[pydotorg-www] [PSF-Board] Nonprofit Academic Permission Request ::wpmc::10-17250

[David Mertz]

On Apr 20, 2012, at 11:25 AM, Jeremy Baron wrote:
> It sounds like you're talking about database rights. See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_rights (for the general question) and
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
> (for the US in particular). DB rights were created in the EU by EU directive
> and it seems were ruled unconstitutional in the US by the supreme court. At
> least in the EU, DB rights are a separate right from copyright and not a part
> of copyright.

Nah, Guido was writing about Collection Copyright (e.g. http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm).  "Database Rights" are rights in the manner of aggregation of material that is not otherwise copyrightable.  However, every page (or even just sentence) on the Wiki is itself straightforwardly covered by copyright already.

For example, if I were to publish a book _My Favorite 18th Century Short Stories_, the individual stories will have already come into the public domain.  However, I can still copyright the selection of those particular stories arranged in that particular order, and prohibit someone else from publishing the same collection.  The same applies to my followup volume _My Favorite 20th Century Short Stories_, but in that case the individual stories will each be covered by copyright held by some individual or estate (well, for those after 1927).  The Wiki is similar to this... except that none of the contributions themselves have come into the public domain as a matter of age.

> My personal opinion (i.e. without really knowing anything about how the PSF
> works) is that the websites should as a general rule be available with content
> released as PD/CC-0 or licensed under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA and code released as
> PD/CC-0 or licensed under one of the Python License, GPL, or AGPL. Content can
> also be licensed the same way the code is licensed. (but as an addition not a
> replacement. so content could be dual licensed CC-BY-SA+Python License but not
> just the Python License)

Well, I entirely agree that content SHOULD BE released on such non-restrictive terms.  But those terms were not specified as a condition of contribution to the Wiki, and the Wiki includes contributions even from anonymous editors whose permission for non-restrictive licensing is effectively impossible to obtain now.  It's an unfortunate situation, but it's one that is damn hard to remedy given current copyright law.

Going forward, I also agree that we SHOULD add non-restrictive terms to all future contributions to the Wiki.  This would, over time, certainly cover any newly created pages.  And in principle we could examine diffs to determine what in old pages was of undeterminable provenance (and perhaps purge it).

Yours, David...

--
Dred Scott 1857; Santa Clara 1886; Plessy 1892; Korematsu 1944; Eldred 2003