Fwd: Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its considerations on Wikidata and CC-0

Good (IMHO) summary by Yair Rand on CC-0 vs. CC-BY-SA for Wiktionary.

Federico

-------- Messaggio inoltrato --------
Oggetto: 	Re: [Wikidata] An answer to Lydia Pintscher regarding its 
considerations on Wikidata and CC-0
Data: 	Thu, 30 Nov 2017 12:05:54 -0500
Mittente: 	Yair Rand <[email protected]>
Rispondi-a: 	Discussion list for the Wikidata project. 
<[email protected]>
A: 	Discussion list for the Wikidata project. <[email protected]>



Wikidata is not replacing Wiktionary. Wikidata did not replace 
Wikipedia, and force all articles to be under CC-0. Structured data for 
Commons doesn't replace all Commons media with CC-0-licensed content. 
They didn't even set up parallel projects to hold CC-0 articles or 
media. There is no reason to believe that structured data for Wiktionary 
would do any of these things. Wikidata is for holding structured data, 
and only structured data.

The fact that France is in Europe is not, independently, copyrightable. 
The fact that File:Vanessa_indica-Silent_Valley-2016-08-14-002.jpg is a 
picture of a butterfly is not copyrightable. The facts that "balloons" 
is the plural of "balloon", and that "feliĉiĝi" is an intransitive verb 
in Esperanto, are not copyrightable. Even if they were copyrightable, 
copyrighting them independently would harm their potential reuse, as 
elements of a database, as has been previously explained.

A Wikipedia article is copyrightable. Licensing it under CC-BY-SA does 
not particularly harm its reuse, and makes it so that reuse can happen 
with attribution. Wikidata includes links to Wikipedia articles, and 
while the links are under CC-0, the linked content is under CC-BY-SA. 
Similarly for Commons content. Wikipedia articles and Commons Media are 
not structured data, and as such, they do not belong in Wikidata.

Elements of prose in Wiktionary, such as definitions, appendices, 
extensive usage notes and notes on grammar and whatnot, are 
copyrightable. Similar to Wikipedia articles, licensing them under 
CC-BY-SA would not particularly harm their reuse, as attribution is 
completely feasible. They are also not structured data, and can not be 
made into structured data. Wikidata will not be laundering this data to 
CC-0, nor will it be setting up a parallel project to duplicate the 
efforts under a license which is not appropriate for the type of content.

Attempting to license the database's contents under CC-BY-SA would not 
ensure attribution, and would harm reuse. I fail to see any potential 
benefits to using the more restrictive license. Attribution will be 
required where it is possible (in Wiktionary proper), and content will 
be as reusable as possible in areas where requiring attribution isn't 
feasible (in Wikidata). There's no real conflict here.

-- Yair Rand

2017-11-29 16:45 GMT-05:00 Mathieu Stumpf Guntz 
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>:

     Saluton ĉiuj,

     I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
     Wiktionary User Group talk page
 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#An_answer_to_Lydia_general_thinking_about_Wikidata_and_CC-0>,
     because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on
     this point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided
     or that I might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested
     to know it, so please be bold.

     Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind
     that I stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I
     wish it a bright future full of even more amazing things than what
     it already brung so far. My sole concern is really a license issue.

     Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:

     Thank you Lydia Pintscher
     <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29>
     for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer
     <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29/CC-0>
     miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have been
     raised.

     Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
     decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as
     this inquiry on the topic
 
<https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/fr:Recherche:La_licence_CC-0_de_Wikidata,_origine_du_choix,_enjeux,_et_prospections_sur_les_aspects_de_gouvernance_communautaire_et_d%E2%80%99%C3%A9quit%C3%A9_contributive>
     advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata
     choice toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who –
     to make it short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph
     team. Also it worth noting that Google funded a quarter of the
     initial development work. Another quarter came from the Gordon and
     Betty Moore Foundation, established by Intel co-founder. And half
     the money came from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for
     Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#cite_note-1>.
     To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the
     puppet trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm
     of Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more argumentative version, please
     see the research project (work in progress, only chapter 1 is in
     good enough shape, and it's only available in French so far). Some
     proofs that this claim is completely wrong are welcome, as it would
     be great that in fact that was the community that was the driving
     force behind this single license choice and that it is the best
     choice for its future, not the future of giant tech companies. This
     would be a great contribution to bring such a happy light on this
     subject, so we can all let this issue alone and go back contributing
     in more interesting topics.

     Now let's examine the thoughts proposed by Lydia.

     Wikidata is here to give more people more access to more knowledge.
         So far, it makes it matches Wikimedia movement stated goal. 
This means we want our data to be used as widely as possible.
         Sure, as long as it rhymes with equity. As in /Our strategic
         direction: Service and //*Equity*/
 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction/Endorsement#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity>.
         Just like we want freedom for everybody as widely as possible.
         That is, starting where it confirms each others freedom. Because
         under this level, freedom of one is murder and slavery of 
others.     CC-0 is one step towards that.
         That's a thesis, you can propose to defend it but no one have to
         agree without some convincing proof.     Data is different from 
many other things we produce in Wikimedia in
     that it is aggregated, combined, mashed-up, filtered, and so on much
     more extensively.
         No it's not. From a data processing point of view, everything is
         data. Whether it's stored in a wikisyntax, in a relational
         database or engraved in stone only have a commodity side effect.
         Whether it's a random stream of bit generated by a dumb chipset
         or some encoded prose of Shakespeare make no difference. So from
         this point of view, no, what Wikidata store is not different
         from what is produced anywhere else in Wikimedia projects. 
    Sure, the way it's structured does extremely ease many things.
         But this is not because it's data, when elsewhere there would be
         no data. It's because it enforce data to be stored in a way that
         ease aggregation, combination, mashing-up, filtering and so on.
     Our data lives from being able to write queries over millions of
     statements, putting it into a mobile app, visualizing parts of it on
     a map and much more.
         Sure. It also lives from being curated from millions[2]
 
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_Group#cite_note-2>
         of benevolent contributors, or it would be just a useless pile
         of random bytes.     This means, if we require attribution, in 
a huge number of cases
     attribution would need to go back to potentially millions of editors
     and sources (even if that data is not visible in the end result but
     only helped to get the result).
         No, it doesn't mean that.         First let's recall a few 
basics as it seems the whole answer
         makes confusion between attribution and distribution of
         contributions under the same license as the original.
         Attribution is crucial for traceability and so for reliable and
         trusted knowledge that we are targeting within the Wikimedia
         movement. The "same license" is the sole legal guaranty of
         equity contributors have. That's it, trusted knowledge and
         equity are requirements for the Wikimedia movement goals. That
         means withdrawing this requirements is withdrawing this goals. 
        Now, what would be the additional cost of storing sources in
         Wikidata? Well, zero cost. Actually, it's already here as the
         "reference" attribute is part of the Wikibase item structure. So
         attribution is not a problem, you don't have to put it in front
         of your derived work, just look at a Wikipedia article: until
         you go to history, you have zero attribution visible, and it's
         ok. It's also have probably zero or negligible computing cost,
         as it doesn't have to be included in all computations, it just
         need to be retrievable on demand.         What would be the 
additional cost of storing licenses for each
         item based on its source? Well, adding a license attribute might
         help, but actually if your reference is a work item, I guess it
         might comes with a "license" statement, so zero additional cost.
         Now for letting user specify under which free licenses they
         publish their work, that would just require an additional
         attribute, a ridiculous weight when balanced with equity
         concerns it resolves.         Could that prevent some uses for 
some actors? Yes, that's
         actually the point, preventing abuse of those who doesn't want
         to act equitably. For all other actors a "distribute under same
         condition" is fine.     This is potentially computationally 
hard to do and and depending on
     where the data is used very inconvenient (think of a map with
     hundreds of data points in a mobile app).
         OpenStreetMap which use ODbL, a copyleft attributive license, do
         exactly that too, doesn't it? By the way, allowing a license by
         item would enable to include OpenStreetMap data in WikiData,
         which is currently impossible due to the CC0 single license
         policy of the project. Too bad, it could be so useful to have
         this data accessible for Wikimedia projects, but who cares? 
This is a burden on our re-users that I do not want to impose on them.
         Wait, which re-users? Surely one might expect that Wikidata
         would care first of re-users which are in the phase with
         Wikimedia goal, so surely needs of Wikimedia community in
         particular and Free/Libre Culture in general should be
         considered. Do this re-users would be penalized by a copyleft
         license? Surely no, or they wouldn't use it extensively as they
         do. So who are this re-users for who it's thought preferable,
         without consulting the community, to not annoy with questions of
         equity and traceability?     It would make it significantly 
harder to re-use our data and be in
     direct conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge.
         No, technically it would be just as easy as punching a button on
         a computer to do that rather than this. What is in direct
         conflict with our clearly stated goals emerging from the 2017
         community consultation is going against equity and traceability.
         You propose to discard both to satisfy exogenous demands which
         should have next to no weight in decision impacting so deeply
         the future of our community.     Whether data can be protected 
in this way at all or not depends on
     the jurisdiction we are talking about. See this Wikilegal on on
     database rights
     <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights> for more
     details.
         It says basically that it's applicable in United States and
         Europe on different legal bases and extents. And for the rest of
         the world, it doesn't say it doesn't say nothing can apply, it
         states nothing.     So even if we would have decided to require 
attribution it would
     only be enforceable in some jurisdictions.
         What kind of logic is that? Maybe it might not be applicable in
         some country, so let's withdraw the few rights we have. 
Ambiguity, when it comes to legal matters, also unfortunately often
     means that people refrain from what they want to to for fear of
     legal repercussions. This is directly in conflict with our goal of
     spreading knowledge.
         Economic inequality, social inequity and legal imbalance might
         also refrain people from doing what they want, as they fear
         practical repercussions. CC0 strengthen this discrimination
         factors by enforcing people to withdraw the few rights they have
         to weight against the growing asymmetry that social structures
         are concomitantly building. So CC0 as unique license choice is
         in direct conflict with our goal of *equitably* spreading
         knowledge.         Also it seems like this statement suggest 
that releasing our
         contributions only under CC0 is the sole solution to diminish
         legal doubts. Actually any well written license would do an
         equal job regarding this point, including many copyleft licenses
         out there. So while associate a clear license to each data item
         might indeed diminish legal uncertainty, it's not an argument at
         all for enforcing CC0 as sole license available to 
contributors.         Moreover, just putting a license side by side with 
a work does
         not ensure that the person who made the association was legally
         allowed to do so. To have a better confidence in the legitimacy
         of a statement that a work is covered by a certain license,
         there is once again a traceability requirement. For example,
         Wikidata currently include many items which were imported from
         misc. Wikipedia versions, and claim that the derived work
         obtained – a set of items and statements – is under CC0. That is
         a hugely doubtful statement and it alarmingly looks like license
         laundering <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/license_laundering>.
         This is true for Wikipedia, but it's also true for any source on
         which a large scale extraction and import are operated, whether
         through bots or crowd sourcing.         So the Wikidata project 
is currently extremely misplaced to give
         lessons on legal ambiguity, as it heavily plays with legal blur
         and the hope that its shady practises won't fall under too much
         scrutiny.     Licenses that require attribution are often used 
as a way to try to
     make it harder for big companies to profit from openly available
     resources.
         No there are not. They are used as /a way to try to make it
         harder for big companies to profit from openly available
         resources/ *in inequitable manners*. That's completely
         different. Copyleft licenses give the same rights to big
         companies and individuals in a manner that lower socio-economic
         inequalities which disproportionally advantage the former. 
The thing is there seems to be no indication of this working.
         Because it's not trying to enforce what you pretend, so of
         course it's not working for this goal. But for the goal that
         copyleft licenses aims at, there are clear evidences that yes it
         works.     Big companies have the legal and engineering 
resources to handle
     both the legal minefield and the technical hurdles easily.
         There is no pitfall in copyleft licenses. Using war material
         analogy is disrespectful. That's true that copyleft licenses
         might come with some constraints that non-copyleft free licenses
         don't have, but that the price for fostering equity. And it's a
         low price, that even individuals can manage, it might require a
         very little extra time on legal considerations, but on the other
         hand using the free work is an immensely vast gain that worth
         it. In Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next
         library <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html> is
         stated /proprietary software developers have the advantage of
         money; free software developers need to make advantages for each
         other/. This might be generalised as /big companies have the
         advantage of money; free/libre culture contributors need to make
         advantages for each other/. So at odd with what pretend this
         fallacious claims against copyleft licenses, they are not a
         "minefield and the technical hurdles" that only big companies
         can handle. All the more, let's recall who financed the initial
         development of Wikidata: only actors which are related to big
         companies.     Who it is really hurting is the smaller 
start-up, institution or
     hacker who can not deal with it.
         If this statement is about copyleft licenses, then this is just
         plainly false. Smaller actors have more to gain in preserving
         mutual benefit of the common ecosystem that a copyleft license
         fosters.     With Wikidata we are making structured data about 
the world
     available for everyone.
         And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license
         to be achieved.     We are leveling the playing field to give 
those who currently don’t
     have access to the knowledge graphs of the big companies a chance to
     build something amazing.
         And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license.
         Actually CC0 makes it a less sustainable project on this point,
         as it allows unfair actors to take it all, add some interesting
         added value that our community can not afford, reach/reinforce
         an hegemonic position in the ecosystem with their own closed
         solution. And, ta ta, Wikidata can be discontinued quietly, just
         like Google did with the defunct Freebase which was CC-BY-SA
         before they bought the company that was running it, and after
         they imported it under CC0 in Wikidata as a new attempt to
         gather a larger community of free curators. And when it will
         have performed license laundering of all Wikimedia projects
         works with shady mass extract and import, Wikimedia can
         disappear as well. Of course big companies benefits more of this
         possibilities than actors with smaller financial support and no
         hegemonic position.     Thereby we are helping more people get 
access to knowledge from more
     places than just the few big ones.
         No, with CC0 you are certainly helping big companies to
         reinforce their position in which they can distribute
         information manipulated as they wish, without consideration for
         traceability and equity considerations. Allowing contributors to
         also use copyleft licenses would be far more effective to
         /collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge/
         that /focus efforts on the knowledge and communities that have
         been left out by structures of power and privilege/, as stated
         in /Our strategic direction: Service and Equity/.
     CC-0 is becoming more and more common.
         Just like economic inequality
         <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality>. But that is
         not what we are aiming to foster in the Wikimedia movement. 
Many organisations are releasing their data under CC-0 and are happy
     with the experience. Among them are the European Union, Europeana,
     the National Library of Sweden and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern
     Arts.
         Good for them. But they are not the Wikimedia community, they
         have their own goals and plan to be sustainable that does not
         necessarily meet what our community can follow. Different
         contexts require different means. States and their institutions
         can count on tax revenue, and if taxpayers ends up in public
         domain works, that's great and seems fair. States are rarely
         threatened by companies, they have legal lever to pressure that
         kind of entity, although conflict of interest and lobbying can
         of course mitigate this statement.         Importing that kind 
of data with proper attribution and license
         is fine, be it CC0 or any other free license. But that's not an
         argument in favour of enforcing on benevolent a systematic
         withdraw of all their rights as single option to contribute. 
  All this being said we do encourage all re-users of our data to give
     attribution to Wikidata because we believe it is in the interest of
     all parties involved.
         That's it, zero legal hope of equity.     And our experience 
shows that many of our re-users do give credit to
     Wikidata even if they are not forced to.
         Experience also show that some prominent actors like Google
         won't credit the Wikimedia community anymore when generating
         directly answer based on, inter alia, information coming from
         Wikidata, which is itself performing license laundering of
         Wikipedia data.     Are there no downsides to this? No, of 
course not. Some people chose
     not to participate, some data can't be imported and some re-users do
     not attribute us. But the benefits I have seen over the years for
     Wikidata and the larger open knowledge ecosystem far outweigh them.
         This should at least backed with some solid statistics that it
         had a positive impact in term of audience and contribution in
         Wikimedia project as a whole. Maybe the introduction of Wikidata
         did have a positive effect on the evolution of total number of
         contributors, or maybe so far it has no significant correlative
         effect, or maybe it is correlative with a decrease of the total
         number of active contributors. Some plots would be interesting
         here. Mere personal feelings of benefits and hindrances means
         nothing here, mine included of course.         Plus, there is 
not even the beginning of an attempt to A/B test
         with a second Wikibase instant that allow users to select which
         licenses its contributions are released under, so there is no
         possible way to state anything backed on relevant comparison.
         The fact that they are some people satisfied with the current
         state of things doesn't mean they would not be even more
         satisfied with a more equitable solution that allows
         contributors to chose a free license set for their publications.
         All the more this is all about the sustainability and fostering
         of our community and reaching its goals, not immediate feeling
         of satisfaction for some people.
       *

         [1] Wikipedia Signpost 2015, 2nd december
 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op-ed>


       *

         [2] according to the next statement of Lydia

     Once again, I recall this is not a manifesto against Wikidata. The
     motivation behind this message is a hope that one day one might
     participate in Wikidata with the same respect for equity and
     traceability that is granted in other Wikimedia projects.

     Kun multe da vikiamo,
     mathieu

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