I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.
I don't know if this is the place for that discussion, but briefly, I think posting to SO gives them an implicit right to show your content on the web and store it on their servers. What I don't think it gives them an implicit right to do is re-license your content under cc-wiki, provide it in a data dump, and specify how you are to be attributed for your contribution. When I've brought this up with SO, their response was that because the footer says that all content is licensed under cc-wiki, it's OK. I disagree. If I say that your response to this comment will be in the public domain, that doesn't make it so. I would need your explicit permission to re-license your comment, even though I have certain implicit permissions, like the permission to cache it in my browser.
For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution.
I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same.
OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.
That's ok, I asked for the details. This is an interesting topic (especially to me, as I'm working on my own site which will have user created content). But this isn't the place for a discussion about it.
Thanks for your point of view though, I'll definitely keep take what you said into account.
Comments
I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.
Can you expand on that SO statement? I know you said you've already been talking about it for months, but I've never heard anything about this.
I don't know if this is the place for that discussion, but briefly, I think posting to SO gives them an implicit right to show your content on the web and store it on their servers. What I don't think it gives them an implicit right to do is re-license your content under cc-wiki, provide it in a data dump, and specify how you are to be attributed for your contribution. When I've brought this up with SO, their response was that because the footer says that all content is licensed under cc-wiki, it's OK. I disagree. If I say that your response to this comment will be in the public domain, that doesn't make it so. I would need your explicit permission to re-license your comment, even though I have certain implicit permissions, like the permission to cache it in my browser.
For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution.
I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same.
OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.
I'm very interested in this topic. I'm curious to know if this line in the SO terms of service document
is enough to relicense user submissions?Yes! Thank you for sharing. This legal page is something quite new on SO and finally addresses my concern.
That's ok, I asked for the details. This is an interesting topic (especially to me, as I'm working on my own site which will have user created content). But this isn't the place for a discussion about it.
Thanks for your point of view though, I'll definitely keep take what you said into account.