Austrian Economics Wiki talk:Copyrights

Why no sharealike?

So this is something I'd like to understand. As stated on this main project page, Mises Wiki content is released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license while Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

Now. The only difference between these two is that the latter requires any derivative works to be distributed under the same or a similar license. In other words, the content itself is freely copyable, distributable, and adaptable, but any new work created using it must also be made freely copyable, distributable, and adaptable. That's the whole point of the "share alike" provision.

This means that in the case of the Mises Wiki (as it does not have this provision), the content itself is freely copyable, distributable, and adaptable, but any derivative work made using this content falls under normal copyright law...meaning that anything anyone makes using content from our Mises Wiki, they have an intellectual monopoly on, and all they have to do is attribute the base work.

My question is, why in the world would we allow this? --John James 05:42, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

This reflects the position of the Mises Institute: to make all works as free as possible. "Share-Alike," even though it ostensibly encourages freedom, is nonetheless a restriction on freedom. This was discussed in the early days of the wiki, in the google group (see the email on November 9, 2010). Stephan Kinsella is the one you'd need to convince, I suspect, to get this changed. --Forgottenman (talk) 06:17, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

Thanks for the quick response and suggestion for the info source, but I didn't find much of a discussion there. The only addressing of this was your first post (which said even less about my question than you did here), and Jeff Tucker mentioning how Kinsella suggested a hybrid to allow Wikipedia content. Is there more discussion elsewhere?

Here's what I don't understand. When you say the share-alike provision is a "restriction on freedom" what you're talking about is a restriction on the freedom to restrict freedom. In other words, you're arguing that we want to promote as free a society as possible, but we're so hell-bent on freedom, that we allow the illegitimate restriction of freedom. It's the same concept as becoming so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance. We believe so strongly in freedom, that we think others should be free to restrict freedom all they want. (Or at least we allow for it when we have the ability to prevent it, which I think is basically the same thing.)

I'm aware that Kinsella is a much more qualified authority on this, but I want to hear the argument for purposefully allowing for more copyright to exist. If we're of the position that copyright is illegitimate, IP is not property at all, and that it is a concept of nothing more than de jure monopoly that should be abolished...why in the world would we provide a platform to allow for more of it? --John James 07:01, 10 May 2011 (MSD)

It's a tough question, I agree. Kinsella explains his position here, and the key quote is "the 'Attribution Share Alike' seeks to use one’s copyright threat to force others to use this license too." Looking at it that way I think the decision makes sense. --Forgottenman (talk) 17:02, 10 May 2011 (MSD)