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How to Stop Commerial Use of Copyleft Materials?
An anonymous reader writes "The Guild Wiki, an extremely popular fan-made wiki for documenting the Masssively Multiplayer game Guild Wars, was originally supported by donations, then later advertisements — supposedly just enough to break even. Just the past week, the owner of the domain name surprised this wiki community by revealing that he had sold the domain name, the database, and his services to Wikia, a commercial entity that intends to profit from Guild Wiki's content. The catch? Much of Guild Wiki's content falls under Creative Commons by-nc-sa license, which denies the commercial use of licensed material. Arena.net created their own community run wiki to serve as the in-game help system, because they didn't think they could use the material on Guild Wiki commercially. If Wikia continues to serve ads over Guild Wiki's content, how can the thousands of contributors to the site stop them without going to the expense/trouble of hiring attorneys (or the crude path of mass vandalism)? If it turns out the site owner has been making a profit all along from ads, what's the remedy?"
From what you say the site owner is making money from advertising, not directly from the content (e.g. by selling it). Now I understand that the authors of the content probably wouldn't be happy with the site owner making a profit even indirectly from advertising (which is only possible owing to the presence of their content on the site) but whether they can stop him presumably depends on the exact wording of their CC license. If the license doesn't stop him making this indirect profit then there is nothing they can do. I guess it should just serve as a warning to others to ensure that the license you release something under exactly matches your intent for how you want to allow it to be used.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
You can't destroy a wiki with vandalism. A simple script can roll every single page back to a particular date, and then it can all be locked. You can ruin the community aspect of it, and presumably take away a great deal of the value assuming Wikia believe they're buying the community rather than merely the content, but if Wikia think the content is finished and in a state where they can sell it (through advertising) then there's little that can be done.
Except...
The authors of the wiki pages are the owners of their content, and as such they're free to put their content onto the other wiki. They're free to put it onto 1000 other wikis. With some SEO expertise it should be possible to make Wikia's purchase completely worthless because noone would ever see it, so noone would ever view any of their adverts.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
As much as I'm appalled by the legal incongruencies involved, the deal seems to be rather fair towards the contributors (except that they didn't get $$$ - but did they ever expect money in return for CC-NC content?)
... don't turn this place into a land of "lawyers and order".
I mean, Jimbo Wales is no idiot about Wikis (and seemed very down to earth guy when I met him). As much as this might be legal wrangling in the hands of the original owner, if I were a contributor I wouldn't be calling my lawyers. The ideal solution would be for the Wikia folks to ask for CC-SA (striking the NC) relicensing from all authors - in a classic King Solomon solution, by putting up a static data dump on torrents & offering to take down content of any contributor who objects from the wiki version.
But not the lawyers
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
My question is why the sudden change of heart about commercial use? It is stated that the site has had advertising, so why is it okay for the old site owner to put advertising on the site, but not okay for the new owner to put advertising on the site? The older owner may not have made a lot of money of the site (at least he claims he didn't, I doubt anyone but him really knows) but his intention was obviously commercial, as shown by his selling of the site and cashing in. It seems to me the license of being broken before and no one cared about it, so why is okay for the former owner to break the license bu not okay for the new owner?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
It's funny. A while ago, probably not long after Google bought out Deja News, there was some bad feeling from Usenet contributors who felt that their content had been sold, and others were basically profiteering on the back of their work. A few custom services were also popping up, which reproduced the content on certain Usenet groups but splatted those irritating ad-links all over key words in the content. When I suggested that this was inappropriate in a discussion here, a whole load of people basically told me to STFU because once I'd posted the content on Usenet I should have known that was going to happen.
I pointed out that at the time Deja started keeping its archive, I (and many others) would not necessarily have been aware of it, and might reasonably have expected articles to expire after a few days (as they did at the time on pretty much all ISPs' Usenet servers). I was directed to the relevant RFCs and told that they said content could be kept effectively indefinitely, and that this was more important than the industry standard practice at the time that users would actually have experienced.
I pointed out that the only licence anyone had to copy my and others' copyrighted content from Usenet was the implicit one granted by posting in the first place, and that it was questionable whether this covered commercial use or for that matter the RFC-sanctioned archival if most people using the system didn't know that could happen. This, too was our problem, I was told.
I pointed out that splatting the hyperlink ads all over the content degraded the content and certainly would not be expected on a normal Usenet system. This, apparently, was just fair use, and the fact that US-style fair use doesn't even apply in my country (where some of the material was being posted) didn't matter.
The critics' conclusion: Too bad, get over it, you have no legal rights.
My conclusion #1: Don't ask Slashdot about legal rights, ask a lawyer.
My conclusion #2: Expect to get screwed by unethical/illegal business practices if you put your content on-line anywhere but you don't have big enough legal guns to defend it afterwards. But you should take what steps you can to minimise the effort required to defend your rights: including the non-commercial clause that applies here, for example.
My prediction: In the current, Web 2.0-ish world full of community-made content, there's going to be a lot of bad feeling sooner or later, as the numerous businesses who basically just host discussion facilities but then claim rights over the content start profiteering, potentially at the expense of those who wrote the material in the first place. The so-called "you write all the content, they keep all the money" model is a great deal for businesses but a lousy deal for the contributors, who tend to suffer from some idealistic illusion that their content is safe and the service they are supporting will continue to operate for their benefit even if it's not making enough money. A lot of people's feelings are going to get hurt as this happens more often, and this case is just the start.
My answer: If you want to share content on-line, always host it on your own terms. Don't use a commercial service for your blog, set up your own. It's almost as cheap and easy these days, and then there's no ambiguity about the ongoing hosting, the rights to the material, or the privacy implications of someone else holding potentially substantial amounts of personal data. If you want to set up a community site with friends, get a friendly geek to help you do so with your own web host, for the same reasons.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The relevant part of the license is the following:
For starters I don't like this wording at all. It grants a right that is conditioned on the intent of the entity exercising the license which makes it horribly vague. Now obviously this passage prohibits the sale of the material (e.g. give me five bucks I'll give you this content) but what this means for other uses (like advertising) is extremely problematic. Moreover, it would be very very harmful if the courts read this license to prohibit the use of the material in a way that lets one gain commercial benefits because of the mere interest and popularity of the work.
Suppose for instance a bunch of documentation is released under this licensce for some open source software. If any use requiring the license that is motivated by commercial advantage even if the compensation is only indirect is bared then IBM would be barred from paying some of it's employees from adding to the documentation on the wiki. Sure the result of their action is just to help the project like anyone else but they motivation is to gain commercial advantage by improving documentation for their customers (along with everyone else) and they had to use the license to make the modifications (derivative work). Nor could any such project be hosted on google code or take advantage of google's summer of code. After all google's motivation in both projects is to elevate their corporate image and thus give them a competitive advantage. Hell, even contributing to the project to impress your boss or to learn how to write/code so you can get a better job would be banned.
Of course you could try to weasel about the meaning of the word "primarily intended" to avoid these consequences but then companies like this could do the same. If you get to weasel on this word they can simply weasel and say something like "yes we want to make profit but our primary intention is just to provide a commercially stable distribution mechanism for this product and that requires being a profitable company." There just isn't any good way to distinguish using the copyright to draw page views which draw ad revenue from using the copyright to look good so you draw customers without explicit language in the license to make this distinction. You can't make the license mean "whatever I find objectionable is off limits."
Ultimately I think we are all better off if the non-commercial aspect of this license is interpreted narrowly, i.e, it stops you from charging admission to a play you are putting on with this material, putting it on a CD and charging for that CD or other direct exchanges of value for the work. As for what you do in situations like this one, you don't whine about it.
I understand the motivation for not wanting people to charge for your work or to otherwise turn your work into a commercial product but that's not what's happening here. Intuitively (though not legally) this company isn't behaving much differently than google (or slashdot in hosting our comments). They are aren't suggesting that the content isn't free or making sure you have to pay them for the work. They are just making a profit in return for hosting the material. If you don't like the ads the obvious solution is to set up an ad free alternative.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
There are many insidious things about modern copyright legislation in various jurisdictions, but I don't think immediate take-down notices are among them. Such notices are a natural consequence of the need to protect copyright in a world of effectively instant, effectively free transmission of copies with widespread abuse. The notices are just a legal tool, and like all tools, the mechanism itself is neutral and it's how it's used that matters.
(Please don't challenge that "need" now: it's how the law works today, and I don't think this is an appropriate article for the wider discussion.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Aside from things like quest text and screenshots (and that's debatable) pulled directly from the game, the sort of things put on these wikis would not be derivitave works any more than a book review would be.
I don't disagree with you in priciple, but the fact is that the people who wrote the articles licensed them to the wiki under specific terms, and it has a legal obligation to follow them. They can always start again with their own work.
Takedown notices are just a tool in an arsenal: Is it the tool itself that is the problem, or just the people who usually employ it?
There are very few tools in this world that are a problem if they are used by an informed conscientious individual, conversely there are very few tools that are safe when in the hands of a desperate megalomaniac.
We are all just people.