my property.

And your failure to understand that is what's keeping you fron understanding the implications of SA3.

I freely admit they're largely abstract implications, because no one of us or hasbro actually cares... but I also think that this licensing switchover is being pushed by a group with an agenda in mind that boils down to "get a lot of people (mainly Wikipedia) to switch their licensing, and watch legal havoc that ensues after a couple years as unforeseen implications start fucking up the copyright of books, TV episodes and movies, making their copyright status so murky, debatable and indeterminate that they essentially become legally piratable." and while GFDL might have some of those same problems, it isn't the license they're urging people to switch to.

So if both licenses are equally bad, I'd much rather stick with the one we currently have rather than switch to the one that's probably going to be challenged in the supreme court 5 years from now.

Or at the very least have a conversation where the burden is on CC-BY-SA3 to show some benefit to us for switching, and not on me to prove GFDL is better. Why is our action simply being taken for granted here? -Derik 02:04, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, I understand how copyright actually works, because I've seen people have to deal with it. I don't understand your comment on the whole deal, no, because it makes no sense.

It's true that if Hasbro objects to our wiki writing about Transformers we could technically re-write it to refer to something similar but different enough to avoid Hasbro's copyright. However, unlike your "Dr. Jeckel vs. the Moorlocks" example, our doing that would be useless. In this case, it's not our value-added elements that make the wiki useful, it's the fact that the wiki is about Transformers. Take away the "about Transformers" part, and our wiki becomes pointless. Hasbro's copyright is the intrinsic value of this wiki.

So yes, it is an abstract implication, but it's not because nobody cares.

As for why switch, it basically boils down to: if we are compliant with the GDFL, then switching to the CC-BY-SA means we have the same restrictions, and will also have our info be incompatible for usage with anyone who stays on the GDFL, and we'll be able to require attribution. Basically, it gives us some benefits above the existing GDFL's benefits, without adding or removing any restrictions.

If we're not compliant with the GDFL due to Hasbro's copyright claims, then it turns out we're not bound by the GDFL anyway, because we never had the legal right to claim that license on our work. In which case, again, we get to ignore all this and switch to whatever license someplace like Memory Alpha has.

But in either case, switching gives us benefits over the current GDFL. So it really is on you to prove why staying with the GDFL is better, sorry. --Jeysie 08:31, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Whaaat? No, Derik's right. Windmills and copyright do not work that way. J. K. Rowling does not have the right to re-publish Dumbledore/Grindelwald Harry Potter fanfic. Original owners have the right to stop distribution of unauthorized derivatives, but they don't have the right to anything not already created by themselves. (So that would mean yes, ironically, fanfiction authors could C&D original authors infringing on the fanfiction's copyrights. But somehow I think they would restrain themselves.)
And if we're violating the GFDL by using it to document Transformers, we aren't then "not bound;" because that would mean our existence is illegal, and we don't get to throw up our hands and say "Well we're already illegal, might as well be illegal in a totally different way!" So no, we can't just ignore everything and switch to any license but CC-By-SA-3.0. --fleb 13:49, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

I know that Hasbro doesn't have the right to simply go ahead and publish our work without any agreement with us. But, based on my experiences with seeing other fan creators dealing with legal things regards their work, they do have the right to either make us take our work down, or relinquish our rights to it in some manner. We don't have the right to force Hasbro to use our work according to certain terms as long as it's a derivative of their work.

As for our existence being illegal, well yeah, if you want to get technical, we're already as illegal as all other fanworks anyway. I don't see what the validity or otherwise of the contract the work was created under has to do with it, if the contract allows you to do that type of work.

But essentially, the core of my confusion with Derik's concerns is: I don't see how he could be claiming we can ever force Hasbro to follow our terms on derivative works, when our work is already a derivative of Hasbro's work, and thus we already have to follow Hasbro's terms on derivative work. I mean, it's not that his concerns don't make sense to me from a general perspective. It's that they only make sense to me if we're the originator on top of the derivative work chain, which isn't the case here. --Jeysie 17:34, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

based on my experiences with seeing other fan creators dealing with legal things regards their work, they do have the right to either make us take our work down, or relinquish our rights to it in some manner.

They have the right to threaten or strongarm someone, and the person they're threatening has the right to cave. But they have no ability to "make you relinquish your rights."

The idea that New Line owns everything in any work I created means that they'd be claiming ownership not just of my Mary Sue, but also of Fox's Aliens. So that's clearly not true on the face of it. There is a completely unprooven legal theory that a copyright owner could actually own all the value-added additions made to a derived work... but it has literally never been tested (because Paramount has no desire to own a lot of Kirk/Spock bondage fics) and there is a strong suspicion that if it ever went to trial, the entire concept would be shot down.

Regardless-- you're again arguing "my experience," and that's the fundamental source of the musunderstanding here. You're talking about how the law is actually implemented. I'm talking about what the law is. In your experience, no one cares if you go through a red light if there's no one around. But I'm telling you it's still illegal.

And since the kind of illegal we're talking about can have a slow corrosive effect on Hasbro's copyrights, that abstract legality could come back to bite us and Hasbro in the ass. So I'd like to have a real, actual discussion about this. -Derik 17:54, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Um, the entire point of copyright is that you have control over how your copyrighted work is used. If you create something using copyrighted work, then the copyright holder very much has control over what you do with it, because you're using their copyrights. Otherwise, why have copyright to begin with?

Now, if you remove the copyrighted material from your work, then, yes, the copyright holder indeed has no control over your work, because it has no copyrighted material. Problem is that, while that might help out a fancreator if they can change their work into something original, it does us no good, because the entire point of our wiki is that it's about Transformers specifically. We could technically rewrite it to not be about Transformers, but that would just defeat the point.

My experience is that fanworks are always illegal, it's just that most of the time companies turn their head because usually it nets them more goodwill and publicity than anything the fanwork is taking away from them. But it's within a company's rights to turn around and tell you to either take your fanwork down, change it so it no longer contains their copyrights, or obtain a waiver from them/sign over your rights to continue displaying it.

Basically, the reason this is weird is because, you seem like you're saying that we can tell people who create derivative work based from our work how to use it, yet also saying that Hasbro doesn't have the same right to tell us how to use the derivative work we created from their work. Why would we have certain copyright rights, yet Hasbro not have those same rights? --Jeysie 20:28, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Ehh, you know what, this is all getting way, way off track. The only real question worth considering that's been raised with all this is whether we had a right to claim our work fits under the GDFL to begin with. If we did, then switching makes sense. If we didn't, then the contract is technically void/annulled, and we need to switch to some new license regardless. Either way, staying with the GDFL itself seems pointless to me. --Jeysie 21:19, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

And, as beautifully Machiavellian as Derik's contamination scenario is, it still wouldn't negate "fair use" anyway in the case of such a small "lift". - SanityOrMadness 19:44, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

But this isn't about fair use. It's about people who've read Lawrence Lessig's book and attended Disinfocon having a pissing contest and trying to upend how Copyright works.

See how casually you said it? Suddenly instead of us claiming fair use use of Hasbro's intellectual property-- Hasbro is having to claim fair use of our property. And fair use is never proven until it's challenged-- so any instance of "fair use" derived work massively weakens Hasbro's copyright on their own material-- because anyone wanting to claim their work is now SA3 is is now free to do so... and the burden is shifted onto Hasbro to hire lawyers and prove it's not.

That kind of mad-cow subversion tactics would normally make me grin like an idiot-- but just because I approve of malotov-wielding free-culturists are planning the legal equivalent of the World Bank Protests doesn't mean I want to be stuck in the middle of it. -Derik 19:56, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

1. Derik causing problems? Never... :p
2. It's a binary choice - the GDFL3 licence ONLY allows us to change to CC-BY-SA3 and THEN ONLY if we do it before the 1st of August, 2009. The only way we could change in any other direction would be to track down every user who's ever contributed and either get them to relicense their contributions or excise their contributions and derivatives thereof from the wiki. Given that, thanks to Mr Bookworm, we don't even HAVE a complete list of contributors...
3. I think you're getting Daken mixed up with Erista (thank you Eric J. Moreels...) there
4. McFly, not McFeely.
5. The main point is number 2 - we don't have the freedom to custom-design a licence. - SanityOrMadness 17:51, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Sure we do! It just has to be a license that doesn't violate any of the GFDL or CC-BY-SA3 requirements! That's not hard, I do object-oriented programming! Same basic principle!

(In all seriousness, from a legal standpoint, you'd probably set up sort of "type-coercion comfort trap", which is like a Dan Brown novel written by a lawyer with a minor in game theory. I'd want to get a lawyer to check it-- I know a few-- but I'm fairly sure you could do it, legally.) -Derik 18:37, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

I'm a tad confused about what you're saying - the GDFL and the CC-BY-SA are both designed to limit restrictions on the (re)use of work. If you're adding more restrictions than either specifies (i.e., if I licence my work to you under the condition that you must give a copy to anyone who fulfils condition X, and must not give a copy to anyone who doesn't; you can't then impose condition Y, which means not only that you restrict who you give a copy to to a subset of group X will receive a copy from you, but that you DO give copies to a subset of group Not-X...), then you're in breach of the basic licence, ja? - SanityOrMadness 19:44, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

You offer s separate license with GFDL+ (or CC+) permission for new content (generated after the date) for specific commercial purposes. On the date of adoption, the two liscences are exactly equal, but as time goes on, the GFDL/CC+ becomes increasingly attractive, because it offers a commercial reuser a better legal foothold on their own material. You are giving them more rights to the material, provided they operate according to certain restrictions. They could always choose to license the content under vanilla GFDL (or whatever,) but that gives up the increased privileges they have for the post-adoption material.

The beauty is that such a liscence need not differentiate as to what part of the material is eligible for one liscence but not the other... it's a diffuse legal benefit over the content that their lawyers would force them to choose-- but we are not forcing them to choose; the content remains accessible under GFDL, as the GFDL requires, but we offer incentives of increased re-usage rights for newer content in exchange for restricted action.

...this isn't going to make any sense without a chart, is it? There are force-gradients involved. -Derik 21:33, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Okay Derik, simple basic question - if Creative Commons licences are so set for copyright Armageddon, how come Memory Alpha (one of the biggest wikis on the internets, and one which many ST creatives - including the writers of this year's movie [who also happen to write Transformers movies] - have freely admitted to using) has always been under a CC licence without Viacom/Paramount/CBS imploding? - SanityOrMadness 21:04, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Because Memory Alpha is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Generic license. Note the absence of the "Share and share alike" clause, which in the source of the Copyright Armageddon I'm ranting about. -Derik 21:20, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Okay, Derik. Bottom-line it for me. How likely is this to result in Tina Turner forcing me to fight in a cage with a brutally strong man with the mind of a child?--Rosicrucian^Talk 22:04, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Well, Tina Turner is signed with Virgin, and so was The Verve, whose "Bitter Sweet Symphony," got the band sued out of existence due to a 3-second sampling they claimed was "fair use," but Mick Jagger felt was a big enough use to be a copyright violation. The courts agreed, and for a 3 second sample, they lost all rights tot he song and Jagger is now listed as the songwriter.

So I'd say the odds of Tina Turner smacking you around for not paying attention to this important and non-trivial legal issue involving copyright are in the range of at least 30-35% if we plow ahead heedlessly. -Derik 22:23, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

Wow. Okay. Lots of words to catch up on all of a sudden. Glad I sorta-started all this, I guess?
Going waaay back to Derik's first question: There is, indeed, a breakdown. In table form.
"which is like a Dan Brown novel written by a lawyer with a minor in game theory" I would totally read that. --fleb 00:13, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

I don't trust that table. I dont' feel informed after viewing it, I feel brushed off.

I think I need to re-read me the full GFDL to do a proper comparison.

*sigh* I was hoping I wouldn't have to read this thing again. Last time I had drugs to make it better. -Derik 01:20, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Okay, so from what you're saying, the problem with Creative Commons is that... by jumping on the CC bandwagon we might become part of a bigger target in the culture wars or otherwise pull Hasbro into the line of fire, because a CC-licensed thing is more likely to get its day in court someday, because it's popular. Whereas the GFDL, with which we shall stay for ever and ever, will safely gather dust in the FSF's basement for the next hundred years where the light of legal precedent can never touch it.

And also a problem is if Hasbro or its licensees try to reuse our content and unwittingly license their own work under Creative Commons. Honestly, if they make a mistake like that... it's their mistake. It's no different from plagiarizing a random Transformers blog. It shouldn't happen, and it's not our responsibility if someone, somewhere might forget to do due diligence in a hypothetical future. --fleb 21:33, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Oh, hey there

Look who else switched to CC-BY-SA. --abates 00:20, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Pfft. We shouldn't not switch just because Wikia is.

I finished auditing the fine print of both licenses last night. (Whoever said the CC one is easier to read: Lies.) I need to digest 'em... I think the GFDL is a better license for where we are now, but CC-BY-SA includes a clause I was hoping would be in GFDL that might play into future legal wrangling. (Simply because-- it's a license intended to be used by artists, and it doesn't handle our copyright situation well any more than GFDL does.)

Regardless which one we pick, I think TFWiki needs to do something unique to better position ourselves, legally. I'm still ruminating what that might be. (Fortunately, we've got time yet.) -Derik 00:41, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

FWIW, I got a reply from the GNU folks, and the CC-BY-SA3 is indeed the only license we can switch to under this particular allowance. --Jeysie 00:58, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Yes, I got that. They had to amend the GFDL to even make that possible. I don't think we can even make it CC-BY-SA3-NC.

So if we do intend to wriggle around it somehow, it will probably require some vigorous legal calisthenics. (Fortunately legalese doesn't intimidate me.)

I just haven't figured out which license is a better starting point for those calisthenics yet. Maybe I'll blog about the subject to get my thoughts straight. -Derik 01:34, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

The full reply, if it helps:

Unfortunately, the GFDL 1.3 (which enables the relicensing) specifically lists CC-BY-SA3 as the license that a wiki can migrate to, and so that is the only license available under this relicensing provision.

In addition, a non-commercial license is not really a free license, instead it is considered semi-free (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#semi-freeSoftware). The GFDL (as well as all GNU licenses) permits commercial use and distribution. While I understand your concerns, being able to use and distribute a work for any purpose, even a commercial purpose, is a part of the freedom that we work towards protecting here at the FSF. Thank you once again for your interest, and good luck with your project.}}

--Jeysie 01:46, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Right, any gymnastics would have to take place outside of this licensing provision, which we're not allowed to do.

(Law can be wonderfully fun when you see it as the illusionary cultural construct-- like a monster in a fairy tale whose terms must be met, but is stupid and easily tricked by turning its words against it.) -Derik 02:15, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

You see, this is exactly the kind of granola-crunching BS that I'm worried about. "Woo, look at us! We're so clever, Information Wants To Be Free, Fight The Power!" Er, no. Information wants nothing. It's data. It's a thing, an inanimate pile of electron states jumbled up into a system which we can comprehend. We can claim that we Mean No Harm, that we're a Free Information Repository For All Things Transformers, but in the end, we have screencaps, quotes, bios, comic summaries, and roughly 25 years worth of history all crammed into this site. If Hasbro wanted to, they could shut us down right now just by scaring us with enough of a nasty C&D. I don't exactly see us armed with a high-powered law firm, for one, and second, unless someone in this thread *coughDerikcough* wants to produce a JD and back his comments with actual legal expertise, we're merely guessing as to what we can and can't get away with. On top of all of that, flaunting what we can theoretically get away with on a public web page with an ideally-infinite revision history means that you've just peed in the swimming pool that is the Internet. Perhaps we can make this all easier by just charging for access, thumbing our noses at the law, and even hosting a torrent of the movie, just to make damned sure that we get dragged into court? Smartassery + Law is a combination best left to those who have studied the practice of law. --McFly 21:09, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Your sarcastiggestion seems like the opposite of what's going on, if the goal's more to "get away with" adding more pro-Hasbro restrictions to ourselves/the content. And how does their granola-crunching email impact anything? That's them. Not us.

Anyway, I think there's one other plus point to a switch; the CC licenses get updated at a reasonable rate. There's a chance the folks in charge will listen to concerns about fanwork and adopt language into version 4.0 or 5.0 to fit it better-- they seem to solicit feedback like that. There's not much of a chance of our use case being relevant to version 2.0 of a license intended for software documentation... ---fleb 22:16, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Going back to the well

Alright, in my mind we need to re-center this discussion. The first question is:

1. Why did we originally want to re-license?

Which, scrolling up, seems to be "because it would provide a legal barrier to Wikia stealing what new content we've generated since the move." This, as also shown above, has become a moot point due to Wikia re-licensing in the exact same fashion.

So, that particular aim coming to naught, we instead need to ask these two questions.

1. Is there any remaining benefit to re-licensing?
2. Does said benefit outweigh the hassle of doing it?

I look forward to answers to these.--Rosicrucian^Talk 22:33, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

So, uh... I've been drafting this blog entry about the switch for about two weeks. It's not big on answers, but it provides a thorough comparison, and some worst-case-scenarios.

I'm really not sure which license TFWiki should choose. After review, I think that the chances of the switch turning TFWii into a copyright-eroding-machine are minimal... if only because vast portions of CC-BY-SA3 are arguably invalid on TFWiki because the license was never intended for wikis, and certainly never intended for media-fandom wikis.

I think we do need to figure out something that does properly address our status as a media-fandom wiki-- whether it's a legalistic (but non-binding) mission statement that underlines how we believe this license to apply to our unique situation or something else.

I'm leaning towards 'something else' or 'both,' but I'm a bit at a loss about which license is actually the better starting point for it. If CC-BY-SA3 is going to cause legal problems (and it will) we need to do something that grounds it out and minimizes the hassle it poses to Hasbro.

I've got some vague ideas about possible attacks... I'm gonna see if they work better for one license or the other as I develop 'em. -Derik 02:07, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

My thought was that, what Fleb said earlier makes sense about the Creative Commons people being more likely to listen to user comments about future updates. In contrast, the Free Software people seem pretty dead set on their licenses always providing completely free use, and don't care about accomodating copyrights. So even if the licenses are functionally similar now, the CC people might be willing to provide a more fitting alternative to switch to in the future, whereas the GDFL will not.

In the meantime, an additional disclaimer might be wise, I agree. --Jeysie 09:08, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

The GFDL doesn't recognize 'compatible licenses', which content can be freely ported to. CC-BY-SA3 does, at least insofar that it makes provision for their existence (whether or not any actually exist...? I have no idea.)

So it's at least possible that at some point in the future Creative Commons might come out with CC-BY-SA3-MMC (for wikis) or CC-BY-SA3-MMC-MF (addressing the problems specific to media-fandom wikis) and declare that they are compatible with CC-BY-SA3 and allow wikis to be relicensed over to that version if they meet the requirements.

Though a longshot, any legal 'relief' on that end seems much less likely to come from the FSF. (GFDL's governing body.) The relicensing amendment in GFDL 1.3 strikes me as their way of washing their hands of wikis. "You fit our license badly and we don't want to deal with you. Go bother Larry."

The fundamental problem is that CC-BY-SA3 and GFDL are both unsuited to wikis, so when they're applied to wikis, what they actually mean becomes fuzzy-- it's like using tarrif law to restrict the sale of marijuana. "Okay, we bent an existing law sideways to fit this under it... but now it's so warped that some of the fundamental assumptions of the original law don't apply in the new situation... so how are we going apply it?"

Since the "Copyright Meltdown" scenario described in my blog largely stems from the non-binding GUI imposing an expansive interpretation on derived works, a non-binding "Predacon Shell Program" (mission statement? Signing statement?) on our part could probably be said to override that. Acknowledging some of the intrinsic problems with mating the requirements of CC-BY-SA3 (mostly author credit) with the realities of how Wikis work and saying 'this is how we think we fulfill these requirements' could cover a most of the other problems. It'd basically be a published Opinion Draft-- not legally binding in itself any more than CC's GUI is (so we're not liable if we get it wrong somehow) but formal interpretation of how we think this license-- which is in many ways horribly unsuited for wikis-- applies to our circumstances and why.

Basically, we'd be CC-BY-SA3 with a signing statement. (There's no real reason you couldn't do the same with GFDL, but I think CC-BY-SA3's 'if any part is non-enfordcable' clause, as well as the fact it already uses a non-binding GUI makes CC more suited for this kind of 'soft interpretation.' GFDL is much more rigid by virtue of its narrow focus. ) Since signing statement's aren't laws, just formalizations of an understanding how laws are executed, It wouldn't violate GFDL 1.3's "You can port to CC-BY-SA3 only" thing-- we would be porting to CC-BY-SA3. We're not modifying the license in any way, if someone disagrees with our interpretation... they're pretty much free to ignore it.

It's CYA. If there's problems with CC-BY-SA3 later, it at least shows we tried to address them, and formalizing our own thinking on the subject to some degree insulates us from being victimized of someone with a more radical interpretation (no more legally binding than our own!) of how CC-BY-SA3 applies. -Derik 13:27, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

Seriously you guys . . .

If Wikia wanted to copy your work, they could already do it, because you already put it under a free license. That was the deal - and it was a deal with everyone, not just with people you like. Yes, it means Hasbro could take your work and sell it, or Wikia could take your work and put ads on it, without any further notice. You already gave them a license to do it. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here. Be thankful it allowed you to take the content with you when you left.

There are two main reasons for switching to CC-BY-SA:

1. CC-BY-SA makes it easier for reusers to make use of those rights. Specifically, you don't have to print out an entire copy of the GFDL and attach it to your work in order to legally reuse it, and that "human-readable summary" makes people a lot more comfortable than trying to parse the GFDL.
2. Creative Commons licenses (and CC-BY-SA in particular) are more widely used than the GFDL. This is a side-effect of them being easier to understand. Because of this, there is more chance that people interested in using another person's work will have a compatible license. This works both ways - if this wiki wants to use CC-BY-SA text, it can't right now.

Neither changes the basic rights given: they both allow commercial use with the provision of attribution and the requirement for continued distribution under the license.

As a corollary of the second reason: If you don't switch to CC-BY-SA as your main license, content here will not be usable on Wikipedia, and you risk not being able to use their content in the future (because new work may not all be GFDL-licensed). I don't know how important this is for you, but that's how it is.

Wikimedia engineered this switch because it furthers their mission "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." Put simply, it's easier to disseminate free content with CC-BY-SA. The GFDL included measures that were fine for the intended purpose, but are cumbersome in an age where people may wish to use part of an individual page rather than a whole textbook.

There may be other restrictions on some uses of your work, such as trademark rights. These are unaffected by the license you choose, as both choices pertain only to the copyright in the work. With regards to concerns over use of Hasbro's material; if you were violating copyright with the GFDL, you will continue to do so under the CC-BY-SA. It can't give you the right to distribute their work under the license, nor is it more permissive in including sections of non-free content, or on disallowing commercial uses of the work. You cannot modify either license to do this, nor are GNU or Creative Commons likely to do so.

WikiFur switched to CC-BY-SA (while retaining GFDL as a secondary license) last month because it made sense for us. I think it makes sense for this wiki, too. You have other issues common to many fan sites that are not addressed by this license change, but that is not a reason for avoiding a switch; CC-BY-SA still provides benefits that the GFDL does not. GreenReaper 10:55, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

If Wikia wanted to copy your work, they could already do it, because you already put it under a free license.

That's certainly true. Frankly I encourage them to do so-- Google has some notion of where new content showed up FIRST. If Wikia just bogarted our content, it'd almost certainly hurt their Google rating. That said, the admins on the Wikia Transformers wiki seem to have put their foot down and told users not to just port content from here, agreeing with our basic premise that the Wikia site needs to develop its own cultural identity if it ever hopes to prosper.

And actually at the moment Wikia cannot copy our work (at least not any version of articles made after June 23) because they are a CC-BY-SA3 Massive Multiauthor Collaboration, and we are a GFDL MMC. The right to port our GFDL work to CC-BY-SA3 until August 1 does not lie with individual users (and cannot, as I understand it, be done piecemeal) it lies with the site operator. If we ultimately decided not to re-license, then any post-June-23rd article ports made to Wikia would be illegal-- because the content they were porting would never have been made available under CC-BY-SA3.

it's easier to disseminate free content with CC-BY-SA. The GFDL included measures that were fine for the intended purpose, but are cumbersome in an age where people may wish to use part of an individual page rather than a whole textbook.

But we wish to disseminate non-free content-- or at least a mix of free a non-free content. CC-BY-SA3 was intended for use by artists remixing one another's work freely... it doesn't address copyrighted or fair use content mixed in any more than GFDL did.

And there's some debate whether or not we even intend to disseminate the content. Someone (Mcfeely?) raised a question about a hypothetical cell-phone app that would re-use our content. There's already a cell-phone app of Transformers tech-specs that's a walking copyright violation, and we'd rather not draw negative attention from Hasbro if a similar infringing application was made from our content. Does Hasbro care about cell-phone apps? Not really, but Glu mobile who pays for an exclusive license to develop Transformers-related cell-phone content might. Those kind of competing unlicensed applications de-value their own license.

I don't think there's a consensus about whether or not we want to even try to control that kind of thing... (or if we even can, legally) but it at least bears consideration. TFWiki.net generally tries to respect Hasbro's business interests, but the degree to which we even want that to be a factor in this decision...? Unknown.

And CC-BY-SA3 is no less cumbersome a fit for wikis than GFDL was-- it's just that CC-BY-SA3 includes an "if any part of this license proves invalid or unenforceable" clause that (arguably) relieves some of that tension.

if you were violating copyright with the GFDL, you will continue to do so under the CC-BY-SA

Yes, but GFDL at least had the excuse of being grandfathered stupidity-- the site was already licensed under GFDL when the current community took it over. Whatever we choose here becomes a conscious choice.

And dual-licensing like WikiFur has is a possibility-- it certainly provides for maximum data portability. But is data portability our primary concern? -Derik 12:31, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

I don't think a conscious choice would have any more moral or legal weight than a conscious decision to do nothing would. We already have the dilemma, ignoring it would just be another way of choosing.
Eh, dual-licensing would at least stop the deliberation from becoming moot in two weeks. It'd be like standing in two lines at the same time! --fleb 17:01, 16 July 2009 (EDT)